Archive for the ‘Online’ Category

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iPad users dropping print newspapers

Friday, December 10th, 2010

A survey out of the University of Missouri’s Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute backs the previously stated notion that the iPad is the future of newspapers.

The survey, which AdWeek calls “one of the first deep dives into how people are consuming news content on the eight-month-old device,” said that most heavy users of the tablet have or will drop their print subscriptions.

“These findings are encouraging for newspaper publishers who plan to begin charging for subscriptions on their iPad app editions early next year, but our survey also found a potential downside: iPad news apps may diminish newspaper print subscriptions in 2011,” said Roger Fidler, RJI’s program director for digital publishing.

The survey contacted more than 1,600 iPad users online from September to November. It found that “58 percent of respondents who use the Apple tablet at least an hour a day for news are very likely to cancel their subscription in the next six months. One in 10 said they had already done so.”

Another survey, by GfK MRI, found about 4 percent of adults read newspapers or magazines via apps or mobile devices.

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Facebook as tabloid

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010

Just for fun: Log in with your Facebook user name and password at PostPost to see everything your friends have shared as if it was a newspaper website.

Users can also comment on shared items and reshare them directly via the PostPost platform, which is by TigerLogic.

WebNewser points out that readers of the New York Post will certainly recognize the font used in the PostPost logo.









				


				
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Retailers like Facebook for marketing

				Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

				

					
Facebook is where it’s at for retailers with a promotional message to get out, and such “owned media” is poised to edge out paid advertising.


Out of 100 U.S. retailers surveyed by  Media Logic between July and September, 15 had  more than 1 million “likers” and even more top 1 million today, including JC Penny, Target and Kohl’s, which has 3 million, according to a summary of the report. In 2009, only Victoria’s Secret and its PINK division could claim more than 1 million Facebook fans.


“It is not hyperbole to say that Facebook may  be to this century what TV was to the last,” Ronald Ladouceur, EVP  and executive creative director of Media Logic, said. “In 2010, owned media  came of age, and is now set to rival paid media for primacy.” 











				


				
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Charlotte’s online newspaper for the masses

				Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

				

					
In a detailed Charlotte Magazine piece about the Internet-age transformation of the Charlotte Observer, Publisher Ann Caulkins predicts 20 percent of the company’s total ad revenue will come from the Internet by year’s end and in five years nearly half will be from the Web.


But while its 22 Facebook pages, 31 Twitter feeds and 40+ blogs bring the Observer more readers than ever, so far the online transformation isn’t paying the bills.


“At the top of the front page, the Observer brags  it is ‘Read by 1 million+ in print and online.’ The total monthly number  of different readers from everywhere is a whopping 2.3 million, which  would have been a staggering number of readers for any newspaper in the  pre-Internet days. Therein lies the problem. As sportswriter [Ron Green Jr.] puts  it, ‘If you look at our business model, we’re trying to sell something (the news) that’s now free.’ Basically, if you read the Observer website in the evening, you won’t learn much new by purchasing next morning’s print edition. The other problem with the Observer’s business model is that it really relies on advertising revenue, and so far, an online ad brings in a fraction of the revenue a print ad does.”


Meanwhile, the money-making “print edition has lost one out of five readers in the past six years, and Sunday readership is down 8 percent in the same time frame,” the magazine says.


In the future, Caulkins predicts, the print edition will be a niche publication “mainly for the affluent and well educated, a readership highly coveted by advertisers.” The Web will be for the masses.

				


				
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Daily Beast chair says printed version next step

				Thursday, October 28th, 2010

				

					
Barry Diller, chairman of the company that owns the Daily Beast, the Huffington Post challenger run by Tina Brown, plugged print as a viable advertising medium in a conference about third-quarter earnings Wednesday.


“One  way or another, we’ll either find something or we’ll create  somehow,  as Politico did, a print product to go with the Beast,” Diller said, according to Business Insider.  “For advertisers, that makes sense.”


Diller said the two-year-old Daily Beast, which posted a 44 percent revenue increase, will be profitable soon.


Asked about failed talks of a merger between The Daily Beast and Newsweek, Diller said Brown’s background in magazines makes print a logical step. “The idea that that  sensibility (of the Daily Beast) would then come to a print product as a companion piece made industrial sense,” he said.

				


				
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Google sees jump in paid search, display

				Friday, October 15th, 2010

				

					
Google is apparently cleaning up on paid search and display advertising, with profit up 32 percent in the third quarter for a staggering $2.17 billion. That’s profit, not revenue, according to Online Media Daily.


They are making money on what should be $2.5 billion worth of display ads and $1 billion in mobile on an annual basis – including about 90,000 Android apps - and by  monetizing more than 2 billion YouTube views per week.


Online Media Daily says “search ads remain the company’s primary revenue driver, from desktop to mobile,” topping display ads, though apparently specific figures for search were not released. 


Advertisers are paying more for paid-search advertising, and clicks on ads posted to Google’s site and the sites of AdSense partners are up 16 percent year-over-year and 2 percent from the second quarter (see our AdSense ads below each post here  and on our Carolina Outdoors Guide and its This Land, Your Land blog, and our Carolina Music Festivals site).


The AdSense program pays its partner sites a small portion of advertisers’ fees when readers click on an ad that appears on the partner’s site - pennies per click, usually. But that money, called Traffic Acquisition Costs,  adds up, and payments increased to $1.81 billion in the  third quarter of 2010, compared with $1.56 billion in the third  quarter of 2009.


Online Media Daily also reports that “Google has agreed to pay $3.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit  alleging that it used a misleading registration form that tricked  marketers into paying for ads that ran on its publisher network.


