Barclays has lowered its global ad spending forecasts for this year and next, the financial firm confirmed in a report to investors Friday. The financial firm now believes global spending will reach nearly $490 billion this year, up 3.5%, a downgrade from its January growth forecast of 4%. Barclays cited ongoing issues in Europe and Asia, where China has imposed TV air-time restrictions as factors in the downgrades. The firm also reported that Internet spending, growing by leaps and bounds in recent years, still has significant growth ahead, given that dollars spent on the medium still significantly lag consumers' time spend online.
In April, the firm upgraded its U.S. growth forecast for 2012 to 4.6%, up more than a half percentage point from its January forecast,
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Saturday, June 9
Movies About Journalism
This goes a long way toward explaining why reporters and editors love movies about themselves. The films tend to add style to their khakis and wit to their whining. Their ordinary workday world suddenly seems so exciting, so glamorous and, very often, so unreal.
Now that actual newspapers are beginning to flicker and fade, like the tail ends of old movie reels, these films may one day define how the newsroom culture is remembered — from the kill-for-a-story obsession of the reporter Kirk Douglas in “Ace in the Hole” (1951) to the closing words of the editor Humphrey Bogart in that stop-the-presses classic from 1952, “Deadline U.S.A.”:
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Now that actual newspapers are beginning to flicker and fade, like the tail ends of old movie reels, these films may one day define how the newsroom culture is remembered — from the kill-for-a-story obsession of the reporter Kirk Douglas in “Ace in the Hole” (1951) to the closing words of the editor Humphrey Bogart in that stop-the-presses classic from 1952, “Deadline U.S.A.”:
Read more here
Thursday, June 7
Say Says 'Clean' Web Pages Better Than Ones Cluttered With Ads
In a not so surprising finding, SAY Media this morning released results of research conducted with the IPG Media Lab indicating that “clean Web pages” have a more positive impact on advertiser and site perception when compared with Web pages that are “cluttered” with advertising messages. The finding is consistent with a number of advertising and media research studies conducted for a variety of media in the past.
The study’s authors cited comScore data showing that the average time spent by users on a Web page “is steadily decreasing,” and currently averages 40 seconds per page.
Among those who actually saw the ads, the ones on the clean pages were viewed for an average of 6.4 seconds, while the ones on cluttered pages were viewed for an average of 3.2 seconds.
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The study’s authors cited comScore data showing that the average time spent by users on a Web page “is steadily decreasing,” and currently averages 40 seconds per page.
Among those who actually saw the ads, the ones on the clean pages were viewed for an average of 6.4 seconds, while the ones on cluttered pages were viewed for an average of 3.2 seconds.
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In scare for newspapers, digital ad growth stalls
As more newspapers cut back on print to reduce costs and focus on their websites, a troubling trend has emerged: online advertising sales are stalling. In the first quarter, digital advertising revenue at newspapers rose just 1 percent from a year ago, the fifth consecutive quarter that growth has declined, according to the Newspaper Association of America, a trade organization.
For an industry savaged by the erosion of print advertising dollars, significantly boosting digital revenue is necessary for survival. But the double-digit online growth rates that many newspapers used to enjoy -- and on which their hopes for a prosperous future rest -- could be a thing of the past.
Last week, ratings agency Moody's issued a report calling the U.S. newspaper industry's outlook "negative" because of the "relentless" declines in overall revenue.
"At this point, there is no evidence digital strategies are returning most daily newspapers to positive growth," wrote Moody's senior credit officer John Puchalla. "It is merely a way to moderate revenue declines."
Read more here
For an industry savaged by the erosion of print advertising dollars, significantly boosting digital revenue is necessary for survival. But the double-digit online growth rates that many newspapers used to enjoy -- and on which their hopes for a prosperous future rest -- could be a thing of the past.
Last week, ratings agency Moody's issued a report calling the U.S. newspaper industry's outlook "negative" because of the "relentless" declines in overall revenue.
