Indolent - online marketing, planning, media

The imminent death of local media

2008-12-16T20:32:37Z

Last Friday I went to a Westminster Media Forum event on the Future of Local Media. Claire Enders, the founder of media research company Enders Analysis, kicked things off with a thoroughly depressing analysis of the state of local media and here are my notes from her session. (The Press Gazette also covered this talk under the headline: Urgent action needed to save newspapers)

Local radio

Local commercial radio has an unequal fight against BBC local radio: commercial radio spends £170 million per year on programming against the BBC's budget for local radio of £400 million.

In audience terms, there has been a steady drift from local radio to national radio, especially towards BBC Radio's 2 and 4.

Advertising revenues peaked in 2003/04 and have been steadily declining since then.

In general there is an over-supply of commercial impacts - advertising volumes are exceeding demand, which obviously implies falling rates.

Claire predicts that local commercial radio will be pretty much extinct within the next five to ten years.

Local newspapers

The sector is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Income for local newspapers is heavily reliant on advertising which has been decimated in waves - first job ads, then property (and now retail).

BMRB figures show the time being spent with newspapers is declining even faster than newspaper's reach - especially amongst young people and most strongly amongst 20 to 24-year-olds. So even where people are still buying a Sunday newspaper for example, they are allocating less time in their day to reading it.

What's left is a hard-core of elderly local newspaper readers who are also 'Internet rejectors' - households which are not online and which see no point in going online.

The result is that ten to fifteen local newspapers are closing each week. And Claire predicts that half of all jobs in local newspapers will be gone in five years.

Advertising market

Also looking forward five years, the Advertising Association predicts that 34% of advertising spend will go online by 2013.

But that does not mean that online is the answer for local media. The value of a regular reader of a local newspaper, including direct and advertising revenues, is estimated at £91 per year. But a regular visitor to a local newspaper website is generating just £3 per year.

So where are the advertising revenues going? Some will have followed classified advertising online to sites like Monster, Autotrader, Gumtree and eBay. But the biggest share is going to our old friend Google. On Google, Claire made the interesting point that an algorithmic approach to content leads inevitably to monopoly, whilst a people-based approach encourages diversity.

Whilst Google is in many ways a blessing, it cannot be said to have delivered much value in terms of employment. According to Claire, on UK revenues of £1.2 billion, Google employs 10,000 people whereas the UK press, with total revenues of £2.4 billion employs a total of 175,000 people. (Actually I'd be amazed if Google employs anything like 10,000 people in the UK - there may be 10,000 staff across the UK offices and the European headquarters in Dublin.)

Can anything be done?

Claire Enders argues for a rapid removal of controls on the local media market, including cross-channel ownership restrictions which prevent the same company owning local newspapers and local radio stations.

Meanwhile newspapers are too reliant on Google for traffic to negotiate fair commercial terms for the content that Google indexes - so perhaps there is a role for government here, via a Google windfall tax, to redress the balance.

As for local radio, it seems unfair to blame the BBC for the poor performance of their commercial rivals. After all, very recently local radio stations were profitable - but the profits have not generally been re-invested in quality local programming.

One of the biggest problems with local media in general is not just that market dynamics have changed, but that they are changing incredibly fast. If we aren't careful, the diversity of local media will be destroyed before politicians and the general public really realise what is going on. By then writing a letter to the local newspaper or mouthing off on the local radio phone in will no longer be options. And advertisers will have lost an incredibly powerful way to connect to a local audience.

Express yourself!

2008-11-24T12:41:09Z

High up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs are the 'Esteem Needs', which Wikipedia defines as: "where the individual will desire a sense of competence, recognition of achievement by peers, and respect from others".

I'd express this slightly differently as the very human desire to show off how cool we are. And focusing on this is a good way to kick start a successful community.

So I'd argue that the motor behind blip.fm is the desire to show what great musical taste you have - or even what a cool DJ you can be.

And Herman Miller's new site thoughtpile.org is kind of a take on Yahoo! Answers, but with more of a social conscience - and it does look lovely in a kind of gloopy new age way. You get the chance to show off your genius thoughts - and change the world at the same time. And that would kind of boost your self-esteem I guess!

Trademark bidding - still not safe to enter the water

2008-10-28T10:44:36Z

Google's green light allowing brands to bid on competitive trade marks was one of the big stories in UK search over the past six months. We've conducted research at Harvest Digital that suggests that the result has not been the free-for-all that some predicted. In fact many big brands are not even bidding on their own brand, let alone competitors.

Why is this? Normally people would cite two reasons: that brands have entered into 'gentleman's agreements' not to bid on each other's brands, and that Google's relevancy rules simply make it uncompetitive to bid on other brands.

