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Please send your news or media-related articles you find interesting to NJPA
Notes:
Catherine Langley at
clangley@njpa.org
May 15 Today!
Legislative Correspondents Club Show
Reception 6-7:30 pm ● Show 8 pm
The Hamilton Manor, 30 Route 156, Hamilton
May 24
Webinar:
Newspaper Circulation Version 2.0
Redefining your role
with Jeffrey Hartley, Morris Communications
2-3 pm
For more information and registration form:
Circulation Version
2.0
June 5 Government Affairs Committee
11 am
teleconference
June 21
Webinar:
Processing Photos Faster
with Russell Viers
2-3 pm
For more information will be available soon.
June 22
Webinar:
Covering the Presidential Election:
Why and How
with Al Cross, Institute for Rural Journalism & Community Issues
2-3 pm
For more information and registration form:
Covering
Presidential Election
Gannett Steps Up Paywalls
News & Tech
May 14, 2012
Gannett Co. Inc.’s U.S. Community Publishing unit kicked off digital subscriber initiatives at five additional papers last week, with more to come.
The Press and Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton, N.Y., the Star-Gazette in Elmira, N.Y., the Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal and New Jersey dailies Home News Tribune and Courier News all launched their programs. …
Gannett now has more than 25 of its 80 USCP papers with digital subscriber plans.
For the rest of the article: http://www.newsandtech.com/dateline/article_77d281fc-9ded-11e1-878e-001a4bcf887a.html
Greater Media’s ‘iPad Project’ Improves
Ad Sales and Production
Editor & Publisher
May 9, 2012
By Nu Yang
As publishers search for solutions to save on resources, the Greater Media Newspaper group, based in central New Jersey, has found an answer right in its own office. Known as the “iPad project,” the sales tool was developed in-house and has helped reduce paperwork and errors and speed up the production process.
The newspaper group puts out 10 weekly papers plus one online-only paper, and circulation is just under a quarter of a million. With a large geographical area to cover, the group’s sales representatives would spend much of their time traveling back and forth between the office and visiting clients.
“The goal of the iPad project was to give the outside sales reps a complete set of tools that would allow them to operate fully without ever coming back into the office,” said Gene Lennon, director of information technology, production, and interactive. …
He approached systems manager Jeff Messeroll with the idea of a virtual mobile office, and the two quickly went to work.
“We needed to construct an application that would give (sales reps) ad history, account history, the ability to enter ads into our order entry system, make changes to orders, do pickups and kills, and replace the traditional paper layout sheets,” Lennon said.
According to Lennon, the iPad — with its long battery life, high-resolution screen, and ability to work anyplace with no Wi-Fi required — was the perfect remote device.
Lennon and Messeroll decided to work on the project quietly behind the scenes, because they wanted to develop a working version before going to management. They used one iPad to conduct their beta testing, and a year later the graphic-based application was ready.
Lennon said the new system includes viewing and emailing of ads as PDFs and integrated tear-sheet management that allows sales reps to see all ads on the page as well as email tear sheets. The system also enables reps to draw layouts on their iPads and submit them to the production department.
“It used to take four or five days before the reps returned to the office with an order ticket,” Lennon said. “Now before they even walk out the customer’s door, production is working on the ad.”
The system also has reduced the number of errors. It automatically compares the data entered by the sales rep side by side with data from the finance system and places a red X in any field that isn’t in agreement.
Lennon said ad entry error rate has decreased from 13 percent to less than 1 percent, and since going live with the program about 10 months ago, Lennon said local display advertising has increased 30 percent in print dollars.
For the rest of the article: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ASection/Article/Greater-Media-s–iPad-Project–Improves-Ad-Sales-and-Production
New Auras Surround Philly Inquirer
Readers
News & Tech
May 10, 2012
By Tara McMeekin
When Philadelphia Inquirer readers opened their Sunday paper on May 6, they couldn’t readily see what was hiding under a handful of ads and editorial content — that is, unless they were looking with their tablet or smartphone.
That’s because the May 6 Inquirer marked the launch of the publisher’s use of “auras,” or augmented reality features, which allow readers to interact digitally with their paper.
The Inquirer is the first paper in the United States to use the technology, developed by HP unit Aurasma. The Aurasma AR software powers enhanced content, including video, audio and other features, across both iOS and Android devices.