"At this point, there is no evidence digital strategies are returning most daily newspapers to positive growth," wrote Moody's senior credit officer John Puchalla. "It is merely a way to moderate revenue declines."
Read more here
Tuesday, June 5
TV Remains Dominant Viewing, Ad Medium
Despite the growth of the Internet, total Internet viewing
represents 1.5% of all TV-video viewing, with traditional TV having a
virtual near monopoly -- 91% watching TV live, and 7% being
time-shifted, per Steve Lanzano, president/CEO of TVB Local Marketing
Solutions.
In a recently released TVB study with Knowledge Networks, research also notes that TV usage has grown 8% in two years. TV is still dominant when it comes to the advertising medium most influential in making a purchase decision for those 18 + -- at 37.2%. Next comes newspapers at 10.6%, then Internet at 5.6%.
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In a recently released TVB study with Knowledge Networks, research also notes that TV usage has grown 8% in two years. TV is still dominant when it comes to the advertising medium most influential in making a purchase decision for those 18 + -- at 37.2%. Next comes newspapers at 10.6%, then Internet at 5.6%.
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Why Reporting Is Ripe For Innovation
Today, the social web is the new public square. Anyone is able to produce and publish information at the click of a button. There are 150,000 new URLs registered every day. On Facebook, people produce billions of pieces of content daily, 300 million of them are photos. WordPress.com users create roughly 500,000 new blog posts every day. On Tumblr, there have been more than 22 trillion total posts published. And this kind of production is still growing.
Journalists should no longer think of themselves as “newspaper reporters” or a journalist of any specific medium. Instead they should consider themselves multimedia producers equipped to tell a story on multiple platforms. They should also have knowledge of how stories are being consumed. More than anything, a truly “integrated newsroom” will have journalists who build tools that enable them to do reporting at scale and innovate the storytelling process.
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Journalists should no longer think of themselves as “newspaper reporters” or a journalist of any specific medium. Instead they should consider themselves multimedia producers equipped to tell a story on multiple platforms. They should also have knowledge of how stories are being consumed. More than anything, a truly “integrated newsroom” will have journalists who build tools that enable them to do reporting at scale and innovate the storytelling process.
Read more here
Moody's: Digital Revenues Won't Save Newspapers
June brought more bad news for the newspaper industry, in the form of another negative forecast from Moody’s, the ratings agency. Moody’s senior credit officer John Puchalla warned in stark terms that earnings will drop over the next several years, as digital revenue growth fails to offset continuing losses on the print side.
“Revenue declines are relentless, and industry efforts to grow the digital business and reduce costs are not sufficient to offset pricing pressure and print volume losses,” according to Puchalla, who gave the entire newspaper business a “negative” outlook.
According to the most recent figures from the Newspaper Association of America, total ad revenues dropped 6.9% from $5.5 billion in the first quarter of 2011 to nearly $5.2 billion in the first quarter of 2012. This was due to declines in print ad revenues, which fell 8.2% to $4.36 billion over the same period. Online ad revenues edged up 1% to $816 million.
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“Revenue declines are relentless, and industry efforts to grow the digital business and reduce costs are not sufficient to offset pricing pressure and print volume losses,” according to Puchalla, who gave the entire newspaper business a “negative” outlook.
According to the most recent figures from the Newspaper Association of America, total ad revenues dropped 6.9% from $5.5 billion in the first quarter of 2011 to nearly $5.2 billion in the first quarter of 2012. This was due to declines in print ad revenues, which fell 8.2% to $4.36 billion over the same period. Online ad revenues edged up 1% to $816 million.