But a third reason is that the legal position in the UK is still somewhat unclear. The precedent set in the "Mr Spicy" case said that it was OK for search engines to accept advertisements triggered by a brand term. But UK lawyers believe - and are telling their clients - that one brand could still be sued directly by another for trademark bidding.

For instance, Iain Connor - an Intellectual Property Law specialist at Pinsent Masons - thinks that UK law forbids the practice of triggering adverts with another person's trade mark:

"In the UK, we believe that where a search engine allows a trade mark to be used as an trigger to generate a competitor's sponsored link, that would amount to an infringement by the search engine of the trade mark. Such use is likely to affect the essential function of a trade mark and take unfair advantage of that mark."

Improved 404 pages thanks to Google

2008-10-14T21:10:49Z

I've blogged about 404 pages before - they are something of a hidden optimisation opportunity for most websites. You see a 404 page when you mistype a URL or follow a link to a page which no longer exists. And normally they represent a frustrating dead end - a page that simply points out that the content you are looking for no longer exists.

Google has now created a simple widget you can use to create an enhanced 404 page which delivers a search box and suggests potential links within your site if they exist in Google's index. For instance, on this blog, if you accidentally type http://indolent.com/socail networks/ into the browser, Google's widget corrects the spelling mistake and makes a good guess at a potential page.

All in all, it's a quick and easy way to keep valuable traffic spinning around in your website.

Giving good Powerpoint

2008-10-02T12:27:49Z

So many Powerpoint presentations are dull and lifeless that it's easy to surrender all hope. In fact tons of times I've heard people say: 'speaker xxxx was really good, they just spoke off the cuff without using Powerpoint'.

One problem I think is that we have lost track of what good Powerpoint actually looks like. We certainly don't expect it to have any POWER - except the power to bore into submission.

So what could we be aspiring to? Here's the winning entry in Slideshare's recent 'World's Best Presentation Contest'. Really beautiful work which gives the impression that each and every frame has been carefully written and art directed. And an important message, which helps. Check it out!

THIRST

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design crisis)

David Cameron tag cloud

2008-10-01T18:46:17Z

Following on from last week's tag cloud of Gordon Brown's big speech, here is the full text of David Cameron's showcase speech put through wordle's brilliant software. Perhaps the Tories do believe in big government after all!

It's dead Kate's birthday

2008-09-29T16:21:27Z

I had a somewhat bizarre automated email from Bebo reminding me that it is Kate Modern's birthday on the 1st October.

Kate Modern is of course a fictional character in an online soap opera - but she is also dead, having been murdered at the end of series one. There's a good clue to this in her screen name: RIP Kate.

So if Bebo can't suppress birthday reminders for fictional dead people, it makes me wonder how well their system works with real dead people.

Digg-style voting to choose questions for Presidential debates?

2008-09-28T13:44:08Z

There have been interesting calls from a prominent group of Internet movers and shakers for questions at future debates between McCain and Obama to be decided by an 'open' system of voting, rather like Digg.

On the face of it, this would be a more democratic way to decide the agenda for the next set of debates - an agenda which is currently being decided pretty much at the whim of the media host.

But given the efforts that some people put into spamming links into Digg, perhaps what this would really do is hand control of the political agenda over to a cabal of social media professionals.

MSN adCenter labs finds Gordon sexier than David

2008-09-24T15:51:49Z

I'm speaking at a seminar at Fox Williams tomorrow, partly covering the subject of tracking techniques in online advertising.

So I had a quick look at the Demographics Prediction tool at Microsoft adCenter labs. This experimental tool predicts a user's age and gender from online behaviour, including the search terms they use.

The search term 'Gordon Brown' yesterday shows a strong female orientation and an average age of searchers between 18 - 24. So Sarah clearly has some competition for that lovable lump!

Meanwhile, smooth and supposedly sexy David Cameron is actually attracting more searches from older men, with an average age of 35 - 49. So for all of the podcasts and new logos, it looks like his core appeal is still the Tory heartland.

Gordon Brown tag cloud

2008-09-24T13:04:07Z

Here's a tag cloud (generated in the ever-wonderful wordl.net) of Gordon Brown's speech to the Labour Party conference yesterday. Will be interesting to compare it with David Cameron's big speech next week.

Google-Yahoo attacked by US trade association

2008-09-08T13:59:32Z

There I was in a post-Chrome haze thinking warm thoughts about Google, when the FT spoils my mood by reporting on the first major attack on the advertising alliance between Google and Yahoo.