“Augmented reality is not the first idea we had when thinking of ways to engage with our readers, but once we saw the Aurasma technology everything changed,” Philadelphia Media Network Chief Brand Officer Jerry Steinbrink said in a statement. “(It) gives us the capability to deliver interactive content through a customized app without investing heavily in technology, programming or production.”
Equally important, the service bridges the gap between digital and print. The app gives PMN another tool through which it can attract print subscribers while it enhances the value of the ink-on-paper Inquirer. …
Hover, then done
To access the Aurasma-encoded information within a printed page, users merely hover their smartphones or tablets over the image. The actual data is retrieved from Aurasma servers in the cloud; once content is downloaded users are free to read and manipulate the data anyway they want to, regardless of Wi-Fi connectivity.
For the rest of the article: http://www.newsandtech.com/news/article_8e22d7cc-9adc-11e1-82d4-001a4bcf887a.html
Osberg Steps Down as Phila. Media
Network CEO
The Philadelphia Inquirer
May 11, 2012
By Mike Armstrong
Gregory J. Osberg stepped down as publisher and chief executive of Philadelphia Media Network on Friday afternoon, less than six weeks after the company was purchased by a group of local owners.
Robert J. Hall, who has been PMN’s chief operating officer, will replace Osberg as publisher and CEO of the company that operates The Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com - a job he held previously for 13 years.
Osberg, 54, said he would remain with PMN as an adviser on digital strategies and advertising sales.
In an interview, Osberg said the decision to step down after just 19 months was his alone.
For the rest of the article: http://www.philly.com/philly/business/breaking/151164955.html
Times Sells Remaining Stake in Fenway
Sports Group
The New York Times
May 11, 2012
By Amy Chozick
The New York Times has sold its remaining stake in the Fenway Sports Group, the company that owns the Boston Red Sox, the latest in a continuing effort to shed assets unrelated to the company’s flagship newspaper.
The Times Company received an aggregate of $63 million in cash and will receive an estimated pretax gain of $38 million in the second quarter of 2012, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. A company spokeswoman, Abbe Serphos, declined to say who purchased the shares.
For the rest of the article: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/times-sells-remaining-stake-in-fenway-sports-group/?ref=media
NJPA Contest Results Now Online
See the great work produced by New
Jersey newspapers in 2011!
The
results of NJPA’s annual newspaper contest are available online at
www.njpa.org or by clicking on the
button at left.
They are available as PDFs, in list format and as slides from the presentations shown at the awards banquets. The PDFs are searchable by name, newspaper, article title, category and place. Print entire PDFs, or just individual pages. The slides include images of this year’s award-winning ads and photographs, and all or part of each winning article.
Reporters Committee to Host Free Webinar
on Covering Courts
June 5
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is hosting a free webinar on June 5 to help journalists understand court proceedings. The webinar, to be held at 1 p.m., will focus on court secrecy issues and access to trial information and proceedings.
Space is limited for the webinar, so early registration is recommended. The webinar will run about one hour, with time for questions at the end. To register: “Secret Courts”
Sigma Delta Chi Accepting Nominations
for First Amendment Award
Society of Professional Journalists
Deadline: June 22
The Sigma Delta Chi Foundation presents the Eugene S. Pulliam First Amendment Award to honor a person or persons who have fought to protect and preserve one or more of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.
An individual, group of individuals or organization will be awarded $10,000 cash and an engraved crystal to honor those committed to the same goals and as a tribute to the professional contributions Pulliam made to journalism.
For more information, including nomination
requirements and information:
http://www.spj.org/a-pulliam.asp.
Questions? Contact Awards Coordinator Lauren Rochester:
lrochester@spj.org
John Sturm, Former NAA President,
Appointed to New Role at Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame
May 2, 2012
Press Release
John F. Sturm, former president and chief executive officer of the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), has been appointed associate vice president of federal and Washington relations at the University of Notre Dame effective June 1, 2012.
“We are pleased that John Sturm has accepted the challenge of this newly established position,” said John Affleck Graves, Notre Dame’s executive vice president. “His expertise in public policy and communications will help enhance the national and international visibility of Notre Dame’s work and mission.”
Sturm, a 1969 alumnus of Notre Dame who holds a law degree from Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law, will oversee a Notre Dame office in the nation’s capital. His responsibilities will include developing a federal relations strategy for the University, and strengthening Notre Dame’s relationships with key constituencies in Washington, including the White House, Congress, federal agencies, regulatory bodies, media, and alumni. While based in Washington, Sturm will often be on campus meeting with faculty and administration.
