SO, HOW MANY WATCHED
INAUGURATION VIEWING SIDE NOTES
FROM XBOX TO ATARI
THINK GLOBALLY; ACT GLOBALLY
THE 600 POUND GORILLA
WHO DO YOU BELIEVE
FROM A KING TO A JACK
SUPER BOWL COCKTAIL CHATTER
SO, HOW MANY WATCHED: As we noted in last week’s MfM, we may never know how many people watched the inauguration. According to Nielsen Media Research, an estimated 37.8 Million Americans watched the event across the 14 broadcast and cable networks airing the coverage throughout the day. Nielsen should release the Live +7 viewing shortly. Regardless, that puts it just behind the Ronald Regan inauguration viewing in 1981 (which, if I read the numbers right, was about 41 Million). Of course that doesn’t take into account online viewing. Nielsen Online reports that visits to Current Events and Global News sites jumped significantly on Election Day, and based on my addition of just the top ten sites, that puts another 48.5 Million unique visitors into the mix. The top three sites were CNN (11 Million), MSNBC (10M) and Yahoo News (9M). After that it drops dramatically to the number four spot with Fox (4M). Further add into the mix viewing on YouTube where CSpan’s video of the inauguration and address drew 3.2 Million views and CNN’s coverage another half million. And that’s to say nothing about the record 2 Million people who actually turned out in person.
INAUGURATION SIDE NOTES: Five of the top ten videos viewed on inauguration day were directly related to the events of that day. No surprise there, but a little surprising is that his actual inauguration address came in at seventh place. The most linked-to video on inauguration day? Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream. Two of the other popular videos that day were The Presidential Pledge produced by celebrities Ashton Kucher and Demi Moore on MySpace; and on YouTube, it’s will.i.am’s Yes, We Can which has had more than 16 Million views. An oddity in the mix – even with all the political hoopla of the day, the third most linked-to video was the YouTube Street Fighter video game. The biggest beneficiaries of the Election Day coverage were the digital networks of ABC and CBS which nearly doubled their unique audience on that day. And despite all the furor surrounding the dominance of Google and the decline of Yahoo, the actual Yahoo News website drew five times the unique audience (9 Million) of Google News (1.8M).
FROM XBOX TO ATARI: That’s how White House spokesman Bill Burton described the media technology he and others in the Obama administration used to have, compared to what they found waiting for them at the White House. In an article headlined Staff Finds White House in Technological Dark Ages in The Washington Post, reporter Anne E. Kornblut says the tech-savvy “iPhone” Obama people found themselves in a rotary dial world. The Macintosh-toting Obama-ites found themselves working with Microsoft products and six year old Microsoft products at that. Of course, the reporter notes the Bush transition team arrived in 2001 to find computers with letters missing from the keyboards, and that in 2005 Bush’s Internet director didn’t get a PDA or even a computer for a week. The WhiteHouse.gov website has undergone a transformation, with a cleaner, more Web 2.0 design. In my usual anal retentive fashion, I saved the WhiteHouse.gov site as it looked under the Bush administration and compared it with the Obama administration site. (More analysis on that later.) Much more telling though is a report by WebProNews that the Obama administration has un-blocked the website, allowing access to search engine spiders such as Google. They did a test of the site Monday when it was still in Bush administration control and found the robot.txt file, allowing search engine access, was ‘disallowed’ more than 24-hundred times, even though the information was public information, not just about defense and budget issues but things like African American history and the First Lady’s initiatives. After the Obama administration took over the amount of such ‘disallows’ was basically reduced to zero.
THINK GLOBALLY; ACT GLOBALLY: And that’s what more people are doing every day as the Global Internet audience passes a milestone of sorts with more than One Billion visitors worldwide. China confirmed its position as the country with the largest online audience (179.7 Million unique visitors, comprising 17.8% of the total Worldwide Internet Audience), according to comScore World Metrix. The U.S.A. came in second (163.3 Million and 16.2%). Rounding out the top five are Japan (60 M and 6%), Germany (37 M and 3.7%) and the United Kingdom (36.6 M and 3.6%). China’s economic rival, India, came in seventh behind France, with a lowly 32 Million unique visitors comprising only 3.2% of the world internet audience. Despite its huge Internet audience, leading Chinese website Baidu.com came in 14th in the list of worldwide properties (with a worldwide reach of ‘only’ 15.1%), well behind Google (77%), Microsoft (64.2%) and Yahoo (55.8%) sites.
THE SIX HUNDRED POUND GORILLA: That’s what the print version of The New York Times is to the online version, or at least it seems that way based on an analysis of revenue projections by digital content research firm ContentNext Media. And that is not good news. In order to meet the ‘offline revenues’ projected for the fourth quarter of $300 Million, the Times would have to boost its monthly page views to – get this – 1.3 Billion a month; and it would have to get a CPM (cost per thousands) of $25. At present it averages about 173 Million page views a month, according to comScore. Do the math. That translates into a six or seven fold increase in page views. Just to confuse the mix even more, let’s add some more figures into the mix. The print product has a subscription base of about One Million people daily (1.4 Million on Sunday). BTW, the ContentNext analysis assumed a print CPM of $58. On Inauguration day, NYTimes.com scored 2.4 Million unique visitors, up from the average of 1.7 Million daily uniques. Also, remember the difference – page views versus unique visitors – a point that raises questions about online measurement metrics. And just to confuse you more, let’s do some more math. According to Nielsen Online, the average person goes online an average 57 times a month and views an average of 2,345 pages a month. So, the uniques times page views ‘might’ indicate the Billion-plus page views is do-able, and, of course, Yahoo News and AOL News both do just about that number monthly. But most analysts are not counting on it. Lastly add into the mix the fact that the Times has about $1 Billion in debt and $46 Million in assets, according to an article in The Atlantic which raises the question whether the venerable media icon may be facing a quicker and more painful online transition.
WHO DO YOU BELIEVE? Two reports with apparently contradictory conclusions raise questions about viewing. According to online video tracking site TubeMogul, the vast majority of people watch online videos for only a few seconds at the most. The folks at TubeMogul said they did their own study because many online video sites, such as YouTube, count it as a view even though it may only be a few seconds. They looked at 188,000 videos, streamed 22 Million times on six video sites (YouTube was not included.) Nine out of ten people watched a piece of video for less than ten seconds. Let me repeat that – 90% of those videos were 10 second snackables. About half (46.4%) were watched for a full minute, but only one in ten (9.4%) got a full five minutes viewing. The folks at TubeMogul say that raises serious questions about the effectiveness of post-roll ads. Meanwhile a survey by increasingly popular video website Hulu.com (which, BTW, was not included in the TubeMogul study) found that, when given the option, the vast majority of people (88%) SAY they would prefer to watch a two-minute commercial rather than four 30-second spots.
FROM A KING TO A JACK: Yeah, yeah, I know, I’ve got the country song lyrics backwards, but there’s a reason. Country music has officially fallen to second place behind News/ Talk as the number one radio format in the country, albeit by a slim margin. According to insideradio.com and M Street publications, there were 2,056 news/talk stations on air at the end of last year, compared to 2,027 country stations. The next most popular format? Religion, with 1,288 stations labeled as “religion.” BUT if you add the other associated formats (Gospel, Black Gospel, Southern Gospel and Contemporary Christian), the total stations would be 2,861. In actual fact, there are 31 different formats listed, ranging from Classic Rock (483 stations) and Classic Hits (568). And how they differ from Oldies (728), I don’t know. Add to that Adult Contemporary (676) and Adult Standards (361); Alternative Rock (378) and Modern Rock (173); Classical (179) and Jazz (127). Some of the least popular formats are Easy Listening (25), Modern AC (Adult Contemporary – 22), R&B/ Adult (39) and Rhythmic AC (22). And, no, I don’t know what Rhythmic AC is.
SUPER BOWL COCKTAIL CHATTER: Last year’s face-off between the Patriots and Giants was viewed by 97.5 Million people nationwide, making it, as usual, the most watched TV event of the year and in actual fact the highest rated Super Bowl of all time and the 2nd highest rated telecast of all time (just behind the MASH special of 1983). Super Bowl Games account for 17 of the top 20 telecasts of all time. The highest rated commercial minute in last year’s game was the Victoria Secret spot, seen by 103.7 Million viewers. Last year a spot cost $2.7 Million and total spending for the game reached over $195 Million. This year the spots run $3 Million. Under NFL rules, networks carrying the Super Bowl are restricted to five minutes of air time for promotion, according to TVWeek. Super Bowl advertisers saw a 24% jump in Web traffic after the game while half-time performers Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers saw sales of their album jump 196%. The Super Bowl is the 8th largest beer-selling event each year, according to the stats provided by Nielsen Media. More than 60% of the U.S. population (138 Million adults) claim to be NFL fans, and those fans are more likely to be in the higher income, higher education bracket AND (as Nielsen points out) more likely to have a “softer side” to them – buying 74% more skin products than the average American.
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Showing posts with label online video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label online video. Show all posts
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Message from Michael -- 2009 Predictions Issue
THE HEADLINE: Let’s just get the major forecast issue out of the way at the start – 2009 will stink… stink being a relative term. If you’re in traditional media, it will stink bad. If you’re in new media, it will stink less. But, regardless, it will stink. The Television Bureau of Advertising predicts total TV spot advertising will drop anywhere from 7% to 11%. The BIA Advisory Services says radio will drop 10% and MediaWeek says 2009 will be the worst year for radio since 1954 when The Lone Ranger went off the air. Online advertising will actually grow, but at a much slower rate. Research firm eMarketer puts the growth at 9% which is a significant drop from the double digit growth of the past. And as Borrell Associates points out, online is a small part (3.5%) of radio and television revenue. Rating service Fitch Ratings has similar dire predictions for newspaper, even going so far as to say that some major cities will be without a newspaper by 2010. So, now that we’ve gotten all the depressing news out of the way, let’s move on to the rest of the predictions.
DIGITAL TV. It’s an obvious point, but it should be made anyway. The big change for many of us is the transition to digital TV scheduled for February 17, 2009… unless President-elect Barack Obama does delay it. Not surprising, the Consumer Electronics Association which is putting on its annual show as we speak, says unit shipments of digital TV’s will increase six percent in 2009 with an expected 35 Million units being shipped out. The association notes that digital TV’s are the primary revenue driver for the industry. Okay, now that we’ve gotten that other obvious point out of the way, let’s really move on to the rest of the predictions.
SOCIALIZE YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS: That seems to be the main message for 2009. Social network this… social media that… Many of the articles I read talk about social media coming of age in 2008 and growing in 2009 as a marketing and branding tool. One of the reasons for companies and marketers to focus on social networking is the growth and interest in ratings and review sites. That is why several groups recommend companies create a kind of CCO position – Chief Conversation Officer – to monitor the online conversation. Here’s a simple metric that says a lot. When I did a search with the key terms media, predictions and 2009, more than 80% of the responses came back with “social media.” However, a note of reality -- our friends at eMarketer predict that while social network spending will outpace other online advertising (10% versus 8.9%), that is down from 126% growth in 2007 and 34% growth in 2008. Several other reports noted the demise of Pownce and Values of n social networks, plus the cutbacks at LinkedIn, Hi5 and Jive. And the much bally-hooed Twitter still is not generating revenue. Be that as it may, several groups, including MediaPost and OMMA (Online Media Marketing Advertising) are planning events and offering webinars to show you how to “make money making friends.” As Marketing Daily’s Diane Mermigas so well puts it, “social media is becoming the new CRM (customer relationship management.) The new ROI is Return On Involvement.”
WHAT YOU GET IS WHAT YOU SEE: And more and more people want to get it at their convenience, which is cited as one of the main reasons for the growth in online video. Research firm Mediamark Research and Intelligence (MRI) reports that downloading TV programs posted the greatest gain in the online world with a 141% jump; but to put that in perspective, that ‘whopping’ increase amounted to a relatively insignificant 3.2% of the online users. Still, watching video online also posted a strong gain (35.4%) but even more significant, that translated into a quarter (23.3%) of all online users which was actually just one step ahead of the popular downloading of music (21.6%), according to MRI. Earlier this year, marketing and research firm Magna Insights predicted a 45% growth in online video in 2009, lower than the 67% in 2007 and the 54% in 2008, but still huge. Researcher Jack Myers goes even further, forecasting a 70% growth in 2009 in online video along with social networking and widgets, which he lumps all together. Looking even further ahead tech research firm ABI Research says the number of online video viewers will grow from the present 563 Million to 941 Million in 2013 because, as research director Michael Wolf puts it, “all stakeholders in the online video ecosystem are eyeing the living room.”
As a Side Note that probably deserves to be more than that, networked video games online is the other major category to watch in 2009. According to projections from the Consumer Electronics Show, the online video game market is expected to grow 11% this year generating a high mark of $22 Billion a year in revenue. The Magna Insights report more than doubles that estimate with a forecast of a 27.4% growth in video gaming, including off-line as well as online.
CLOUDS GET IN YOUR WAY: Despite the lyrics of the Joni Mitchell song, most people in the media technology world believe just the opposite – clouds will guide the way for future computing. Several groups are predicting that 2009 will be the year of cloud computing. Shock of shocks, most of those projections come from the major cloud computing sites, but as website cloudcomputing.sys-con.com points out, with Amazon rolling out CloudFront, Microsoft rolling out Azure, Hosting.com rolling out CloudNine and VMware rolling out vCloud, there is a lot of validity to the claim. Just as a reminder about what cloud computing is, Wikipedia callsit is a metaphor for the Internet. It means all your applications plus IT-technology infrastructure and data are hosted on-line and not on your computer. Much of the future of cloud computing will be seen when the 2nd international cloud computing conference takes place in New York City at the end of March. As the expo website puts it, “entrepreneurial opportunities abound as this classic disruptive technology begins to proliferate.”
As a Side Note, watch for the sale of ‘netbooks’ to grow in 2009. These mini-me’s of computers are becoming mainstream with Hewlett Packard jumping into the manufacture of the devices along with Lenovo. Weighing less than three pounds and with a small solid state hard drive, their main purpose is just to get you on the Internet where cloud computing offerings will replace your maxed out home computer. (I will confess that I am looking at trying this approach.)
And as an only semi-related side note to the side note, look for the acronym OLPC to emerge this year. It stands for One Laptop Per Child. A non-profit U.S. organization funded by several major corporations has been established to provide these ‘educational devices’ to children in third world, developing nations.
BUSINESS LOOK AT TECHNOLOGY IN 2009. As much, if not more, than any of the media guru’s prognostications, the recommendation by Forbes Magazine of “dirt cheap” tech stocks to buy, may tell us more about the upcoming year. At less than six bucks a share ($5.93 at last check), Harmonic (listed as HLIT) is worth a look as the transition from SDTV to HDTV gathers momentum. The company makes and sells high-performance products designed to deliver the next generation of broadcast and on-demand services. If you have a little more money, take a look at Skyworks Solutions ($6.42 and listed as SWKS), which makes and markets high performance analog and mixed signal semi-conductors used for wireless communication. Old-line company Corning (GLW and $10) is worth a look because it is definitely not old-line in its products. It is the leading global maker of advanced glass products used in LCD’s. Forbes editors say they expect an ‘inventory correction’ and the transition from tube TV’s to LCD TV’s is far from over. Netgear (NTGR and $10.74) specializes in networking products and solutions – LAN’s – for the home and small business market. The Forbes editors cite the ongoing transition from wired to wireless markets. Another old stand-by is Western Digital (WDC and $15.35), the leading maker and supplier of hard drives used not just in personal computers but consumer electronics in general. The Forbes editors say the weakened consumer spending will put pressure on hard drive sales short-term, but long-term, the need for greater data storage will only grow and grow. Lastly a complete unknown (at least, to me) is MEMC Electronic Materials (WFR and $17.76) which is one of the world’s largest makers of wafers for the semiconductor and solar industries. The Forbes forecasters admit the semiconductor market is down and that may last a while, but they anticipate another ‘inventory correction’ with growth in markets like China and India. But more particularly, the solar application wafer business should grow.
