Blog readership doubles
Friday, September 30th, 2005Steve Outing at Poynter rightly notes that new Forrester research showing accelerating growth in blog readership is likely due to mainstream media players getting into the blogging world.
As the “old guard” of journalism joins the blogging revolution, it’s no wonder that blogging’s numbers are rising. As for RSS, with non-geeky RSS reading solutions made available by the likes of My Yahoo!, more and more people are utilizing the technology without realizing it.
To those in media companies who aren’t involved in this space yet, I can only say that it’s rapidly becoming too late for you.
TV viewing is up. So what?
Friday, September 30th, 2005With sincere apologies to Jack Wakshlag, television viewing is up, according to a report from Nielsen. An average household now watches eight hours and 11 minutes a day.
But the issue that matters isn’t how much we’re watching but what we’re watching. Exploding options have so fragmented the audience, that the mass market that TV used to deliver is disintegrating. These same households now average over 100 channels of programming, according to the report.
Nielsen said the average individual watched four hours and 32 minutes of TV last season, the highest level in 15 years.
The question, however, is so what? Why does that really matter? It doesn’t, because the industry isn’t sold based on overall viewing anyway. It used to be that a salesperson could walk into a retailer’s shop and say, “Look here: everybody’s watching more TV,” and it would mean something, because the salesperson’s station represented a sizeable slice of the overall pie. It doesn’t anymore, and more and more advertisers are waking up to this reality.
TV is still the best advertising bang for the buck, imo, and it will probably be the one form of mass media that actually survives long term. It will be a shadow of its former self, however, and those who prosper will do so in a multimedia environment.
New Google AdSense/AdWords option
Thursday, September 29th, 2005Dave Taylor posts an explanation of Google’s new “Advertise on this site” AdSense/AdWords option. I agree with Dave that this has the potential to be huge, because it allows advertisers to select specific sites for their ads and makes it easy for newcomers to get into the AdWord world. Very smart on Google’s part, methinks.
The view from the top
Thursday, September 29th, 2005There is a growing acceptance of bloggers and blogging among mainstream media executives, although there are still lingering questions about the role of blogging as media and as to how it “fits” with culture. This picture emerged from Wednesday’s gathering in New York of media executives, media observers and bloggers at the Museum of Television and Radio.
Several times during the meeting, I noted to myself the extraordinary nature of some of the comments from TV and print execs that would not have been heard even a year ago. Andrew Heyward, president of CBS News, noted three areas where his thinking has been changed. From my notes:
- A breakdown of our formulas. We’re being influenced by bloggers and this idea of conversation
- The illusion of omniscience is out of date, this idea that everything has an answer and that there’s one truth.
- The notion that journalism with a point-of-view is an acceptable form.
I thought that was remarkable.
Jay Rosen said something terribly important that (imo) went over the heads of most people in the room. He said the nature of authority is changing in our culture, and that this directly impacts all media. He used the example of a person who goes to the doctor and gets a prescription for an ailment. The doctor explains how the medication will work. The patient then proceeds to the drugstore and receives the medicine, along with (perhaps) an explanation from the pharmacist about how the medicine will work. But then the patient goes home and gets on the internet to research the thoughts of others who’ve used the medicine to discover what THEY think about how it works, and this impacts the doctor’s authority. The doctor is still the doctor, but gone is the automatic acceptance of his or her words as gospel. This is new in our world, and I couldn’t agree more. It’s the major challenge of all institutional authority, and it’s one of the truly fascinating things about a culture drifting into postmodernism.
Another thing that was obvious at this meeting was the growing enmity between big mainstream media and companies like Yahoo! Bloggers, it would seem, don’t pose nearly the threat that hip, technology-savvy, and cash flush disrupters in the media space bring to the table.
On a personal note, it was great fun to finally meet David Weinberger, Jay Rosen and Tim Porter. It was also great to see Jeff Jarvis and Dan Gillmor again. These are among the most tuned-in people on the planet, and I was honored to be on the same panel with them (thanks, Jeff).
The only thing disquieting about the group was its whiteness. Of the couple dozen people on the panel, all were white and three were women.
Finally, a couple of notes about New York. Status on the streets of the city is determined by the number and size of colorful little bags that one carries. Some of these bags, I swear, are more costly than the goods they conceal. New York IS about shopping.
And then there are the urinals in Terminal Four at Kennedy. Made by American Standard, each has the black image of a fly imbedded in the porcelain. The damned things look very real and serve as a perfect “target,” which, I assume, is the point.