Sturm retired from the NAA presidency last year after 16 years at the helm of the newspaper industry’s largest trade organization.
For the rest of the article: http://newsinfo.nd.edu/news/30635-former-naa-president-appointed-notre-dames-first-associate-vp-of-federal-and-washington-relations/
Zuckerman Aims at Flyover Country
Plans national ‘Daily News’ website
Adweek
May 10, 2012
By Lucia Moses
Word that the Daily News is working on a new U.S. news website confirms recent remarks owner Mort Zuckerman made on the subject. In a conversation with Adweek earlier this year, Zuckerman said the Daily News would launch a “national Web product” to nurture an already large national online audience.
NYDailyNews.com has 10 million visitors, 8 million of which are outside its home market, according to Zuckerman, adding, “That is where you are seeing the advertising energy. New York is a very interesting subject for the whole country, and we’re going to try to exploit that with more features and more stories—New York stories that are basically about the people of New York and New York City.” …
For the rest of the article: http://www.adweek.com/news/press/zuckerman-aims-flyover-country-140203
Content’s Never Been a Profit Center, So
Why Should It Be Any Different Online?
Online Video Insider
May 14, 2012
By Ashkan Karbasfrooshan
Content and marketing are connected at the hip. Content amplifies marketing, and marketing fuels content. Increasingly the line between the two is getting blurred, until some scandal or controversy brings back the adage that church and state ought to remain separate.
Everything old is new again, right?
But now, we’re on the “future of marketing is content” train ride, and we don’t know when we’re getting off. Part of this convergence stems from the so-called death of the 30-second spot. …
Yes, viewers are moving online, but despite billions of connected devices out there, … the fact remains that with falling rates, the pre-roll isn’t enough to fund online content.
For content to survive – let alone thrive – it needs to make economic sense.
Someone left common sense back in the
analog world
On television, media companies fund the production, marketing and
distribution of content, money they then recoup over time through
advertising, sponsorship, subscription, licensing, theatrical and home
purchases, and so forth. Occasionally, content loses money – it is a “hits”
business, after all.
Online, we treat content as a profit center. Like advertising, content generally bears a negative ROI early on. Content isn’t a widget (in the economics/accounting sense), where producing it at X amount of money and selling at Y will yield a profit, provided Y is greater than X. …
The “user propensity” to…
If your site’s DNA is content, it’s very hard to introduce commerce as
an afterthought (same way, perhaps, that Google can’t nail social or
Facebook has challenges on mobile – it’s not something one staples on). So
if you plan on generating e-commerce revenues via video content, you have to
seed it early on and foster it in your editorial strategy.
Whatever your plan to recoup your investment in content, it’s worthwhile remembering that the company that produces the best content at the lowest cost will have an edge over time – but a “low enough” cost is good enough; the focus ought to be on the revenue side of the equation.
For the rest of the article: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/174586/contents-never-been-a-profit-center-so-why-shoul.html
For a related article:
My Personal Take: 3 Reasons I Don’t Like Newspaper Paywalls
http://gigaom.com/2012/05/12/my-personal-take-3-reasons-i-dont-like-newspaper-paywalls/
Newsosaur: At Risk - The Best Newspaper
Ad Buyers
Editor & Publisher
May 8, 2012
By Alan D. Mutter
Following the collapse of the national and classified ad categories in the last six years, the most faithful remaining customers for newspapers today are the local retailers who purchased fully half of the $23.9 billion in advertising sold by the industry in 2011.
Now, there is good reason to fear that even the last, best customers for newspaper advertising are getting ready to take their dollars elsewhere — unless publishers act fast to develop a product mix that meets the rapidly changing needs of Main Street merchants. For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, ad sales last year came in at half the all-time peak of $49.4 billion achieved in 2005.
One of the principal reasons newspaper sales have contracted in the last half-decade is that a growing number of small and medium local businesses (SMBs) are putting more of their marketing dollars than ever into establishing direct relationships with consumers via digital media.
Although roughly half of local marketing dollars today go to newspaper and broadcast advertising, BIA/Kelsey predicts that only 30 percent of an expected $151 billion in local marketing expenditures in 2016 will be spent on the legacy media.
