CREATIVE DESTRUCTION VS. DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY
SHOW ME THE MONEY
COCKTAIL CHATTER – A MUSICAL
CREATIVE DESTRUCTION: That’s the title of a report from Harvard University looking at news on the Internet. The short-hand summary is that “the Internet is redistributing the news audience in ways that is threatening some traditional news organizations” – most particularly, local newspapers. But the traditional news organizations have “brand names” that they need to capitalize on, if they’re going to compete with the non-traditional news operations. The long-hand version of the report by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy is considerably more complicated. While “brand name” national newspaper websites (New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today) are growing, the websites of the dailies in large, medium and small cities are not. (In fact, local newspapers are probably losing audience to the national ‘brand name’ newspapers.) And while “brand name” networks (Fox, CBS, NBC) and local broadcast operations ARE growing, they have a long way to catch up to the “first mover” advantage that newspapers have. And none of the traditional news organizations are growing as fast as the nontraditional news operations such as news aggregators, bloggers and search engines and search providers – growth that study author Thomas E. Patterson calls “stunning.”
Let me throw out some figures: Brand name national newspaper sites average 8.8 Million visitors compared to brand name networks’ 3.2 Million, but the network sites are growing at 35% while the national newspaper sites are growing at 10%. Large city dailies average 1.2 Million visitors compared to large city television’s 250 Thousand, but large city TV is growing at 40% while large city dailies’ growth is flat. In medium sized cities, it’s a similar pattern but in small cities it’s a tighter race with small city newspapers averaging 94 Thousand visitors to their sites compared to 60 Thousand for small city TV; but small city TV is growing (modestly at 6%) while small city newspapers are flat. But here are the figures Patterson calls “stunning” – News aggregator Digg went from 2 Million visitors to 15 Million visitors in the last year, while Topix.net went from 50 Thousand to 750 Thousand. And that’s not even counting the “general aggregators” (Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN) which are hitting the 100 Million mark in terms of visitors.
The Players: By my count, there are a dozen key categories in the Internet News war: National Newspapers and National Television (which can attract local audiences); Local Newspapers and Local Television (and this is further divided into large, medium and small cities); Magazines; Commercial Radio (whose audience is very small but growing); Public Broadcasting/ Television and Public Broadcasting/ Radio (national and local); Bloggers – national and local (community sites and citizen media); Aggregators – the general ones which do have news as an important element, specific news aggregators and what Patterson calls “aggregators with attitude” – like the Drudge Report and Huffington Post; AND non-traditional actors. This one blew me away. Never thought of it. Lobbying Groups such as the Recording Industry of America, the US Chamber of Commerce, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, American Petroleum Institute. Patterson makes the point that many of these are growing by using news as a way to attract visitors to their websites. That is why Patterson says the “largest threat” posed by the Internet to traditional news organizations is “the ease with which imaginative or well positioned players from outside the news system can use news to attract an audience.”
Considerations: Newspapers originally had the advantage because the Internet was originally more ‘print’ focused. Video and graphics are now a bigger part of the equation. On the Internet, geography is less of a factor in deciding on a news source. That is why ‘brand name’ development is so important. The report emphasizes the importance of local news operations taking advantage of their local brand identity and their offline power to promote their online product. Patterson offers an object lesson from public television and radio which surprisingly was declining. His “hunch” is the public broadcasting websites promote featured programs instead of providing the day’s news. He basically argues that you have to have a balance in your local website of local, national and international news. Local news may be obvious, but if you don’t have national news as well, you’re conceding that area of interest to the national brand names. Patterson makes the point that while it is true that the Internet is contributing to an increasingly fragmented news audience, the fact is the Internet itself has a less disbursed audience than newspapers because while there are thousands of providers on the Internet, a small number of them dominate it – something that is not true in the newspaper system, or for that matter, in television.
Disclaimer or Consideration: The most important one is the point that you need two to three dozen online users, or readers in the case of newspapers, to make up for ONE offline user, in terms of advertising revenue. Secondly, while one sector of the Internet News category can increase in absolute terms (in actual numbers), it could shrink in relative size because, as Patterson puts it, “like the Cosmos, the Internet is expanding.”
Footnote: In case you’re wondering, the term “creative destruction” comes from the study of Economics and describes the transformation that comes about through radical innovation which, while destroying the value of established companies, introduces a new market dynamic that actually is good for long-term economic growth. I think it’s interesting that the authors used that term instead of the more commonly used “disruptive technology” which Wikipedia defines as “a technological innovation, product or service that eventually overturns the existing dominant technology or status quo product in the market.” Study author Patterson coins a phrase of his own when he talks about “product substitution” through the Internet.
Sidenote: A survey released by Frank N. Magid and Associates further validates the issue of brand importance. While noting that TV is still the most trusted source for breaking news, TV is vulnerable to loss of audience to the Web as a story plays out. Jack MacKenzie, who heads the group’s Millennial Strategy Program, warns that “to be a news brand today, you need to be a news brand of equal import on all platforms.”