Professional/amateur isn’t mass/personal
Monday, September 26th, 2005Can we please bury the term “consumer-generated content” and never let it see the light of day again? It’s being used with increasing frequency, I believe, and it’s foolishly blending two separate events taking place in our culture.
It re-frames the personal media revolution (PMR) into a mass marketing sub-category, and it’s confusing an awful lot of people. Re-framing is a clever marketing tool that’s been around for a long time, but this time all it’s doing is fooling the re-framers. So let’s take a step back this morning, take a deep breath, and THINK about this.
I’m on a panel in New York on Wednesday called “The Intersection of Blogging and the Mainstream Media.” An intersection assumes a crossing of one form or another, but I view mainstream media and the PMR as running along parallel lines. Their relationship is symbiotic, so they do touch each other, but they never really intersect. This is why I don’t think one will ever fully supplant the other.
Whenever mass media speaks of so-called “consumer-generated content,” it does so with an assumption of co-opting such media for its own purposes. In this sense, everybody works to serve the interest of mass media, and in the case of everyday people, that usually means for free. This is why every news organization solicits pictures and accounts from people during major news events. It extends their content reach and it’s cost-effective. Mass media lives in a world of content and consumers of content, so it’s understandable that somebody would stand up in a meeting (with a parenthetical light bulb above his or her head) and say, “I’ve got it! When the audience makes ‘content,’ we’ll call it ‘consumer-generated.’”
This may make them feel good, but it misses the point of the PMR, because the difference here is one of amateur versus professional, and that’s profoundly different than mass versus personal. This is the problem with re-framing the personal media revolution into the meme of consumer-generated content. They’re two different animals. Professional versus amateur. Mass versus personal.
Media 2.0 is personal. That’s what makes it 2.0. Media 1.0 is mass, and it doesn’t play well with the personal. One is top-down; the other is bottom-up. It has nothing to do with amateur versus professional. Are J.D. Lasica, Dan Gillmor, Glenn Reynolds, Jeff Jarvis, Jay Rosen, Tim Porter and a host of others “amateurs,” because they blog independent of the mainstream? Am I? Is the Nashville blogosphere — as demonstrated via Nashville Is Talking — a bunch of amateur wannabes? I don’t think so.
None of these exist to provide “content” for mass media.
And the personal media revolution goes far beyond bloggers and blogging. MyYahoo, MyMSN, Microsoft’s prototype Start.com, Google News and any of the multitude of RSS aggregation systems all allow the individual user to customize their own media bundling. This is the essence of the personal versus the mass, and it’s why it’s so foolish to re-frame it with such a fraudulent and condescending term as “consumer-generated content.”
David Weinberger on Jeff Jarvis
Friday, September 23rd, 2005Two of my favorite people spent some time together today. Here’s the way David described it:
…and then had a three-hour conversation with Jeff Jarvis (which at Jarvis speeds equates to 4.5 hours with anyone else) in which we settled all issues, solved all problems, bought a house, raised a family, and then split up because we couldn’t agree on how to respond to terrorism.
Palm Beach WiFi
Friday, September 23rd, 2005I’m sitting here at the Sam Snead tavern (sipping a coke) in the lovely West Palm Beach airport using their FREE WiFi to say hello. The more I travel, the more I appreciate places like this. Many airports now charge for WiFi, and while I don’t mind, it is nice to find an airport that recognizes the needs of their customers.
The trip has been a good one. I’ve met some more broadcasters and heard more stories about what’s going on “out there.” I’ve also seen a couple of interesting presentations, including one from a consultant who predicts that email marketing will thrive in the future. We’ll solve the spam thing, he believes, and permission marketing will become a lasting staple of Web commerce. The reason he thinks it’ll survive? Because it has to. Too much is at stake for it not to survive.
This is an interesting assumption to explore through the old game of “why/because.” You make a statement and then ask the question “Why?” This is followed by an answer that begins with “because” and ends with another question “Why?” The point is to reach conclusions or, more commonly, to find holes in your beliefs that become evident by chasing your tail. It’s a healthy exercise for those unafraid to challenge their own assumptions.
So what’s at stake if email marketing doesn’t survive? The collapse of all mass marketing. Think about it. Let’s assume we continue to move in a user-controlled direction. At some point, it logically follows that there won’t be any way for a single entity — government or otherwise — to get a message through to everybody at the same time. The one-to-many model is at stake.
Does it “have” to survive? Why? Because.
(Remember, “all or nothing” is an illusion.)