Read more here
Monday, June 4
New suffixes for internet addresses
Earlier this year the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the outfit in charge of addresses in cyberspace, allowed applications for new suffixes. That would allow new domains, such as .microsoft, .paris and .music, to join the 22 existing handles, such as .com and .info. Brand owners complain they will have to spend millions buying domains they don’t want, just to protect their online identities. In early April it halted applications for new domains after discovering a technical glitch that may have allowed some applicants to view each other’s confidential plans. The system was rebooted on May 22nd and the applications will probably be made public in mid-June. Lawsuits loom about that. No one will challenge Disney for .disney, but what about .disneyexperience? Such questions remains unclear despite more than 300 pages of guidelines. The battles will be fiercest over the most popular generic suffixes—such as .art, .radio, .music and .web.
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Mobile Devices Not Replacing Newspapers - Yet
Two-thirds of U.S. adults now use at least one mobile media device in their daily lives, according to a national survey recently conducted by the Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. The RJI survey found that news consumption ranks fourth among reasons people use mobile devices, behind interpersonal communications, entertainment, and Internet usage for information not provided by news organizations. Despite the large number of mobile device users, Roger Fidler, the program director for digital publishing at RJI, says that mobile news products do not appear to be replacing printed newspapers as quickly as was earlier predicted. The survey also showed that smartphones and large media tablets are the two most popular devices for consuming news.
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Why Crowdfunding is Today's Goldrush
An area where crowdfunding sites have great potential is in the leveraging of data from a wide range of startups to forecast what sort of companies will succeed and which will fail.
“A crowdfunding platform can serve as a prediction market,” Lawton says. “A successful platform will aggregate an enormous amount of data. It can then analyze that big data to predict to a higher degree which startups will be successful. You have all these deals on a platform and layered on top of that you have this black-box algorithm that you can leverage to jack up the success ratio on startup investing like we’ve never seen before.”
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“A crowdfunding platform can serve as a prediction market,” Lawton says. “A successful platform will aggregate an enormous amount of data. It can then analyze that big data to predict to a higher degree which startups will be successful. You have all these deals on a platform and layered on top of that you have this black-box algorithm that you can leverage to jack up the success ratio on startup investing like we’ve never seen before.”
Read more here
AP Stylebook 2012 edition released today features new broadcast chapter
The 2012 edition of the AP Stylebook, which comes out today, features more than 270 updated and new entries. There’s a new broadcast chapter, an expanded social media chapter.
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8% Of U.S. Online Adults Now Use Twitter Daily
According to the latest data from the Pew Internet & American Life project, 15% of online adults in the U.S. now say that they have used Twitter in the past and 8% told Pew that they do so on a typical day. Overall Twitter usage has actually remained pretty stable since early 2011 (the slight changes over the last year are safely within the margin of error). What has changed, though, is the number of daily active users, which increased from 4% in May 2011 to 8% today.
Young adults use Twitter at twice the rate of those between 30 and 49 (26% vs. 14%) and urban and suburban residents are more likely to use Twitter than Internet users in rural areas. Twitter usage among young adults is one of the few areas where there have been significant changes lately. Since May 2011, daily usage of Twitter among those 18 to 24 increased from 9% to 20%
Read more here
Young adults use Twitter at twice the rate of those between 30 and 49 (26% vs. 14%) and urban and suburban residents are more likely to use Twitter than Internet users in rural areas. Twitter usage among young adults is one of the few areas where there have been significant changes lately. Since May 2011, daily usage of Twitter among those 18 to 24 increased from 9% to 20%
Read more here
Sunday, June 3
Government Gets Unreal Game Engine
Unreal Engine 3, the game engine that provides the visuals and physics behind popular shooter games such as “America’s Army 3” and “Mass Effect 3,” is being licensed to government customers.
Another, more hush-hush project is Sirius, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA) effort to develop serious games to train intelligence analysts to recognize and diminish their own biases and thus produce more accurate analyses. ARA, along with other contractors such as Raytheon, has received a $10 million IARPA award to fund research.
Another, more hush-hush project is Sirius, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA) effort to develop serious games to train intelligence analysts to recognize and diminish their own biases and thus produce more accurate analyses. ARA, along with other contractors such as Raytheon, has received a $10 million IARPA award to fund research.
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