SHOW ME THE MONEY: Despite all the gnashing of journalistic teeth about the “tarting up” of the news with infotainment, the Pew Research Center for the Press and the People says there is little real evidence that Americans taste for softer news has grown over the last two decades. The authors are quick to note that doesn’t mean news outlets have, as they put it, “erred financially” in running tabloid type news because even though interest is small, in the competitive news environment, small counts. The study looks at stories people say they followed “very closely.” The center has been doing this every year since 1986. The center says the level of interest in news has changed a little over the last two decades, but not much – with about a quarter (26%) saying they follow particular stories “very closely.” While the authors admit the term “very closely” may be a high standard, they say it still ‘suggests’ that the American news audience is only modestly interested in most day-to-day reporting.
What they are interested in, pretty consistently, is “disaster news,” says the report. It is the number one area of interest with four out of ten (39%) saying they follow such stories very closely. In second place was “money news” with 34% saying they follow such stories “very closely” but even more interesting, the authors say stories about people’s finances has grown steadily in interest over the last twenty years. When asked about specific stories that would fit into the tabloid category (such as the Anna Nicole Smith death), less than one in five (18%) said they were following such stories closely – only slightly more than those following foreign news (17%).
The report also does an interesting comparison of people’s news interest versus the media’s actual coverage. You might expect that the more coverage the more interest and vice versa. Not always. For example, the stories about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and the trial of former Vice Presidential aide Scooter Libby received more coverage than the research by Pew would indicate people want. The coverage of the War in Iraq received considerable coverage and rightfully so, based on the public interest. But then there is the story about inadequate conditions at the Walter Reed Medical Center veterans’ hospital. It received what the group called “mid-level news coverage” even though it was of high interest to the public which ranked it fourth on its list of stories they followed “very closely.” Even more surprising, stories about weather did not receive as much coverage as the public interest would have indicated. For example, the “cold winter weather” in February of this year had the third highest ranking in viewer interest among all stories, but it didn’t get nearly equivalent coverage. Global warming is another example, with audience interest ranking it in the top ten, but coverage (at least during the time of the study) ranked it in the lower third. (I say “surprising” because we consultants almost always emphasize the importance of weather coverage.)
Sidenote: To put some of this in perspective, the study by the Magid group said Word of Mouth was the #1 way people who weren’t at home found out about the Virginia Tech story. it. And that was across all demos. And that study validates an earlier study by the Word of Mouth Association that word of mouth is the primary way many people find out about breaking news.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Only one today, but it’s an interesting one. Who would have thought in today’s day and age that a musical – a musical produced by the Disney Channel, no less – would be the hottest thing on television. Disney’s High School Musical 2 became the most watched basic cable television event of all time when it premiered Friday night. The sequel to the already highly successful High School Musical drew 17.2 Million viewers. Actually, it had much more than that in this correspondent’s humble opinion because I know many students – high school and even college – who arranged viewing parties for the event, which is a double phenomenon since the show is a Tween event. TV Week put it in perspective, noting that the viewership was comparable to CBS’s CSI or ABC’s Desperate Housewives. Critics are likening High School Musical to yesteryear’s Grease, or going further back, Westside Story.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Message From Michael -- August 13, 2007
THE SEISMIC SHIFT IN THE MEDIA LANDSCAPE
NEWSPAPERS GETTING INTO THE ACT
NETWORKS GETTING INTO THE ACT
BROADBAND BALONEY
COCKTAIL CHATTER
THE SEISMIC SHIFT IN THE MEDIA LANDSCAPE: In four years time, Internet advertising will replace newspapers as the largest ad medium. Consumers are moving away from advertising-supported media to consumer-supported platforms. Spending on non-traditional media advertising such as blogs, podcasts and RSS is growing faster than any other media category. These are just some of the startling statistics and statements from the annual communications forecast study by media investment firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson. You may have read or heard about some the facts and factoids from other publications. For example, that media usage per person actually declined for the first time in ten years. But the big story isn’t so much the figures as it is the underlying theme of the report. For example, the drop in usage is explained by the simple fact that people are switching to digital alternatives for news, information and entertainment and these require less time investment than their traditional media counterparts. Or that while consumer media usage may have dropped, media usage by ‘institutional end-users’ (aka – business and government) actually grew.
Okay, we can’t go on without some facts and figures. First off, the firm says the average media usage per person last year was 3,530 hours – a drop of 0.5% from the year before. Of those hours spent with media, most of it (1,899 hours) was spent with ad-supported media, defined as broadcast television and magazines, while the rest (1,631 hours) was spent with consumer-supported media, defined as web and videogames. BUT… the time spent with ad-supported media was actually down 6.3% from five years ago while the time spent with consumer-supported media was up 19.8% from five years ago. Communications spending in the U.S. will top $1 Trillion for the first time next year, with such spending expected to reach $1.222 Trillion three years later in 2011.