OTHER THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR: This is my addition to the list – things I didn’t see mentioned in great detail in other reports, but which I think will be worth noting. Watch for WiMax to become more prevalent in 2009, replacing WiFix transmission in many cases. Microsoft may actually get it right, or at least closer to right, when it releases Windows v.7, replacing the clunky Vista operating system, but there will still be bugs. Google will release its new browser system, Chrome, onto an unsuspecting public as it continues its efforts to dominate the on-line world.
Last year the buzz phrase was ‘cause marketing’ – tying your product to a public service, ‘feel good’ cause. This year watch for the new buzz phrase to be ‘content marketing’ – in which relevant information is made part of your advertising message to provide value to the consumer. Also look for “personal branding” to come into the ‘buzz-ophere’ (a word I just made up) as blogging, web 2.0 and Internet Interactivity spreads people’s individual social networking needs.
But the big issue of the year, especially considering the economy situation, will be measurement and metrics. Several groups are offering differing measures for everything from the Internet to social networking to word of mouth. Stay tuned for more, as marketers and companies look to get more “bang for their buck.”
FOOTNOTE #1: We didn’t mention Mobile growth in this report although several reports predict continuing growth in this area. The reason I didn’t is that we talked about it in the previous MfM report looking back at 2008, and besides, I couldn’t beat the headline I wrote in the last MfM – Bear Bryant’s Agile, Mobile and Hostile. I would note that the Magna Insight report cited earlier, predicts that mobile will grow 42.6% in 2009 which is pretty impressive given other areas, but not as impressive as the doubling (118.2%) in 2007 and the 73.4% in 2008.
I also made a brief mention of the newspaper dilemma at the top of this report. Again, I touched on it in the previous MfM, but it too is probably one of the scarier scenarios. On the upside of this, there are several prognostications that journalists may find unexpected sources of work with corporations as marketers realize they need the natural story telling skills of journalists to tell the narrative of their particular product. Ann Handley of MarketingProfs says such writers are ‘natural’ content managers, a sentiment echoed by content management site Junta42.com. Columnist Jon Fine of BusinessWeek goes several steps further, predicting a “shadow” media industry staffed by the laid off journalists. Lastly I didn’t talk much about Widgets, but this is another area to watch as they become – in the words of one group – the new ad unit. Or as I put, the new coin of the realm.
FOOTNOTE #2: My list of subscribers (I am happy to say) has continued to grow. But that will mean I will have to look at another way to distribute this newsletter. So, in the coming year, I will be switching to ConstantContact, an email and newsletter managing service. Stay tuned as I experiment with this.
DIGITAL TV. It’s an obvious point, but it should be made anyway. The big change for many of us is the transition to digital TV scheduled for February 17, 2009… unless President-elect Barack Obama does delay it. Not surprising, the Consumer Electronics Association which is putting on its annual show as we speak, says unit shipments of digital TV’s will increase six percent in 2009 with an expected 35 Million units being shipped out. The association notes that digital TV’s are the primary revenue driver for the industry. Okay, now that we’ve gotten that other obvious point out of the way, let’s really move on to the rest of the predictions.
SOCIALIZE YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS: That seems to be the main message for 2009. Social network this… social media that… Many of the articles I read talk about social media coming of age in 2008 and growing in 2009 as a marketing and branding tool. One of the reasons for companies and marketers to focus on social networking is the growth and interest in ratings and review sites. That is why several groups recommend companies create a kind of CCO position – Chief Conversation Officer – to monitor the online conversation. Here’s a simple metric that says a lot. When I did a search with the key terms media, predictions and 2009, more than 80% of the responses came back with “social media.” However, a note of reality -- our friends at eMarketer predict that while social network spending will outpace other online advertising (10% versus 8.9%), that is down from 126% growth in 2007 and 34% growth in 2008. Several other reports noted the demise of Pownce and Values of n social networks, plus the cutbacks at LinkedIn, Hi5 and Jive. And the much bally-hooed Twitter still is not generating revenue. Be that as it may, several groups, including MediaPost and OMMA (Online Media Marketing Advertising) are planning events and offering webinars to show you how to “make money making friends.” As Marketing Daily’s Diane Mermigas so well puts it, “social media is becoming the new CRM (customer relationship management.) The new ROI is Return On Involvement.”
WHAT YOU GET IS WHAT YOU SEE: And more and more people want to get it at their convenience, which is cited as one of the main reasons for the growth in online video. Research firm Mediamark Research and Intelligence (MRI) reports that downloading TV programs posted the greatest gain in the online world with a 141% jump; but to put that in perspective, that ‘whopping’ increase amounted to a relatively insignificant 3.2% of the online users. Still, watching video online also posted a strong gain (35.4%) but even more significant, that translated into a quarter (23.3%) of all online users which was actually just one step ahead of the popular downloading of music (21.6%), according to MRI. Earlier this year, marketing and research firm Magna Insights predicted a 45% growth in online video in 2009, lower than the 67% in 2007 and the 54% in 2008, but still huge. Researcher Jack Myers goes even further, forecasting a 70% growth in 2009 in online video along with social networking and widgets, which he lumps all together. Looking even further ahead tech research firm ABI Research says the number of online video viewers will grow from the present 563 Million to 941 Million in 2013 because, as research director Michael Wolf puts it, “all stakeholders in the online video ecosystem are eyeing the living room.”
As a Side Note that probably deserves to be more than that, networked video games online is the other major category to watch in 2009. According to projections from the Consumer Electronics Show, the online video game market is expected to grow 11% this year generating a high mark of $22 Billion a year in revenue. The Magna Insights report more than doubles that estimate with a forecast of a 27.4% growth in video gaming, including off-line as well as online.
CLOUDS GET IN YOUR WAY: Despite the lyrics of the Joni Mitchell song, most people in the media technology world believe just the opposite – clouds will guide the way for future computing. Several groups are predicting that 2009 will be the year of cloud computing. Shock of shocks, most of those projections come from the major cloud computing sites, but as website cloudcomputing.sys-con.com points out, with Amazon rolling out CloudFront, Microsoft rolling out Azure, Hosting.com rolling out CloudNine and VMware rolling out vCloud, there is a lot of validity to the claim. Just as a reminder about what cloud computing is, Wikipedia callsit is a metaphor for the Internet. It means all your applications plus IT-technology infrastructure and data are hosted on-line and not on your computer. Much of the future of cloud computing will be seen when the 2nd international cloud computing conference takes place in New York City at the end of March. As the expo website puts it, “entrepreneurial opportunities abound as this classic disruptive technology begins to proliferate.”
As a Side Note, watch for the sale of ‘netbooks’ to grow in 2009. These mini-me’s of computers are becoming mainstream with Hewlett Packard jumping into the manufacture of the devices along with Lenovo. Weighing less than three pounds and with a small solid state hard drive, their main purpose is just to get you on the Internet where cloud computing offerings will replace your maxed out home computer. (I will confess that I am looking at trying this approach.)
And as an only semi-related side note to the side note, look for the acronym OLPC to emerge this year. It stands for One Laptop Per Child. A non-profit U.S. organization funded by several major corporations has been established to provide these ‘educational devices’ to children in third world, developing nations.
BUSINESS LOOK AT TECHNOLOGY IN 2009. As much, if not more, than any of the media guru’s prognostications, the recommendation by Forbes Magazine of “dirt cheap” tech stocks to buy, may tell us more about the upcoming year. At less than six bucks a share ($5.93 at last check), Harmonic (listed as HLIT) is worth a look as the transition from SDTV to HDTV gathers momentum. The company makes and sells high-performance products designed to deliver the next generation of broadcast and on-demand services. If you have a little more money, take a look at Skyworks Solutions ($6.42 and listed as SWKS), which makes and markets high performance analog and mixed signal semi-conductors used for wireless communication. Old-line company Corning (GLW and $10) is worth a look because it is definitely not old-line in its products. It is the leading global maker of advanced glass products used in LCD’s. Forbes editors say they expect an ‘inventory correction’ and the transition from tube TV’s to LCD TV’s is far from over. Netgear (NTGR and $10.74) specializes in networking products and solutions – LAN’s – for the home and small business market. The Forbes editors cite the ongoing transition from wired to wireless markets. Another old stand-by is Western Digital (WDC and $15.35), the leading maker and supplier of hard drives used not just in personal computers but consumer electronics in general. The Forbes editors say the weakened consumer spending will put pressure on hard drive sales short-term, but long-term, the need for greater data storage will only grow and grow. Lastly a complete unknown (at least, to me) is MEMC Electronic Materials (WFR and $17.76) which is one of the world’s largest makers of wafers for the semiconductor and solar industries. The Forbes forecasters admit the semiconductor market is down and that may last a while, but they anticipate another ‘inventory correction’ with growth in markets like China and India. But more particularly, the solar application wafer business should grow.
OTHER THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR: This is my addition to the list – things I didn’t see mentioned in great detail in other reports, but which I think will be worth noting. Watch for WiMax to become more prevalent in 2009, replacing WiFix transmission in many cases. Microsoft may actually get it right, or at least closer to right, when it releases Windows v.7, replacing the clunky Vista operating system, but there will still be bugs. Google will release its new browser system, Chrome, onto an unsuspecting public as it continues its efforts to dominate the on-line world.
Last year the buzz phrase was ‘cause marketing’ – tying your product to a public service, ‘feel good’ cause. This year watch for the new buzz phrase to be ‘content marketing’ – in which relevant information is made part of your advertising message to provide value to the consumer. Also look for “personal branding” to come into the ‘buzz-ophere’ (a word I just made up) as blogging, web 2.0 and Internet Interactivity spreads people’s individual social networking needs.
But the big issue of the year, especially considering the economy situation, will be measurement and metrics. Several groups are offering differing measures for everything from the Internet to social networking to word of mouth. Stay tuned for more, as marketers and companies look to get more “bang for their buck.”
FOOTNOTE #1: We didn’t mention Mobile growth in this report although several reports predict continuing growth in this area. The reason I didn’t is that we talked about it in the previous MfM report looking back at 2008, and besides, I couldn’t beat the headline I wrote in the last MfM – Bear Bryant’s Agile, Mobile and Hostile. I would note that the Magna Insight report cited earlier, predicts that mobile will grow 42.6% in 2009 which is pretty impressive given other areas, but not as impressive as the doubling (118.2%) in 2007 and the 73.4% in 2008.
I also made a brief mention of the newspaper dilemma at the top of this report. Again, I touched on it in the previous MfM, but it too is probably one of the scarier scenarios. On the upside of this, there are several prognostications that journalists may find unexpected sources of work with corporations as marketers realize they need the natural story telling skills of journalists to tell the narrative of their particular product. Ann Handley of MarketingProfs says such writers are ‘natural’ content managers, a sentiment echoed by content management site Junta42.com. Columnist Jon Fine of BusinessWeek goes several steps further, predicting a “shadow” media industry staffed by the laid off journalists. Lastly I didn’t talk much about Widgets, but this is another area to watch as they become – in the words of one group – the new ad unit. Or as I put, the new coin of the realm.
FOOTNOTE #2: My list of subscribers (I am happy to say) has continued to grow. But that will mean I will have to look at another way to distribute this newsletter. So, in the coming year, I will be switching to ConstantContact, an email and newsletter managing service. Stay tuned as I experiment with this.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Message From Michael - December 1, 2008
WHEN LIFE-CASTING BECOMES DEATH-CASTING
FEAR RULES THE NEWSROOM
LIVING IN SPAMALOT
LICENSE TO BE A RICH IDIOT
DO IT YOURSELF IDIOCY
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.
WHEN LIFE-CASTING BECOMES DEATH-CASTING: A 19-year-old Florida college student committed suicide online while upwards of 15-hundred people watched, some reacting in horror, some ‘egging’ him on, according to a variety of media reports. Abraham Briggs Jr., who went by the name Candyjunkie on the website Bodybuilding.com and Feels Like Ecstacy on Justin.TV, had threatened suicide in the past. He took a drug over-dose and left a suicide note which was a combination of two other suicide notes from other posts. When it became apparent he was not moving, a viewer from India urged the forum moderators to do something but was initially dismissed, and then contacted other viewers living in the States. Other viewers watching reacted with either OMG (Oh My God) or LOL (Laugh Out Loud). The video of the cops breaking into his room, along with his actual suicide note are still available online. The CEO of Justin.TV issued a statement that, “we regret that this has happened and respect the privacy of the broadcaster and his family during this time.” Police in the young man’s home town of Pembroke Pines are investigating the role of the website which calls itself a “life-casting” site.
The suicide is not the first on line. A British electrical engineer hanged himself on line last year. British newspapers report at least 17 deaths in Britain since 2001 involving chatrooms that give advice on committing suicide. There have been several ‘cybersuicide’ pacts formed, most notably in Japan where more than 140 deaths have been attributed to this phenomenon since 2004. A memorial site has been established on MySpace.com by friends of the young man. If you go to the Justin.tv website and enter suicide as a search item, you will find a series of videos, mostly animes, but including one in which a young man televises his call to a suicide hotline. If you go to MySpace.com and enter suicide as a search item, you’ll get nearly 3 Million returns, including Bludgeoned to Death by Suicide Silence and a suicide prevention website. Funeral services for Briggs were held this past Saturday.
As a footnote, I know this story has been reported fairly widely, but frankly it was too important not to report it again, with hopefully a few more details for you.
FEAR RULES THE NEWSROOM. So says former CBS anchorman Dan Rather in one of the many vignettes created for the IFC Media Project. It’s the fear of being beaten on a news story, the fear of loss of ratings, and the fear for one’s job. His brief interview is one of many examining the role of the media, along with a cartoon character called the “news junkie” who gives his spin on the media. The project offers a handbook on “decoding the media” with an in-depth look at terms, resources and milestones but also a somewhat asinine media quiz, loaded with pretty obvious, expected responses to prove that you’re ‘media savvy.’ But still an interesting site. Meanwhile, in a similar vein, The New York Times recently profiled a series of web-based, independent news sites doing investigative reporting. The article points out that these sites have arisen in several cities as newspapers and television stations have cut back on staff. Some of those cited include voiceofsandiego.com, MinnPost in the Twin Cites and St. Louis Beacon. Other sites without a specific geographic focus include ProPublica, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the three-decades-old Center for Investigative Reporting. All well worth a visit.
LIVING IN SPAMALOT. It seems we all do. According to a report by the BBC, spammers are turning a profit, even though they’re only getting one response for every 12.5 Million emails they send. Quoting a study by the University of California, Berkeley, the report says spammers churn out so many messages that they are still able to turn over “millions of pounds in profit every year.” The study investigators infiltrated a spam network called Storm and found that it had One Million machines under its control. The researchers sent about 469 million junk email messages, got a response of only 0.00001%, but still this came out to $100 a day – not the vast sums some people think but when the numbers are scaled higher, the profits increase as well. On a related note, China led the way but closely followed by the U.S. as the leading source of “attack traffic” on the Internet. Of the 179 countries involved, the two accounted for nearly half (45%) of all the attack traffic worldwide, according to the quarterly report State of the Internet by Akamai.
LICENSE TO BE A RICH IDIOT. A Statesville, North Carolina, man has just won $5,000 plus a trip for two to New York City for coming up with a new catch phrase (fan-taste-ic) and setting it to music for an ad for Crest toothpaste. But that’s nothing compared to Joel Moss Levinson, a college dropout whose declared major was medieval weaponry and who has won more than $200,000 creating “digital ditties” – home-made advertisements. His consumer generated pieces have generated a viral buzz for everything from Klondike ice cream bars to Little Penguin wine, to Delta Air Lines and even an Israeli advocacy group. Levinson who admits to having held, and lost, more than 40 jobs is quoted in The New York Times as saying, “it’s great to have a license to be an idiot.” Levinson is also one of the 1,773 entrants in what is becoming an annual event for chip-maker Doritos, looking for the ‘best’ consumer generated advertising spot to run during the SuperBowl. The winner gets $1 Million. Sorry, entries have closed, but you can see the entries at website crashthesuperbowl.com. You can enter the $25,000 contest by Truth North snacks which is looking for an inspirational life story which will be played during the Oscars in February of next year.
