Online News and Advertising
PEJ: Online advertising on news sites is still not targeted, neither by context nor behavior; http://eicker.at/NewsAdvertising
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Gerrit Eicker
Tablets and eReaders
Pew: Tablet and eBook reader ownership nearly double over the holiday gift-giving period; http://eicker.at/TabletseReaders
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Gerrit Eicker
Pew: “The share of adults in the United States who own tablet computers nearly doubled from 10% to 19% between mid-December and early January and the same surge in growth also applied to e-book readers, which also jumped from 10% to 19% over the same time period. – The number of Americans owning at least one of these digital reading devices jumped from 18% in December to 29% in January. … These findings are striking because they come after a period from mid-2011 into the autumn in which there was not much change in the ownership of tablets and e-book readers. However, as the holiday gift-giving season approached the marketplace for both devices dramatically shifted. In the tablet world, Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble’s Nook Tablet were introduced at considerably cheaper prices than other tablets. In the e-book reader world, some versions of the Kindle and Nook and other readers fell well below $100.”
Pew: “The surge in ownership of tablet computers was especially notable among those with higher levels of education and those living in households earning more than $75,000. More than a third of those living in households earning more than $75,000 (36%) now own a tablet computer. And almost a third of those with college educations or higher (31%) own the devices. Additionally, those under age 50 saw a particularly significant leap in tablet ownership. … The story with the growth in e-book readers was somewhat different from the story with tablet computers. Ownership of e-readers among women grew more than among men. Those with more education and higher incomes also lead the pack when it comes to e-book ownership, but the gap between them and others isn’t as dramatic.”
NYT: “The holiday season spawned a huge marketing and advertising push for the Nook Tablet, Barnes und Noble’s latest color device, and the Kindle Fire from Amazon. While many consumers bought the costlier Apple iPad at $500, tablets from Barnes und Noble and Amazon cost less than $250, a more tempting price for a Christmas gift. Some black-and-white e-readers cost less than $100. – ‘Publishers are putting a lot of effort into e-books; apps developers are cranking out more and more tools for tablets; libraries and tech companies are making e-books easier to borrow,’ Lee Rainie, director of the Internet and American Life Project, said in an e-mail. ‘So the ecosystem of these devices is making them more valuable.'”
VB: “Leading the pack is Amazon, which sells a slate of Kindle e-readers and tablets. The online retail giant claimed to have sold units in its Kindle lineup at a rate of one million e-readers per week during the holiday push. … However, money still plays some role in whether or not a given consumer decides to spring for a tablet. – While some demographic factors such as race and gender showed little or no statistically significant variations among tablet owners, education and correlating factors such as income showed strong proportional relationships to tablet and e-reader ownership.”
Gerrit Eicker
Google Acquires Zagat
Zagat got googled: Google acquires Zagat Survey, restaurant ratings and reviews since 1979; http://eicker.at/GoogleZagat
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Gerrit Eicker
Nina and Tim Zagat: “Zagat got googled – We are writing to share the most exciting news in our 32 years in business. Zagat Survey has been acquired by another great company, Google. – From the beginning, Zagat Survey has empowered people by providing a vehicle for them to express their opinions. After spending time with Google senior management discussing our mutual goals, we know they share our belief in user-generated content and our commitment to accuracy and fairness in providing users with the information needed to make smart decisions about where to eat, shop and travel. – It is a testament to the knowledgeable consumers who contribute their opinions that Zagat Survey has become an internationally respected symbol of quality. Their experiences, distilled into numerical ratings and concise, witty, quote-filled reviews, will continue to provide accurate guidance for a wide range of leisure activities.”
Google, Mayer: “I’m thrilled that Google has acquired Zagat. Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering – delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights, while enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary (and ordinary) experiences around the corner and around the world. – With Zagat, we gain a world-class team that has more experience in consumer based-surveys, recommendations and reviews than anyone else in the industry. …I’m incredibly excited to collaborate with Zagat to bring the power of Google search and Google Maps to their products and users, and to bring their innovation, trusted reputation and wealth of experience to our users.”
pC: “Google … is expanding its push into local content with its acquisition of Zagat, which started out as a New York City restaurant guide in 1979 and now publishes guides in 13 categories and over 100 cities. It’s good news for Zagat, which unsuccessfully put itself up for sale in January 2008, pulling itself off the market six months later when there were no buyers. … Zagat has tried to develop its mobile business. Its app, which costs $9.99 per year, was one of the founding iPad apps. The company announced a partnership with Foursquare for a ‘foodie’ badge in 2010 and also partnered with Foodspotting to use that company’s data and photos. … In the past, Google has resisted the characterization of itself as a content company, but this is a major push into local content for sure.”