Before the Internet and other digital interlopers unhinged the once comfortable franchises enjoyed by local media, it was not uncommon for Main Street merchants to put 70 percent of their marketing budgets into print or broadcast advertising. But that was then and this is now.
In a series of surveys over the last few years, Borrell Associates found that many of the dollars formerly spent on local advertising are going to a wide — and growing — variety of alternative marketing venues.
Key findings at mid-2011:
• 87% of SMBs planned to put money into
upgrading their websites — or building new ones.
• 64% of local businesses planned to put money into social media marketing,
a sharp increase over the 58 percent of merchants who were planning Facebook
or Twitter blitzes at the end of 2010.
• Some 43% of SMBs were planning email campaigns, 27 percent wanted to buy
Facebook ads, 24 percent wanted to produce online videos, 22 percent wanted
to offer online coupons, 22 percent wanted to advertise on mobile devices,
and 20 percent wanted to buy targeted keyword ads on Google, Bing, and
similar sites.
The list goes on, but the point is this: Newspapers generally don’t offer products or services to fulfill these needs.
The only digital marketing solution provided by most publishers is untargeted banners on their websites and mobile apps. Unfortunately, only a fifth of merchants told Borrell they are interested in buying the run-of-site advertising that happens to be the only solution most newspapers can offer.
A further alarming aspect of the Borrell poll is that the more than 2,000 business people quizzed in each flight of the survey were newspaper advertisers invited to participate by their local publisher. Imagine the response if the same questions were put to people who already have forsaken newspapers. …
In light of these trends, newspaper publishers would be wise to offer their customers — and those who ought to be their customers — the kinds of marketing solutions identified in the Borrell survey. They had better hurry, too, because competitors ranging from local start-ups to Groupon to Google are selling many similar solutions.
For the rest of the article: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/Columns/Article/Newsosaur–At-Risk–-The-Best-Newspaper-Ad-Buyers
Desperate Newspapers Pin Hopes on
Annoyed Readers
SFWeekly.com
May 8, 2012
By Dan Mitchell
News publishers have always treated readers like commodities – because that’s what readers are. The real customers for publishers aren’t readers, but advertisers. Readers are the product. It’s not quite that simple, of course, and more enlightened publishers treat readers with respect and cover the news fearlessly (which actually makes the readers more valuable to advertisers).
But a quick glance through just about any regional newspaper reveals that most publishers, especially corporate ones, aren’t particularly enlightened. Those papers are filled with inane drivel and overcareful, “balanced” stories because publishers and news executives believe that’s what attracts readers – or at least doesn’t scare them away.
Web publishing was supposed to change all this, in part by empowering readers to respond to the news. The positive effects, though, have been limited, at best. Readers can respond to many news stories in comments sections, for example, but thoughtful responses tend to get buried by angry, illiterate screeds
Comments sections, in fact, are just another way for publishers to commodify readers, and to many publishers, the angry, illiterate readers are no less valuable than sane, thoughtful ones. If comments sections didn’t drive pageviews, you can bet that most publishers would get rid of them. In fact, most of what newspapers do on the web is driven, not by reader empowerment, or even journalist-empowerment, but by the short-term quest for pageviews. Many of the tactics they employ annoy the shit out of readers rather than empower them.
Take slideshows. Please. Many news execs love them, because they draw many more clicks per minute than, say, a well-reported (and expensive) investigative news story. When they comprise really good photos that convey information, slideshows can be great. But they almost never do those things. Usually, they’re garbage. In the long run, they hurt business, but publishers tend not to think in the long term.
As Alexis Madrigal points out in The Atlantic, smarter publishers have learned that counting unique visitors is a much better metric of success than is the lunkheaded, simpleminded counting of pageviews. …
The Washington Post is partly responsible for another phenomenon that tries to mine gold from the irritation of readers: forced-sharing apps on Facebook. When one of your friends has the Post’s “Social Reader” app installed, everything he or she reads is automatically posted to your newsfeed. …
Of course, it’s not that people don’t like to share news stories – it’s the forced sharing that’s the problem. If we want to share a Washington Post news story that we’ve read, we will. It’s not hard – you just paste in the link. What we don’t want is to have everything we read to be automatically broadcasted to all of our friends.