RSS ad shows up in Google News
Friday, September 23rd, 2005
Here’s a screen grab from Google News this morning (red underlining is mine). I’m on the road and interested in how the U.S. is doing in the President’s Cup competition, so I ended up with this.
The auto dealer ought to be paying extra for the exposure, although I doubt anybody outside Indianapolis would care. This is one of the reasons I prefer whole item ads in RSS, rather than placing small text ads within the copy. Why muck up a good thing?
For example, the image below is from my RSS reader, and it shows an ad “post” within the RSS feed of PaidContent. It’s unintrusive and gives ME the choice as to whether I want to read it or not.
East bound and down
Wednesday, September 21st, 2005I’m headed for Palm Beach this morning and a meeting with broadcasters, so blogging will be sporadic the rest of the week. I didn’t want to leave, however, without pointing to this wonderful essay by Henry Copeland, founder of Blogads. Long a cheerleader for blogging, Henry really nails it by deconstructing the phrase “Consumer Generated Media” and calling for a new name.
But the label of CGM misses the vitality that people experience as they engage with each other publicly and in real time. Calling blogs consumer-generated media is like calling sex the “clothless generation of heat, musk and mucus.” The essential excitement and motivation just doesn’t come through, does it?
Volatility on parade
Tuesday, September 20th, 2005Broadcasting & Cable magazine is reporting that Rupert Murdoch is selling eight of his local stations and will keep only those in top-25 markets. It would reduce the number of company owned-and-operated stations to 27 from 35. Stations that could be sold include those serving Kansas City, Milwaukee, Salt Lake City, Memphis, Austin, and Birmingham, Ala., among others.
FTVLive (Subscription required) is reporting that Tribune may be shutting down news operations at WB stations in Philadelphia and San Diego and laying off an unknown number of people.
According to numerous reports, the New York Times company is laying off 500 people, including 45 newsroom jobs in New York and 35 newsroom jobs in Boston.
And Staci Kramer reports at PaidContent that “Knight Ridder hopes to use buyouts to cut the staffing in Philadelphia by 15 percent — 75 jobs — at the Inquirer and nearly 20 percent — 25 jobs — at the incredibly shrinking Daily News.”
I’m telling you, folks, this is but a tip of the iceberg. It’s a new media world now, and you’re going to need a new skill set in order to survive.
The train’s a-comin’
Tuesday, September 20th, 2005“Newspaper publishers are clueless as to what they might do to stop the bleeding and Hollywood is more concerned about digital rights management than they are about their own future,” writes John Dvorak. He concludes, “Hey, guys. There is a huge locomotive headed your way. Take a look!”
Good read.
Big dollars and big changes
Monday, September 19th, 2005Tidbits from today’s reading
From an article in BackChannelMedia’s newsletter:
British researcher Spectrum Strategy is forecasting that conventional real-time viewing could drop to just 50 per cent of the time spent watching television in Great Britain by 2012. The rest will be time-shifted.Alan Rutherford, the vice-president of global media at Unilever, one of the world’s largest advertisers, says the value of television advertising is dropping in the face of audience fragmentation and the proliferation of new channels.
He told the conference that advertisers have to spend 10 per cent more in the US to achieve the same “weight” of impact available five years ago. “Advertisers cannot continue to fund that [traditional] type of television,” he said, pointing to new platforms available to advertisers and their ability to create their own content. “The advertiser-dependent model can not survive. Those broadcasters who cannot resolve this will die.”
Media are wasting little time seizing on the new impetus. During this year’s upfront advertising negotiations, at least two TV networks tied their 2005-06 advertising deals to at least some form of engagement measurement: Court TV and The Weather Channel, though precise details of those deals have not been disclosed.Convinced that their mediums are equally, if not more engaging than TV, both the magazine and newspaper industries have been investing significant research dollars to demonstrate that.
A little more than half of the top 25 advertisers spent less in the second quarter versus last year. SBC Communications was down 45.7 percent; Time Warner was off 28.0 percent; and Toyota Motor Corp. dropped 27.2 percent. Subway was one of the biggest gainers–up 81.1 percent. Other big positive movers: Procter & Gamble, up 53.1 percent; and Hyundai Corp., 22.6 percent higher.Overall, 18 of the top 25 advertising categories spent less in broadcast in the quarter than a year ago. Governmental agencies were off 37.6 percent, beer and wine was down 25.4 percent, and telecommunications was 24.0 percent lower. Big gainers included: toiletries & cosmetics (up 17.9 percent), and insurance and real estate (14.8 percent more).
