TRUST IS TO BE EARNED
THE SWEET SPOT
MOST EXPENSIVE ADS ON TV
MOST EXPENSIVE TV ON ADS
GOOD NEWS FOR NEWS
FOLLOW-UPS – JOOST AND LINKEDIN
COCKTAIL CHATTER – MALLS AND CUBA
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.
TRUST IS TO BE EARNED: And apparently the media hasn’t earned it, at least in developed countries. The Edelman public relations firm did a worldwide survey – what it called a Trust Barometer -- to find out what people thought of business, media, religion, government, and non-governmental organizations. The question was “how much do you trust each institution to do what’s right.” Interestingly, the media scored lower (37%) than any other institution in developed countries (defined as Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States). Yet the media scored the second highest level of trust (56%), just behind business (60%) in the developing countries (defined as Brazil, China, India, Poland, Mexico and Russia).
Just for the record, in developed countries the scores go like this: Non-governmental organizations, NGO’s, scored the highest (53%), followed by business (47%), government and religion (both at 38%) and media (37%). In developing countries, it goes like this: Business (60%), media (56%), NGO’s (53%), government and religion (both at 46%).
THE SWEET SPOT: The language is a little convoluted, but one of the many messages that I found particularly interesting from the report is this one: “the vertical axis – the top-down, one-way dissemination by an authoritative voice of precise, controlled messages – has been firmly intersected by a horizontal axis of a continuous, messy, powerful, peer-to-peer conversation.” Notice – not replaced, but augmented. According to company President and CEO Richard Edelman, it’s at the nexus of these “vertical and horizontal axes” that companies will find the ‘sweet spot’ of communications and trust.
The report also indicates, yet again, the power of Word of Mouth, which we have talked about before in MfM. In the European Union, North America and Latin America, “a person like me” is the most credible deliverer of information about a company. In Asia, “a person like me” is second only to physicians. And in many countries, a conversation with a friend or peer is as trusted a source of information about a company as an article in a newspaper or TV news coverage. However, newspapers, TV and radio remain more credible than new media sources like blogs or a company website. The report notes that it used to be that ‘a person like me’ was one of our neighbors or people in our social circle, but now the commonality is that they share our interests, regardless of geographic location.
Finally, and I shouldn’t say finally because there is so much in the report, the survey says the “new green” – that is, the new hot button issue – is how companies treat their employees. “Fair treatment of employees” is the most or second most important activity (behind the environment) for a socially responsible company to engage in.
MOST EXPENSIVE ADS ON TV: Last year, it was ABC’s Desperate Housewives that took the top spot. This year, according to Advertising Age, ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy at $419,000 per 30-second spot is the most expensive show on network TV. Followed by: NBC’s Sunday Night Football ($358K), Fox’s The Simpson’s ($315K), NBC’s Heroes ($296K), ABC’s Desperate Housewives ($270K), CBS’s CSI ($248K), CBS’s Two and Half Men ($231K), and tied for 9th place at $208,000 per spot was CBS’s Survivor: China and ABC’s Private Practice. Of course, reporter Brian Steinberg notes that all of them will be toppled by American Idol in the spring.
MOST EXPENSIVE TV ON ADS: I’ll admit it. Sometimes my headlines are a stretch. In this case, we’re talking about the top media companies. Two lists came out. Both reporting that Time Warner is the biggest media company in the world. The oddity is the ‘slight’ difference in numbers. Advertising Age puts TW’s gross revenues at just under $34 Billion. Fortune magazine puts it at just under $45 Billion. Both lists also put the Walt Disney Company at the top of their lists, but again there is a wide disparity in numbers, with Advertising Age putting Disney’s revenues in 2006 at $16.8 Billion while Fortune magazine puts Disney’s revenues at $34.2 Billion. The disparity (I think) is that Advertising Age lists only the net U.S. media revenues while Fortune is listing worldwide revenues. That doesn’t quite explain why Advertising Age puts Comcast in the number two spot with revenues of about $27.4 Billion, but Comcast doesn’t even make Fortune magazine’s list of top entertainment companies.
In any case, the lists do provide some interesting fodder. For example, Time Warner as the top media company in the world ‘only’ has one-tenth the revenues of the world’s largest company – Wal-Mart which had more than $351 Billion in revenue in 2006. Staggering, isn’t it? In fact, even based on the larger revenue figures, Time Warner only makes it to the 48th spot on the Fortune 500 list. However, even so, the revenue of Time Warner at the top spot in the Advertising Age list is 100 times the revenue of the media company occupying the final 100th spot on the media company list – Schurz Communications at $300 Million. The editors at Advertising Age also note that the cost of entry to the top 100 media list has grown significantly over the last two decades. In 1986, a ‘mere’ $100 Million would have gained a company entry into the top 100 list; in 1999, that figure rose to $200 Million; and now in this latest report, it’s $300 Million.