Disclaimer: I don’t pretend to fully understand all the in’s and out’s of the study which covers 19 segments and more than 100 sub-segments of the U.S. media industry. (For example, I’m not sure I fully understand ‘branded entertainment.’) Plus, I can’t afford to pay the $2,495 for the full report. So, most of my information comes from a variety of sources. But, getting back to the point of overall theme, the clear message is the switch from old, analog media to new, digital media, in all its forms, is changing the media landscape dramatically and dynamically. As VSS Executive Vice President and Managing Director James Rutherford says, “time and place shifting (will) accelerate while consumers and businesses utilitize more digital media alternatives, strengthening the new media pull model at the expense of the traditional media push model.”
NEWSPAPERS GETTING INTO THE ACT: More evidence that newspapers may be leading broadcasters in Internet warfare is a study by The Bivings Report that says 92 of America’s top 100 newspapers now offer video on their websites. This is a huge jump from the year before when just 61 offered video. Even more interesting, while 26 of those newspapers use the Associated Press video streams, 13 of them offered video content from local news outlets while 39 newspapers offered original video content. The other 13 newspapers offered a conbination of video content options. In addition to the video, the report says 95 of the newspapers offered at least one reporter blog – up from 80 the year before. A third allow readers to comment on articles – up from 19 the year before. And nearly all of the newspaper websites (96) now use RSS technology.
Related Note: Internet giant, search engine and news aggregator Google is offering people or organizations mentioned in news stories the opportunity to submit their own comments which will run – unedited – alongside the Googe news links to those stories. There is no explanation yet how the Google editors will vet the comments to make sure they come from the claimed source. Regardless, many are upset, not just because of journalistic questions, but the feature will mean that Google will be offering its own version of original content.
NETWORKS GETTING INTO THE ACT: The private equity firm, Providence Equity Partners, has invested $100 Million for a 10% stake in the joint venture by NBC Universal and the News Corporation to bring their television shows and movies on the Internet. Now, I’m pretty good at Math, but it doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that means the joint venture is valued at $1 Billion. And as an article in the New York Times points out, that’s even though the joint venture has no website, doesn’t even have a name, has no defined mission statement and is hoping to persuade skeptical observers that these two real-world rivals can cooperate online.
BROADBAND BALONEY: That was the headline on a Wall Street Journal commentary by Federal Communications Commissioner Robert M. McDowell on the recent analysis of broadband adoption rates around the world. As reported in last week’s MfM, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says the U.S. has dropped from 4th place to 15th place in the past five years. However, McDowell argues the OECD analysis is flawed because it is based on a pure per capita basis which doesn’t take into account several other factors, including household size (in the U.S., there are more people in each household) or the size of the country. The household penetration in the U.S. is 42% compared to 23% in the European Union. And McDowell argues that 13 of the 14 countries listed as ahead of the U.S. are significantly smaller than the U.S. Only Canada was similar in size. He also makes the point that the OECD data doesn’t take into account all the myriad ways Americans get high speed access to the Internet.
OR IS IT? A separate analysis of broadband adoption rates by UK-based broadband communications services company Point Topic actually has the U.S. even lower at 25th place in the world with a HOUSEHOLD broadband adoption of just over half. The #1 country in the world is South Korea where nine out of ten households (89%) have a broadband connection. McDowell’s argument about the size of the country does appear to be a factor in most instances. The #2 country in terms of broadband penetration is the tiny country of Monaco (82.92%), followed by Hong Kong (79.78%), Iceland (75.51%), Singapore (69.59%). But ahead of the U.S. are also Canada (63.02%), the UK (52.25%) and Australia (only slightly ahead of the U.S. at 50.18%).
SIDENOTE #1: Dr. Alan Albarran, of the University of North Texas, who pointed out the article to me after last week’s MfM, says he has been in 17 of the European countries and the Internet speed varies widely. The Scandinavian countries have high speed connections but others like Spain and Portugal are at a virtual crawl with Germany and the U.K. in the middle. (I have been trying to nail down exactly what the facts are, in a comparison of Broadband speed and adoption rates. Maybe some of my overseas MfM readers can help sort this out.)
SIDENOTE #2: One in five broadband homes will have the technology to watch Internet-based video on their TV sets by the end of this year, according to an analysis by Emerging Media Dynamics. And in ten years time, by 2017, more than 72 Million homes (representing two-thirds of the broadband marketplace) will have PC/TV devices.
FOOTNOTE: The most fascinating part of Commissioner McDowell’s article – to me, at least – was his statement (un-sourced, I’m afraid) that “YouTube alone uses as much bandwidth today as the entire Internet did in 2000.” Is that a WOW statement, or what?