For the rest of the article: http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2012/05/desperate_newspapers_pin_hopes.php
Geofeedia Helps Journalists Locate
Real-Time Photos, Tweets Where News Breaks
Poynter
May 14, 2012
By Steve Myers
There are three challenges in using social media content for reporting, as Storyful’s Mark Little has written: finding it, verifying it, and figuring out the best way to publish it.
In breaking news situations, reporters often rely on text searches — names of places, keywords like “crash” or “fire,” and hashtags. They look for users whose bios mention a particular location.
But it’s hit-or-miss. Even when they use the right terms, they have to wade through all the conversation from people who aren’t at the scene.
Geofeedia, a service that comes out of private beta today, aims to solve this problem by enabling location-based searches for social media content. Users can type in a place name, address, even the name of a sports venue, or they can simply outline an area on a map. The service will display the latest geotagged content — from Twitter, Instagram, Picasa, Flickr and YouTube — within that area.
“Most news happens at a location,” said Phil Harris, CEO of Geofeedia. When time is of the essence, “filtering through an unbelievable number of social media posts, it’s daunting.”
Hear about a shooting at a high school in near Cleveland? Draw a circle around the area on a map and start looking at what is being posted, pretty close to real-time. From there, you can filter by keywords and time. …
“Business intelligence” for journalists
It’s easy to see how reporters could use the tool, particularly in breaking news. Besides being a tool to find sources, Harris described it as a form of “business intelligence” that can help editors make decisions about whether and how to cover stories.
For instance, they could use Geofeedia to gauge how big a story is so they can decide whether to send a reporter. If they do send someone, the reporter can go to the place with a high concentration of tweets rather than heading to a general area like a highway exit. And before anyone gets to the scene, people in the newsroom can use Geofeedia to find eyewitnesses and contact them, perhaps while they’re still at the scene of the breaking news.
For the rest of the article: http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/173764/geofeedia-helps-journalists-locate-real-time-photos-tweets-where-news-breaks/
Why ‘The Atlantic’ No Longer Cares About
SEO
Mashable
May 9, 2012
By Lauren Indvik
The number of online news consumers has grown consistently over the past half-decade, yet not every publication has gotten the same lift as The Atlantic, whose web audience has catapulted from approximately 500,000 to 13.4 million monthly visitors since taking down its paywall in early 2008.
As we’ve explored previously, there are many factors that have contributed to The Atlantic’s online success: assigning a number of well-known columnists, like James Fallows and Andrew Sullivan (now of The Daily Beast), to begin writing original pieces for TheAtlantic.com; launching and staffing two new online news properties, TheAtlanticWire.com and TheAtlanticCities.com; and building up its digital ad offerings to support those hires.
Furthermore, The Atlantic is adapting its editorial strategy to the shifting landscape of online news consumption, namely, to capitalize on the growing importance of social networks, rather than search engines, as sources of traffic.
“Sixteen months ago we received the same number of monthly referrals from search as social. Now 40% of traffic comes from social media,” Scott Havens, senior vice president of finance and digital operations at The Atlantic Media Company, said in a phone conversation ahead of his on-stage interview at our Mashable Connect conference in Orlando, Fla. last weekend. “Truly [our writers] are not really thinking about SEO anymore. Now it’s about how we can spin a story so that it goes viral.”
For the rest of the article: http://mashable.com/2012/05/09/the-atlantic-social-over-seo-strategy/
What the Web Could Learn from Dawn of TV
Advertising Age
May 14, 2012
By Michael Learmonth
Creators of web video have decided that the best way to transfer TV advertising dollars to the web is to transfer TV’s advertising model – or at least parts of it – to the web. But the predominant model for made-for-the-web content is one that TV abandoned decades ago: single sponsorship, in which content is created for an advertiser underwriting the cost.
During the 1950-51 TV season – the first in which Nielsen reported audience figures – four of the top six shows had advertiser names: “Texaco Star Theater,” “Philco TV Playhouse,” “The Colgate Comedy Hour” and “Gillette Cavalcade of Sports.”
That was the foundation of ad-supported TV…
At the time, the model made sense. TVs were far from ubiquitous. Sponsors were more comfortable with radio, print and billboards, and not that many were willing to pony up for a relatively new medium.
Web video is at a similar stage today.
The single-sponsor model takes a lot of the risk out of the equation for content producers and makes sense for advertisers that want to “own” a show or a series with the aim of rising above the clutter.
It also intrinsically limits the upside, as TV found decades ago. The revenue from a show is limited to what a single sponsor is willing to pay, usually the cost of production plus a moderate profit.