GOOD NEWS FOR NEWS: It was only one line in the Associated Press report, and it was buried at the end, but it’s too interesting not to report. According to a poll by the AP and survey research firm Ipsos (which has the somewhat insulting slogan – Nobody’s Unpredictable), more than a quarter (28%) of the American public would like to see more news on television. This is up significantly from two years ago when it was 17%. This is the same poll that found nearly two-thirds of the American public (62%) believe television is getting worse and that nearly three-quarters (71%) believe there are too many reality shows on TV.
FOLLOW-UPS: TV-on-computer/ video-streaming site Joost has gone public. Regular readers of MfM will remember that we were part of the Beta testing of the site which up to now had been by invite only. But now it’s all aboard. Al-Jazeera says it is close to inking a deal with a major distributor in America. The British Broadcasting Company has launched the Americanized version of its World Now television newscast at 7:00 p.m. EST. After a week of watching, what I noticed most was not just that the report had a much broader worldwide perspective, but the commercials which included a spot about Qatar as the financial center of the world, Turkish Airways as connecting the world, and tourist attractions in India. As long as I am making some personal observations, LinkedIn, a social networking site for the business community, which we’ve mentioned in previous MfM’s appears to be taking off. In the last month, I have had more requests to link up from former students, and others, than I can remember receiving in the last year.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: In what must signal the end of an era, the International Council of Shopping Centers reports that only one enclosed shopping mall (the one-time haven of teenagers everywhere) was built in 2006 and none are planned for this year. According to an article in The New York Times by Stanford journalism professor and technology writer G. Paschal Zachary, Internet behemoth Google uses at least 450,000 computers in its search operations.
There is a website, cubaheadlines.com, which, as you would expect, has news and editorials about Cuba. All fine and dandy. But the part I love is that the banner at the top of the page is a map of Cuba (to be expected) a picture of Havana harbor (to be expected) and emblazoned across all this, the true symbol of Cuba – what looks to me like a 1953 Packard, in mint condition of course.
And finally, website Entrepreneur.com named ten businesses facing possible (and that’s the debatable word) extinction in the next ten years: Record stores (no explanation needed), camera film manufacturing (again, no explanation needed), crop dusters (commercial airlines are taking over); gay bars (because of greater acceptance in society); newspapers (at least the printing press plant part, but not the Internet part); pay phones whose numbers have dropped by half over the last decade (not just because of cell phones, but because cities are eliminating them because they’re gathering points for drug dealers); used bookstores (you can find what you want on the Internet); piggy banks (as we go to a paperless society); coin operated arcades which have dropped from 10,000 to 3,000 in the last decade because of video games at home and online; and -- wishful thinking -- telemarketers whose sales have been stagnant because of the national Do Not Call list, but who still managed to bring in $393 Billion last year.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail 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.
Showing posts with label Joost. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joost. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Message From Michael -- June 11, 2007
MOTHRA VERSUS GODZILLA
LET THE COMPETITION CONTINUE
NO LONGER A TWO WAY BATTLE
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 newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
MOTHRA VERSUS GODZILLA: It’s the classic film, but did you know that Godzilla also went up against King Kong, and creatures known as Biollante, Destoroyah and King Ghidorah? Sometimes Godzilla was the hero and sometimes the anti-hero. Well, there are a similar series of contests going on, with the definition of who the hero is, depending on your point of view. The Toshiba developed HD-DVD and the Sony developed Blu-Ray are battling over who controls the home video sales market with releases of movies on the competing formats. Microsoft meanwhile has launched Silverlight to try and wrest the content creating crown from Adobe’s Flash multimedia authoring program. And, according to research call center Bridge Ratings, old media Radio may be facing a challenge from new media Cell Phones for news and sports info. Although radio remains the primary source by a two to one margin (65% versus 30%), the percentage of consumers picking radio for news and sports info dropped 11% while the percentage picking cell phones increased 11% in the last two years. But the big showdown pits traditional media Television against new media Broadband video. The odds are similar to the radio versus cell phone battle, but again it’s all a matter of perspective.