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Keep an eye out for the latest Smirnoff “Tea Partay” video. We told you in a previous MfM about the original video which does a parody of hip hop and rap with some New England preppy types. Now they’re putting out a new version. And as long as I’m plugging things, take a look at Gloob.tv. It is a video aggregation service, picking out the ‘best’ videos in different categories, from sports to movies, music, games and TV. The group Public Knowledge is questioning a statement by AT&T that it mistakenly deleted lyrics critical of President George W. Bush from a Pearl Jam performance of “Another Brick in the Wall.” Dana Boyd, A researcher and “social network expert” at the University of California-Berkeley, has created a firestorm of controversy after writing an essay dubbing MySpace as a working class site dominated by “kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school” and Facebook as a ‘suburbia’ site for “goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes and other ‘good’ kids.” You have a little more than two weeks to enter a contest sponsored by a Dutch ecology group, along with the Dutch national lottery, to dream up a greenhouse-gas-reducing product or service. The winner gets 500,000 Euro dollars. The deadline for the PICNIC Green Challenge is August 30th.
NEWSPAPERS GETTING INTO THE ACT
NETWORKS GETTING INTO THE ACT
BROADBAND BALONEY
COCKTAIL CHATTER
THE SEISMIC SHIFT IN THE MEDIA LANDSCAPE: In four years time, Internet advertising will replace newspapers as the largest ad medium. Consumers are moving away from advertising-supported media to consumer-supported platforms. Spending on non-traditional media advertising such as blogs, podcasts and RSS is growing faster than any other media category. These are just some of the startling statistics and statements from the annual communications forecast study by media investment firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson. You may have read or heard about some the facts and factoids from other publications. For example, that media usage per person actually declined for the first time in ten years. But the big story isn’t so much the figures as it is the underlying theme of the report. For example, the drop in usage is explained by the simple fact that people are switching to digital alternatives for news, information and entertainment and these require less time investment than their traditional media counterparts. Or that while consumer media usage may have dropped, media usage by ‘institutional end-users’ (aka – business and government) actually grew.
Okay, we can’t go on without some facts and figures. First off, the firm says the average media usage per person last year was 3,530 hours – a drop of 0.5% from the year before. Of those hours spent with media, most of it (1,899 hours) was spent with ad-supported media, defined as broadcast television and magazines, while the rest (1,631 hours) was spent with consumer-supported media, defined as web and videogames. BUT… the time spent with ad-supported media was actually down 6.3% from five years ago while the time spent with consumer-supported media was up 19.8% from five years ago. Communications spending in the U.S. will top $1 Trillion for the first time next year, with such spending expected to reach $1.222 Trillion three years later in 2011.
Disclaimer: I don’t pretend to fully understand all the in’s and out’s of the study which covers 19 segments and more than 100 sub-segments of the U.S. media industry. (For example, I’m not sure I fully understand ‘branded entertainment.’) Plus, I can’t afford to pay the $2,495 for the full report. So, most of my information comes from a variety of sources. But, getting back to the point of overall theme, the clear message is the switch from old, analog media to new, digital media, in all its forms, is changing the media landscape dramatically and dynamically. As VSS Executive Vice President and Managing Director James Rutherford says, “time and place shifting (will) accelerate while consumers and businesses utilitize more digital media alternatives, strengthening the new media pull model at the expense of the traditional media push model.”
NEWSPAPERS GETTING INTO THE ACT: More evidence that newspapers may be leading broadcasters in Internet warfare is a study by The Bivings Report that says 92 of America’s top 100 newspapers now offer video on their websites. This is a huge jump from the year before when just 61 offered video. Even more interesting, while 26 of those newspapers use the Associated Press video streams, 13 of them offered video content from local news outlets while 39 newspapers offered original video content. The other 13 newspapers offered a conbination of video content options. In addition to the video, the report says 95 of the newspapers offered at least one reporter blog – up from 80 the year before. A third allow readers to comment on articles – up from 19 the year before. And nearly all of the newspaper websites (96) now use RSS technology.
Related Note: Internet giant, search engine and news aggregator Google is offering people or organizations mentioned in news stories the opportunity to submit their own comments which will run – unedited – alongside the Googe news links to those stories. There is no explanation yet how the Google editors will vet the comments to make sure they come from the claimed source. Regardless, many are upset, not just because of journalistic questions, but the feature will mean that Google will be offering its own version of original content.
NETWORKS GETTING INTO THE ACT: The private equity firm, Providence Equity Partners, has invested $100 Million for a 10% stake in the joint venture by NBC Universal and the News Corporation to bring their television shows and movies on the Internet. Now, I’m pretty good at Math, but it doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that means the joint venture is valued at $1 Billion. And as an article in the New York Times points out, that’s even though the joint venture has no website, doesn’t even have a name, has no defined mission statement and is hoping to persuade skeptical observers that these two real-world rivals can cooperate online.