Then there’s the fact that the number of big-money advertisers willing to pay big for a single show is relatively small. That’s certainly true in online video.
For the rest of the article: http://adage.com/article/digital/web-learn-dawn-tv/234682/?utm_source=digital_email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=adage
Nick Denton’s New Advertising System May
Foreshadow a Post-Blogger Future
Poynter
May 11, 2012
By Andrew Beaujon
Gawker Media honcho Nick Denton is weaning his sites off banner ads, he announced in a staff memo Thursday: “In two years, our primary offering to marketers will be our discussion platform.” That’s the new commenting system Gawker sites began rolling out at the end of April, one Denton thinks can be sold.
Gawker’s sort of throwing up a leaky paywall around the system; Mathew Ingram wondered why advertisers wouldn’t just hop into Gawker comments for free. Denton told him:
“Advertisers will pay for promotion of the discussions in which they engage. Just like any marketer can go into Twitter — but sponsored tweets give them more prominence. They will also be paying for our help in discussion management. Just like they currently contract with us to create sponsored content in the voice of the web and the Gawker readership.”
If Denton’s new model works, it’ll represent an important shift from online content to online discussion.
For the rest of the article: http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/173715/nick-dentons-new-advertising-system-may-foreshadow-a-post-blogger-future/
Does Branding Need to be Rebranded?
Online Spin
May 14, 2012
By Matt Straz
Recently, Sir James Dyson, the founder of the Dyson Company and the inventor of sleek household appliances, said that he doesn’t believe in branding. “We’re only as good as our latest product,” Dyson said. “I don’t believe in brand at all.”
Like a cat coughing up a hairball, Dyson’s comment caused a loud, involuntary response from the advertising world. In Ad Age, the wave of feedback from Dyson’s comments was completely dismissive. Some claimed that Dyson didn’t understand what branding was, while others said that it was a canny attempt to get more attention for his products. …
All of these recriminations must have been a shock to Dyson, who has been able to build a successful global company despite a lack of faith in branding. Instead, he had focused on creating elegant products and then selling them at a profit. Once in a while Dyson would also narrate a stylish, 30-second product demo that would appear on television.
Interestingly, James Dyson isn’t the only one now questioning the idea of branding. Ford, who has been stamping its blue logo into the backs of eyeballs for decades, recently launched a series of ads without any branding at all. According to Ford strategists, their new cars are now so good that they didn’t feel the need to brand as aggressively as they have in the past.
And then there’s Nike. Having relied for years on mass branding messages like “Just do it,” the company has now dramatically scaled back its investment in traditional branding. Nike has also reduced its emphasis on big brand athletes like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, and Lance Armstrong. Instead, the company has focused on creating software and gadgets like its new Fuel wristband that measures athletic output. Instead of marketing products, Nike is using products to market itself.
So are these all signs that traditional branding will eventually be obsolete, a relic of the 20th century? Perhaps the entire enterprise will turn out to have been an abstraction, a way of thinking about disparate activities that would have happened anyhow. Or perhaps, with consumers empowered by technology and overwhelmed by choice, branding doesn’t have the same effect on consumers that it used to. …
Ultimately, though, if more CEOs like James Dyson – the end customers of branding, after all – reject the product called branding, then marketers will need to change
For the rest of the article: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/174552/does-branding-need-to-be-rebranded.html
Research Brief:
The Social Sharing Shortcut to
Registration
Center for Media Research
May 14, 2012
By Jack Loechner
According to the current quarterly study by Janrain Engage, across 365,000 websites analyzing social login and social sharing preferences, Facebook is the most popular option at 45%, while a majority would rather use a different social identity, such as Google, Yahoo! or Twitter.
Because the social media landscape is fragmented, notes the report, the study helps to determine which identities people prefer both for sign-in and content sharing that can be used to speed up registration on sites across the web.
People use Facebook to interact with friends and family, Twitter to follow influencers and share opinions, LinkedIn for their professional network, and Gmail, Yahoo! or Hotmail to communicate directly with contacts. Combined, these networks boast over 1.5 billion accounts.
For the rest of the article: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/174520/the-social-sharing-shortcut-to-registration.html
Bitly Data Shows the Best Times to Post
Links to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr
Poynter
May 9, 2012
By Jeff Sonderman
Bitly, the URL shortener of choice for most people, has analyzed its click-tracking data to find the optimal days and times for posting links to social media. The results show interesting, distinct patterns among Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.