A study by ‘marketing research consultancy’ Ipsos Insight says even among consumers who ‘actively stream and download video content,’ three quarters of their video consumption (75%) is through a television set with only 11% being viewed on a PC. On the flip side, communications giant Motorola released a study of European broadband users which shows nearly half (45%) are watching some TV on the Internet. And even though the Ipsos report says Americans still are “entranced” by the increasing variety of content options available on their TV’s, a different study by media agency Publicis says the public is becoming blasé about TV’s offerings, in prime time in particular, with more than a third (38%) saying they’re less satisfied than in past years. The Washington Post reported that 2.5 Million fewer people tuned into the major networks this Spring season compared to last year, although the article says it is uncertain whether the change is a result of fewer TV viewers from Web use or time shifting. Nielsen Media Research released a report saying that the ‘decline’ in TV viewing is attributable to DVR usage and that people are actually watching as much as before. Meanwhile, the major networks have all gotten into the business of delivering program on the Internet. The biggest and latest player may be the British Broadcasting Corporation which unveiled a new streaming video player called iPlayer with its entire schedule soon available.
And even among the broadband video operations, there is a Godzilla like battle going on. Joost which was created by the Scandinavian duo who created Skype and Kazaa is quickly becoming the 600-pound gorilla of the broadband TV market, lining up major networks AND major advertisers. But it is not the only one, by any stretch of the imagination. Babelgum uses the same peer-to-peer technology (in which bits of data are shared among multiple computers instead of being housed on just one server) to distribute TV content. Even more unusual is Democracy Player, an open source TV video player created by a group called Participatory Culture Foundation which wants to build a “new, open mass medium of online television… (because) we think it’s a problem that a small number of corporations control mass media.”
As a side note to all this, a public thank you to Raycom CIO Dave Folsom for getting me an invite to beta test the Joost player. I’ll let you know what my admittedly semi-informed testing shows, after I’ve had a chance to kick the wheels for a while.
As a foot note to the declining viewership, reporter Paul Farhi reports in The Washington Post that the number of people watching Washington’s four leading news stations at 5pm and 6pm fell by about 8% overall from May 2006 to May 2007. But, he says if you go back to May of 1997, the change is even dramatic with a decline of 25% in the late news viewing and 37% in the 6pm viewing.
LET THE COMPETITION CONTINUE: As long as we’re on this battle theme, let’s look at some others. In social networking sites, the 16-hundred pound gorilla is, of course, MySpace with nearly 80% of the market, according to research firm Hitwise, while the 6-hundred pound monkey is Facebook with nearly 12% of the market. The chimpanzees of the social networking sites are Bebo and Imeem which get about one percent, focusing on music and video, and Black Planet which also gets about one percent focusing on the African American community. When it comes to virtual worlds, the 800-pound gorilla is Second Life which we’ve talked about in previous MfM’s. But a Swedish software company may soon make a monkey out of them with plans to build a massive virtual universe for China. The company, MindArk, says the Chinese virtual world will be able to handle 7 Million players at the same time and is aiming at 150 million users who are expected to generate $1 Billion in activity every year. For comparison’s sake, Second Life had 1.3 Million people log into the site in March, an increase of 46% since the beginning of the year, with most those visitors from Europe and only a fifth from North America. And in the war of the sexes, males account for nearly two thirds (63%) of the podcasting audience with only a third (37%) being female.
NO LONGER A TWO-WAY BATTLE: Let’s keep the theme going. Traditionally the battle for website NEWS and information users has been between television stations and newspapers. Regular readers of MfM will remember The Media Audit study of websites in 84 cities. A recent article in Editor and Publisher interprets the report as showing the television websites are getting stronger compared to newspaper websites. Four of the top websites are television sites (WRAL, KUSA, KENS and WVTM) and a fifth is a newspaper-TV combo (San Antonio Express News and KENS). The question, according to Bob Jordan, president of International Demographics, is whether TV stations can maintain that momentum. Now, there appears to be an even bigger question. Can TV and newspapers maintain their position against competition from what are called “pure play” media websites or multimedia websites? (That’s the Google, Yahoo, Digg sites of the world.)