The point of all this is a claim by Current.TV founder Joel Hyatt that his video and TV site has landed multiple million-dollar deals based on non-professional commercials created by fans. He says surveys (un-named) show that viewers prefer consumer generated ads 9-to-1 over the Madison Avenue creations, according to website ReadWriteWeb.com. Meanwhile a senior executive with advertising giant Ogilvy says that while user generated content can be difficult to ‘monetize’ because of its edgy nature, it can be done. Gina de Mendonca told Beet.TV that UGC video mash ups and contests are especially appealing. But all is not wine and roses in the consumer generated world. AOL has announced it’s dropping its consumer generated content site, uncutvideo, on December 18th and turning over operations to Motionbox.com. I should also note previous MfM reports in which consumer generated reviews and comments, on websites and in blogs, did prove to be critical to users’ decision making. On a semi-related note, eMarketer reports that two thirds (67%) of the U.S. Internet population – 145 Million people – will be reading blogs at least monthly by 2012, and that one out of every six (16%) of the people on the Internet will actually have a blog.
DO IT YOURSELF IDIOCY. In a semi-related vein, several Internet websites have popped up, that promise to show you how to do virtually anything. The granddaddy site is learn2.com which focuses on how to get the most out of your Microsoft Office and Windows software, but others are decidedly more interesting and often risqué. Website Instructables.com recently announced its winning entries which included scavenging free electronics and food while helping the environment, renewing old children’s toys and how to convert an old cell phone (Nokia 6600 to be exact) into a “super gadget microcomputer.” Website Howcast.com shows you how to do simple magic tricks, to how play iPod videos on your TV, to how to break out of prison. Website WonderHowTo.com shows you how to curse in several languages, change the PCV valve in your car and how to turn old underpants into a bra. Website Tricklife.com shows you how to get over autumn depression, how to tie a surgeon’s knife and how to be a Ninja. Website 5Min.com shows you how to pick the perfect Christmas tree, how to prevent acne and what parents should know about giving their kids a debit card. Website VideoJug.com shows you how to play the Ukulele, how many fish you should have in your aquarium and how to give the ‘perfect hug.’ I am offering this all up this week as an alternative to my weekly Cocktail Chatter (since last week’s Message was all CC), but I warn you that these sites, while having many useful tips, can also be addictive time-eaters.
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
FEAR RULES THE NEWSROOM
LIVING IN SPAMALOT
LICENSE TO BE A RICH IDIOT
DO IT YOURSELF IDIOCY
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.
WHEN LIFE-CASTING BECOMES DEATH-CASTING: A 19-year-old Florida college student committed suicide online while upwards of 15-hundred people watched, some reacting in horror, some ‘egging’ him on, according to a variety of media reports. Abraham Briggs Jr., who went by the name Candyjunkie on the website Bodybuilding.com and Feels Like Ecstacy on Justin.TV, had threatened suicide in the past. He took a drug over-dose and left a suicide note which was a combination of two other suicide notes from other posts. When it became apparent he was not moving, a viewer from India urged the forum moderators to do something but was initially dismissed, and then contacted other viewers living in the States. Other viewers watching reacted with either OMG (Oh My God) or LOL (Laugh Out Loud). The video of the cops breaking into his room, along with his actual suicide note are still available online. The CEO of Justin.TV issued a statement that, “we regret that this has happened and respect the privacy of the broadcaster and his family during this time.” Police in the young man’s home town of Pembroke Pines are investigating the role of the website which calls itself a “life-casting” site.
The suicide is not the first on line. A British electrical engineer hanged himself on line last year. British newspapers report at least 17 deaths in Britain since 2001 involving chatrooms that give advice on committing suicide. There have been several ‘cybersuicide’ pacts formed, most notably in Japan where more than 140 deaths have been attributed to this phenomenon since 2004. A memorial site has been established on MySpace.com by friends of the young man. If you go to the Justin.tv website and enter suicide as a search item, you will find a series of videos, mostly animes, but including one in which a young man televises his call to a suicide hotline. If you go to MySpace.com and enter suicide as a search item, you’ll get nearly 3 Million returns, including Bludgeoned to Death by Suicide Silence and a suicide prevention website. Funeral services for Briggs were held this past Saturday.
As a footnote, I know this story has been reported fairly widely, but frankly it was too important not to report it again, with hopefully a few more details for you.
FEAR RULES THE NEWSROOM. So says former CBS anchorman Dan Rather in one of the many vignettes created for the IFC Media Project. It’s the fear of being beaten on a news story, the fear of loss of ratings, and the fear for one’s job. His brief interview is one of many examining the role of the media, along with a cartoon character called the “news junkie” who gives his spin on the media. The project offers a handbook on “decoding the media” with an in-depth look at terms, resources and milestones but also a somewhat asinine media quiz, loaded with pretty obvious, expected responses to prove that you’re ‘media savvy.’ But still an interesting site. Meanwhile, in a similar vein, The New York Times recently profiled a series of web-based, independent news sites doing investigative reporting. The article points out that these sites have arisen in several cities as newspapers and television stations have cut back on staff. Some of those cited include voiceofsandiego.com, MinnPost in the Twin Cites and St. Louis Beacon. Other sites without a specific geographic focus include ProPublica, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the three-decades-old Center for Investigative Reporting. All well worth a visit.
LIVING IN SPAMALOT. It seems we all do. According to a report by the BBC, spammers are turning a profit, even though they’re only getting one response for every 12.5 Million emails they send. Quoting a study by the University of California, Berkeley, the report says spammers churn out so many messages that they are still able to turn over “millions of pounds in profit every year.” The study investigators infiltrated a spam network called Storm and found that it had One Million machines under its control. The researchers sent about 469 million junk email messages, got a response of only 0.00001%, but still this came out to $100 a day – not the vast sums some people think but when the numbers are scaled higher, the profits increase as well. On a related note, China led the way but closely followed by the U.S. as the leading source of “attack traffic” on the Internet. Of the 179 countries involved, the two accounted for nearly half (45%) of all the attack traffic worldwide, according to the quarterly report State of the Internet by Akamai.
LICENSE TO BE A RICH IDIOT. A Statesville, North Carolina, man has just won $5,000 plus a trip for two to New York City for coming up with a new catch phrase (fan-taste-ic) and setting it to music for an ad for Crest toothpaste. But that’s nothing compared to Joel Moss Levinson, a college dropout whose declared major was medieval weaponry and who has won more than $200,000 creating “digital ditties” – home-made advertisements. His consumer generated pieces have generated a viral buzz for everything from Klondike ice cream bars to Little Penguin wine, to Delta Air Lines and even an Israeli advocacy group. Levinson who admits to having held, and lost, more than 40 jobs is quoted in The New York Times as saying, “it’s great to have a license to be an idiot.” Levinson is also one of the 1,773 entrants in what is becoming an annual event for chip-maker Doritos, looking for the ‘best’ consumer generated advertising spot to run during the SuperBowl. The winner gets $1 Million. Sorry, entries have closed, but you can see the entries at website crashthesuperbowl.com. You can enter the $25,000 contest by Truth North snacks which is looking for an inspirational life story which will be played during the Oscars in February of next year.
The point of all this is a claim by Current.TV founder Joel Hyatt that his video and TV site has landed multiple million-dollar deals based on non-professional commercials created by fans. He says surveys (un-named) show that viewers prefer consumer generated ads 9-to-1 over the Madison Avenue creations, according to website ReadWriteWeb.com. Meanwhile a senior executive with advertising giant Ogilvy says that while user generated content can be difficult to ‘monetize’ because of its edgy nature, it can be done. Gina de Mendonca told Beet.TV that UGC video mash ups and contests are especially appealing. But all is not wine and roses in the consumer generated world. AOL has announced it’s dropping its consumer generated content site, uncutvideo, on December 18th and turning over operations to Motionbox.com. I should also note previous MfM reports in which consumer generated reviews and comments, on websites and in blogs, did prove to be critical to users’ decision making. On a semi-related note, eMarketer reports that two thirds (67%) of the U.S. Internet population – 145 Million people – will be reading blogs at least monthly by 2012, and that one out of every six (16%) of the people on the Internet will actually have a blog.
DO IT YOURSELF IDIOCY. In a semi-related vein, several Internet websites have popped up, that promise to show you how to do virtually anything. The granddaddy site is learn2.com which focuses on how to get the most out of your Microsoft Office and Windows software, but others are decidedly more interesting and often risqué. Website Instructables.com recently announced its winning entries which included scavenging free electronics and food while helping the environment, renewing old children’s toys and how to convert an old cell phone (Nokia 6600 to be exact) into a “super gadget microcomputer.” Website Howcast.com shows you how to do simple magic tricks, to how play iPod videos on your TV, to how to break out of prison. Website WonderHowTo.com shows you how to curse in several languages, change the PCV valve in your car and how to turn old underpants into a bra. Website Tricklife.com shows you how to get over autumn depression, how to tie a surgeon’s knife and how to be a Ninja. Website 5Min.com shows you how to pick the perfect Christmas tree, how to prevent acne and what parents should know about giving their kids a debit card. Website VideoJug.com shows you how to play the Ukulele, how many fish you should have in your aquarium and how to give the ‘perfect hug.’ I am offering this all up this week as an alternative to my weekly Cocktail Chatter (since last week’s Message was all CC), but I warn you that these sites, while having many useful tips, can also be addictive time-eaters.
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Message From Michael -- October 13, 2008
VETTING THE VEXING VIDEO REVOLUTION
ADVENTURES IN VIDEO LAND
THE UNKNOWN INFLUENTIALS
LEADING MEDIA COMPANIES COMPARISON
COCKTAIL CHATTER – RICH AND RICHER
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.
VETTING THE VEXING VIDEO REVOLUTION. Whew… you know that headline caused some headaches to create. Anyway, you’ve all heard about the amazing growth in online video. Research firm, ABI Research, notes that while just under a third of online households had watched video streamed through a browser a year ago, now the ratio is more like six out of ten. Even with a recent downward revision, online video ad spending is expected to grow an incredible 55% this year, after jumping 74% last year. Now for a little perspective. That translates to $505 Million a year, and research firm eMarketer predicts that with an annual growth rate of between 50% and 70% that by 2012 online video ad spending will reach $3.4 Billion. Putting that figure into perspective, total Internet advertising is expected to reach $51.1 Billion in 2012, according to market intelligence firm IDC. U.S. Internet advertising will reach $23 Billion this year alone. Another note of perspective, the eMarketer firm notes that the TV market already hovers around $70 Billion a year.
Much of that growth is also dependent on growth in broadband access and broadband speeds. Which brings us to another piece of perspective. Internet network connectivity firm Cisco says that by 2012, Internet video will be – get this -- nearly 400 times the U.S. Internet backbone just eight years ago in 2000. The company says that even now, online video (PC and TV) accounts for a third (32.2%) of all consumer traffic worldwide. And, in a report that received a lot of press, research by Forrest Consulting for Veoh Networks shows heavy users and younger users of video account for much of that use. Consumers between the ages of 13 and 24 account for only 15% of the online population but represent 35% of active online video users. Add to that, says Veoh, consumers who watch more than an hour of video account for 40% of all viewers and three-quarters (75%) of ALL online video viewing. Research firm TeleGeography Research (which has a very cool submarine cable map showing all the under sea connections) says the amount of Internet bandwidth grew more than the Internet demand… at least this year. And a final footnote, Congress has passed the Broadband Data Improvement Act which promises to keep better track of who has access to the Internet and who does not, as well as better track the oft-criticized data standards.
ADVENTURES IN VIDEO LAND. The shoot-out at the Wild Wild Web’s version of the O.K. Corral may well be with video. Just keeping up with the proliferation of choices has produced a proliferation of sites. You know of course about NBC and Fox venture, Hulu, and regular readers will know about Joost which boasts 40,000 titles and a recent upgrade to work around plug-ins. Then there’s the Veoh networks which describes itself as an “Internet TV service” bringing together large TV and film studios with independent producers and user-generated content. But more keep coming: From the people who brought you the Slingbox comes video portal Sling.com. From the venerable TV guide group comes OVGuide, which really has an amazing list of video sites on everything from anime to wine, from Asian films to adult films, from fitness films to videos about pets. Then there’s the video search engine, Blinkx, which says it searches 26 Million hours of videos on everything from world news to travel, and then allows you to email it or embed it.
Then there’s the Holy Grail of PC to TV and vice versa video. The folks at Sling have created Slingcatcher which it describes as a “universal media player” which can access video from your Slingbox, PC or the Internet and put it on your TV. The folks at TiVo meanwhile have teamed up with Nero AG of Germany to actually replicate the TiVo recordable experience onto your PC. Of course, some versions of Microsoft Corp’s Vista operating system already have some of these same capabilities. Meanwhile, the growing user-generated video production capabilities continue to keep growing. There are the established sites like Photobucket. But they’re being joined by both established companies and up-starts. From established company Adobe comes Adobe AIR which allows you to develop rich Internet applications, including video, onto your desktop and across operating systems. From The Participatory Culture Foundation comes makeinternettv.org which provides, along with a Wiki, a simple six-step process to get your video polished and published on the Internet. And, to quote the old song… the beat goes on. There are too many options out there to list them all. So, we’ll have future video updates on MfM.
THE UNKNOWN INFLUENTIALS. A list compiled by BusinessWeek of the most influential people on the Web is a round-up of the usual suspects – Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker, Craig Newmark, Steve Jobs, Jerry Yang and Jimmy Wales. You might even have picked Jon Stewart or Arianna Huffington. But how about Jonathan Kaplan, Maria Thomas, Loic Le Meur, Gabe Rivera or Jack Ma. Kaplan is the mastermind behind the Flip camera; Le Meur created Seesmic.com, a sort of video Twitter; Rivera created Techmeme, ‘the tech news source of record’; Thomas created Etsy, a site that buys and sells homemade arts and crafts but who is probably better known for her NPR connections; Ma is the CEO of China’s premier e-commerce player Alibaba. And then there are the ones you want to know – Joi Ito, an entrepreneur and angel investor in operations like Flickr and Six Apart who works with Creative Commons; or Peter Thiel, a PayPal alum whose The Founders Fund has helped startups Slide and Yammer.
LEADING MEDIA COMPANIES COMPARISON. The #1 media company, based on ‘total net U.S. media revenue’, is Time Warner with $35.6 Billion. Following up in second place is Comcast Corp with $26.9 Billion, Walt Disney Co. with $17.5 Billion, followed by News Corp. with $15.7 Billion and DirecTV Group at #5 with $15.5 Billion. No great surprises. You can check the list out for yourself by searching Advertising Age’s site. What is somewhat surprising is the number of companies that reach the top 100 list simply on the basis of search. Aside from Google and Yahoo, there’s Idearc (which oddly lists its home base as DFW Airport) and is the backer of Switchboard.com and Localsearch.com; Donnelley Corp which has a $2.7 Billion revenue stream based on yellow pages; and Yellow Book whose $2 Billion revenue is based on the obvious. Also somewhat surprising is the number of companies I’ve never heard of – Vallassis which has $2.3 Billion in revenue based primarily on newspaper inserts; or Bonnier, a Stockholm-based magazine company which made its foray into the U.S. after buying 18 magazine titles from Time Warner. Then there are the other surprises – like Major League Baseball which makes it into the top 100 media list based on $400 Million in net revenue.
But, for me at least, the surprise is the difference in revenue generated by some firms between their U.S. and their worldwide operations. For example, based on worldwide revenues, AT&T would be far and away the number one media company with a whopping $118.9 Billion. Second place would go to Sony Corp (which, interestingly, bills its address as both Tokyo and New York) with $75.2 Billion, and third would go to Microsoft Corp., with $60.4 Billion in worldwide revenue. And this is what I found particularly surprising. Of that $60 Billion, ‘only’ $1.9 Billion comes from its U.S. operations. Doesn’t that strike you as odd? In a similar, but somewhat less surprising vein, of number 12 Google’s $16.6 Billion in worldwide revenue, a mere $6 Billion comes from the U.S., while number 20 Yahoo gets ‘only’ $3.8 Billion from the U.S. of its $6.9 Billion in worldwide revenue. Both Disney and News Corp earn the same amount of revenue overseas as they do in the U.S. Even QVC/Expedia/DirecTV-owning Liberty Media Corp. made most of its money worldwide ($9.4 Billion) with the U.S. part accounting for ‘only’ $1.3 Billion.
