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Archive for the ‘Online’ Category
Print continues to bleed newspapers
Friday, June 3rd, 2011Newspaper ad revenue continues its slide in first quarter numbers released this week showing a drop of 9.48 percent in print revenue that struggles up to an overall fall of 7 percent when it’s levened by gains in online.
Revenues from online sales increased 10.6 percent to $807.9 million, according to Newspaper Association of America numbers, but even that was down from a 14 percent gain in the final quarter of 2010.
This quarter’s $4.7 billion in print revenue is off 55 percent from the first quarter of 2006, making it the 20th straight quarter of year-over-year print revenue declines.
Alan D. Mutter of Reflections of a Newsosaur called the news “an unexpectedly sharp decline” and said “newspapers now appear to be entering the sixth year of an unprecedented collapse.”
Eric Sass at Media Daily News said then numbers “suggest that newspaper print ad revenues are locked into a permanent, long-term decline.”
Revenue from online advertising represented a 14.5 percent share of total newspaper ad dollars in the first quarter of the year, an all-time high.
On the print side, national ads dropped 11 percent, retail declined 9.5 percent, and classifieds slid 8.15 percent.
Online advertising matures, tops old media
Thursday, April 14th, 2011Online advertising grew at a double-digit rate despite the economy last year and eclipsed newspaper advertising for the first time, the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP said this week.
Revenue from ads on the Web rose by 15 percent in 2010 to $26 billion, topping newspapers at $22.8 billion, cable TV networks at $22.5 billion, broadcast TV with $17.6 billion and radio with $15.3 billion in advertising revenue, according to the Dow Jones Newswire review of the report.
The Newspaper Association of America put total print newspaper advertising at $22.795 billion last year, an 8.2 percent drop compared with 2009. Online advertising at newspapers grew by 10.9 percent in 2010, to $3 billion, about 13 percent of total ad income.
“We now have had five consecutive quarters of growth since the great recession impacted interactive advertising in 2009,” Sherrill Mane, IAB’s senior vice president, industry services, said in the IAB’s news release introducing the online revenue report. “The record-breaking revenue in Q4 2010 and the total year indicate that interactive advertising has weathered the storm and then some.”
Search is still the largest online ad category with 46 percent of revenue, but display advertising on the Web grew by 24 percent “in a sign that major brands are growing more comfortable with the medium as a place to invest their marketing dollars.”
News sites: Will annoy for cash
Monday, April 11th, 2011Media Bistro’s 10,000 Words blog presents 5 Annoying News Site Ads and Why to Avoid Them, saying newspapers are hurting themselves with their online ads.
“It’s one thing to sell advertisements, and it’s another thing to annoy your visitors with them,” writes Meranda Watling. “Want to know the easiest way to get a reader to exit a webpage? Post an ad that detracts from your content and talks (or sings — true story), jumps in the way of the content, moves around so it can’t be closed, crashes browsers or floods users’ CPUs with an abundance of pop-overs and -unders complete with seizure-inducing animation and headache-inducing jingles.”
CBS vs. newspapers = WRAL vs. The N&O
Thursday, March 10th, 2011A story about CBS’s plan to go after local newspapers and “make [the] company’s single-market websites into the new local newspapers” points at Raleigh and how WRAL’s site tops The News & Observer’s.
“[T]he dynamic in the broader Raleigh, N.C., market is remarkable,” MediaPost’s TV Watch blog said today. “Capitol Broadcasting Co.’s site for CBS affiliate WRAL-TV has greater Web traffic than the local News & Observer, which emphasized the Web at a considerable level before many other papers.”
CBS CEO Leslie Moonves told investors on Monday, “We think we can replace the Yellow Pages, replace the newspaper. … [W]hen you get up in the morning, you should be able to turn on that local CBS website and get everything you would need — everything that would be provided by your newspaper.”
Newspapers got a head start on the Web because it’s easy to post text and photos. But video, which CBS outlets have plenty of, is the key going forward, the blog says. People are “less willing to read lengthy articles. They’re hungry for info chunks. …
“On Thursday, WRAL.com was streaming a murder trial live [the trial of Brad Cooper of Cary for killing his wife]. And a site visitor’s attention was immediately drawn to the one-click opportunity to get inside the courtroom. On the News & Observer site, there was a story about the case that took some scrolling to find. Pretty telling?”