That’s an especially critical question for newspapers, which accounted for more than a third (35.9%) of all local online advertising in 2006, according to research firm Borrell Associates. And the Newspaper Association of America noted that ad expenditures for newspaper websites increased 22.3% to $750 Million in the first quarter of this year compared to last year. TV sites get a meager 7.7% of local online advertising. The folks at Borrell Associates though say the spoilers are the pure play sites that are growing at the expense of local online advertising. Traditional media websites have gotten the “easy money” from existing advertisers, but the growth money will come from nontraditional advertisers, says Borrell. And if that doesn’t complicate the issue enough, another report by Hitwise US News and Media Report shows that the share of traffic leaving the News and Media industry for Multimedia sites doubled (196%) from April 2006 to March 2007. Part of the ‘problem’ is that news websites are increasingly dependent on search engines for traffic. What’s even more disturbing is that the folks at Hitwise say the market share of visits to the top 10 News and Media Websites declined 3.8% year to year, “indicating that news consumption is beginning to fragment.” Just to make sure that I don’t leave all my media friends completely depressed, the Online Publishers Association reports that nearly half (44%) of U.S. online video users watch online clips at least weekly and that three-quarters (73%) do so at least once a month. And the most popular genre for this viewing – news and current events.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: More than 71,000 people have registered to be monitored for health problems associated with the dust created in the aftermath of the 9/11 destruction in New York City, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. One in five people say they bring their laptop computer with them when they go on vacation while four out of five bring their cell phones so they can stay in the electronic loop, according to a poll released by AP-Ipsos. Nearly three quarters of Americans (73%) agree with the statement that “the rich get rich and the poor get poorer,” according to a survey by the Pew Research Group. That’s an 8-point increase since 2002. The same group did a different study which found that two-thirds (65%) of Americans believe corporate profits are too high. A survey by MasterCard found that three quarters of consumers in the Middle East have an Internet connection and half pay for their online purchases with credit cards, reflecting a steady gain in online shopping in the region. An elephant’s trunk has 150,000 muscles and a bird can fly a week without stopping, according to Animal Planet’s new show Fooled by Nature and reported in Cynopsis.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com 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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
LET THE COMPETITION CONTINUE
NO LONGER A TWO WAY BATTLE
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 newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
MOTHRA VERSUS GODZILLA: It’s the classic film, but did you know that Godzilla also went up against King Kong, and creatures known as Biollante, Destoroyah and King Ghidorah? Sometimes Godzilla was the hero and sometimes the anti-hero. Well, there are a similar series of contests going on, with the definition of who the hero is, depending on your point of view. The Toshiba developed HD-DVD and the Sony developed Blu-Ray are battling over who controls the home video sales market with releases of movies on the competing formats. Microsoft meanwhile has launched Silverlight to try and wrest the content creating crown from Adobe’s Flash multimedia authoring program. And, according to research call center Bridge Ratings, old media Radio may be facing a challenge from new media Cell Phones for news and sports info. Although radio remains the primary source by a two to one margin (65% versus 30%), the percentage of consumers picking radio for news and sports info dropped 11% while the percentage picking cell phones increased 11% in the last two years. But the big showdown pits traditional media Television against new media Broadband video. The odds are similar to the radio versus cell phone battle, but again it’s all a matter of perspective.
A study by ‘marketing research consultancy’ Ipsos Insight says even among consumers who ‘actively stream and download video content,’ three quarters of their video consumption (75%) is through a television set with only 11% being viewed on a PC. On the flip side, communications giant Motorola released a study of European broadband users which shows nearly half (45%) are watching some TV on the Internet. And even though the Ipsos report says Americans still are “entranced” by the increasing variety of content options available on their TV’s, a different study by media agency Publicis says the public is becoming blasé about TV’s offerings, in prime time in particular, with more than a third (38%) saying they’re less satisfied than in past years. The Washington Post reported that 2.5 Million fewer people tuned into the major networks this Spring season compared to last year, although the article says it is uncertain whether the change is a result of fewer TV viewers from Web use or time shifting. Nielsen Media Research released a report saying that the ‘decline’ in TV viewing is attributable to DVR usage and that people are actually watching as much as before. Meanwhile, the major networks have all gotten into the business of delivering program on the Internet. The biggest and latest player may be the British Broadcasting Corporation which unveiled a new streaming video player called iPlayer with its entire schedule soon available.
And even among the broadband video operations, there is a Godzilla like battle going on. Joost which was created by the Scandinavian duo who created Skype and Kazaa is quickly becoming the 600-pound gorilla of the broadband TV market, lining up major networks AND major advertisers. But it is not the only one, by any stretch of the imagination. Babelgum uses the same peer-to-peer technology (in which bits of data are shared among multiple computers instead of being housed on just one server) to distribute TV content. Even more unusual is Democracy Player, an open source TV video player created by a group called Participatory Culture Foundation which wants to build a “new, open mass medium of online television… (because) we think it’s a problem that a small number of corporations control mass media.”