COCKTAIL CHATTER. Okay, I’ll admit I’m on some kick about lists, but anyway, to carry on -- The richest member of Congress is Sen. John Kerry whose fortune of $231 Million includes his wife’s claim to the Heinz ketchup fortune and which Roll Call magazine says is probably under-stated. The magazine says the second wealthiest member of Congress is Democratic representative Jane Harman of California whose $226 Million in declared wealth comes from those JBL, Infinity and AKG Acoustics you buy. Third is Republican representative Darrell Issa of California whose $161 Million declared net worth is based on car alarms. And fourth at $81 Million is Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California comes in 8th at $52 Million and Senator Edward Kennedy comes in 9th at $47 Million. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain comes in 13th at $20 Million. At 17th is Democratic representative Nancy Pelosi at $19 Million. New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton came in 29th at $10 Million. The Roll Call article only named the top 50 and did not include Sen. Barack Obama. On a semi-related note, thirty of America’s richest CEO’s lost more money in two minutes than most people earn in a year ($50,000), according to Forbes.com. And that was before the latest stock market free-fall. For example, News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett lost $63.38 a second last year. Of course that still left them with a net worth of $50 Billion for Buffett and $6.8 Billion for Murdoch.
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
ADVENTURES IN VIDEO LAND
THE UNKNOWN INFLUENTIALS
LEADING MEDIA COMPANIES COMPARISON
COCKTAIL CHATTER – RICH AND RICHER
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.
VETTING THE VEXING VIDEO REVOLUTION. Whew… you know that headline caused some headaches to create. Anyway, you’ve all heard about the amazing growth in online video. Research firm, ABI Research, notes that while just under a third of online households had watched video streamed through a browser a year ago, now the ratio is more like six out of ten. Even with a recent downward revision, online video ad spending is expected to grow an incredible 55% this year, after jumping 74% last year. Now for a little perspective. That translates to $505 Million a year, and research firm eMarketer predicts that with an annual growth rate of between 50% and 70% that by 2012 online video ad spending will reach $3.4 Billion. Putting that figure into perspective, total Internet advertising is expected to reach $51.1 Billion in 2012, according to market intelligence firm IDC. U.S. Internet advertising will reach $23 Billion this year alone. Another note of perspective, the eMarketer firm notes that the TV market already hovers around $70 Billion a year.
Much of that growth is also dependent on growth in broadband access and broadband speeds. Which brings us to another piece of perspective. Internet network connectivity firm Cisco says that by 2012, Internet video will be – get this -- nearly 400 times the U.S. Internet backbone just eight years ago in 2000. The company says that even now, online video (PC and TV) accounts for a third (32.2%) of all consumer traffic worldwide. And, in a report that received a lot of press, research by Forrest Consulting for Veoh Networks shows heavy users and younger users of video account for much of that use. Consumers between the ages of 13 and 24 account for only 15% of the online population but represent 35% of active online video users. Add to that, says Veoh, consumers who watch more than an hour of video account for 40% of all viewers and three-quarters (75%) of ALL online video viewing. Research firm TeleGeography Research (which has a very cool submarine cable map showing all the under sea connections) says the amount of Internet bandwidth grew more than the Internet demand… at least this year. And a final footnote, Congress has passed the Broadband Data Improvement Act which promises to keep better track of who has access to the Internet and who does not, as well as better track the oft-criticized data standards.
ADVENTURES IN VIDEO LAND. The shoot-out at the Wild Wild Web’s version of the O.K. Corral may well be with video. Just keeping up with the proliferation of choices has produced a proliferation of sites. You know of course about NBC and Fox venture, Hulu, and regular readers will know about Joost which boasts 40,000 titles and a recent upgrade to work around plug-ins. Then there’s the Veoh networks which describes itself as an “Internet TV service” bringing together large TV and film studios with independent producers and user-generated content. But more keep coming: From the people who brought you the Slingbox comes video portal Sling.com. From the venerable TV guide group comes OVGuide, which really has an amazing list of video sites on everything from anime to wine, from Asian films to adult films, from fitness films to videos about pets. Then there’s the video search engine, Blinkx, which says it searches 26 Million hours of videos on everything from world news to travel, and then allows you to email it or embed it.
Then there’s the Holy Grail of PC to TV and vice versa video. The folks at Sling have created Slingcatcher which it describes as a “universal media player” which can access video from your Slingbox, PC or the Internet and put it on your TV. The folks at TiVo meanwhile have teamed up with Nero AG of Germany to actually replicate the TiVo recordable experience onto your PC. Of course, some versions of Microsoft Corp’s Vista operating system already have some of these same capabilities. Meanwhile, the growing user-generated video production capabilities continue to keep growing. There are the established sites like Photobucket. But they’re being joined by both established companies and up-starts. From established company Adobe comes Adobe AIR which allows you to develop rich Internet applications, including video, onto your desktop and across operating systems. From The Participatory Culture Foundation comes makeinternettv.org which provides, along with a Wiki, a simple six-step process to get your video polished and published on the Internet. And, to quote the old song… the beat goes on. There are too many options out there to list them all. So, we’ll have future video updates on MfM.
THE UNKNOWN INFLUENTIALS. A list compiled by BusinessWeek of the most influential people on the Web is a round-up of the usual suspects – Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker, Craig Newmark, Steve Jobs, Jerry Yang and Jimmy Wales. You might even have picked Jon Stewart or Arianna Huffington. But how about Jonathan Kaplan, Maria Thomas, Loic Le Meur, Gabe Rivera or Jack Ma. Kaplan is the mastermind behind the Flip camera; Le Meur created Seesmic.com, a sort of video Twitter; Rivera created Techmeme, ‘the tech news source of record’; Thomas created Etsy, a site that buys and sells homemade arts and crafts but who is probably better known for her NPR connections; Ma is the CEO of China’s premier e-commerce player Alibaba. And then there are the ones you want to know – Joi Ito, an entrepreneur and angel investor in operations like Flickr and Six Apart who works with Creative Commons; or Peter Thiel, a PayPal alum whose The Founders Fund has helped startups Slide and Yammer.
LEADING MEDIA COMPANIES COMPARISON. The #1 media company, based on ‘total net U.S. media revenue’, is Time Warner with $35.6 Billion. Following up in second place is Comcast Corp with $26.9 Billion, Walt Disney Co. with $17.5 Billion, followed by News Corp. with $15.7 Billion and DirecTV Group at #5 with $15.5 Billion. No great surprises. You can check the list out for yourself by searching Advertising Age’s site. What is somewhat surprising is the number of companies that reach the top 100 list simply on the basis of search. Aside from Google and Yahoo, there’s Idearc (which oddly lists its home base as DFW Airport) and is the backer of Switchboard.com and Localsearch.com; Donnelley Corp which has a $2.7 Billion revenue stream based on yellow pages; and Yellow Book whose $2 Billion revenue is based on the obvious. Also somewhat surprising is the number of companies I’ve never heard of – Vallassis which has $2.3 Billion in revenue based primarily on newspaper inserts; or Bonnier, a Stockholm-based magazine company which made its foray into the U.S. after buying 18 magazine titles from Time Warner. Then there are the other surprises – like Major League Baseball which makes it into the top 100 media list based on $400 Million in net revenue.
But, for me at least, the surprise is the difference in revenue generated by some firms between their U.S. and their worldwide operations. For example, based on worldwide revenues, AT&T would be far and away the number one media company with a whopping $118.9 Billion. Second place would go to Sony Corp (which, interestingly, bills its address as both Tokyo and New York) with $75.2 Billion, and third would go to Microsoft Corp., with $60.4 Billion in worldwide revenue. And this is what I found particularly surprising. Of that $60 Billion, ‘only’ $1.9 Billion comes from its U.S. operations. Doesn’t that strike you as odd? In a similar, but somewhat less surprising vein, of number 12 Google’s $16.6 Billion in worldwide revenue, a mere $6 Billion comes from the U.S., while number 20 Yahoo gets ‘only’ $3.8 Billion from the U.S. of its $6.9 Billion in worldwide revenue. Both Disney and News Corp earn the same amount of revenue overseas as they do in the U.S. Even QVC/Expedia/DirecTV-owning Liberty Media Corp. made most of its money worldwide ($9.4 Billion) with the U.S. part accounting for ‘only’ $1.3 Billion.
COCKTAIL CHATTER. Okay, I’ll admit I’m on some kick about lists, but anyway, to carry on -- The richest member of Congress is Sen. John Kerry whose fortune of $231 Million includes his wife’s claim to the Heinz ketchup fortune and which Roll Call magazine says is probably under-stated. The magazine says the second wealthiest member of Congress is Democratic representative Jane Harman of California whose $226 Million in declared wealth comes from those JBL, Infinity and AKG Acoustics you buy. Third is Republican representative Darrell Issa of California whose $161 Million declared net worth is based on car alarms. And fourth at $81 Million is Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California comes in 8th at $52 Million and Senator Edward Kennedy comes in 9th at $47 Million. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain comes in 13th at $20 Million. At 17th is Democratic representative Nancy Pelosi at $19 Million. New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton came in 29th at $10 Million. The Roll Call article only named the top 50 and did not include Sen. Barack Obama. On a semi-related note, thirty of America’s richest CEO’s lost more money in two minutes than most people earn in a year ($50,000), according to Forbes.com. And that was before the latest stock market free-fall. For example, News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett lost $63.38 a second last year. Of course that still left them with a net worth of $50 Billion for Buffett and $6.8 Billion for Murdoch.
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Message From Michael -- February 18, 2008
I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE
THE SMART TV SHOWS OF ALL TIME
SOMETHING HAPPENS SOME PLACE TO SOMEONE
WHO DO YOU BELIEVE
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.
I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE: Billions and Billions of videos. Two separate reports attest to the growing popularity of online video usage. Although the now resolved writers’ strike might have contributed to it, comScore Video Metrix reports that the number of online videos viewed passed the 10 Billion mark in December. A separate study by the Solutions Research Group found that the number of Americans who have watched one of their favorite TV shows on the Internet has nearly doubled in the past year. That’s 43% of the online population, or 80 Million Americans, compared to 25% a year ago. When you consider all videos online, comScore says three-quarters (76.7%) of all U.S. Internet users have viewed videos online. Of course, Google’s YouTube site accounted for most of those viewings – a third (32.6%), more than 3.3 Billion videos. Nobody else even comes close. Fox Interactive came in second with 358 Thousand videos and 3.5% of the market, followed by Yahoo (340 Thousand and 3.4%), Viacom (237 Thousand and 2.3%) and Microsoft (180 Thousand and 1.8%).
Even more astounding (at least to me, but I’m easily astounded), one in five Online Americans say they watch TV on the Web on a weekly basis – which the Solutions Research Group notes is well ahead of the 14% watching cable’s video-on-demand offerings. The hot shows on the Internet included Heroes, Grey’s Anatomy, Dancing with the Stars, Ugly Betty, Chuck, CSI, House, Kitchen Nightmares, Smallville and Gossip Girl. And as long as I’m being astounded, comScore says online viewers watched an average of 3.4 hours of online video during the month – a 34% increase since the beginning of 2007. The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes but then again the ‘average’ online video viewer ‘consumed’ 72 videos.
As a footnote, I should point out an article by Mike Shields in MediaWeek that major broadcasters, NBC Universal and Viacom, continue to resist placing their content on YouTube. Of course, NBC does have hulu.com as well as its own site. YouTube points out in the article that it has deals with 18 groups, including Hearst Corp., Tribune Broadcasting, Oprah’s Harpo, Reuters and even PBS. And, no, I don’t understand why Viacom resists making a deal with YouTube while CBS doesn’t.
THE SMARTEST TV SHOWS OF ALL TIME: As long as I’m on a TV kick, website fancast.com, which allows people to develop their own TV viewing guide of favorite shows both on line and on air, has created a ‘smart’ TV list, based on an interview with the chairman of Mensa International, the organization for people whose IQ is in the top 2% of the population. Chairman Jim Werdell’s obviously personal list includes M-A-S-H, Cosmos (with Carl Sagan), CSI, House, West Wing, Boston Legal, All in the Family, Frasier, Mad About You and Jeopardy which he says tests intelligence as well as knowledge. Werdell cites most of the shows for their smart ‘repartee.’ You can read more at http://thebiz.fancast.com/2008/02/exclusive_mensa_chair_picks_th.html.
SOMETHING HAPPENS SOME PLACE TO SOMEONE: With that heavy duty definition of news, CNN has launched its iReports.com “user powered news” website. The site says there were 89,894 iReports filed worldwide, of which 915 made it on to CNN. The site bills itself as Unedited, Unfiltered, and one is tempted to say un-interesting, but I won’t; after all it is a beta site. Let me just say the lead story, billed as Breaking News, this morning was a video of an argument between a ketchup bottle and a mustard bottle. The second story on the home page, actually made it to CNN, is a video version book report on Lord of the Flies done a la Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room. Just out of curiosity, I checked out the morning line-up on Current TV which relies heavily but not solely on user generated reports. The lead was an edited version of John McCain talking about Iraq and set to a sort of rap beat and which actually was from YouTube. Of course, the second story was about a man getting a Pug… as in dog. As a side note, MTV has launched a political version of user generated news titled Choose or Lose with a “street team” of ‘reporters’ in all 50 states and D.C.
WHO DO YOU BELIEVE: If you’re like most people, you believe your friends and relatives and your peer group. Two separate surveys came to the same conclusion when looking at online products and services and, by extension, all products and services. Two-thirds of those surveyed say consumer generated reviews and ratings were the most important thing for them in making decisions. A Forrester Research survey of 5,000 online consumers found that not only did two thirds (64%) want to see user ratings and reviews on Websites, nearly the same number (59%)wanted product or price comparison testimonials and half (49%) wanted customer testimonials. A similar survey by Jupiter Research and Bazaarvoice found even more (70%) rated online product ratings and reviews the most helpful when researching products which two thirds (65%) of them did online even when they purchased offline. But here is where it gets interesting (well, to me, anyway) “trust in online reviews was found to be at its greatest when readers heard both sides of the story.” More than half (56%) say they wanted to know both the pros and cons of a product’s ‘attributes.’
Okay, the part my television brethren won’t like – online customer reviews are FIVE times more influential (53%) than TV ads (11%) in the case of online users thinking about spending money, according to the Jupiter survey which focused on U.K. consumers. Somewhat oddly, according to the Forrester survey, only one in five (23%) want the ability to upload or view their own content and only slightly more than that (29%) wanted quizzes or questionnaires. Not surprisingly Gen Yers (18 to 27) responded more positively toward entertaining games, quizzes, questionnaires and sharing content, followed by the Gen Xers (28 to 41).
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Organic milk is taking the place of high octane energy drinks and fruit flavored bottled water as the ‘cutting-edge’ beverage with double digit sales growth, in part because of the smaller price difference with regular milk but mainly because of its perceived health benefits, according to the website, Progressive Grocer. Mexico City has started a women-only bus service in the city because of the problem of women being groped and verbally abused on the public transportation. According to trend watching newsletter, Springwise, similar services have been started in Egypt, India, Brazil, Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan along with taxis in the U.K., Russia, India, Dubai and Iran. An employment website called TheLadders aimed exclusively at high earners looking for jobs paying $100,000-plus, has been started by a former executive from hotjobs.com.
A FINAL NOTE OF CLARIFICATION: Last week’s MfM reported on the amount of ‘non-programming content’, including ads, aired on cable and broadcast networks as compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation. One key point was left out: the analysis was based on the programming on the network affiliates, not just the networks alone. For each network, programming for the ten networks was sampled on local stations in seven different markets across the country, TO allow for regional differences and to create a composite week’s worth of programming. Thanks to sharp-eyed reader Devoe Slisher, of Fox59 and TheCW4 in Indianapolis for catching that.
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.
THE SMART TV SHOWS OF ALL TIME
SOMETHING HAPPENS SOME PLACE TO SOMEONE
WHO DO YOU BELIEVE
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.
I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE: Billions and Billions of videos. Two separate reports attest to the growing popularity of online video usage. Although the now resolved writers’ strike might have contributed to it, comScore Video Metrix reports that the number of online videos viewed passed the 10 Billion mark in December. A separate study by the Solutions Research Group found that the number of Americans who have watched one of their favorite TV shows on the Internet has nearly doubled in the past year. That’s 43% of the online population, or 80 Million Americans, compared to 25% a year ago. When you consider all videos online, comScore says three-quarters (76.7%) of all U.S. Internet users have viewed videos online. Of course, Google’s YouTube site accounted for most of those viewings – a third (32.6%), more than 3.3 Billion videos. Nobody else even comes close. Fox Interactive came in second with 358 Thousand videos and 3.5% of the market, followed by Yahoo (340 Thousand and 3.4%), Viacom (237 Thousand and 2.3%) and Microsoft (180 Thousand and 1.8%).