BROADBAND BALONEY: That was the headline on a Wall Street Journal commentary by Federal Communications Commissioner Robert M. McDowell on the recent analysis of broadband adoption rates around the world. As reported in last week’s MfM, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says the U.S. has dropped from 4th place to 15th place in the past five years. However, McDowell argues the OECD analysis is flawed because it is based on a pure per capita basis which doesn’t take into account several other factors, including household size (in the U.S., there are more people in each household) or the size of the country. The household penetration in the U.S. is 42% compared to 23% in the European Union. And McDowell argues that 13 of the 14 countries listed as ahead of the U.S. are significantly smaller than the U.S. Only Canada was similar in size. He also makes the point that the OECD data doesn’t take into account all the myriad ways Americans get high speed access to the Internet.
OR IS IT? A separate analysis of broadband adoption rates by UK-based broadband communications services company Point Topic actually has the U.S. even lower at 25th place in the world with a HOUSEHOLD broadband adoption of just over half. The #1 country in the world is South Korea where nine out of ten households (89%) have a broadband connection. McDowell’s argument about the size of the country does appear to be a factor in most instances. The #2 country in terms of broadband penetration is the tiny country of Monaco (82.92%), followed by Hong Kong (79.78%), Iceland (75.51%), Singapore (69.59%). But ahead of the U.S. are also Canada (63.02%), the UK (52.25%) and Australia (only slightly ahead of the U.S. at 50.18%).
SIDENOTE #1: Dr. Alan Albarran, of the University of North Texas, who pointed out the article to me after last week’s MfM, says he has been in 17 of the European countries and the Internet speed varies widely. The Scandinavian countries have high speed connections but others like Spain and Portugal are at a virtual crawl with Germany and the U.K. in the middle. (I have been trying to nail down exactly what the facts are, in a comparison of Broadband speed and adoption rates. Maybe some of my overseas MfM readers can help sort this out.)
SIDENOTE #2: One in five broadband homes will have the technology to watch Internet-based video on their TV sets by the end of this year, according to an analysis by Emerging Media Dynamics. And in ten years time, by 2017, more than 72 Million homes (representing two-thirds of the broadband marketplace) will have PC/TV devices.
FOOTNOTE: The most fascinating part of Commissioner McDowell’s article – to me, at least – was his statement (un-sourced, I’m afraid) that “YouTube alone uses as much bandwidth today as the entire Internet did in 2000.” Is that a WOW statement, or what?
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Keep an eye out for the latest Smirnoff “Tea Partay” video. We told you in a previous MfM about the original video which does a parody of hip hop and rap with some New England preppy types. Now they’re putting out a new version. And as long as I’m plugging things, take a look at Gloob.tv. It is a video aggregation service, picking out the ‘best’ videos in different categories, from sports to movies, music, games and TV. The group Public Knowledge is questioning a statement by AT&T that it mistakenly deleted lyrics critical of President George W. Bush from a Pearl Jam performance of “Another Brick in the Wall.” Dana Boyd, A researcher and “social network expert” at the University of California-Berkeley, has created a firestorm of controversy after writing an essay dubbing MySpace as a working class site dominated by “kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school” and Facebook as a ‘suburbia’ site for “goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes and other ‘good’ kids.” You have a little more than two weeks to enter a contest sponsored by a Dutch ecology group, along with the Dutch national lottery, to dream up a greenhouse-gas-reducing product or service. The winner gets 500,000 Euro dollars. The deadline for the PICNIC Green Challenge is August 30th.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Message from Michael -- August 7, 2007
ALL NEWS IS LOCAL
STATISTICS THAT TELL A STORY
TOPS IN BRAND IDENTITY
NOT SO TOPS IN BROADBAND ADOPTION
MEDIA MOGUL OR MEDIA MARAUDER
COCKTAIL CHATTER
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
ALL NEWS IS LOCAL: How often have you heard that aphorism? We consultants use it a lot. Two recent set of statistics prove that it is true, and not true, depending on how you interpret the phrase. Research firm Hitwise says its analysis of websites in the category of ‘news and media’ shows that LOCAL websites contributed 90% of all the traffic to this category of site. I’m going to throw some numbers at you, so stay with me. The researchers say that ‘news and media’ websites accounted for 3.47% of ALL Internet traffic. Local websites received 3.13% of all those visits. A very much related study by comScore Networks found that local search services are beating out the more generalized search services. Local search, using such services as Internet Yellow Pages, grew 24% while general search, using such services as Google, Yahoo and MSN, grew 14%. Even better, according to the survey commissioned by TMP Directional Marketing, four out of five people (82%) using local web search sites followed their research up with action – in store visits, phone calls, e-mails and purchases. The group said they were surprised to learn that a third of the respondents said they continue to rely on print Yellow Pages as their main source of local business information. Of course, that means two-thirds choose online services, but the company noted that those searches are divided amongst a variety of sites.
