- ALL THE NEWS FIT TO BE ONLINE
- A VIDEO PERSPECTIVE
- TV TO WATCH
- RADIO TO LISTEN TO
- COCKTAIL CHATTER – BLACK FRIDAY AND CYBER MONDAY
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- ALL THE NEWS FIT TO BE ONLINE: Nearly 91 Million people in the U.S. visited ‘global news and current event’ websites, according to statistics produced by Nielsen/ Net Ratings. And they spent, on average, nearly an hour and a half (1:23:48, to be exact) during those visits. Now, those statistics for October are interesting enough, but proof that your favorite consultant doesn’t have a life, I looked at the numbers from years past. What’s interesting is the dramatic increase in the number and time spent online at such websites. For example, in 2003, the ‘unique audience’ averaged just over 63 Million and the time spent was just over an hour (1:01:43). A year later in 2004 (and I picked random months to find this), the unique audience was 73 Million and the average time spent was an hour and ten minutes. By 2005, the unique audience had jumped another ten million to just over 83 Million and the time spent had jumped to more than an hour and a half (1:36:21). This year, as noted above, the unique audience continued to grow BUT the average time has dropped slightly. Of course, there are seasonal changes but that appears to be the general trend.As reported by Cyberjournalist.net, the top news site in October was Yahoo News at 29 Million, followed by CNN with 27.5 Million, and MSNBC with 26.5 Million. After that there is a dropoff to AOL News at 16.8 Million, NYTimes at 12.9 Million, Gannett at 12.6 Million, ABC News at 11.3 Million and the Tribune newspaper group at just under 11.3 Million. Internet Broadcasting, which aggregates various television websites, came in at just under 11.1 Million while WorldNow, another aggregator, averaged 7.7 Million. The Associated Press hit an average 7.6 Million unique visitors while the revered BBC barely topped 6 Million, although, again, the numbers are for the U.S. Most of the sites, by the way, averaged under half an hour. I should add that the Pew Research Center for People and the Press noted in an earlier survey this year that the web serves mostly as a supplement to other news and not as a primary source.
- A WORLDWIDE PERSPECTIVE: Worldwide, comScore Networks reported that the top web properties had more than 726 Million unique visitors in the latest figures from September. The leading sites were Microsoft with 505 Million, Yahoo with 480 Million and Google with 467 Million. After that, there is a dropoff to eBay at 237 Million, Time Warner Network at 217 Million and then Wikipedia which, with 155 Million unique visitors and a 12% growth from the previous month, is becoming a phenomenon. Just as a point of perspective, the much vaunted YouTube also showed a substantial 12% jump month to month, but with ‘only’ (and that is deliberately and carefully put in quotes) 81 Million unique visitors it’s not on the scale of some of the giants. I should also note other reports by comScore and Nielsen indicate that a majority of the traffic to the U.S. websites is actually coming from international visitors.
- A VIDEO PERSPECTIVE: Yes, I know I hit the issue of broadband video a lot in last week’s MfM but here’s a different perspective. Fortune magazine in an article titled Old People Like the Web cites a study by BigResearch that shows the average age of the online video user in the U.S. is 39. And web surfers between the ages of 35 and 64 make up anywhere from 48% to 65% of the YouTube audience, according to figures from Nielsen/ Net Ratings, comScore and Quantcast. To provide a little more perspective, the report cites Forrester Research studies that show watching online video ranks fourth (25%) in online activities behind e-mail (96%), instant messaging (37%), and playing games (36%), but ahead of downloading music (12%). Among heavy Internet users, it ranked even lower, behind shopping (84%); entering contests (80%) (and, no, that would never have occurred to me either); playing games (73%); listening to Internet radio (71%), reviewing a product (68%) and sharing photos (67%). As a side note the Online Publishers Association says their study shows that a third of those who watched an online video (31%) say they checked out the company’s website.