Even more astounding (at least to me, but I’m easily astounded), one in five Online Americans say they watch TV on the Web on a weekly basis – which the Solutions Research Group notes is well ahead of the 14% watching cable’s video-on-demand offerings. The hot shows on the Internet included Heroes, Grey’s Anatomy, Dancing with the Stars, Ugly Betty, Chuck, CSI, House, Kitchen Nightmares, Smallville and Gossip Girl. And as long as I’m being astounded, comScore says online viewers watched an average of 3.4 hours of online video during the month – a 34% increase since the beginning of 2007. The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes but then again the ‘average’ online video viewer ‘consumed’ 72 videos.
As a footnote, I should point out an article by Mike Shields in MediaWeek that major broadcasters, NBC Universal and Viacom, continue to resist placing their content on YouTube. Of course, NBC does have hulu.com as well as its own site. YouTube points out in the article that it has deals with 18 groups, including Hearst Corp., Tribune Broadcasting, Oprah’s Harpo, Reuters and even PBS. And, no, I don’t understand why Viacom resists making a deal with YouTube while CBS doesn’t.
THE SMARTEST TV SHOWS OF ALL TIME: As long as I’m on a TV kick, website fancast.com, which allows people to develop their own TV viewing guide of favorite shows both on line and on air, has created a ‘smart’ TV list, based on an interview with the chairman of Mensa International, the organization for people whose IQ is in the top 2% of the population. Chairman Jim Werdell’s obviously personal list includes M-A-S-H, Cosmos (with Carl Sagan), CSI, House, West Wing, Boston Legal, All in the Family, Frasier, Mad About You and Jeopardy which he says tests intelligence as well as knowledge. Werdell cites most of the shows for their smart ‘repartee.’ You can read more at http://thebiz.fancast.com/2008/02/exclusive_mensa_chair_picks_th.html.
SOMETHING HAPPENS SOME PLACE TO SOMEONE: With that heavy duty definition of news, CNN has launched its iReports.com “user powered news” website. The site says there were 89,894 iReports filed worldwide, of which 915 made it on to CNN. The site bills itself as Unedited, Unfiltered, and one is tempted to say un-interesting, but I won’t; after all it is a beta site. Let me just say the lead story, billed as Breaking News, this morning was a video of an argument between a ketchup bottle and a mustard bottle. The second story on the home page, actually made it to CNN, is a video version book report on Lord of the Flies done a la Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room. Just out of curiosity, I checked out the morning line-up on Current TV which relies heavily but not solely on user generated reports. The lead was an edited version of John McCain talking about Iraq and set to a sort of rap beat and which actually was from YouTube. Of course, the second story was about a man getting a Pug… as in dog. As a side note, MTV has launched a political version of user generated news titled Choose or Lose with a “street team” of ‘reporters’ in all 50 states and D.C.
WHO DO YOU BELIEVE: If you’re like most people, you believe your friends and relatives and your peer group. Two separate surveys came to the same conclusion when looking at online products and services and, by extension, all products and services. Two-thirds of those surveyed say consumer generated reviews and ratings were the most important thing for them in making decisions. A Forrester Research survey of 5,000 online consumers found that not only did two thirds (64%) want to see user ratings and reviews on Websites, nearly the same number (59%)wanted product or price comparison testimonials and half (49%) wanted customer testimonials. A similar survey by Jupiter Research and Bazaarvoice found even more (70%) rated online product ratings and reviews the most helpful when researching products which two thirds (65%) of them did online even when they purchased offline. But here is where it gets interesting (well, to me, anyway) “trust in online reviews was found to be at its greatest when readers heard both sides of the story.” More than half (56%) say they wanted to know both the pros and cons of a product’s ‘attributes.’
Okay, the part my television brethren won’t like – online customer reviews are FIVE times more influential (53%) than TV ads (11%) in the case of online users thinking about spending money, according to the Jupiter survey which focused on U.K. consumers. Somewhat oddly, according to the Forrester survey, only one in five (23%) want the ability to upload or view their own content and only slightly more than that (29%) wanted quizzes or questionnaires. Not surprisingly Gen Yers (18 to 27) responded more positively toward entertaining games, quizzes, questionnaires and sharing content, followed by the Gen Xers (28 to 41).
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Organic milk is taking the place of high octane energy drinks and fruit flavored bottled water as the ‘cutting-edge’ beverage with double digit sales growth, in part because of the smaller price difference with regular milk but mainly because of its perceived health benefits, according to the website, Progressive Grocer. Mexico City has started a women-only bus service in the city because of the problem of women being groped and verbally abused on the public transportation. According to trend watching newsletter, Springwise, similar services have been started in Egypt, India, Brazil, Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan along with taxis in the U.K., Russia, India, Dubai and Iran. An employment website called TheLadders aimed exclusively at high earners looking for jobs paying $100,000-plus, has been started by a former executive from hotjobs.com.
A FINAL NOTE OF CLARIFICATION: Last week’s MfM reported on the amount of ‘non-programming content’, including ads, aired on cable and broadcast networks as compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation. One key point was left out: the analysis was based on the programming on the network affiliates, not just the networks alone. For each network, programming for the ten networks was sampled on local stations in seven different markets across the country, TO allow for regional differences and to create a composite week’s worth of programming. Thanks to sharp-eyed reader Devoe Slisher, of Fox59 and TheCW4 in Indianapolis for catching that.
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.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Message From Michael -- October 1, 2007
DON’T COUNT OUT DEAD TREE TECHNOLOGY
ONLINE VIDEO IS LIKE HAVING YOUR OWN DVR
ADVERTISING AND RODNEY DANGERFIELD
MONEY MAKING MEDIA MILLIONAIRES
COCKTAIL CHATTER
DON’T COUNT OUT DEAD TREE TECHNOLOGY: That wasn’t exactly the point of a MediaWeek Special Report looking at the 2008 media outlook, but when you crunch the numbers, like I did, you are reminded just how much of the advertising dollars they account for. Newspapers and magazines together account for nearly as much advertising spending ($73.41 Billion projected for 2007) as all of television (network, cable, spot) and radio combined ($76.77 Billion). Of course, they’re growing at a much slower rate than broadcasting. I am not going to try and summarize the report here, but instead offer a brief overview and a different way of looking at the numbers. The report offers three projections for growth from Price Waterhouse Cooper, Veronis Suhler Stevenson and ZenithOptimedia. I averaged the three to come up with a projected growth and then projected what 2008 means in actual numbers. (Yes, I know, I don’t have a life.) And I apologize, but there’s lots of numbers coming up.
Low man on the growth totem pole of course are newspapers which actually showed a decline from 2006 to 2007 in circulation and revenue, and are only expected to grow an average 2/3rds of one percent in 2008. But at around $49 Billion, it is still #1 and the 600-pound gorilla of the advertising picture. I have to confess that I didn’t realize that magazines (which comes in #2) accounted for such a huge part of the advertising dollar ($24.85 Billion projected for 2007). But, again, growth is pretty low, with an average of 4% projected for 2008. By comparison, TV in all its forms (network, cable and spot) is expected to average between 6.5% to 7%. Cable TV leads the pack at $20.2 Billion projected in 2007 and an average growth rate that will put it at roughly $21.63 Billion in 2008. Network TV comes in next with $18.45 Billion projected in 2007 and a projected growth rate that will put it at $19.68 Billion in 2008. And finally, Spot TV with a projected $18.3 Billion in 2007 growing to $19.5 Billion in 2008. Another thing I didn’t know (there’s so much I don’t know) is that radio advertising is actually larger than any of the individual TV segments, at least in 2007 with $19.82 Billion. But with a meager 2.2% average growth rate, radio will fall behind cable TV in 2008 and just barely ahead of the other two, reaching $20.26 Billion.
The wild card in all this, of course, is digital advertising. It is the third largest category of advertising, but of course that covers everything from MySpace and Yahoo to television video online and newspaper websites. Still, with an average growth rate of 19.8%, digital is on advertising steroids compared to the others. Digital in its myriad forms has projected revenues of $21.1 Billion in 2007, just barely ahead of Cable, but then leaping to a projected $25.28 Billion in 2008, just barely behind magazines. The report notes that broadcast networks are doing everything they can to leverage their brands, content and distribution system into new media; and that newspapers are leveraging their news brand online and garnering a greater growth (24%) than anybody else in their digital efforts.
ONLINE VIDEO IS LIKE HAVING YOUR OWN DVR: New research by NBC-Universal indicates that people are using online video like they use their DVR. They miss an episode. They just go online to watch it. And, says NBC’s Chief Digital Officer, George Kliavkoff, the research shows that online video viewing is not just for people wanting to watch snippets. More than four out of five (83%) who start watching an hour-long program online finish watching it online. Kliavkoff admitted he was worried that online video would “cannibalize” the on-air product. Even better, the research indicates the online viewing, like the DVR viewing actually adds to the viewing ‘incrementally.’ And, as a personal footnote, I missed the comedy Back To You that I mentioned in last week’s MfM, and it was nice to be able to go online to watch it.
As a footnote to this, DVD penetration has almost reached the level of VCR penetration, according to data from Nielsen Media. The difference is that VCR usage has been slowing declining from a high of 91.4% in May of 2002 to 86.4% in May of last year, while DVD usage has been steadily increasing from 42.6% in May of 2003 to 82.4% in May of last year.
ADVERTISING AND RODNEY DANGERFIELD: What do they have in common? They get no respect. At least, according to a survey by advertising giant J. Walter Thompson which found that only one in seven (14%) of Americans respect ad people. But, a consolation prize to my advertising friends, nearly a third (31%) saw ad people as a “necessary good” and that was better than politicians and car salesmen. Even more interesting to me was the finding that four out of five (84%) think too many things are over-hyped and three-quarters (72%) say they are tired of people trying to grab their attention “and sell me stuff.”
Okay, I have to at least acknowledge the more famous study released by the folks at J. Walter Thompson, even though it has made all the media rounds. That is people’s addiction to the Internet. The ‘snicker fact’ is that one in five actually admitted to having less sex because of the Internet. The less humorous but probably more telling factoid is that almost the same number (one in five) said they could go a whole week without the Internet but most said they couldn’t stand being without the Internet for a day (15%), or a couple of days (21%) or a few days (19%).
MONEY MAKING MEDIA MILLIONAIRES: Okay, say that five times real fast. Actually, don’t bother. Just say Oprah. Forbes magazine unofficially announced her queen of media, naming her as the top money-maker in the media world, earning $260 Million from June of 2006 to June of 2007. You’re probably saying ‘no surprise there.’ True. But how about the #2 spot – Jerry Seinfeld. Thanks to re-runs, he gets $60 Million a year. The one I wouldn’t have guessed, at #3, is Simon Cowell, who gets $45 Million a year, followed by David Letterman at $40 Million, Donald Trump (no, I don’t understand why he’s on the list either) at $32 Million, Jay Leno also at $32 Million, Phil McGraw at $30 Million, Judy Sheindlin (aka Judge Judy) at $30 Million, George Lopez at $26 Million, Keifer Sutherland at $22 Million, Regis Philbin at $21 Million, Tyra Banks at $18 Million, Rachel Ray at $16 Million, Katie Couric at $15 Million, Ellen deGeneres at $15 Million, Ryan Seacrest at $14 Million, Matt Lauer at $13 Million, Barbara Walters at $12 Million, Diane Sawyer at $12 Million and finally Meredith Viera at $10 Million. Just for the record, that’s 11 men and 9 women.
And as a footnote – Oprah also made Forbes 400 list of the world’s richest people. Even more fascinating – for the first time, everyone on that list is a Billionaire. Yes, including Oprah.
WORTH NOTING: This is somewhere between Cocktail Chatter and Factoid, but Nielsen Media has taken some of its own research advice and launched a social networking site, heynielsen.com. It is, according to the site description, “a place where you can make a name for yourself while trading opinions on TV, movies, music, personalities, web sites and more.”
COCKTAIL CHATTER: According to linguist K. David Harrison, author of When Languages Die, every two weeks one of the world’s 7,000 languages falls out of use. Some 2.5 Million U.S. adults took part in online dating in the last 30 days, according to research firm Mediamark Research Inc., with men accounting for 52% and women 48% of the users. Researchers at the University of Campinas in Brazil (where sugarcane-based ethanol accounts for a third of its fuel), say they boosted ethanol yield by 17% and shaved two hours off the fermentation process by circulating the fermentation brew past six magnets. Nicholas Negraponte and the folks at the One Laptop Per Child effort have announced a buy one get one program, starting in November, in which you can buy a computer for your child and one for a child in a developing nation.
ONLINE VIDEO IS LIKE HAVING YOUR OWN DVR
ADVERTISING AND RODNEY DANGERFIELD
MONEY MAKING MEDIA MILLIONAIRES
COCKTAIL CHATTER
DON’T COUNT OUT DEAD TREE TECHNOLOGY: That wasn’t exactly the point of a MediaWeek Special Report looking at the 2008 media outlook, but when you crunch the numbers, like I did, you are reminded just how much of the advertising dollars they account for. Newspapers and magazines together account for nearly as much advertising spending ($73.41 Billion projected for 2007) as all of television (network, cable, spot) and radio combined ($76.77 Billion). Of course, they’re growing at a much slower rate than broadcasting. I am not going to try and summarize the report here, but instead offer a brief overview and a different way of looking at the numbers. The report offers three projections for growth from Price Waterhouse Cooper, Veronis Suhler Stevenson and ZenithOptimedia. I averaged the three to come up with a projected growth and then projected what 2008 means in actual numbers. (Yes, I know, I don’t have a life.) And I apologize, but there’s lots of numbers coming up.
Low man on the growth totem pole of course are newspapers which actually showed a decline from 2006 to 2007 in circulation and revenue, and are only expected to grow an average 2/3rds of one percent in 2008. But at around $49 Billion, it is still #1 and the 600-pound gorilla of the advertising picture. I have to confess that I didn’t realize that magazines (which comes in #2) accounted for such a huge part of the advertising dollar ($24.85 Billion projected for 2007). But, again, growth is pretty low, with an average of 4% projected for 2008. By comparison, TV in all its forms (network, cable and spot) is expected to average between 6.5% to 7%. Cable TV leads the pack at $20.2 Billion projected in 2007 and an average growth rate that will put it at roughly $21.63 Billion in 2008. Network TV comes in next with $18.45 Billion projected in 2007 and a projected growth rate that will put it at $19.68 Billion in 2008. And finally, Spot TV with a projected $18.3 Billion in 2007 growing to $19.5 Billion in 2008. Another thing I didn’t know (there’s so much I don’t know) is that radio advertising is actually larger than any of the individual TV segments, at least in 2007 with $19.82 Billion. But with a meager 2.2% average growth rate, radio will fall behind cable TV in 2008 and just barely ahead of the other two, reaching $20.26 Billion.
The wild card in all this, of course, is digital advertising. It is the third largest category of advertising, but of course that covers everything from MySpace and Yahoo to television video online and newspaper websites. Still, with an average growth rate of 19.8%, digital is on advertising steroids compared to the others. Digital in its myriad forms has projected revenues of $21.1 Billion in 2007, just barely ahead of Cable, but then leaping to a projected $25.28 Billion in 2008, just barely behind magazines. The report notes that broadcast networks are doing everything they can to leverage their brands, content and distribution system into new media; and that newspapers are leveraging their news brand online and garnering a greater growth (24%) than anybody else in their digital efforts.
ONLINE VIDEO IS LIKE HAVING YOUR OWN DVR: New research by NBC-Universal indicates that people are using online video like they use their DVR. They miss an episode. They just go online to watch it. And, says NBC’s Chief Digital Officer, George Kliavkoff, the research shows that online video viewing is not just for people wanting to watch snippets. More than four out of five (83%) who start watching an hour-long program online finish watching it online. Kliavkoff admitted he was worried that online video would “cannibalize” the on-air product. Even better, the research indicates the online viewing, like the DVR viewing actually adds to the viewing ‘incrementally.’ And, as a personal footnote, I missed the comedy Back To You that I mentioned in last week’s MfM, and it was nice to be able to go online to watch it.