Okay, back to that Hitwise analysis, some more confusing numbers. So, stay with me. Nearly a third (29.59%) of the visits, just to the ‘news and media’ category, went to the top 10 websites and more than half (56.59%) went to the top 100 websites. The average visit duration for the news and media industry category was 6 minutes and 35 seconds.
And remember the point in a previous MfM about Nielsen/ Net Ratings changing its way of measuring website rankings? Hitwise ranks the top 30 websites in three ways. Using number of visits – Yahoo News came in first, followed by The Weather Channel, MSNBC, CNN, and People Magazine. Using page views – Yahoo News again came in first, but People Magazine came in second, followed by The Weather Channel, MSNBC, and CNN. But when measuring by time spent at the site (session duration), the ranking changes dramatically. In first place is RedOrbit.com where visitors spent more than an hour (1:07:28), followed by Entrepreneur.com (1:10:03), NewsNow, which is a U.K. operation (53:37), Startup Journal (41.10), ABC News Discussion (36:38), Apple Daily Online (31:01), and my favorite, Muscular Development Magazine (28:51), just ahead of SouthAsiaNews.com (28.41).
STATISTICS THAT TELL A STORY: But exactly what kind of story, I’m not sure. For example, the top two Presidential candidates’ websites are Barack Obama (with 29.59% of the market share) followed by Hilary Clinton (with 17.35%), according to a Hitwise survey of websites. Okay, that makes sense. But the third highest ranked presidential candidate’s website is – Ron Paul, the Republican Texas congressman and political unknown, with 12.76%. Followed by John Edwards (10.33%), former Alaska senator Mike Gravel (5.86%) (And if you just said Who? – don’t feel bad), who led Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney 3.92%) and Rudy Giuliani (3.83%). At the bottom of the website indexes was Virginia governor Jim Gilmore (for many, another – Who?) with 0.08%.
On a slightly more serious note, Hitwise, did a breakout of the top U.S. broadcast network TV show websites. Not surprisingly, with the movie coming out, The Simpsons led the pack with a fifth (21.90%) of the market share of visits. After that, the numbers drop dramatically with Pirate Master in second place (7.15%), America’s Got Talent (6.88%), American Idol (6.19%), So You Think You Can Dance (5.81%), America’s Most Wanted (4.23%), Deal or No Deal (3.17%), Hell’s Kitchen (2.69%), Grey’s Anatomy (2.21%) and Age of Love (1.85%).
TOPS IN BRAND IDENTITY: You may have seen the story on the world’s top 100 brands, with Coca-Cola in the number one spot. But the analysis by Interbrand had some exclusions. For example, to qualify, a company must get at least a third of its revenue outside its home country, be recognizable outside its home country, and have publicly available marketing and financial data. So, that excludes Wal-Mart and other companies which operate under different names in other countries. And it excludes companies, like Visa, which are privately held. Proving yet again that I need a life, counting the number of brands and their countries of origin, not surprisingly, the U.S. had the highest count with 42 brands making the top 100 list. The number two country was a tight race with Germany (10 brands) narrowly beating France (9), Japan (8) and Britain (6). China didn’t make it with any brands, but tiny Netherlands did with two companies (Phillips and ING). And Bermuda did with consulting firm Accenture (Yeah, I thought that was an American company, too.)
NOT SO TOP IN BROADBAND ADOPTION: Okay, the point about brand identification was the good news for the U.S., now the bad news. In five years (from 2001 to 2006), the U.S. has dropped from 4th in Broadband penetration in the world to 15th. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development releases a per capita ranking of broadband adoption rates every six months. The group says the U.S. has 19.6 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants. That’s behind Denmark at number one (31.9), Netherlands (31.8), Iceland (29.7), Korea (29.1), Switzerland (28.5), Norway (27.7), Finland (27.2), Sweden (26), Canada (23.8), Belgium (22.5), United Kingdom (21.6), Luxembourg (20.4), France (20.3) and Japan (20.2). We did beat Australia (19.2), Austria (17.3), German (17.1), Spain (15.3) and Italy (14.8).
However, it should be noted that a Pew Internet Project study showed the percentage of Americans with HOME Broadband connections is 47%. That’s double the 24% penetration three years earlier. Researchers at Pew say broadband penetration should pass the half way mark (50%) this year. And to put that in perspective, they note that it took 10 years for CD players to reach 50%, 15 years for cell phones and 18 years for color TV.
MEDIA MOGUL OR MEDIA MARAUDER: And you know who I’m talking about – Rupert Murdoch, of course. With the news that he will purchase Dow Jones and Co., with its flagship Wall Street Journal newspaper, I decided to look at two earlier MfM’s which quoted heavily from Murdoch’s letter to shareholders. In those reports, Murdoch called the print business “the heart” of the News Corp Company. He says it’s too early to declare the death of print media even with surveys showing people finding alternative means of getting the news. He makes it clear that his company will be providing those alternatives, saying, for example, that he “hopes and expects” that in the near future the Internet will be where Cable is today. All because, he says, “the hunger for news and information – for content – is not fading. It is intensifying.”