SEL: “This is huge news for Google (capital ‘H’) and for local. Google is a content publisher now and the content that Zagat brings arguably closes the gap between Google Places and Yelp. We’ll have to see the implementation. … Beyond restaurants, Zagat also offers ratings and revenues of entertainment venues, wine and travel. The online version of the site has developed a community as well; so there’s a social networking dimension to this acquisition as well as content that Google is buying. … I spoke with Google’s Marissa Mayer and Tim Zagat. They told me that nothing would change in the near term; Google will continue to publish the guides and maintain the subscription product. I asked if Zagat reviews would be imported into Google Places and Google’s response was non-committal. Of course they will; that’s the point of this transaction: the content.”
RWW: “The Google local apps are still relatively barebones compared to dedicated competitors like Yelp and Foursquare. Even recent additions to Google’s dominant Maps tools haven’t made it to mobile yet. But this acquisition, along with Google’s purchase of The Dealmap last month, reveal Google’s hand in the local recommendations game, and it looks like a flush.”
VB: “The move is a major blow to user-generated reviews website Yelp, which competes with Google Places and Zagat. Google failed to acquire Yelp back in late 2009, with Yelp reportedly walking away from a $550 million deal. Google further distanced itself from Yelp when it removed Yelp’s reviews from Google Places in mid-2010.”
TNW: “I see this as a much more powerful play than just local offerings. This, combined with Google’s purchase of ITA and its hotel reviews puts the company firmly into the travel business, with more offerings than almost anyone else in the business.”
Lowe: “All of the restaurant reviews on Yelp could fill 16,894 Zagat guides, and only 26% of businesses reviewed on Yelp are restaurants. Congrats?“
Gerrit Eicker
Facebook Editions
Forbes: Facebook is getting into the news business with Facebook Editions, app versions of news outlets; http://eicker.at/FacebookEditions
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Gerrit Eicker
Forbes: “Facebook is thinking less and less about how to grow that number and more about how to get current users to live more of their lives within its virtual walls. One answer it has come up with: asking a select number of news outlets to produce ‘Facebook editions’ – basically, app versions of themselves that can be read and consumed right there on Facebook. – About a dozen news outlets are currently participating, including CNN, the Washington Post and The Daily, according to sources familiar with the project. The first Facebook editions are expected to arrive later this year, perhaps in September. … Now that Facebook is known to be at work on a parallel initiative, however, it could change the dynamic for publishers, who may find playing one against the other gives them leverage they lacked until now.”
VB: “For years, news organizations have been using Twitter more than Facebook to get their messages out and publicize breaking news. So it makes sense that Facebook would be interested in building customized news applications and improving relationships with major news outlets. Back in April, Facebook even expressed a desire to have better relationships with journalists.”
IF: “Facebook itself has recently been on a campaign to increase its presence in the media ecosystem, which we assume this latest effort is a part of. In the past year it has hired social media marketers to help it develop and promote best practices for journalists, provided training events for media, and published guides and studies showing how to use Facebook features (especially Pages) for maximum value. Media companies, including the BBC and Warner Brothers and various musicians, have also been testing selling media content using its virtual currency, Credits – efforts that have been primarily independent, although presumably encouraged by Facebook. … The speculation around possible Credits and ads revenue here are reflections of Facebook’s oft-stated goal of being the main way that people find and share information that matters with people they care about. Without any additional revenue streams, simply getting a stronger two-way flow of content-driven traffic can help it create more value for users, and make more money from its existing ad inventory.“
Gerrit Eicker
Web Engagement Management
WEM, Web Engagement Management, may replace ‘CMS‘ for using content to deliver business results in 2011; http://eicker.at/WEM
Gerrit Eicker 14:40 on 13. February 2012 Permalink |
PEJ, Who Advertises on News Sites and How Much Those Ads are Targeted: “A new study of advertising in news by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that, currently, even the top news websites in the country have had little success getting advertisers from traditional platforms to move online. The digital advertising they do get appears to be standard ads that are available across many websites. And with only a handful of exceptions, the ads on news sites tend not to be targeted based on the interests of users, the strategy that many experts consider key to the future of digital revenue. – Of the 22 news operations studied for this report, only three showed significant levels of targeting. A follow-up evaluation six months later found that two more sites had shown some movement in this direction, but only some, from virtually no targeting to a limited amount on inside pages. By contrast, highly targeted advertising is already a key component of the business model of operations such as Google and Facebook.”