August marked the fifth consecutive month of increases in the number of impressions served. Advertisers served 102.9 billion impressions in July–compared to 97.1 billion in June, 93.1 billion in May, and 91.4 billion in April.
And while huge dollars are shifting here and there, it’s the little developments that catch my attention. Like this one (via Dave Winer). The menu at Allegany College is now available via RSS.
While the big boys knock each other over dollars going here and there, the personal media revolution chugs along, visible to those with eyes to see but (seemingly) invisible to everybody else.
Stock analyst sees what’s coming
Sunday, September 18th, 2005One way or the other, revenue will move online and if the traditional media companies do not move aggressively to capture this revenue it will be lost to more nimble competitors.
On whether big media has lost the opportunity, she writes that traditional media is in a better position than perceived. “First, they have multiple touch points with consumers. This provides ample opportunity for cross-platform promotion, a more difficult proposition for Yahoo! and Google. Multiple touch points also allow traditional media companies to tailor cross-platform content experiences to a new generation of consumers who are used to multi-tasking, watching television and surfing the web for instance.”
RSS as advertising
Saturday, September 17th, 2005Folks, this is much bigger than you may think. Titleist, the people who make the golf balls I use, has gotten into the business of RSS marketing. Now, I’m a consumer of their products, so I’m interested in certain information from them. Thanks to RSS, I don’t need any form of media to give it to me.
Dave Winer hits the nail on the head (what else is new?):
An example of RSS-as-advertising; much more powerful than advertising-in-RSS. Why pay someone else to hitch a ride in a conversation, when you can host it yourself? Much more cost-effective, and appreciated by customers. People don’t like intrusive marketing as much as they like finding commercial information they’re looking for.
Show Cory the money
Friday, September 16th, 2005Cory Bergman of Lost Remote writes: “Lost Remote receives about two or three proposals a month to promote a TV show, but the money is so low they don’t justify the time to traffic the ad. Yet.”
I admire Cory’s willingness to say no. It’s that attitude that will change the ad world, because there IS no better place for producers/networks to promote new shows than Lost Remote. I’m glad Cory knows it.
The Matter of “Getting It”
Friday, September 16th, 2005Here is the latest in my series of essays, TV News in a Postmodern World.
This one deals with what people mean when they say that mainstream media doesn’t “get it” when it comes to new media. The piece summarizes where my head has been of late, so I thought you might enjoy an exploration of the topic.
I’ve been terribly busy lately, mostly in the development of new concepts. I tend to disappear when I’m inspired creatively, and that explains my absence from writing these essays. I apologize for that, and all I can say is stay tuned.
Of news users and RSS feeds
Wednesday, September 14th, 2005I’m in San Francisco this week with a client and catching up with Bay Area friends, so I don’t have a lot of time to blog. However, there are two articles in today’s Online Media Daily that I want to pass along for my news colleagues.
Burst! Media (who is partnering with WKRN-TV in Nashville to create an ad network for local bloggers) released a study that shows the most sought-after content by Web users these days is news. 62% of the 64-hundred respondents reported that they are most interested in news when they go online. The next most popular category was entertainment. Onling gaming was tops for the younger demos.
This is significant in my mind, because local media companies that aren’t exploiting this TO ITS FULLEST POTENTIAL are already too late to make a significant dent in the habits being formed today.
The second item is even more significant. E-mail marketing giant Return Path has formed a partnership with FeedBurner to provide ads in RSS feeds.
Matt Blumberg, Return Path’s chief executive and founder, said the time had come for publishers to start monetizing RSS. “As long as publishers have the right tools, RSS offers a great ad-supported model for the future of online publishing,” Blumberg said.In the last year, FeedBurner has gone from 10,000 feeds going out to 50,000 consumers to 100,000 feeds being sent to 5 million, according to Brent Hill, vice president of business development at FeedBurner. In other words, the firm’s RSS subscriber reach has been growing by 40 percent per month for the past six months.
“As the user base for RSS expands, advertising to that base will become an important part of any integrated marketing plan,” Hill said. “With this new delivery channel, publishers can opt to monetize their feeds, allowing advertisers to reach a consistent and growing audience with a fully ‘permissioned’ relationship.”
We’re going to be experimenting with forms of RSS advertising here in Nashville, and I think you’ll all be surprised at the outcome. Stay tuned.
Imagine this? Me with all the biggies!
Sunday, September 11th, 2005This is turning out to be a pretty big travel month for me. I’m headed to San Francisco this week for client stuff and renew some acquaintences. Next week, it’s Palm Beach, Florida, where my dog-n-pony show will be presented to another broadcast group. But the big event of the month is on the 28th.