What stands out in re-reading those MfM’s is the hyperbole that borders somewhere between cocky and confident. For example, he refers to his company as “the most innovative and fearless media company in the world today.” He talks in the letter several times about the need for an “innovative, entrepreneurial spirit.” He talks about the “digital revolution” having the potential of “changing our world as fundamentally as the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions.” Topping his list of ‘business principles’ is the admonition that one needs to “be willing to ignore or even take on conventional wisdom.”
Considering the $5 Billion price tag he offered for the WSJ which translated into a 50% or more per share price, his other business principles are particularly interesting – invest wisely and early in a new business – be patient as the new effort finds its footing – enjoy the growth and profitability as the business matures but always be thinking about and building the next generation of offerings. Lastly, I offer the thought that Murdoch may have used the word “customer” more in his letter to shareholders than anybody else, but not as a company focus so much as a revenue target.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: The first recorded spam e-mail was in 1978, according to an article in The New Yorker, when a marketer for Digital Equipment Corporation sent out an e-mail to the thousand or so people on Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet, touting the wonders of DEC’s new computer system. The man, Gary Thuerk, was harshly reprimanded by the system administrator but his company sold 20 of the computers at a million dollars apiece. Students headed to college this fall are part of the most wired generation yet, according to a study released by research firm eMarketer and reported in MediaLife Magazine. The percentage grew 2% from last year to this year, so that 95% of college students use the Internet. That translates into 17.1 Million college students who log on to do everything from register for classes to reserving dormitory washing machines.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail me at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at my website MediaConsultant.tv.
STATISTICS THAT TELL A STORY
TOPS IN BRAND IDENTITY
NOT SO TOPS IN BROADBAND ADOPTION
MEDIA MOGUL OR MEDIA MARAUDER
COCKTAIL CHATTER
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
ALL NEWS IS LOCAL: How often have you heard that aphorism? We consultants use it a lot. Two recent set of statistics prove that it is true, and not true, depending on how you interpret the phrase. Research firm Hitwise says its analysis of websites in the category of ‘news and media’ shows that LOCAL websites contributed 90% of all the traffic to this category of site. I’m going to throw some numbers at you, so stay with me. The researchers say that ‘news and media’ websites accounted for 3.47% of ALL Internet traffic. Local websites received 3.13% of all those visits. A very much related study by comScore Networks found that local search services are beating out the more generalized search services. Local search, using such services as Internet Yellow Pages, grew 24% while general search, using such services as Google, Yahoo and MSN, grew 14%. Even better, according to the survey commissioned by TMP Directional Marketing, four out of five people (82%) using local web search sites followed their research up with action – in store visits, phone calls, e-mails and purchases. The group said they were surprised to learn that a third of the respondents said they continue to rely on print Yellow Pages as their main source of local business information. Of course, that means two-thirds choose online services, but the company noted that those searches are divided amongst a variety of sites.
Okay, back to that Hitwise analysis, some more confusing numbers. So, stay with me. Nearly a third (29.59%) of the visits, just to the ‘news and media’ category, went to the top 10 websites and more than half (56.59%) went to the top 100 websites. The average visit duration for the news and media industry category was 6 minutes and 35 seconds.
And remember the point in a previous MfM about Nielsen/ Net Ratings changing its way of measuring website rankings? Hitwise ranks the top 30 websites in three ways. Using number of visits – Yahoo News came in first, followed by The Weather Channel, MSNBC, CNN, and People Magazine. Using page views – Yahoo News again came in first, but People Magazine came in second, followed by The Weather Channel, MSNBC, and CNN. But when measuring by time spent at the site (session duration), the ranking changes dramatically. In first place is RedOrbit.com where visitors spent more than an hour (1:07:28), followed by Entrepreneur.com (1:10:03), NewsNow, which is a U.K. operation (53:37), Startup Journal (41.10), ABC News Discussion (36:38), Apple Daily Online (31:01), and my favorite, Muscular Development Magazine (28:51), just ahead of SouthAsiaNews.com (28.41).
STATISTICS THAT TELL A STORY: But exactly what kind of story, I’m not sure. For example, the top two Presidential candidates’ websites are Barack Obama (with 29.59% of the market share) followed by Hilary Clinton (with 17.35%), according to a Hitwise survey of websites. Okay, that makes sense. But the third highest ranked presidential candidate’s website is – Ron Paul, the Republican Texas congressman and political unknown, with 12.76%. Followed by John Edwards (10.33%), former Alaska senator Mike Gravel (5.86%) (And if you just said Who? – don’t feel bad), who led Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney 3.92%) and Rudy Giuliani (3.83%). At the bottom of the website indexes was Virginia governor Jim Gilmore (for many, another – Who?) with 0.08%.