As a footnote to this, DVD penetration has almost reached the level of VCR penetration, according to data from Nielsen Media. The difference is that VCR usage has been slowing declining from a high of 91.4% in May of 2002 to 86.4% in May of last year, while DVD usage has been steadily increasing from 42.6% in May of 2003 to 82.4% in May of last year.
ADVERTISING AND RODNEY DANGERFIELD: What do they have in common? They get no respect. At least, according to a survey by advertising giant J. Walter Thompson which found that only one in seven (14%) of Americans respect ad people. But, a consolation prize to my advertising friends, nearly a third (31%) saw ad people as a “necessary good” and that was better than politicians and car salesmen. Even more interesting to me was the finding that four out of five (84%) think too many things are over-hyped and three-quarters (72%) say they are tired of people trying to grab their attention “and sell me stuff.”
Okay, I have to at least acknowledge the more famous study released by the folks at J. Walter Thompson, even though it has made all the media rounds. That is people’s addiction to the Internet. The ‘snicker fact’ is that one in five actually admitted to having less sex because of the Internet. The less humorous but probably more telling factoid is that almost the same number (one in five) said they could go a whole week without the Internet but most said they couldn’t stand being without the Internet for a day (15%), or a couple of days (21%) or a few days (19%).
MONEY MAKING MEDIA MILLIONAIRES: Okay, say that five times real fast. Actually, don’t bother. Just say Oprah. Forbes magazine unofficially announced her queen of media, naming her as the top money-maker in the media world, earning $260 Million from June of 2006 to June of 2007. You’re probably saying ‘no surprise there.’ True. But how about the #2 spot – Jerry Seinfeld. Thanks to re-runs, he gets $60 Million a year. The one I wouldn’t have guessed, at #3, is Simon Cowell, who gets $45 Million a year, followed by David Letterman at $40 Million, Donald Trump (no, I don’t understand why he’s on the list either) at $32 Million, Jay Leno also at $32 Million, Phil McGraw at $30 Million, Judy Sheindlin (aka Judge Judy) at $30 Million, George Lopez at $26 Million, Keifer Sutherland at $22 Million, Regis Philbin at $21 Million, Tyra Banks at $18 Million, Rachel Ray at $16 Million, Katie Couric at $15 Million, Ellen deGeneres at $15 Million, Ryan Seacrest at $14 Million, Matt Lauer at $13 Million, Barbara Walters at $12 Million, Diane Sawyer at $12 Million and finally Meredith Viera at $10 Million. Just for the record, that’s 11 men and 9 women.
And as a footnote – Oprah also made Forbes 400 list of the world’s richest people. Even more fascinating – for the first time, everyone on that list is a Billionaire. Yes, including Oprah.
WORTH NOTING: This is somewhere between Cocktail Chatter and Factoid, but Nielsen Media has taken some of its own research advice and launched a social networking site, heynielsen.com. It is, according to the site description, “a place where you can make a name for yourself while trading opinions on TV, movies, music, personalities, web sites and more.”
COCKTAIL CHATTER: According to linguist K. David Harrison, author of When Languages Die, every two weeks one of the world’s 7,000 languages falls out of use. Some 2.5 Million U.S. adults took part in online dating in the last 30 days, according to research firm Mediamark Research Inc., with men accounting for 52% and women 48% of the users. Researchers at the University of Campinas in Brazil (where sugarcane-based ethanol accounts for a third of its fuel), say they boosted ethanol yield by 17% and shaved two hours off the fermentation process by circulating the fermentation brew past six magnets. Nicholas Negraponte and the folks at the One Laptop Per Child effort have announced a buy one get one program, starting in November, in which you can buy a computer for your child and one for a child in a developing nation.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Message From Michael -- June 25, 2007
THE JESUS PHONE
INTERNET OVER THE AIR
ONLINE VIEWING GROWTH
NETWORK AND CABLE NEWS DIFFERENCE
TECHNOLOGY INDIFFERENCE
STEPPING INTO THE WAYBACK MACHINE
COCKTAIL CHATTER
MURROW AWARD CONGRATULATIONS
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.
THE JESUS PHONE: That’s the somewhat cynical description by media technology site SYS-CON MEDIA of the Apple iPhone because they say it’s being hyped like “it was the Second Coming.” Adding to the hype, Apple has announced it will be able to play YouTube video clips. It’s supposed to be released this Friday, June 29th, after what technology website Engadget.com calls “years of speculation on perhaps the most intensely followed unconfirmed product in Apple’s history.” Technology guru Mike Wendland who writes for the Detroit Free Press admits he is not as enamored of the device as many but he’ll still be standing in one of those long lines waiting to buy one. His concerns are the fact that it is using AT&T’s lower level broadband network, that it won’t allow direct music downloads (you have to go through your computer) and that it doesn’t have an actual keyboard.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has announced its own “second coming” device – surface computing, or as some call it, table technology. It’s a coffee table like computer that allows you to move and redesign pictures by simply touching the surface, or download pictures from your cellphone by simply laying it on the surface, or… well, you name it. I can’t do it justice by writing about it, but it’s worth viewing. Just go to Microsoft.com/surface.
INTERNET OVER THE AIR: As long as we’re on a technology kick, a group of major technology companies are joining forces to convince the federal government to allow high-speed Internet access to be provided over TV airwaves. Microsoft, Google, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Philips say they have developed a prototype device which would use idle TV channels, known as white space, to beam the Internet out, according to an article in Washingtonpost.com. They say the device will take WiFi to a new level. Meanwhile, as the article says, the major telephone and cable companies are “watching warily from the sidelines.”
Keeping on the technology theme, researchers at MIT have shown that it’s possible to wirelessly power a 60-watt lightbulb. The power was only a short distance away (two meters), but the researchers say the experiment paves the way for wirelessly charging batteries in laptops, mobile phones and music players as well as cutting the electric cords on household appliances.
ONLINE VIEWING GROWTH: Two different reports and different sets of numbers but the same end conclusion. More people are watching more videos online. The Magid Media Futures national online survey found that a majority (52%) of online Americans 12 to 64 are using online video once a week or more. A survey of online users by the Online Publishers Association put the number at 44%. (Oddly, the same number Magid reported for last year.) The numbers are also different when it comes to daily use with Magid reporting 14% watching videos online every day while OPA reports 8% watching online daily. (Again, oddly, almost the same as Magid reported last year.) Both say the prime users are young males. And both say the top content items are news. OPA says nearly half (45%) access news videos weekly while Magid says more than a third watch online video news stories regularly. Both also put weather as a top online video content item, followed by jokes and bloopers. The OPA report says the Internet dominates all other media during the purchase process, leading in terms of initial awareness of a product, learning more about a product, deciding where to buy and, finally, in the actual purchase decision. Of course, this was a survey of online users, but the report says the numbers range from 48% to 57%. The second most influential part of the purchase process – Word of Mouth. The Magid report says nearly half (41%) of Internet homes have wireless networks and predicts that TV sets will be part of home networks in the years ahead.
NETWORK AND CABLE NEWS DIFFERENCE: One of the criticisms we often hear from the public is that all local news “looks the same.” Well, now research from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press finds the same criticism of network news BUT not so much for cable news. Nearly three-quarters (74%) of those surveyed say network news operations ABC, CBS and NBC are “all pretty much the same.” (Despite ABC’s recent jump in the ratings.) Only a fifth (18%) say there are real differences. But while two-fifths (40%) of the public say cable news operations CNN, Fox and MSNBC are pretty much the same, nearly half (48%) see real differences. Further evidence that people think they’re all the same was the fact that the first word out of their mouths when asked to describe either network, cable or public radio news was the word “good.” OK was the second word used when people were asked to describe their impression of network news. Excellent was the second word used to describe Fox and NPR. The second most common word used to describe CNN was informative. Other words used for the various news organizations were liberal and biased. Consolation for the network news executives is that two-thirds (63%) say they regularly get their news about national and international news from one of the three major network news organizations while cable news operations was regularly viewed by about a third or less (37% for Fox, 35% for CNN and 26% for MSNBC.)
TECHNOLOGY INDIFFERENCE: Another part of the Pew group, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that nearly half of Americans (45%) say information and communication technology gives them less control over their lives OR makes no difference. And a third (32%) of those with either cell phones or Internet say they need help setting up or using their new electronic gadgets. Reviewing why some people still refuse to join the communication revolution, associate director John B. Horrigan argues that the technology industry needs to improve its design of electronic gadgets and the industry needs to improve its sell of the benefit of such gadgets. Although he notes there are some “contrarians” who just don’t want to adapt or adopt the new devices. As a lesson to all, he quotes a report by the World Economic Forum on “digital ecosystems,” which says that while “not all companies that experimented with new organizational structure have flourished, all companies that failed to experiment have floundered.”
You may remember from a previous MfM that the Pew group provided a quiz to find out what kind of technology type you are – an omnivore, mobile centric or whatever. If you want to find out where you fit, the link is http://wwww.pewinternet.org/quiz.
STEPPING INTO THE WAYBACK MACHINE: Anybody out there remember Peabody and Mr. Sherman? Okay, never mind. In any case, a new feature for the weekly MfM is an occasional look back at what was ‘making the news’ in the MfM this time last year.
This time last year AOL relaunched Netscape.com with readers voting on the hot stories of the day. The site is still up and running but the voting is still low with stories garnering anywhere from three votes to 99 votes but not much more than that. Also this time last year we announced the launch of two new websites designed to broker people’s pictures to the press. The sites, scoopt.com and celljournalist.com are still up and running. The Online Publishers Association reported in June of last year that the Web was the dominant medium during work hours (followed by radio) and the second most used medium at home (after TV), proving, according to association president Pam Horan, that the Web’s “rise to mass media status is now clear and incontrovertible.”
COCKTAIL CHATTER: The invention of barbecue may be a key reason for humans developing larger brains. Scientists say that 1.9 Million years ago the brain of Homo erectus doubled in size. Harvard professor Richard Wrangham says that coincided with the development of cooked meat which allowed more calories to be consumed faster which led to a shrinking of gastrointestinal organs and an increase in brain size, essentially trading “guts for gray matter,” as MIT’s Technology Review puts it. The National Science Foundation has given two professors $150,000 to develop video games that can be used to teach students computer science, according to the website Next Generation which focuses on “interactive entertainment.” A study sponsored by a group called Electronic Arts in the U.K. and conducted by FutureLab, a non-profit education ‘advancement’ organization found that video games could be useful in teaching several other subjects as well. California is the fourth largest wine producer in the world, behind France, Italy and Spain with Australia in sixth place.
MURROW AWARD CONGRATULATIONS: To all the stations that won Murrow awards, but a special Mazel Tov to Belo-owned KVUE-TV in Austin, Texas, and friend Frank Volpicella for winning for Overall Excellence in small market television. Ironically my friends at KEYE-TV, also in Austin, won for news series. Another Mazel Tov goes to Media General-owned WSLS-TV in Roanoke and friend Shane Moreland for winning for best newscast. Media General-owned WTVQ-TV in Lexington, Kentucky and friend Mark Pimentel won for spot news coverage. Another irony is that my friends at Gray communications-owned WKYT-TV, also in Lexington, won for continuing coverage. And a final Mazel Tov to Jeff Hoffman and Raycom media-owned WAFF-TV in Huntsville for winning best website.
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.
INTERNET OVER THE AIR
ONLINE VIEWING GROWTH
NETWORK AND CABLE NEWS DIFFERENCE
TECHNOLOGY INDIFFERENCE
STEPPING INTO THE WAYBACK MACHINE
COCKTAIL CHATTER
MURROW AWARD CONGRATULATIONS
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.
THE JESUS PHONE: That’s the somewhat cynical description by media technology site SYS-CON MEDIA of the Apple iPhone because they say it’s being hyped like “it was the Second Coming.” Adding to the hype, Apple has announced it will be able to play YouTube video clips. It’s supposed to be released this Friday, June 29th, after what technology website Engadget.com calls “years of speculation on perhaps the most intensely followed unconfirmed product in Apple’s history.” Technology guru Mike Wendland who writes for the Detroit Free Press admits he is not as enamored of the device as many but he’ll still be standing in one of those long lines waiting to buy one. His concerns are the fact that it is using AT&T’s lower level broadband network, that it won’t allow direct music downloads (you have to go through your computer) and that it doesn’t have an actual keyboard.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has announced its own “second coming” device – surface computing, or as some call it, table technology. It’s a coffee table like computer that allows you to move and redesign pictures by simply touching the surface, or download pictures from your cellphone by simply laying it on the surface, or… well, you name it. I can’t do it justice by writing about it, but it’s worth viewing. Just go to Microsoft.com/surface.
INTERNET OVER THE AIR: As long as we’re on a technology kick, a group of major technology companies are joining forces to convince the federal government to allow high-speed Internet access to be provided over TV airwaves. Microsoft, Google, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Philips say they have developed a prototype device which would use idle TV channels, known as white space, to beam the Internet out, according to an article in Washingtonpost.com. They say the device will take WiFi to a new level. Meanwhile, as the article says, the major telephone and cable companies are “watching warily from the sidelines.”
Keeping on the technology theme, researchers at MIT have shown that it’s possible to wirelessly power a 60-watt lightbulb. The power was only a short distance away (two meters), but the researchers say the experiment paves the way for wirelessly charging batteries in laptops, mobile phones and music players as well as cutting the electric cords on household appliances.
ONLINE VIEWING GROWTH: Two different reports and different sets of numbers but the same end conclusion. More people are watching more videos online. The Magid Media Futures national online survey found that a majority (52%) of online Americans 12 to 64 are using online video once a week or more. A survey of online users by the Online Publishers Association put the number at 44%. (Oddly, the same number Magid reported for last year.) The numbers are also different when it comes to daily use with Magid reporting 14% watching videos online every day while OPA reports 8% watching online daily. (Again, oddly, almost the same as Magid reported last year.) Both say the prime users are young males. And both say the top content items are news. OPA says nearly half (45%) access news videos weekly while Magid says more than a third watch online video news stories regularly. Both also put weather as a top online video content item, followed by jokes and bloopers. The OPA report says the Internet dominates all other media during the purchase process, leading in terms of initial awareness of a product, learning more about a product, deciding where to buy and, finally, in the actual purchase decision. Of course, this was a survey of online users, but the report says the numbers range from 48% to 57%. The second most influential part of the purchase process – Word of Mouth. The Magid report says nearly half (41%) of Internet homes have wireless networks and predicts that TV sets will be part of home networks in the years ahead.
NETWORK AND CABLE NEWS DIFFERENCE: One of the criticisms we often hear from the public is that all local news “looks the same.” Well, now research from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press finds the same criticism of network news BUT not so much for cable news. Nearly three-quarters (74%) of those surveyed say network news operations ABC, CBS and NBC are “all pretty much the same.” (Despite ABC’s recent jump in the ratings.) Only a fifth (18%) say there are real differences. But while two-fifths (40%) of the public say cable news operations CNN, Fox and MSNBC are pretty much the same, nearly half (48%) see real differences. Further evidence that people think they’re all the same was the fact that the first word out of their mouths when asked to describe either network, cable or public radio news was the word “good.” OK was the second word used when people were asked to describe their impression of network news. Excellent was the second word used to describe Fox and NPR. The second most common word used to describe CNN was informative. Other words used for the various news organizations were liberal and biased. Consolation for the network news executives is that two-thirds (63%) say they regularly get their news about national and international news from one of the three major network news organizations while cable news operations was regularly viewed by about a third or less (37% for Fox, 35% for CNN and 26% for MSNBC.)
TECHNOLOGY INDIFFERENCE: Another part of the Pew group, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that nearly half of Americans (45%) say information and communication technology gives them less control over their lives OR makes no difference. And a third (32%) of those with either cell phones or Internet say they need help setting up or using their new electronic gadgets. Reviewing why some people still refuse to join the communication revolution, associate director John B. Horrigan argues that the technology industry needs to improve its design of electronic gadgets and the industry needs to improve its sell of the benefit of such gadgets. Although he notes there are some “contrarians” who just don’t want to adapt or adopt the new devices. As a lesson to all, he quotes a report by the World Economic Forum on “digital ecosystems,” which says that while “not all companies that experimented with new organizational structure have flourished, all companies that failed to experiment have floundered.”