PEJ, Who is Placing Ads? – “Who is buying ads on news sites? The answer reveals part of the trouble the news industry is having findings its way in the new marketplace. Across these 22 news sites, the biggest single advertiser is the news organization itself or its parent. Ads promoting the organization’s own products, known as ‘in-house ads’ in industry terms, accounted for 21% of the online ads studied – more than any category. … The magazine websites studied here (time.com, newsweek.com, economist.com and theatlantic.com) ran the largest percentage of in-house ads, fully 50% overall, from economist.com at 40.1% on the low end to time.com at 56% at the high end. In the print version of these magazines, by contrast, 10% of the ads were promoting the magazine or its company (Time magazine 11%, The Economist 13%, Newsweek 4%, and The Atlantic’s print edition contained no self-promoting ads). – Newspapers contained the second-highest level of self-referencing advertising, 21% of the Web-based ads versus 9% of their print ads. … For these print-related outlets, though, the heavy reliance on self-promoted ads could reflect two different factors. First, the newspaper industry still relies on its print product for the vast majority of its ad revenues. At the end of 2010 (the latest data available) fully 88% of overall newspaper revenue came from the print product versus just 12% from the Web. … Another phenomenon could be the inability of the industry to draw advertisers-and thereby ad revenue-to their online space.”
PEJ, The Financial Industry: “The second biggest category of advertising online was one that played a fairly small role for news in legacy platforms, the financial industry. Ads for financial products or services accounted for 18% of all Web ads captured, more than triple that of the next biggest category, toiletries and cosmetics (5%). And on more than half of the sites, 12 out of 22, financial ads ranked first-above self-promotion. … These numbers stand in contrast with the small role financial advertising plays in most of the legacy platforms studied. Only magazines contained more financial industry advertising in their original platform than online.”
PEJ, Targeting: “The customization or targeting of ads based on audience data is one of the newer ways to serve advertisers interests-helping those selling goods to reach consumers perceived to be the most likely to be interested in and thus to act on their ads. In targeted advertising, in other words, the ads one person gets will differ from what another person receives, depending on their online purchase history, location and/or personal habits, even if they click on the same website at essentially the same time. … Overall, only a handful of sites exhibited high levels of targeting. A few more had a moderate level of targeting. Most showed no signs of targeting at all. … Overall, just three of the 22 sites exhibited high levels of targeting, defined here as at least 45% of the ads were different from one user to the next. … One question that emerges is whether targeting has more or less natural appeal on some websites than others. In other words, do national sites with their larger and more diverse audience pools lend themselves more naturally than smaller sites to the benefits of ad targeting? … Finally, on a few sites, there was evidence of another method of targeting-not according to users but according to news story. On a number of occasions, there was a close relationship between the content of the story and the ads displayed.”
PEJ, Use of Discount Sites/Coupons: “About half of the sites studied, 16 of the 22, carried some discount/coupon advertising. But on only five did discount ads make up more than 10% of all the ads studied. For the most part, sites that created their own discount programs tended to rely on these ads more. … Among nationally oriented sites, Yahoo News carried the greatest percentage of discount/coupon advertising, 15% of the ads studied. The majority of these were from the national services Groupon and LivingSocial. – The other two sites with the highest use of discount advertising, the Toledo Blade and Los Angeles Times, have created their own daily deal operations to compete with the national companies. … These were the only two sites in our sample that had tried their own daily deal style business, but they are certainly not alone. Various papers now have their own Groupon-like services…”
PEJ, Format: “That leaves banner ads, classifieds, video and rich media as the four main kinds of ads news sites can offer advertisers. – Banner ads, the oldest form of advertising on the internet, make up the second largest percentage of ads on the internet (24% of total online advertising revenue). Going forward, most market analysts expect banner ads will represent a smaller portion of online advertising than search, but the category is still expected to grow. For instance, eMarketer predicts that banner ads will increase from $7.6 billion in 2011 to $11.7 by 2015, a bright spot for the news online. … Across these 22 news sites, that same tendency toward banner ads emerged; static banner ads made up nearly half (46%) of all the ads on news websites. Some differences in the style of ads used did emerge-mostly according to the legacy media genre, though individual sites did at times stand apart from their media brethren. … The Washington Post, on the other hand, relied on banner ads for just 18% of the ads studied. Instead, the site used sponsored links far more than others, 66%. Two other national papers, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times, also used sponsored links more than static banner ads.”