Myers: Newsps, Mags, TV and Radio Down

Jack Myers, for whom I've done some work, writes today in a run-up to his annual ad spending forecast that most of what some call legacy media are going to face a decline (this on the same day that newspapers' Web revenue is reported declining in growth):

Newspapers, magazines and local television and radio will experience double-digit declines in 2009 and additional declines in 2010, coming off a flat to down year in 2008.

Even more importantly, he predicts that we won't see the media industry re-emerge with a 21st-century model for another 3-4 years:

It will be 2012 before the industry of the future - the 21st Century model of the media and advertising industry - will begin to prosper. We can witness new foundations emerging without even looking that hard. Those who profit from the preservation of the old institutions misguidedly turn first to Wall Street and economic solutions rather than building new business models that focus on their customers and consumers.

Don't look to Wall Street. That's probably not a hard sell right now. It's been common wisdom of a sort that while newspapers were in trouble, other parts of the media wouldn't decline so precipitously. Maybe newspapers were simply the canary in the coal mine.

How to Manage Too Much Content

There might not be a lot of literal wealth around these days, but there's still a lot of content that media companies are managing in their digital properties. The challenge is to balance the competing needs (commercial and editorial, breaking news vs. standing features, archival material) while making it all findable and, not least, preserving the "brand" -- the look and feel of the media product. Some of the leading magazines have grappled with the issue, and next week, on Oct. 23, I'll will be moderating a seminar on the topic. Here are more details from the MPA site, with a link to registration:

Every publisher struggles with what to put on a website's homepage, and on every internal page as well. It's a struggle to maintain the brand identity while you also:

Balance important news and information with the big traffic drivers

Encourage user participation and content

Satisfy competing interests of not only editorial staff, but also marketing, sales, circulation, community, etc.

Keep the page optimized -- for search, the important Web browsers and operating systems, etc.

Include audio and video

Encourage clickthrough

Architect the site for maximum ease and effectiveness

Nail the navigation -- don't include too little, or too much

and much much more. As Goldilocks might ask, How can you get it just right?

With leading digital executives of some of the top magazine and media companies -- including recent award-winners who have burgeoning audience -- we'll explore in detail the ins and outs of what they've done, and how.

Don't miss this session, another in our digital best practices series, that will give you the tools you need to achieve success in the digital sphere.

Panelists include: Mark Remy, digital chief of Runners World, winner of the ASME for General Excellence this year and Jim Meigs, Editor-in-Chief, Popular Mechanics . Moderated by Dorian Benkoil, SVP, Editorial Director, Teeming Media.

Thoughts on Google's Ad Sense for Games

I was asked by a reporter from CNET (where I've contributed) what I thought about Google's announcement that they're launching advertising for games.  A lot's not clear about what Google's doing, but that they're getting into gaming is certainly an endorsement of the platform as a place for ads, and means others will pay attention. It's never prudent to denigrate a Google effort any more than it is for Microsoft. (Remember how many poo-poo'd the idea of Internet Explorer being able to become a dominant browser?). 

Here's some of my quotes from the piece:

To Dorian Benkoil, the founder of Teeming Media, an online business consultancy, Google's success at placing in-game ads, like that of its competitors, will come down to how well it is able to integrate those messages in games.

"What I've seen," said Benkoil," is that the community of gamers tend to be very vocal and emotional about anything that they find that isn't well integrated into a game. So if Google is doing an AdSense initiative, I would hope that they would do it in a seamless way that isn't interruptive of the gaming experience. Because if not, they would face some backlash."

Benkoil said that his research has also indicated that in-game ads may not be as effective as those in other media. That's because, he suggested, gamers spend a lot of time on the sites and in the games where they play, but they are deeply engaged in what they're doing and are not very interested in looking at things, like ads, that may be a distraction.

Minor niggle: I didn't really say "my research" but rather just conversations with media buyers and planners. I also mentioned that I teach an MBA-level digital marketing course, where we happen to have done games as a platform last lesson.

Explaining the Financial Crisis -- Not

My thoughts here.

Ways Around Text Messaging Fees

A significant portion of the recent Naked Media show was on fees for mobile (cellphone) use, and how people are going directly to the Web to get video and other material rather than subscribing and paying a new fee for a subscription, on top of their data plans.

Occurred to me today that the mobile Twitter app (interestingly, link is a Blogspot blog) is a way to avoid text messaging fees. You can post to the mobile Twitter site, and hit people directly (if they follow you), and also blast the wider group. Less of a sure thing than text messages -- which you can be pretty sure are consumed by those you're sending to -- but it's a way for people to go "off-deck" for text messages, too, from their handhelds, and end-run another money maker for mobile carriers.

Broadcast TV Down: Is That Bad News?

One way to make money from TV other than ads in the program.

Today’s Wall St. Journal story on the decline in TV ratings snapped me back to an alternate universe, a week after listening to ABC’s digital programming EVP Albert Cheng talk about revenue “per episode" at the Streaming Media West show. If broadcast TV executives are counting their pennies the way the “blast-from-the-past” story described it, they are in trouble:

Many viewers haven't rushed back to their television sets to watch this year's highly promoted season premieres, preferring to catch the shows on digital video recording devices and online -- or not catch them at all.

An average of 9 million people tuned in to prime-time programs on the top five English-language broadcast networks the night they aired last week, a 4.3% decline from the first week of the 2007 TV season, according to Nielsen Media Research.

OK, the “not catch them at all” part would be distressing. But why would watching in some fashion other than linear broadcast be considered a negative? Advertisers and Nielsen are already allowing for the “+3” formulation that accounts for viewers who watch a show up to three days after initial airing. TiVO has good measures of how many ads are viewed in a DVR’d program, making the case that even when forwarded through, some ads stick. Ads that are actually watched on a DVR are probably more impactful than on broadcast. And, what about the bathroom or snack or pick-up-a-coffee-table-magazine breaks during commercials?

Perhaps NBC’s Jeff Zucker was right when he said that NBC now has to manage not for ratings, but rather for profitability. What’s a show worth if you add up the revenues not just from broadcast TV ads (and reruns and overseas...) but also DVD and iTunes sales, and Web and mobile and anything else from which you can make a penny? Perhaps broadcast’s worth can even be counted as a marketing opportunity for sales in the other platforms.

It’s not like any TV executive should, at this point, be surprised by any of this, except perhaps the pace, accelerated by the apparent lasting effect of the writer’s strike. It’s not like DVRs or the Web are a surprise at this point. Sure, the days when a TV ad sales exec could just wait for the phone to ring and take the order are long gone. A show that’s a hit has so much more than broadcast TV to rely on. That people are watching in other ways than over the air should be seen as a triumph of the programming, not a downside. Even for ads, there are innovative ways to go about it. There's no reason, for example, that commercials have to be exactly 30 seconds and fit neatly into a format that's decades old (and easy to skip and avoid). Now, it’s the executives’ jobs to turn that popularity into money. That takes work, sure. But that’s all it is.

Naked Media Goes Mobile

In a wide-ranging yet very specific discussion with Jerry Rocha of Nielsen and Bob Walczak of mobile ad company RingLeader Digital we explored everything from the fate of mobile advertising (there may be one), to how minorities are using mobile devices in the U.S. more than the mainstream, to ways in which the iPhone (gasp!) doesn't quite work.

See Episode 5 on the Naked Media site. And check out the blog for some "man on the street" interviews where we show that all the whizbang we discuss in the studio (and at trade shows, industry magazines and the like) is far ahead of the crowd.