- MORE BROADBAND VIDEO NOTES: Web portal Lycos, which actually scored well in the worldwide web properties survey, is getting into the online video business with a kind of online movie theater concept. The company is providing old movies online (which is nothing different; see AOL’s In2TV) but what is different is that you can invite friends in other areas to watch with you and you can discuss it online. And TiVo is creating a service to… well, TiVo the web for online videos. You will soon be able to watch video from the web on your TiVo, thanks to a deal with some producers to convert their video to TiVo’s preferred MPEG2 format. I should note the competitors in this area – BitTorrent and GreaseMonkey which have been doing something similar for some time. Another competitor in the video sharing business is MetaCafe which is put together by TV producer Steven Bochco. Like Revver and unlike YouTube, MetaCafe pays -- in this case $100 per 20,000 views. Premiering in February is joiningthedots.tv which is a TV-over-Broadband service providing documentary and ‘factual’ films. And, finally, AOL and HBO are partnering to create a comedy broadband channel titled This Just In, also in the first quarter of 2007.
- TV TO WATCH: Or not watch, as the case may be. The controversial interview titled If I Did It with footballer-turned-TV Star-turned-accused murderer O.J. Simpson airs on Fox November 27th and 29th, two days before his book comes out. Already several Fox affiliates (Pappas Broadcasting and Lin Broadcasting) have announced they won’t air the special while several major ad agency executives are, as MediaPost put it, “leery, if not outraged” by the move. Dan Rather made his debut on HDNet to mostly positive reviews with a look at wounded soldiers coming home from the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. His next piece, The Best Congress Money Can Buy, premieres this Tuesday. Meanwhile, “Not Coming to a Channel Near You, as New York Times writer Alessandra Stanley put it, Al Jazeera launched its English version channel. The lead piece was the re-election of Joseph Kabila as president of Congo, followed by pieces on the “hip, multicultural scene in Damascus; traffic in Beijing; Brazilian indigenous tribes; and the trials and tribulations of a Palestinian ambulance driver in Gaza.”
- RADIO TO LISTEN TO: According to a study by EmPower Media Marketing, there is less commercial time on radio than there is on TV. The firm looked at Nielsen Monitor-plus data from the top 15 markets and found that commercial time on radio averages less than 10 minutes an hour compared to the 12 to 14 minutes averaged on TV. News Talk and Sports had the most commercial time with an average of 11.91 minutes, compared to country music’s 9.72 minutes, classic music’s 6.81 and religion’s 7.78. Another study by the Radio Advertising Bureau found that African Americans and Hispanics have “exceptionally high receptivity to advertisements on the radio compared to other media.” African Americans and ‘Spanish-dominant’ Hispanics were more likely to associate radio ads with “honesty” and “fun,” according to the survey by Harris Interactive for the Radio Ad Effectiveness Lab. The same two ethnic groups cite particular “relevance” in the ads they hear on radio. Finally, as a footnote to this, even though many of you have read about this, I have to note the sale of Clear Channel Communications. The company is being bought by private equity firms and as part of the deal, all 42 of the TV stations will be sold as well as 448 (of the roughly 1,100) radio stations not in the top 100 markets. Aside from the sheer size, many observers have also noted that the sale to a private equity firm may be a precursor of other possible media deals.
- COCKTAIL CHATTER: The New York Times reports that mail-in rebates which it labeled “a process purposely designed to be complicated for consumers” is being phased out with Office Max, Best Buy, Dell and Hewlett Packard already stepping down their use. For the first time, the number one gift choice for the holidays is not a toy, games, music or video, but gift cards, according to the American Express gift card survey. You know about Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving which is the biggest shopping day of the year and Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving which is the biggest online shopping day of the year. Well, not quite. According to the American Retail Federation, the Saturday before Christmas is actually the biggest shopping day. And according to research firm CoreMetrics, the Monday after Thanksgiving has the highest online traffic but the highest sale comes the following Monday. James Bond wouldn’t recognize the Beretta company famous for his handgun. It is now an “outdoors” company which still makes handguns but also shotguns, scopes and clothing accessories. (And before anybody corrects me, I know Bond preferred the Walter PPK but he was first issued a Beretta.) The board of governors of the U.S. Postal Service reported net income of $900 Million for the fiscal year ending September 30th. But get this – that was based on total revenue of $72.8 Billion and expenses of $71.9 Billion.
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