Archive for May, 2009
Further evidence of the demise of the Industrial Age – Newspaper circulation skids
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
According to a new report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, for the six months ended March 31, 2009, the largest daily newspapers are losing subscribers at a record pace, with circulation down 7% compared with the same period in March 2008. For Sunday newspapers, circulation was down 5.3%.
In addition to sinking circulation, newspaper ad revenue is plunging. McClatchy ad revenue plummeted 29.5% in Q1 2009 compared to the same quarter last year, while The New York Times Co. saw ad revenue plunge 27%. Zenith Optimedia predicts that ad spending for newspapers will sink 12% in 2009.
During this 6 month period ending Mar. 31, 2009:
– Circulation at the New York Times slipped 3.5% during the week and 1.7% on Sundays
– The Washington Post fell 1.6% daily and 2.3% on Sundays
– USA Today fell 7.4% during the week on a decline in copies ordered from hotels
– The Chicago Tribune fell 7.4% daily and 4.5% on Sunday
– The Los Angeles Times slipped 6.5% and 7.5%
– The Boston Globe plunged 13.6% during the week and 11.2% on Sundays
– The New York Daily News was down 14% during the week
– New York Post, down 20%
– The Miami Herald (-15.8%)
– The San Francisco Chronicle (-15.7%)
– The Philadelphia Inquirer (-13.7%)
– The Houston Chronicle (-14%)
Posted by Tom Polanski in Trend Tracker on May 8th, 2009
Q&A: Roger Williams of Right Media
by Graham Charlton
The Right Media Exchange was launched in 2005 and acts a a stock exchange for advertisers and publishers. It was acquired by Yahoo in 2007 for $680m. It now claims to have over 240 Exchange members, with 8bn transactions a day going through the Exchange.
I’ve been talking to Roger Williams, the company’s director of international marketing, about the workings of the Exchange, the impact of the Yahoo acquisition, and how online ad exchanges may develop in future.
Can you provide a brief summary of how The Exchange works?
The Exchange is a technology platform that is designed to bring buyers and seller of online advertising inventory together (publishers, advertisers, networks and agencies) in order to trade inventory more efficiently via a real time auction.
Sellers place their non-guaranteed inventory on the exchange while buyers establish their targeting criteria and then bid to purchase relevant inventory, impression by impression, through a single platform interface.
Posted by Tom Polanski in Interviews on May 6th, 2009
eBrand Media Research Brief: Retailers increasingly invest in site optimization
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
According to Internet Retailer’s recent monthly survey, retailers are creating interactive page treatments and adding video, customer reviews and other advanced features. Merchants also are making site optimization a top priority and redesigning their web sites to achieve speedier navigation and faster performance.
The survey finds retailers updating their web sites, with 49.9% of merchants having rolled out a new design in the past year, including:
– 26.6% in the last six months
– 13.3% within 90 days
Improved site optimization is the top priority for 72.9% of merchants, followed by:
– Clearly organized home, category and product pages at 62.4%
– Better navigation at 49.4%
– Improved site search at 47.1%
– Faster checkout at 40%
Posted by Tom Polanski in Website Optimization on May 4th, 2009
Why give up privacy? Because everybody else is doing it!
By Bob Sullivan, The Red Tape Chronicles
Would you share the most intimate details of your life with a stranger, such as cheating on your taxes or sleeping with a friend’s spouse? You’d be more likely to tell if you thought everyone else was doing it, say a group of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.
The results of their study could help explain the slow but steady march toward “anything goes” behavior on social networking sites like Facebook, where users are notorious for revealing too much information about themselves.
Msnbc.com has obtained a copy of the report, which is to be released next month. In it, the researchers worried about what they called a “frog effect” on the public. Like a frog that doesn’t notice it’s in danger when sitting in water that slowly comes to a boil, consumers are not noticing that personal privacy standards are slowly eroding.
A befuddling conflict
The group of behavioral scientists were looking for answers to a vexing question that dogs nearly every privacy-related research project: People routinely say they care deeply about privacy, then consistently act otherwise.
In the study, the group asked nearly 2,000 adults a series of sensitive, “self-revelatory” questions. They ranged from tame (Have you ever left a room with the light on?) to the dramatic (Have you ever had sex with the current partner of a friend?). After each question, the researchers showed the test-takers fake results offering up alleged answers from other test takers. Some of the fake results showed the majority admitted to a variety of these unethical behaviors; others showed that most test-takers had denied taking part in the behaviors, or refused to answer the questions.
Posted by Tom Polanski in Social Media, Trend Tracker on May 1st, 2009