The Association of National Advertisers in the US, which represents major advertisers like Wal-Mart, General Motors and Anheuser-Busch is objecting to the tie-up between the two internet giants. The ANA notes that:

"a Google-Yahoo partnership will control 90% of search advertising inventory and states ANA's concerns that the partnership will likely diminish competition, increase concentration of market power, limit choices currently available and potentially raise prices to advertisers for high quality, affordable search advertising."

The alliance will also impact on UK advertisers. My view is that the alliance will particularly drive up the price of niche terms on Yahoo!, which are something of a bargain at the moment compared with the same traffic on Google.

Google Chrome faces tough fight against IE and inertia

2008-09-02T14:13:41Z

From the perspective of a digital agency, you sometimes get the feeling that the entire world is using either Firefox or Safari.

But in fact the real story of the last few years has not been the remarkable rise of Firefox (and I am a massive fan, of course!) but of the resilience in Internet Explorer's market share.

I cobbled together the graph below (click on it for a larger version) from browser statistics up until the end of Q2 2008 from TheCounter.com. (This will understate the impact of the launch of Firefox 3 on the 17th of June - Wikipedia quotes a share of 19.73% for Firefox in August 2008.)

So Firefox has eaten into Internet Explorer's market share - but as of June 2008, IE still enjoyed 78.3% of browser usage. Over the last two years, Microsoft's share of the browser market has dropped by just eight percentage points. For the majority of users, there have not been compelling reasons to switch from a browser that is stable and works pretty well.

Those who were dissatisfied with Internet Explorer will already be using Firefox or Safari - and it is these early adopters who are most likely to jump once again over to Google Chrome.

Browser wars, take 2

2008-09-01T22:49:51Z

I've been thinking for a while that the one area where Google's domination of search is just a tiny bit shaky is around control of the browser. That's why I got excited about the 'Awesome Bar' in Firefox 3, with its convenient ability to search through your browser history.

And suddenly it really does look like we might have another browser war on our hands. Internet Explorer 8 is now available for download in its second pre-release beta. And around an hour ago came the news that Google is launching a new open source browser - Google Chrome - tomorrow.

There are signs that Google has acted somewhat hastily to get the launch of Chrome out the door. They admit that they sent out a comic book release explaining the thinking behind chrome a little early. And the browser's homepage - www.google.com/chrome - currently hosts a hand-coded 404 not found message.

So a quick take on this news. Anything that speeds up or improves internet access can only be a good thing. Pushing the envelope on the web browser could potentially kick start a new wave of site development as companies look to take advantage of new functionality. And Microsoft does seem to have been somewhat asleep at the wheel with its browser developments - IE7 came out almost two years ago, a lifetime ago in web terms.

On the other hand, Google needs to be careful not to flirt too closely with the 'M' word - its domination of search is clearly monopolistic, it owns one of the largest ad serving companies and is a major player in many other sectors. Control of the browser as well may well just be a step too far towards global domination.

And this, presumably, is why Google's announcement is of an open-source browser, and they stress that any improvements they have engineered in - for example - javascript support, will be shared with competitors.

So welcome to Chrome. A shiny, friendly metal... nothing for us to worry about.

Probably.

Yahoo also offers one-click unsubscribe to ad targeting

2008-08-09T13:06:44Z

Following swiftly on from Google's decision to allow a one-click unsubscribe to ad targeting on Google and Doubleclick, Yahoo has now announced a similar one-click unsubscribe from ad targeting on its site.

Yahoo's announcement comes as part of its response to the request from the House of Representatives committee early last week for information from thirty major internet companies about their ad targeting plans.

Looks like this is becoming a hot issue on the other side of the Atlantic - don't expect any political developments in the UK though, as parliament is well into its long summer holiday right now. I wonder if any prominent UK brands will start offering a similar opt-out to targeted advertising.

No more cookies please

2008-08-07T20:38:50Z

I think that privacy and control will be big issues in digital marketing this year, so it's interesting to see that Google are now offering an explicity opt-out from cookies set either by Google or by their adserving network Doubleclick. This button is very prominently displayed on Google's main page about Advertising and Privacy.

This is a really encouraging development. Without services like this, consumers trying to protect their personal privacy are often forced to delete all their cookies - which will also remove saved settings on many websites, like login information.

Rooting around, it turns out that this service is being run on behalf of Google by the Network Advertising Initiative, which offers consumers a route to opt out of a whole host of advertising networks including Advertising.com, Yahoo and Atlas.

Of the 17 networks listed, I have active cookies from 9 (not that I am particularly obsessed with deleting cookies - working for a media agency, that would be a tad hypocritical of me!).

The opt out page for the Network Advertising Initiative sits at http://networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.