You may remember from a previous MfM that the Pew group provided a quiz to find out what kind of technology type you are – an omnivore, mobile centric or whatever. If you want to find out where you fit, the link is http://wwww.pewinternet.org/quiz.
STEPPING INTO THE WAYBACK MACHINE: Anybody out there remember Peabody and Mr. Sherman? Okay, never mind. In any case, a new feature for the weekly MfM is an occasional look back at what was ‘making the news’ in the MfM this time last year.
This time last year AOL relaunched Netscape.com with readers voting on the hot stories of the day. The site is still up and running but the voting is still low with stories garnering anywhere from three votes to 99 votes but not much more than that. Also this time last year we announced the launch of two new websites designed to broker people’s pictures to the press. The sites, scoopt.com and celljournalist.com are still up and running. The Online Publishers Association reported in June of last year that the Web was the dominant medium during work hours (followed by radio) and the second most used medium at home (after TV), proving, according to association president Pam Horan, that the Web’s “rise to mass media status is now clear and incontrovertible.”
COCKTAIL CHATTER: The invention of barbecue may be a key reason for humans developing larger brains. Scientists say that 1.9 Million years ago the brain of Homo erectus doubled in size. Harvard professor Richard Wrangham says that coincided with the development of cooked meat which allowed more calories to be consumed faster which led to a shrinking of gastrointestinal organs and an increase in brain size, essentially trading “guts for gray matter,” as MIT’s Technology Review puts it. The National Science Foundation has given two professors $150,000 to develop video games that can be used to teach students computer science, according to the website Next Generation which focuses on “interactive entertainment.” A study sponsored by a group called Electronic Arts in the U.K. and conducted by FutureLab, a non-profit education ‘advancement’ organization found that video games could be useful in teaching several other subjects as well. California is the fourth largest wine producer in the world, behind France, Italy and Spain with Australia in sixth place.
MURROW AWARD CONGRATULATIONS: To all the stations that won Murrow awards, but a special Mazel Tov to Belo-owned KVUE-TV in Austin, Texas, and friend Frank Volpicella for winning for Overall Excellence in small market television. Ironically my friends at KEYE-TV, also in Austin, won for news series. Another Mazel Tov goes to Media General-owned WSLS-TV in Roanoke and friend Shane Moreland for winning for best newscast. Media General-owned WTVQ-TV in Lexington, Kentucky and friend Mark Pimentel won for spot news coverage. Another irony is that my friends at Gray communications-owned WKYT-TV, also in Lexington, won for continuing coverage. And a final Mazel Tov to Jeff Hoffman and Raycom media-owned WAFF-TV in Huntsville for winning best website.
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.
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.
Message from Michael -- May 28, 2007
CHINA TO OWN AMERICAN MEDIA
THE TRILLION DOLLAR MEDIA MOVE
TV WATCHING INCOME
LIVING IN SPAMALOT
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.
CHINA TO OWN AMERICAN MEDIA: No cute headline this time. Just a statement. The Chinese state investment agency has made a $4 Billion investment in one of the top private equity firms in America – The Blackstone Group. You may have heard about that. However, what I haven’t heard reported is the fact that The Blackstone Group owns or has investments in many of the leading media companies in America. Everything from VNU and Nielsen to wireless and broadband providers, cable operators as well as Freedom Communications which owns nine television stations and more than two dozen daily newspapers. And recently Blackstone formed a new group with Cumulus Media called Cumulus Media Partners which owns 345 stations in 67 markets. Of course, the Chinese investment is in the form of “non-voting common units.” (I’m sure some of the smarter MfM readers know exactly what that means. I confess I don’t.) And because the Chinese investment is only 10% of Blackstone, that keeps it off the “radar screen” (as The Washington Post put it) of government scrutiny. Oh, and that $4 Billion. Chump Change. China has $1.2 TRILLION in “foreign exchange reserves.”
Now, I’m not trying to develop some kind of conspiracy theory, but the other partners in the Cumulus group are Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners. These are the same two private equity groups that are “merging” with broadcast behemoth Clear Channel, owner of more than a thousand radio stations. Which brings me back to what started me on this thread – private equity firms buying media groups. In addition to the radio ‘merger,’ for example, Clear Channel has reached agreement to sell its 56 television stations to private equity firm Providence Equity Partners for $1.2 Billion. And that’s just the beginning. You heard about The New York Times selling its nine TV stations to private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners for $575 Million. And US Spanish language media network Univision is being acquired by a private equity consortium of Madison Deaborn Partners, Texas Pacific Group, Saban Capital Group AND Providence Equity Partners (yes, the same one that ‘acquired’ Clear Channel’s TV group) AND Thomas H Lee Partners (yes, the same one involved in the Cumulus purchase). And the private equity firms' interest in ‘old’ media isn’t limited to television either. Even ‘old-fashioned’ Reader’s Digest has ‘agreed to be taken private’ by a private equity consortium led by Ripplewood Holdings. So you’ve heard about those. But how about ProSiebenSat, the largest private German television broadcaster, being acquired for $7.6 Billion by the European private equity firm of Permira and the American private equity firm of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. (I was working for Miami TV station WTVJ when KKR bought it.) Or how about European media giant Bertelsmann selling part of its assets (Sony Music maybe) to private equity firms and then teaming up with private equity firms to raise more money.
So, if declining audiences, fragmenting audiences, the Internet and information overload, along with multiple sources over multiple platforms are raising economic concerns for traditional media… why are these savvy financial experts buying them? The other point being raised by many observers is what does this mean to the journalism of the future. I know what you’re saying -- I’m getting off my fact-based approach and straying into opinion, but I’m not. I’m just pointing out questions being raised by others in the many publications I read – from The New York Times, The Financial Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Economist and many others. Lastly, as a footnote, there have been several reports speculating that private equity firms may bid on Nexstar Broadcasting and Lin Broadcasting, both of whom were put on the auction block.
THE TRILLION DOLLAR MEDIA MOVE: Part of the reason the private equity firms are snatching up traditional media can be found in a report by media investment banker Veronis Suhler Stevenson which predicts that media spending will surpass $1.236 Trillion by 2010. The report says “growth will see-saw in coming years as traditional media outlets transition business models.” Even more interesting (to me, at least) is the report’s statement that consumers spent 3,543 hours per person per in 2005 but that by 2010, it will grow to 3,620 per person annually – meaning 10 hours a day. The report says the fastest growth in Internet and mobile services is actually coming from the ‘traditional’ media companies. The problem is that online platforms don’t generate the spending that traditional media generates, at least in the short term. Consumers spend less time with online and mobile media than they do with traditional media. For example, they read a few news stories on the Web but entire sections of a printed newspaper. Complicating the financial picture is the fact that consumers are accustomed to getting content for free on the Web and are reluctant to pay. Add to that, the report says, user generated content (such as blogs and podcasts) which are also free and the decline of many media formats such as VHS, PC games and CD’s.
As a footnote to the hours spent with media, another report by Media-Screen which bills itself as a market research and consulting firm for “the digital lifestyle” says BROADBAND online users spend nearly half of their spare time (48%) online on a typical weekday. According to the study, that amounts to an hour and 40 minutes daily. Nearly half (49%) of the broadband population (45 Million people) regularly visit sites decided to a personal hobby or interest. And the authors say sending e-mail and visiting web sites for personal reasons are more popular than television.
TV WATCHING INCOME: Only one program, Desperate Housewives, ranked in the top 20 in terms of ‘upscale’ income viewers in every part of the U.S. MAGNA Global, one of the world’s largest media services firm, did an analysis of Nielsen data to find out which programs drew the highest income viewers and in which areas of the country – Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, East Central, West Central and Pacific. Only Desperate Housewives scored in all six Nielsen regions. The other top 10 programs in terms of ‘upscale’ viewers was The Office (NBC), Andy Barker, P.I. (NBC), Grey’s Anatomy (ABC), Two and a Half Men (CBS), Sixty Minutes (CBS), Boston Legal (ABC) Friday Night Lights (NBC) and What About Brian (ABC). On the cable side of the equation, the Magna analysis showed the top five cable networks are Fox News, HGTV, NFL Network, ESPN and ESPN2.
The highest income prime time viewers are in the Northeast where the ‘average medium income’ is $68,000 and lowest income prime time viewers are in the Southwest where the ‘average medium income’ is $48,000. Steve Sternberg, Magna’s Executive Vice President for Audience Analysis, says the analysis isn’t completely on target because Nielsen only reports total household income, not individual income. To put those figures into some kind of perspective, I looked up national figures. According to the Federal Reserve’s survey of consumer finance, the average family income in 2004 (the last time surveyed) was $70,700. And, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the ‘real median income’ for an American household in 2005 was $46,326.
LIVING IN SPAMALOT: Despite an increase in Spam, American Internet users are less bothered about it, according to a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. In 2003, when Pew first asked people about the affect of spam on their Internet life, one in four (25%) said spam was a big problem. In the latest survey just released, that number had dropped to less than one in five (18%). Part of the reason for that, according to the authors, may be that the amount of pornographic spam (which people find to be the most offensive) has dropped. Three years ago, nearly 3 out of 4 people (71%) reported receiving porn spam. In the last survey the number had dropped to half (52%). However, phishing spam (email designed to trick people into revealing financial information) is the same with one in three (36%) receiving this kind of spam. As a side note to this, I found it interesting that the survey showed more email users (88%) have a personal email account compared to those with a work account (49%).
COCKTAIL CHATTER: The big story in Europe is the disappearance of a three-year-old British girl named Madeline McCann while on vacation with her family in Portugal. To give you an idea of the extent of coverage, do a search for her name and you get 127,000-plus hits. Nearly a quarter of American adults (23%) say they mostly (14%) or completely (9%) agree that American lives are worth more than the lives of people in other countries, according to the most recent Pew Social Values Survey. A :30-second spot in the American Idol finale went for $1.3 Million – the same as last year, despite some ratings attrition. By way of comparison, a :30-second spot in the SuperBowl went for twice that -- $2.6 Million. But, of course, that’s a once a year event. The latest ‘sensation’ in online video is Justin.tv which is a 24/7 “lifecast” of some guy with a camera on his head. Literally, nothing happens for hours on end. But it has become so popular, that backers are offering to help other people start up their own “lifecast.” And despite all the focus on digital entertainment, the latest ‘sensation’ among male ‘tweens (boys aged 10 to 12) is The Dangerous Book for Boys which the Wall Street Journal calls a “retro-style adventure manual.”
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.
THE TRILLION DOLLAR MEDIA MOVE
TV WATCHING INCOME
LIVING IN SPAMALOT
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.
CHINA TO OWN AMERICAN MEDIA: No cute headline this time. Just a statement. The Chinese state investment agency has made a $4 Billion investment in one of the top private equity firms in America – The Blackstone Group. You may have heard about that. However, what I haven’t heard reported is the fact that The Blackstone Group owns or has investments in many of the leading media companies in America. Everything from VNU and Nielsen to wireless and broadband providers, cable operators as well as Freedom Communications which owns nine television stations and more than two dozen daily newspapers. And recently Blackstone formed a new group with Cumulus Media called Cumulus Media Partners which owns 345 stations in 67 markets. Of course, the Chinese investment is in the form of “non-voting common units.” (I’m sure some of the smarter MfM readers know exactly what that means. I confess I don’t.) And because the Chinese investment is only 10% of Blackstone, that keeps it off the “radar screen” (as The Washington Post put it) of government scrutiny. Oh, and that $4 Billion. Chump Change. China has $1.2 TRILLION in “foreign exchange reserves.”
Now, I’m not trying to develop some kind of conspiracy theory, but the other partners in the Cumulus group are Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners. These are the same two private equity groups that are “merging” with broadcast behemoth Clear Channel, owner of more than a thousand radio stations. Which brings me back to what started me on this thread – private equity firms buying media groups. In addition to the radio ‘merger,’ for example, Clear Channel has reached agreement to sell its 56 television stations to private equity firm Providence Equity Partners for $1.2 Billion. And that’s just the beginning. You heard about The New York Times selling its nine TV stations to private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners for $575 Million. And US Spanish language media network Univision is being acquired by a private equity consortium of Madison Deaborn Partners, Texas Pacific Group, Saban Capital Group AND Providence Equity Partners (yes, the same one that ‘acquired’ Clear Channel’s TV group) AND Thomas H Lee Partners (yes, the same one involved in the Cumulus purchase). And the private equity firms' interest in ‘old’ media isn’t limited to television either. Even ‘old-fashioned’ Reader’s Digest has ‘agreed to be taken private’ by a private equity consortium led by Ripplewood Holdings. So you’ve heard about those. But how about ProSiebenSat, the largest private German television broadcaster, being acquired for $7.6 Billion by the European private equity firm of Permira and the American private equity firm of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. (I was working for Miami TV station WTVJ when KKR bought it.) Or how about European media giant Bertelsmann selling part of its assets (Sony Music maybe) to private equity firms and then teaming up with private equity firms to raise more money.
So, if declining audiences, fragmenting audiences, the Internet and information overload, along with multiple sources over multiple platforms are raising economic concerns for traditional media… why are these savvy financial experts buying them? The other point being raised by many observers is what does this mean to the journalism of the future. I know what you’re saying -- I’m getting off my fact-based approach and straying into opinion, but I’m not. I’m just pointing out questions being raised by others in the many publications I read – from The New York Times, The Financial Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Economist and many others. Lastly, as a footnote, there have been several reports speculating that private equity firms may bid on Nexstar Broadcasting and Lin Broadcasting, both of whom were put on the auction block.
THE TRILLION DOLLAR MEDIA MOVE: Part of the reason the private equity firms are snatching up traditional media can be found in a report by media investment banker Veronis Suhler Stevenson which predicts that media spending will surpass $1.236 Trillion by 2010. The report says “growth will see-saw in coming years as traditional media outlets transition business models.” Even more interesting (to me, at least) is the report’s statement that consumers spent 3,543 hours per person per in 2005 but that by 2010, it will grow to 3,620 per person annually – meaning 10 hours a day. The report says the fastest growth in Internet and mobile services is actually coming from the ‘traditional’ media companies. The problem is that online platforms don’t generate the spending that traditional media generates, at least in the short term. Consumers spend less time with online and mobile media than they do with traditional media. For example, they read a few news stories on the Web but entire sections of a printed newspaper. Complicating the financial picture is the fact that consumers are accustomed to getting content for free on the Web and are reluctant to pay. Add to that, the report says, user generated content (such as blogs and podcasts) which are also free and the decline of many media formats such as VHS, PC games and CD’s.
As a footnote to the hours spent with media, another report by Media-Screen which bills itself as a market research and consulting firm for “the digital lifestyle” says BROADBAND online users spend nearly half of their spare time (48%) online on a typical weekday. According to the study, that amounts to an hour and 40 minutes daily. Nearly half (49%) of the broadband population (45 Million people) regularly visit sites decided to a personal hobby or interest. And the authors say sending e-mail and visiting web sites for personal reasons are more popular than television.
TV WATCHING INCOME: Only one program, Desperate Housewives, ranked in the top 20 in terms of ‘upscale’ income viewers in every part of the U.S. MAGNA Global, one of the world’s largest media services firm, did an analysis of Nielsen data to find out which programs drew the highest income viewers and in which areas of the country – Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, East Central, West Central and Pacific. Only Desperate Housewives scored in all six Nielsen regions. The other top 10 programs in terms of ‘upscale’ viewers was The Office (NBC), Andy Barker, P.I. (NBC), Grey’s Anatomy (ABC), Two and a Half Men (CBS), Sixty Minutes (CBS), Boston Legal (ABC) Friday Night Lights (NBC) and What About Brian (ABC). On the cable side of the equation, the Magna analysis showed the top five cable networks are Fox News, HGTV, NFL Network, ESPN and ESPN2.
