Message From Michael -- January 21, 2008

SHE LOVES ME; SHE LOVES ME NOT

THE ENGAGED CANNIBAL

SUPERBOWL – THE ULTIMATE TORTURE TEST

GIANT KILLER OR KILLER GIANT

COCKTAIL CHATTER – BLACK OWNED TV AND CHINESE ADULTERY

A FINAL SALUTE


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SHE LOVES ME; SHE LOVES ME NOT: Several recent reports seem to be sending the same mixed signals about the Internet and politics, just like the childhood game of plucking petals from a flower to find out if ‘she loves me’ sent me some mixed signals when I was young. If you pick the flower message from the Pew Research Center, the Internet is becoming a “major source” of campaign news, particularly for young people. The Pew study says a quarter (24%) of Americans say they regularly learn something about the campaigns from the Web, which is double the number (13%) in the 2004 campaign. But if you pick the flower message from Presidentialwtch08.com, the presidential candidates may need to rethink their Internet strategies because their sites have little or no impact on voters, according to an analysis by AdWeek’s Wendy Melillo. The website which provides a map of political conversations shows links between websites and it shows very few links between candidate’s websites and political websites and vice versa. Ah, ha, you say, the difference is the candidates’ website versus other political websites. I thought the same thing except MediaWeek reports that sites like WashingtonPost.com, Slate and Wall Street Journal online report little to no political ad activity so far. Even the candidates themselves say Web ads can only go so far building momentum for political campaigns, according to a report by The ClickZ Network. The explanation for the discrepancy may come in a line in the Pew Study which notes that more than half (52%) of the people getting political news on the Internet got it by accident, so to speak, because they came across it while surfing for something else. The Pew study says TV remains the main source of political news by a wide margin even though local TV and the network news’ share is down significantly while cable is basically flat, but that the Internet has beaten newspapers in the political news category. One analysis comes from a report by Mark Walsh at MediaPost which suggests alliances between old media and new media (such as the ones between CNN and YouTube, MTV and MySpace, and ABC News and Facebook) may be “the first steps toward the increasing convergence of TV and the Internet in shaping political coverage in the digital age.”

Several politically themed websites have been created, including Scripps’ RedBlueAmerica.com, Lin TV which has launched political sites in each of its 17 markets, and AOL’s Truveo. The two best – in my humble opinion – are the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg Schools’ FactCheck.org AND Votegopher.com, which was created by a Harvard grad who has done a remarkable job of outlining every issue and every candidate’s stance on the issue along with the latest polls, statements and news stories about the candidates.

THE ENGAGED CANNIBAL: If I were to headline this, ‘online video use is growing,’ you’d say, sarcastically, ‘oh, really, no kidding.’ However, some of the figures are pretty staggering. For example, technology research firm ABI says the number of video downloads will spike from 215 Million this year to more than 2.4 Billion in 2012, with rentals making up half the market. Our friends at the Pew Internet Project say nearly half (48%) of US Internet users (those already on the Internet) visited a video sharing site during 2007 and that 15% were either watching or posting video on a typical day. And that last number is double the figure of a year ago. Consulting firm Deloitte & Touche says more than a third (38%) of consumers watch TV shows online and that a fifth (20%) say they are viewing video content on their cell phones daily or almost daily. Research and consultancy firm Horowitz Associates says the figures are even higher for high-speed Internet users with six out of ten either watching or downloading video content at least once a week and nearly nine out of ten (86%) doing so on a monthly basis. And those figures are up dramatically from the year before.

The Horowitz study says that even though the number of people watching full episodes of TV shows online doubled from last year’s study to 16% of high-speed Internet users, ‘traditional’ TV remains the preferred platform. It also says handheld devices are becoming more popular, and that as broadband content gets better, more consumers are brought to the online platform. Despite this AdWeek quotes company president Howard Horowitz as saying that, “the data suggest that broadband video is not cannibalistic to linear video but rather an enhancement to consumers’ traditional TV experience.” A slightly different view comes from Experian Research Services’ Simmons group which found that consumers who watch TV online are ‘more engaged’ than consumers who watch TV programs on regular TV sets. And the firm says engagement equals ‘ad receptivity.’ In fact they say viewers are 47% more engaged with ADS shown during online TV programs than those shown on regular TV sets but ‘only’ 25% more engaged with the actual CONTENT of online shows compared to content on regular TV sets. The study says a similar higher level of engagement applies to online versions of magazines compared with print versions. However, it should be noted that the report says print, in general, enjoys higher levels of engagement than either TV or the Internet.


I also think it’s worth noting the six dimensions of engagement as defined by Simmons. The company says respondents identify with media they consume as either – inspirational, trustworthy, life-enhancing, social interaction, personal time-out, and ‘ad attention/ receptivity.’

I should also note the Horowitz study says the most ‘highly-viewed’ video content is news, followed by user-generated content, followed by movie previews, music videos and segments of television shows.

SUPERBOWL – THE ULTIMATE TORTURE TEST. And I’m not talking about the game. According to Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president of strategic services for Nielsen Online, the Super Bowl is the ultimate torture test in marketing ROI with the ‘buzz factor’ often becoming “the final arbiter of success or failure of the advertising.” Nielsen is going to issue special reports, tracking messages across 70 million blogs and websites, and has its own blog – The Road to the Big Game. Blackshaw’s analysis of a successful Super Bowl ad is good advice for marketers: “Brands that wrap holistic, well-integrated marketing programs around the television advertising typically reap higher dividends.” In keeping with that holistic approach, Fox is leveraging MySpace as part of its advertising plan. Nielsen says that may explain, in part, why Fox has reported the earliest sell-out for in-game ad inventory in several years with movie companies and automakers leading the pack even though other reports note that former advertisers, including tech companies, are sitting on the sideline. Oh, by the way, did I say how much an ad is going for? -- $2.7 Million.

GIANT KILLER OR KILLER GIANT: That’s the question as Google and Wikipedia square off, by stepping into each other’s turf. Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales has launched a user-based search engine because he says it’s necessary for the public to take control of search. Meanwhile Google has announced that it is launching a sort-of Wiki competitor, Knol, “to make information easier to find and more authoritative.”

COCKTAIL CHATTER: According to the group Free Press, as reported by FinalCall.com, black television station ownership has dropped 60% over the last year from 19 to 8, “making black ownership almost non-existent.” The animated film Ratatouille was the highest rated film of 2007 by the readers of The New York Times. The hot thing in the Chinese blogosphere is a video of the wife of a TV sports anchor commandeering the microphone at an Olympic media event to accuse her husband of adultery. The U.K. publication The People reports that the 81-year-old Queen Elizabeth II has become a Wii addict after getting hold of one of the video game consoles from grandson Prince William. According to the Census Bureau, as reported by FactCheck.org, one out of four (27%) of U.S. adults have a bachelor’s degree.

A FINAL NOTE: Allow me to make a personal salute to Karl Davis, General Manager of WECT-TV, Wilmington, North Carolina who died recently while motorcycling with friends. Karl was that unusual combination of manager and leader who had the even more unusual talent of being respected by the people who worked for him, not just because he was a good boss but because he was a good person. I had the honor of calling WECT a client station for many years; I had the greater honor of being able to call Karl a friend.

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