Gannett to tag properties everywhere
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011How big is Gannett? We’ll apparently get a demonstration beginning next week when it launches its first corporate branding campaign and puts its new logo all over its 81 community newspapers, 23 TV stations and more than 100 digital properties, according to USA Today, the publisher’s flagship, which will also display the logo.
The new Gannett logo debuts Monday.
“The goal is to communicate that the company — long identified as the nation’s largest newspaper publisher and a major owner of TV stations — has evolved into a forward-looking digital power,” USA Today says.
All of the company’s properties are to begin more prominently identifying themselves as part of Gannett via the new logo. The publisher will also run ads with the new tagline, “It’s all within reach,” on national cable news channels and in digital, print and social media.
Among Gannett’s digital properties is Captivate, which programs TV-like screens in nearly 9,000 elevators and lobbies, the newspaper says.
IAB unveils new online ad formats
Monday, February 28th, 2011Six new online ad designs described as “fairly large” and including “many high-resolution and interactive elements” have been sanctioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and are soon to begin showing up everywhere, Advertising Age says.
The new ads, illustrated here, were chosen in a competition that drew 36 entries from 24 companies. The winning entries come from AOL, Unicast, Google, Pictela, Genex and Microsoft.
The IAB, which administers a universal agreement on the size, shape and function of online ads, says it put out a call in September for new ads that would “encourage engagement with viewers on their terms and allow people to participate confidently with brands.” The new formats support such interactive elements as movie trailers and videos, games, quizzes and shopping modules, Ad Age says.
The new ad units are:
The Portrait, a 300×1050 canvas format with state-of-the-art plug-and-play functionality, which was developed by AOL.
The Slider, an overlay unit on the bottom of a page that is like a touchscreen, prompting users to slide the entire page over to unveil “a full branded experience,” which was developed by Unicast & Mediamind.
The Billboard, by Google/YouTube,which runs the full width of the page and has full close-ability.
The Filmstrip, from Microsoft, a 300×3000 canvas viewable through a 300×600 window and fully controlled by the viewer.
The Pushdown, a pushdown unit by Pictela with broad functionality via a visual toolbar.
The Sidekick Expandable, a format that launches from a standard ad and pushes page content leftward, revealing a large, functional canvas. It was developed by Unicast.
The IAB will evaluate the six new ad formats to see which ones gain a wider acceptance with online publishers, and those that do will become a part of IAB’s official roster.
The IAB also said today that 11 of the 18 current IAB standard ad units will be retired because they are no longer commonly bought and offered throughout the market.
Miami Herald video grows as others cut back
Friday, February 11th, 2011Many U.S. newspapers are posting less online video as they lay people off, according to a study of 100 U.S. newspapers undertaken by the Associated Press. Not too long ago, video was touted as a way to boost traffic and revenue, Beet.TV says.
Kevin Roach, the AP’s director of U.S. broadcast news, conducted the study and would not give Beet.TV numbers, but said newspapers’ video operations are often the first to be cut when savings are ordered from above.
But the Miami Herald is one paper doing a lot with video, and Beet.TV links to a Poynter report that explains how the McClatchy newspaper is succeeding where others have given up.
“Last year, MiamiHerald.com saw about a 25 percent growth in video traffic, making it the second-biggest traffic driver behind articles,” the Poynter report says.
The Herald has learned that, as Roach suggest, breaking news works best and that videos they were posting of editorial board meetings and of news makers speaking out on specific topics don’t get a lot of viewers.
The Herald and its Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald have two full-time news videographers and two photographers who spend part of their time on video, and they’ve joined with local TV stations to share content and cross-promote material, Poynter says.
The Herald and El Nuevo Herald also collaborated with WPBT2, one of South Florida’s PBS affiliates, to produce an hour-long documentary about last year’s earthquake in Haiti.
The Miami paper’s video group produces about 40 percent of what’s on the site and the rest comes from outside vendors, such as CineSport and The AP.