The highest income prime time viewers are in the Northeast where the ‘average medium income’ is $68,000 and lowest income prime time viewers are in the Southwest where the ‘average medium income’ is $48,000. Steve Sternberg, Magna’s Executive Vice President for Audience Analysis, says the analysis isn’t completely on target because Nielsen only reports total household income, not individual income. To put those figures into some kind of perspective, I looked up national figures. According to the Federal Reserve’s survey of consumer finance, the average family income in 2004 (the last time surveyed) was $70,700. And, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the ‘real median income’ for an American household in 2005 was $46,326.
LIVING IN SPAMALOT: Despite an increase in Spam, American Internet users are less bothered about it, according to a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. In 2003, when Pew first asked people about the affect of spam on their Internet life, one in four (25%) said spam was a big problem. In the latest survey just released, that number had dropped to less than one in five (18%). Part of the reason for that, according to the authors, may be that the amount of pornographic spam (which people find to be the most offensive) has dropped. Three years ago, nearly 3 out of 4 people (71%) reported receiving porn spam. In the last survey the number had dropped to half (52%). However, phishing spam (email designed to trick people into revealing financial information) is the same with one in three (36%) receiving this kind of spam. As a side note to this, I found it interesting that the survey showed more email users (88%) have a personal email account compared to those with a work account (49%).
COCKTAIL CHATTER: The big story in Europe is the disappearance of a three-year-old British girl named Madeline McCann while on vacation with her family in Portugal. To give you an idea of the extent of coverage, do a search for her name and you get 127,000-plus hits. Nearly a quarter of American adults (23%) say they mostly (14%) or completely (9%) agree that American lives are worth more than the lives of people in other countries, according to the most recent Pew Social Values Survey. A :30-second spot in the American Idol finale went for $1.3 Million – the same as last year, despite some ratings attrition. By way of comparison, a :30-second spot in the SuperBowl went for twice that -- $2.6 Million. But, of course, that’s a once a year event. The latest ‘sensation’ in online video is Justin.tv which is a 24/7 “lifecast” of some guy with a camera on his head. Literally, nothing happens for hours on end. But it has become so popular, that backers are offering to help other people start up their own “lifecast.” And despite all the focus on digital entertainment, the latest ‘sensation’ among male ‘tweens (boys aged 10 to 12) is The Dangerous Book for Boys which the Wall Street Journal calls a “retro-style adventure manual.”
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.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Message From Michael -- April 9, 2007
SWEEPS AND SOPRANOS
NOW YOU SEE IT
THE POWER OF AJAX
THE RACE IS ON
THE WORD IS EXCELLENCE
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.
SWEEPS AND SOPRANOS: They have nothing to do with each other, but I thought it sounded like a good headline. The two big headlines for this week’s MfM – the critical May sweeps is fast approaching and the critically acclaimed Sopranos debuted its final season last night.
NOW YOU SEE IT: And now you see it again… and again… and again. At least, according to a series of reports about streaming video online, you are. Four different reports from four different groups have come dealing with streaming video. International research firm Ipsos, Online research firm comScore/ Video Metrix, marketing research firm eMarketer and one that you may never have heard of, online tracking firm Vidmeter.com. Ipsos reports that just under half (44%) of ALL Americans have streamed some form of video content online with six out of ten (58%) of those Americans with Internet access streaming video. Not surprisingly the numbers are higher for young people. Three in four of all teens 12 to 17 and young adults 18-24 having streamed video last year in 2006. And figures released by ComScore seem to indicate that the number is growing. While the Ipsos report was for 2006, comScore reported that in January of this year ‘unique streamers and downloaders’ totaled nearly 123 Million people or 70% of the total U.S. Internet audience. The comScore figures seem to verify the Ipsos finding that few people (roughly one in seven – 14%) watched full-length TV shows online. The comScore data shows that ‘streamers’ averaged 58.9 streams a month, averaging 151 minutes of online video watching but that meant they were only watching about 2.6 minutes each time. The most popular form of online video stream is news, commentary and sports clips, according to Ipsos, with more than half (51%) having streamed such videos in the past 30 days. Almost as popular are movie and TV trailers with nearly half (48%) streaming them and an almost equally large number (46%) watching amateur or homemade video clips. That last figure is particularly interesting in light of the study by vidmeter.com which says that despite all the hullabaloo about copyright issues on such sites as YouTube, those videos removed because of copyright questions accounted for only six percent of total video views on the site.
Ipsos Executive Vice President Brian Cruikshank says we could be witnessing a “tipping point” in the evolution of digital video offerings online with young people eschewing (I’m sorry, it’s the word that the press release used) more traditional ways to view and acquire video content and turning to digital video on their PC or portable device. Meanwhile, eMarketer reports far fewer women watch video online compared to men, but the numbers are still substantial. The report says ‘only’ two-thirds (66%) of female Internet users watch video online compared to three-quarters (78%) of male Internet users. The executive vice president for comScore, Erin Hunter, argues that marketers could double their primetime viewing by adopting a multi-channel strategy because while ‘primetime’ TV viewing is traditionally between the hours of 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m., the ‘primetime’ viewing of online video occurs during the preceding block of time between 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. (Okay, I know I spent a lot of time on this, but there were, after all, four studies involved.)
On a related note, online video distributor Azureus has launched a video-on-demand site in competition to Joost (mentioned in a previous MfM) utilizing peer-to-peer downloading technology to deliver high definition video from content partners A&E, Starz, BBC and Showtime. And on a further related note, if you ever wondered how to download those videos from YouTube and others, there is a website Keepvid.com which provides a technique to do that.
THE POWER OF AJAX: And I’m not referring to the Greek warrior or to the bleaching cleanser, but to a new Internet publishing technology which threatens or promises (your choice) to change Internet viewing. Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and is a technique in which a web page or even e-mail can be updated automatically without requiring users to do anything. Publication Mediaweek argues that since the content is updated automatically, there will be less reason to go to other web pages, so therefore there will be fewer page views which is equated (rightfully or wrongfully) with ad impressions. The publication notes that Nielsen/ Net Ratings plans to publish a new “total time spent” metric which will place less emphasis on page views and more on how long is spent viewing. Well, comScore Media Metrix has already adopted a system to measure not only the total visits, but the average minutes per visit and the average visits per visitor. For example, popular website Facebook doesn’t even make it to the top ten when it comes to counting the number of ‘unique visitors.’ Yahoo with 128 Million, Time Warner Network with 118 Million and Google sites with 115 Million are the top three. But when you calculate the average number of visits by each visitor, Facebook jumps into the number two spot with 23.6 visits by each visitor, behind Yahoo with 28.6 visits. In fact the entire top ten list gets restructured with, for example, Weatherbug, which is 48th in terms of unique visitors ranking fifth when it comes to number of visits. I know this all may seem confusing, but the point goes back to an issue raised in previous MfM’s and even the State of the News Media report – measurement. Not just whether a consumer sees a report or advertisement but whether they actually become engaged with, and remember, the report or advertisement.
THE RACE IS ON: The U.S. is ahead, but China is running right behind in one race, but Canada leads in the other race, followed by Israel, South Korea and the United States in fourth place. The first race is the measurement of Internet penetration, arrived at by counting the number of unique visitors aged 15-plus. In this area, according to comScore World Metrix, the U.S. has an astounding 153 Million unique visitors. Think about that. Considering there are ‘only’ 300 Million people in the U.S., that means more than half have visited the Internet. China, which, at 1.3 Billion, has more than four times the population of the U.S., came in second by this measure with nearly 87 Million unique visitors. But there is little doubt the Chinese Internet population will surpass the American Internet population shortly with an annual growth of 20% a year compared to the U.S.’s 2%. The other population behemoth, India, which has a total population of just over One Billion, presently ranks eighth with 21 Million Internet users. India’s total population is growing much faster than China, and its Internet population is growing 33% a year. The next fastest growing Internet population is the Russian federation with just under 13 Million Internet users but with a growth rate of 21% a year. The other race is in average Monthly Hours spent online. Canadians are online 39.6 hours a month compared to Israel’s 37.4 hours, South Korea’s 34 hours and the United States’ 31.6 hours. The world Internet population, measuring those aged 15-plus, in January of this year was 747 Million, up 10% from a year ago.
ANOTHER RACE IS ON: This time between the Internet and other media. According to forecaster ZenithOptimedia, the Internet will overtake radio in terms of ad dollars worldwide by next year. Right now, according to their figures, the Internet is right behind with $31.3 Billion compared to radio’s $36.3 Billion. TV is the big kid on the advertising block with $167.8 Billion in ad spending compared to newspapers’ $126.2 Billion and magazines $56.4 Billion. The agency says the good news for TV is that demand has picked up and instead of its first-ever sustained period of market share loss, TV expenditure globally is forecast to go up. The even better news for the Internet, according to the report summarized in Advertising Age, is that the Internet will account for nearly 9% of global ad spending by 2009 and should reach double digits in the next decade.
THE WORD IS EXCELLENCE: No doubt you’ve heard about the Peabody Award winners, but I just wanted to send my compliments on to the local TV stations cited: WTNH in New Haven, KMOV in St. Louis and the unusual citation for two stations in the same market – WTHR and WISH in Indianapolis. I am proud to have been associated with two of the stations – KMOV where I worked and where I still have friends and WTHR, a former consulting client. The Peabody is awarded under the auspices of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication which I am also proud to be associated with. And for what it’s worth, I would encourage other local TV stations to submit. The criteria is both simple and profound, and can be summed up in one word – Excellence.
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.
NOW YOU SEE IT
THE POWER OF AJAX
THE RACE IS ON
THE WORD IS EXCELLENCE
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.
SWEEPS AND SOPRANOS: They have nothing to do with each other, but I thought it sounded like a good headline. The two big headlines for this week’s MfM – the critical May sweeps is fast approaching and the critically acclaimed Sopranos debuted its final season last night.
NOW YOU SEE IT: And now you see it again… and again… and again. At least, according to a series of reports about streaming video online, you are. Four different reports from four different groups have come dealing with streaming video. International research firm Ipsos, Online research firm comScore/ Video Metrix, marketing research firm eMarketer and one that you may never have heard of, online tracking firm Vidmeter.com. Ipsos reports that just under half (44%) of ALL Americans have streamed some form of video content online with six out of ten (58%) of those Americans with Internet access streaming video. Not surprisingly the numbers are higher for young people. Three in four of all teens 12 to 17 and young adults 18-24 having streamed video last year in 2006. And figures released by ComScore seem to indicate that the number is growing. While the Ipsos report was for 2006, comScore reported that in January of this year ‘unique streamers and downloaders’ totaled nearly 123 Million people or 70% of the total U.S. Internet audience. The comScore figures seem to verify the Ipsos finding that few people (roughly one in seven – 14%) watched full-length TV shows online. The comScore data shows that ‘streamers’ averaged 58.9 streams a month, averaging 151 minutes of online video watching but that meant they were only watching about 2.6 minutes each time. The most popular form of online video stream is news, commentary and sports clips, according to Ipsos, with more than half (51%) having streamed such videos in the past 30 days. Almost as popular are movie and TV trailers with nearly half (48%) streaming them and an almost equally large number (46%) watching amateur or homemade video clips. That last figure is particularly interesting in light of the study by vidmeter.com which says that despite all the hullabaloo about copyright issues on such sites as YouTube, those videos removed because of copyright questions accounted for only six percent of total video views on the site.
Ipsos Executive Vice President Brian Cruikshank says we could be witnessing a “tipping point” in the evolution of digital video offerings online with young people eschewing (I’m sorry, it’s the word that the press release used) more traditional ways to view and acquire video content and turning to digital video on their PC or portable device. Meanwhile, eMarketer reports far fewer women watch video online compared to men, but the numbers are still substantial. The report says ‘only’ two-thirds (66%) of female Internet users watch video online compared to three-quarters (78%) of male Internet users. The executive vice president for comScore, Erin Hunter, argues that marketers could double their primetime viewing by adopting a multi-channel strategy because while ‘primetime’ TV viewing is traditionally between the hours of 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m., the ‘primetime’ viewing of online video occurs during the preceding block of time between 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. (Okay, I know I spent a lot of time on this, but there were, after all, four studies involved.)
On a related note, online video distributor Azureus has launched a video-on-demand site in competition to Joost (mentioned in a previous MfM) utilizing peer-to-peer downloading technology to deliver high definition video from content partners A&E, Starz, BBC and Showtime. And on a further related note, if you ever wondered how to download those videos from YouTube and others, there is a website Keepvid.com which provides a technique to do that.
THE POWER OF AJAX: And I’m not referring to the Greek warrior or to the bleaching cleanser, but to a new Internet publishing technology which threatens or promises (your choice) to change Internet viewing. Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and is a technique in which a web page or even e-mail can be updated automatically without requiring users to do anything. Publication Mediaweek argues that since the content is updated automatically, there will be less reason to go to other web pages, so therefore there will be fewer page views which is equated (rightfully or wrongfully) with ad impressions. The publication notes that Nielsen/ Net Ratings plans to publish a new “total time spent” metric which will place less emphasis on page views and more on how long is spent viewing. Well, comScore Media Metrix has already adopted a system to measure not only the total visits, but the average minutes per visit and the average visits per visitor. For example, popular website Facebook doesn’t even make it to the top ten when it comes to counting the number of ‘unique visitors.’ Yahoo with 128 Million, Time Warner Network with 118 Million and Google sites with 115 Million are the top three. But when you calculate the average number of visits by each visitor, Facebook jumps into the number two spot with 23.6 visits by each visitor, behind Yahoo with 28.6 visits. In fact the entire top ten list gets restructured with, for example, Weatherbug, which is 48th in terms of unique visitors ranking fifth when it comes to number of visits. I know this all may seem confusing, but the point goes back to an issue raised in previous MfM’s and even the State of the News Media report – measurement. Not just whether a consumer sees a report or advertisement but whether they actually become engaged with, and remember, the report or advertisement.
THE RACE IS ON: The U.S. is ahead, but China is running right behind in one race, but Canada leads in the other race, followed by Israel, South Korea and the United States in fourth place. The first race is the measurement of Internet penetration, arrived at by counting the number of unique visitors aged 15-plus. In this area, according to comScore World Metrix, the U.S. has an astounding 153 Million unique visitors. Think about that. Considering there are ‘only’ 300 Million people in the U.S., that means more than half have visited the Internet. China, which, at 1.3 Billion, has more than four times the population of the U.S., came in second by this measure with nearly 87 Million unique visitors. But there is little doubt the Chinese Internet population will surpass the American Internet population shortly with an annual growth of 20% a year compared to the U.S.’s 2%. The other population behemoth, India, which has a total population of just over One Billion, presently ranks eighth with 21 Million Internet users. India’s total population is growing much faster than China, and its Internet population is growing 33% a year. The next fastest growing Internet population is the Russian federation with just under 13 Million Internet users but with a growth rate of 21% a year. The other race is in average Monthly Hours spent online. Canadians are online 39.6 hours a month compared to Israel’s 37.4 hours, South Korea’s 34 hours and the United States’ 31.6 hours. The world Internet population, measuring those aged 15-plus, in January of this year was 747 Million, up 10% from a year ago.
ANOTHER RACE IS ON: This time between the Internet and other media. According to forecaster ZenithOptimedia, the Internet will overtake radio in terms of ad dollars worldwide by next year. Right now, according to their figures, the Internet is right behind with $31.3 Billion compared to radio’s $36.3 Billion. TV is the big kid on the advertising block with $167.8 Billion in ad spending compared to newspapers’ $126.2 Billion and magazines $56.4 Billion. The agency says the good news for TV is that demand has picked up and instead of its first-ever sustained period of market share loss, TV expenditure globally is forecast to go up. The even better news for the Internet, according to the report summarized in Advertising Age, is that the Internet will account for nearly 9% of global ad spending by 2009 and should reach double digits in the next decade.
THE WORD IS EXCELLENCE: No doubt you’ve heard about the Peabody Award winners, but I just wanted to send my compliments on to the local TV stations cited: WTNH in New Haven, KMOV in St. Louis and the unusual citation for two stations in the same market – WTHR and WISH in Indianapolis. I am proud to have been associated with two of the stations – KMOV where I worked and where I still have friends and WTHR, a former consulting client. The Peabody is awarded under the auspices of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication which I am also proud to be associated with. And for what it’s worth, I would encourage other local TV stations to submit. The criteria is both simple and profound, and can be summed up in one word – Excellence.
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.
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