I’m going to be a part of a panel at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York. We’re talking about The Intersection of Blogging and Mainstream News and the group is pretty impressive.
Moderator:
Merrill Brown, Principal, MBB Associates
Co-Conveners:
Andrew Heyward, President, CBS News
Jeff Jarvis, Blogger/Media Consultant
Jon Klein, President, CNN/US
Paul Steiger, Managing Editor, The Wall Street Journal
Participants:
Steve Baker, Author, Blogspotting (BusinessWeek blog on business and media) / BusinessWeek Online
Phil Bronstein, Editor and EVP, San Francisco Chronicle
Debbie Galant, New Jersey columnist, The New York Times / Blogger, Barista.com
Bill Gannon, Editorial Director & Managing Editor, Yahoo! News
Dan Gillmor, Blogger, Grassroots Media, Inc. /Author, We the Media: Grassroot Journalism by the People, for the People
Bill Grueskin, Managing Editor, Wall Street Journal Online
Terry Heaton, President, DONATA Communications
Rick Kaplan, President MSNBC
Martin Nisenholtz, CEO, New York Times Digital
Tim Porter, Blogger, First Draft Productions
Jay Rosen, Assoc. Professor of Journalism, New York University
Steve Shepard, Dean , Graduate School of Journalism City University of New York
Vaughn Ververs, Editor, Public Eye, CBSNews.com
David Weinberger, Research Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and Author, The Cluetrain Manifesto
Kinsey Wilson, VP & Editor-in-Chief, USATODAY.com
Tom Wolzien, Founder, Wolzien LLC
I feel I know most of the people on the panel, but it’s going to be interesting to meet them in person — especially David Weinberger, Jay Rosen and Tim Porter.
I’ll keep you posted on my busy travels.
Measuring the Emperor’s new clothes
Friday, September 9th, 2005Researchers at Nielsen//NetRatings have come up with new methodology that they say provides a much more accurate view of the unique visitors to Websites, and it’s bound to be controversial. That’s because Nielsen is now saying that site measuring tools — including their own — overestimate the number of unique visitors and underestimate the number of times users return to a site. In other words, the reach of Websites isn’t what its claimed to be, and the same people keep coming back to the same sites.
According to MediaDailyNews, NetRatings has been able to develop a system for factoring the number of times users delete cookies and therefore are identified as multiple users by publishers, portals and search engines as so-called “unique users.” Since advertising rates are based on reach and frequency, this is potentially a big blow to companies who are trying to get big bucks from advertisers for online ads.
While this is certainly fascinating, it’s also more evidence that the ad industry continues to try and treat the Internet as a mass marketing medium. I don’t doubt that statistics are inflated, but that’s not the point. The more people obsess with trying to shove this square peg into the Web’s round hole, the less time they spend on development of new models — some of which are beginning to come into focus.
In addition, the industry may also discover that the laws of reach and frequency aren’t as logical as they seem anyway. After all, isn’t this what people have been running from, thanks to disruptive technologies? Why do 70% of TiVo users skip the commercials?
Finally, let’s remember that this is Nielsen. I realize it’s a different division, but it’s still a company with a deeply vested interest in maintenance of the status quo. The MDN article notes that the company is trying hard to develop television set-top boxes that will produce better numbers for television (in the face of new competition), and perhaps we’ll one day find out for sure what many already suspect — that the reliable measuring methodologies of television viewing are a form of blue smoke and mirrors as well.
People who delete cookies may be screwing up online measurements, but trying to account for them introduces a variable that benefits only Nielsen and its (paying) clients. People are tired of being manipulated, and that’s a big part of the whole personal media revolution. The real ad money down-the-road will go to the people who fit themselves into the empowerment of the bottom and away from those trying to direct it from the top.
Bloggers — learn computer assisted reporting
Wednesday, September 7th, 2005Mark Tapscott of the Heritage Foundation writes that there are still openings for the second Computer Assisted Reporting (CAR) classes to be held later this month in Washington:
A number of people have signed up but we still have open seats available for MBA’s second Database 101/201 Computer-Assisted Research and Reporting (CARR) Boot Camp at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., as well as some fellowships to help cover travel and lodging expenses. The first MBA CARR Boot Camp at BlogNashville drew rave reviews from all 14 of the folks who attended. the CARR boot camp gives you the skills to find and use publicly available data to get beyond the hype and PR cant to get to the truth about virtually any major public policy issue being debated in the Blogosphere and the MSM. It’s fun, it’s cheap and it’s a great professional investment in yourself.