As a side note to all this, a public thank you to Raycom CIO Dave Folsom for getting me an invite to beta test the Joost player. I’ll let you know what my admittedly semi-informed testing shows, after I’ve had a chance to kick the wheels for a while.
As a foot note to the declining viewership, reporter Paul Farhi reports in The Washington Post that the number of people watching Washington’s four leading news stations at 5pm and 6pm fell by about 8% overall from May 2006 to May 2007. But, he says if you go back to May of 1997, the change is even dramatic with a decline of 25% in the late news viewing and 37% in the 6pm viewing.
LET THE COMPETITION CONTINUE: As long as we’re on this battle theme, let’s look at some others. In social networking sites, the 16-hundred pound gorilla is, of course, MySpace with nearly 80% of the market, according to research firm Hitwise, while the 6-hundred pound monkey is Facebook with nearly 12% of the market. The chimpanzees of the social networking sites are Bebo and Imeem which get about one percent, focusing on music and video, and Black Planet which also gets about one percent focusing on the African American community. When it comes to virtual worlds, the 800-pound gorilla is Second Life which we’ve talked about in previous MfM’s. But a Swedish software company may soon make a monkey out of them with plans to build a massive virtual universe for China. The company, MindArk, says the Chinese virtual world will be able to handle 7 Million players at the same time and is aiming at 150 million users who are expected to generate $1 Billion in activity every year. For comparison’s sake, Second Life had 1.3 Million people log into the site in March, an increase of 46% since the beginning of the year, with most those visitors from Europe and only a fifth from North America. And in the war of the sexes, males account for nearly two thirds (63%) of the podcasting audience with only a third (37%) being female.
NO LONGER A TWO-WAY BATTLE: Let’s keep the theme going. Traditionally the battle for website NEWS and information users has been between television stations and newspapers. Regular readers of MfM will remember The Media Audit study of websites in 84 cities. A recent article in Editor and Publisher interprets the report as showing the television websites are getting stronger compared to newspaper websites. Four of the top websites are television sites (WRAL, KUSA, KENS and WVTM) and a fifth is a newspaper-TV combo (San Antonio Express News and KENS). The question, according to Bob Jordan, president of International Demographics, is whether TV stations can maintain that momentum. Now, there appears to be an even bigger question. Can TV and newspapers maintain their position against competition from what are called “pure play” media websites or multimedia websites? (That’s the Google, Yahoo, Digg sites of the world.)
That’s an especially critical question for newspapers, which accounted for more than a third (35.9%) of all local online advertising in 2006, according to research firm Borrell Associates. And the Newspaper Association of America noted that ad expenditures for newspaper websites increased 22.3% to $750 Million in the first quarter of this year compared to last year. TV sites get a meager 7.7% of local online advertising. The folks at Borrell Associates though say the spoilers are the pure play sites that are growing at the expense of local online advertising. Traditional media websites have gotten the “easy money” from existing advertisers, but the growth money will come from nontraditional advertisers, says Borrell. And if that doesn’t complicate the issue enough, another report by Hitwise US News and Media Report shows that the share of traffic leaving the News and Media industry for Multimedia sites doubled (196%) from April 2006 to March 2007. Part of the ‘problem’ is that news websites are increasingly dependent on search engines for traffic. What’s even more disturbing is that the folks at Hitwise say the market share of visits to the top 10 News and Media Websites declined 3.8% year to year, “indicating that news consumption is beginning to fragment.” Just to make sure that I don’t leave all my media friends completely depressed, the Online Publishers Association reports that nearly half (44%) of U.S. online video users watch online clips at least weekly and that three-quarters (73%) do so at least once a month. And the most popular genre for this viewing – news and current events.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: More than 71,000 people have registered to be monitored for health problems associated with the dust created in the aftermath of the 9/11 destruction in New York City, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. One in five people say they bring their laptop computer with them when they go on vacation while four out of five bring their cell phones so they can stay in the electronic loop, according to a poll released by AP-Ipsos. Nearly three quarters of Americans (73%) agree with the statement that “the rich get rich and the poor get poorer,” according to a survey by the Pew Research Group. That’s an 8-point increase since 2002. The same group did a different study which found that two-thirds (65%) of Americans believe corporate profits are too high. A survey by MasterCard found that three quarters of consumers in the Middle East have an Internet connection and half pay for their online purchases with credit cards, reflecting a steady gain in online shopping in the region. An elephant’s trunk has 150,000 muscles and a bird can fly a week without stopping, according to Animal Planet’s new show Fooled by Nature and reported in Cynopsis.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com 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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