On Twitter, the best window is 1 to 3 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. Facebook was hot at 1 to 4 p.m. And Tumblr is a night owl, with posts doing best after 7 p.m.
For the rest of the article: http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/173308/bitly-data-shows-the-best-times-to-post-links-to-facebook-twitter-and-tumblr/
Pew: Use of Location Services Up on
Smartphones
Online Media Daily
May 11, 2012
By Mark Walsh
The spread of smartphones in the last year has led to a jump in the number of Americans using real-time, location-based data on their handsets. A new study from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project shows that almost three-quarters (74%) of smartphone owners used their devices to get directions and other location-related information as of February – up from 55% last May.
That increase coincides with a rise in smartphone ownership to 46% this year, from 35% in 2011. That means that the overall proportion of U.S. adults who get location-based information has almost doubled over that time period– to 41% in February 2012 from 23% last May. …
Not surprisingly, the Pew study indicated that younger people are more likely than older adults to use both location-based information services and “check-in” services. More than four out of five (82%) of those ages 18-29, for example, used either or both of those services, compared to 66% of people 50 and over.
Another demographic distinction the research pointed out is that while smartphone owners in lower-income households are less likely to use location-based information services, they are more likely to use geosocial tools like Foursquare.
For the rest of the article: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/174456/pew-use-of-location-services-up-on-smartphones.html?edition=46767
Story of the Week: Facebook Introduces
Own App Store
The Financial Times
May 12, 2012
By Maryam Nabi
Shopping on Facebook for apps will soon be easier with the App Center, a new application storefront for users to buy and discover content. The social networking company announced the App Center this week following an amendment to its S-1 filing that claimed it does not “currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven”.
For the rest of the article: http://blogs.ft.com/tech-blog/2012/05/story-of-the-week-facebook-introduces-own-app-store/?ftcamp=crm/email/2012514/nbe/MediaInternet/product#axzz1urFRmfWI
LA Times Developer Begins Archiving
Newspaper Websites
The Wall Street Journal
May 8, 2012
By Keach Hagey
Newspaper front pages are considered such an important mirror of American culture that they get their own rotating daily museum exhibit at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.
But there has never been an equivalent archive for the more ephemeral – but equally important – newspaper website home page.
Ben Welsh, a 29-year-old developer at the Los Angeles Times, is setting out to change that. This week, he is launching a campaign on the crowd-funding website Kickstarter to fund PastPages, an online archive that hourly takes screenshots of dozens of newspaper home pages and other online news sites and makes them searchable by date and time. …
The bird’s eye view of the news Internet he has selected – right now, about 60 sites – can provide some surprising insights. In the little more than a week since the site went live, he has included more French sites as the French elections were unfolding, and been interested to see how differently they approach real-time election graphics.
“I’ve learned that French news sites are pretty good looking,” he said. “They’re designed well. The way they did the data visualization for the French election was really simple, easy to follow. They had a little more punch to their election night data on the homepages than most American sites, which play it very straightlaced and heavy on the high-end data visualization.”
He imagines it will be useful for academic research, as well as for fellow developers and journalists, who can use it as “a way to keep tabs on yourself and your competition.”
For the rest of the article: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/05/08/la-times-developer-begins-archiving-newspaper-websites/
Postal Service Losses of $3.2 Billion in
Q2
Editor & Publisher
May 11.2012
USPS Press Release
The Postal Service ended its second quarter (Jan. 1 – March 31) with a net loss of $3.2 billion, compared to a net loss of $2.2 billion for the same period last year. Despite ongoing management actions that have grown and improved efficiency, the losses will continue until key provisions of the Postal Service five-year business plan move forward. …
The losses are due primarily to legislative mandates such as the unique mandated pre-funding of retiree health benefits, and prohibiting management from making the needed operational and human resource changes required to address these issues under current laws and contracts. Also contributing to the continuing losses are the declining First-Class Mail and Standard Mail volumes.