On a slightly more serious note, Hitwise, did a breakout of the top U.S. broadcast network TV show websites. Not surprisingly, with the movie coming out, The Simpsons led the pack with a fifth (21.90%) of the market share of visits. After that, the numbers drop dramatically with Pirate Master in second place (7.15%), America’s Got Talent (6.88%), American Idol (6.19%), So You Think You Can Dance (5.81%), America’s Most Wanted (4.23%), Deal or No Deal (3.17%), Hell’s Kitchen (2.69%), Grey’s Anatomy (2.21%) and Age of Love (1.85%).
TOPS IN BRAND IDENTITY: You may have seen the story on the world’s top 100 brands, with Coca-Cola in the number one spot. But the analysis by Interbrand had some exclusions. For example, to qualify, a company must get at least a third of its revenue outside its home country, be recognizable outside its home country, and have publicly available marketing and financial data. So, that excludes Wal-Mart and other companies which operate under different names in other countries. And it excludes companies, like Visa, which are privately held. Proving yet again that I need a life, counting the number of brands and their countries of origin, not surprisingly, the U.S. had the highest count with 42 brands making the top 100 list. The number two country was a tight race with Germany (10 brands) narrowly beating France (9), Japan (8) and Britain (6). China didn’t make it with any brands, but tiny Netherlands did with two companies (Phillips and ING). And Bermuda did with consulting firm Accenture (Yeah, I thought that was an American company, too.)
NOT SO TOP IN BROADBAND ADOPTION: Okay, the point about brand identification was the good news for the U.S., now the bad news. In five years (from 2001 to 2006), the U.S. has dropped from 4th in Broadband penetration in the world to 15th. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development releases a per capita ranking of broadband adoption rates every six months. The group says the U.S. has 19.6 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants. That’s behind Denmark at number one (31.9), Netherlands (31.8), Iceland (29.7), Korea (29.1), Switzerland (28.5), Norway (27.7), Finland (27.2), Sweden (26), Canada (23.8), Belgium (22.5), United Kingdom (21.6), Luxembourg (20.4), France (20.3) and Japan (20.2). We did beat Australia (19.2), Austria (17.3), German (17.1), Spain (15.3) and Italy (14.8).
However, it should be noted that a Pew Internet Project study showed the percentage of Americans with HOME Broadband connections is 47%. That’s double the 24% penetration three years earlier. Researchers at Pew say broadband penetration should pass the half way mark (50%) this year. And to put that in perspective, they note that it took 10 years for CD players to reach 50%, 15 years for cell phones and 18 years for color TV.
MEDIA MOGUL OR MEDIA MARAUDER: And you know who I’m talking about – Rupert Murdoch, of course. With the news that he will purchase Dow Jones and Co., with its flagship Wall Street Journal newspaper, I decided to look at two earlier MfM’s which quoted heavily from Murdoch’s letter to shareholders. In those reports, Murdoch called the print business “the heart” of the News Corp Company. He says it’s too early to declare the death of print media even with surveys showing people finding alternative means of getting the news. He makes it clear that his company will be providing those alternatives, saying, for example, that he “hopes and expects” that in the near future the Internet will be where Cable is today. All because, he says, “the hunger for news and information – for content – is not fading. It is intensifying.”
What stands out in re-reading those MfM’s is the hyperbole that borders somewhere between cocky and confident. For example, he refers to his company as “the most innovative and fearless media company in the world today.” He talks in the letter several times about the need for an “innovative, entrepreneurial spirit.” He talks about the “digital revolution” having the potential of “changing our world as fundamentally as the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions.” Topping his list of ‘business principles’ is the admonition that one needs to “be willing to ignore or even take on conventional wisdom.”
Considering the $5 Billion price tag he offered for the WSJ which translated into a 50% or more per share price, his other business principles are particularly interesting – invest wisely and early in a new business – be patient as the new effort finds its footing – enjoy the growth and profitability as the business matures but always be thinking about and building the next generation of offerings. Lastly, I offer the thought that Murdoch may have used the word “customer” more in his letter to shareholders than anybody else, but not as a company focus so much as a revenue target.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: The first recorded spam e-mail was in 1978, according to an article in The New Yorker, when a marketer for Digital Equipment Corporation sent out an e-mail to the thousand or so people on Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet, touting the wonders of DEC’s new computer system. The man, Gary Thuerk, was harshly reprimanded by the system administrator but his company sold 20 of the computers at a million dollars apiece. Students headed to college this fall are part of the most wired generation yet, according to a study released by research firm eMarketer and reported in MediaLife Magazine. The percentage grew 2% from last year to this year, so that 95% of college students use the Internet. That translates into 17.1 Million college students who log on to do everything from register for classes to reserving dormitory washing machines.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail me at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at my website MediaConsultant.tv.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