“The proposed settlement affects marketers that advertised on Google  between October of 2007 and July of 2009 and didn’t realize that they  would be opted-in to Google’s AdSense network by default.”


$3.5 million out of a quarterly profit of $2.7 billion. Yeah, that’ll hurt.

				


				
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iPad the future for newspapers, everyone else

				Thursday, October 14th, 2010

				

					
Two media heavyweights commenting overseas landed on the iPad as the future of newspapers. And folks are buying it.


Lionel Barber, editor of Financial Times, at a meeting organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry in Mumbai on Tuesday said flexibility and adaptability are key to newspapers’ survival. 


“Today, newspapers cannot stay confined to the  print medium, Barber said, according to Sify News. “Journalists will have to be willing to create more value,  and newspaper managements will have to be flexible in terms of the  content platform. After the Web, it was the iPad [that] FT tapped into. And in  the last three and a half months, we have had half a million downloads  of the application.” 


Meanwhile, Keith Weed, Unilever’s chief marketing and communications officer, told Media Week at the Media Guardian Changing Advertising Summit on Tuesday,  “iPads will save newspapers, they really will.”


Marketing magazine says Weed added: “The sort of guys I hang out with, the iPad idiots, we’re  all on them… I used to have a pile of newspapers in the morning but now  I flick through my iPad.”


“In addition to the newspaper apps for sites such as the Financial  Times, globetrotter Weed cited the restaurant guide and booking service  Zagat to Go, and the airline apps, as among his favorites and most  used.”


And, indeed, sales of the iPad have pushed Apple’s stock to record highs, according to the Associated Press.


“Apple’s iPad is setting the standards for this generation of tablet computers as competitors scramble to match the design and functions,” the AP says. “So far, no credible challengers have hit the market.


“In the first quarter it was available, Apple sold 3.3 million iPads.  That’s about three times the number of iPhones sold in the first full  quarter the smart phones were on sale in 2007. … Analysts’ estimates for iPad unit sales in 2011 are in flux, with those on the conservative  end putting the number around 20 million while more bullish forecasters  say it could be 50 million.”

				


				
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Newspapers, e-readers a natural fit

				Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

				

					
It’s not surprising that the same adults affluent enough to buy an e-reader, such as a Kindle or Nook, also still read newspapers.


“Scarborough Research  found that fully 78 percent of adults in so-called ‘e-reader households,’  which number about 4 million, read a newspaper in print or online  within the past week,” Editor & Publisher says. “That compares with 71 percent of all adults. E-reader households are 11 percent more likely to read a newspaper regularly than an  average adult.”


Adults in  e-reader households are also 9 percent percent more likely than all adults  nationally to have read a printed newspaper during the past week, and 48 percent more likely than all consumers nationally to have visited a newspaper website within the past month.


“E-reader  devices are becoming an important technology for millions of Americans,  and our data confirms their emergence as a natural companion to  newspapers,” said Gary Meo, senior vice president of digital media and  newspaper services for Scarborough Research. “At this point, many  newspaper publishers are determining strategies for making their content  available on e-reader devices, and this is creating a new opportunity  to monetize content and increase readership.”

				


				
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Charlotte Observer tries 3D in paper, online

				Saturday, October 9th, 2010

				

					
The Charlotte Observer goes 3D Sunday with its special section for the beginning of race week at Charlotte Motor Speedway and will follow up with a 3D photo in the paper every day next week, editor Rick Thames explained Thursday.


The Sunday paper will come with 3D glasses for viewing racing photos in the paper and online at CharlotteObserver.com and That’sRacin.com.


“Our  sports and photo staffs sifted through hundreds of great racing moments  from our archives for this 20-page section, Thames said. “It includes legendary  drivers, faithful fans, grinding competition on the track and furious  action in the pits.”


The Observer’s director of  photography, Bert Fox, said editors looked for depth, action and  simplicity. “As 3D images, foreground objects come at you and background objects  fall off,” Fox said. “In the photos, race cars stretch far into the  background, a pit crew looks like they’ll jump into your lap, drivers  jump in the arms of race fans and helicopters fly off the page.”


And, since readers will have the glasses, Thames said, they figured they should give them more to look at from Charlotte and the region throughout the week.







				


				
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Advertisers set up opt-out on behavioral ads

				Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

				

					
Some 5,000 advertisers led by the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the American Advertising Federation have agreed to offer an opt-out device to thwart behavioral marketing, or the practice of sending ad messages based on the user’s online searches.




Behavioral advertising opt-out icon
Behavioral advertising opt-out icon


“The program promotes the use of the Advertising Option Icon (right) and  accompanying language, to be displayed within or near online  advertisements or on Web pages where data is collected and used for  behavioral advertising,” the group’s statement says. “The Advertising Option Icon indicates a  company’s use of online behavioral advertising and adherence to the principles guiding the program. By clicking on it, consumers will be  able to link to a clear disclosure statement regarding the company’s  online behavioral advertising data collection and use practices as well  as an easy-to-use opt-out option.”


“The industry initiative is based on guidelines recommended last year by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission,” Bloomberg says. “The FTC’s proposals stemmed from the agency’s continuing inquiry into how companies tailor their advertising to individuals and whether practices based on consumer Web browsing intrude on privacy.”


Behavioral targeting is the cornerstone of such online marketing as Yahoo’s Newspaper Consortium, which includes such publishers as McClatchy, Cox, Belo, Scripps and Media News Group.


Addendum: Our original post about the FTC’s regulation of behavioral targeting slipped our mind this morning.

				


				
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