For the rest of the article: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/Business/Article/Postal-Service-Losses-of–3-2-Billion-in-Q2
How to Turn Your Inventory into a
Valuable Commodity
Online Publishing Insider
May 10, 2012
By Bill Rowley
Everyone needs water – and, not that long ago, we used to get it for free. But I’ll go out on a limb and guess the last time you quenched your thirst with some refreshing H2O, it wasn’t from the tap. Most of us have grown accustomed to purchasing bottled water, whether it’s an economy brand or some esoteric brand touting water from the oldest glacier in the world. The bottom line is, we’re fueling a billion-dollar industry profiting from something that is essentially free and abundant.
This is where publishers can learn a valuable lesson.
Digital media inventory is a lot like water: abundant and, if not free, increasingly inexpensive. Whether it’s being given away as a value-add or being sold for just pennies, as an industry we’re drowning in undifferentiated inventory.
According to a study by Ignition One, CPM rates for online display advertising have fallen 23.4% year-over-year despite a healthy 21.0% increase in ad spend. The advertising industry is clearly experiencing a severe supply-and-demand imbalance. Based on comScore figures, 2012 should see 4 trillion display ads served. There’s simply not enough demand to fill those impressions, and prices are falling. The solution to date has been to create additional inventory to make up the difference, a tactic that’s not working. However, if publishers follow the lead of the bottled water industry, they will see a better approach.
Just as water morphed from the tap to Perrier, advertising has gone from standard display to rich media. The inventory is the same, but the packaging has changed; it’s more engaging and cooler. And it’s worth more. Publishers can follow some of the same steps the bottled-water companies employed when making consumers not think twice about spending hard-earned money for water.
1. Remove the impurities: The first big marketing push for selling bottled water was that it was better because all harmful impurities were removed. Similarly, publishers can remove the impurities around their sites. By cleaning the clutter and placing ads next to relevant content above the fold, performance will increase.
2. Packaging: Stroll through the bottled water aisle, and you’ll find options that are almost like sculptures. Elaborate bottle designs and artistic images are designed to grab consumers’ attention and imagination. Like the designer bottle, ads come packed with many eye-catching layers that are made to engage users. High impact units … offer sight, sound and motion. …
3. Customization: There’s a water variety for every lifestyle and every taste. From vitamin-enriched varieties to sports-themed bottles to energy water, the bottled water manufacturers have a product that targets every type of demographic. Publishers should also be able to target any type of audience. Leverage your audience data and build rich audience segments for advertisers looking to reach a specific audience. You can segment your readers by demographics, behavior, psychographics, or other custom segments that increase the value of your available inventory.
4. Influential: The bottled water craze had a time when it was about feeling exclusive, sophisticated and classy drinking a Perrier or an Evian. As more and more people began buying bottled water, celebrities were used to sell specific brands and everyone wanted to be like the influential personalities pushing the product. You can turn your own ad inventory into an influential tool by building social media sharing plug-ins into your creative. This helps create a social chain reaction of additional eyeballs viewing a particular ad, and ultimately your Web site. The benefit is not only the recommendations but also the ability to share and to accumulate those recommendations so that someone outside the social network of the viewer can find it.
5. Tell a story: There are a number of varieties of water that try to tell a story to the consumer: what far off land it comes from, how old the water source is, etc. The product is tied back to a compelling story. Your ad inventory should be tied to original content. Work with your editorial team to produce engaging content that can be sponsored by a relevant brand. Advertisers want to be part of the story.
The above is pretty basic marketing – differentiate your product. But the rewards are still out there for the publishers who do these basic things well.
For the rest of the article: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/174395/how-to-turn-your-inventory-into-a-valuable-commodi.html
Defining “The Cow Path”
Louderback.com
May 9, 2012
By Jim Louderback
I often talk about “The Cow Path” when I talk about old media, new media, web video and traditional Television, but I haven’t really ever explained it well. Until now.
Did you ever see cows go to a feed trough? They beat a path directly from the open gate into the field right to the feed. If you subsequently, say, move the feed 100 yards to the right, they will first head down the original path to where the feed was, and then take a 90 degree turn and march to where the new feed is – rather than going on a diagonal path directly to the new trough location.
All new media, when it first comes out, suffers from the cow-path mentality. We put magazine articles on the web (I did this at PC Week when the web first came out). We put sitcoms and dramas on web TV. We film radio shows and call them TV shows. We put movie cameras in front of plays and call them movies.
Over time we figure out the parameters of the new media, and what works and what makes sense. We learn to move the camera. We figure out the diagonal.
For the rest of the article: http://louderback.com/2012/defining-the-cow-path/
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