The Internet as News Central

JANUARY 13, 2009

Only TV is a more popular source.

In yet another sign that news readers are dropping print for digital, the Internet has now surpassed all media except television as a news source, according to consumers surveyed in December 2008 by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

In December 2008, 40% of respondents said they got most of their news about national and international issues from the Internet, up from just 24% in September 2007.

Pew said it was the first time since it started surveying that consumers relied more on the Internet for news than on newspapers.

Television was still the main source for national and international news, at 70%.

For young people, however, the Internet now rivals TV as a news source. Nearly six out of 10 Americans younger than 30 said they got most of their national and international news online; the exact same percentage said TV was the main way they got their news.

Another indicator that print newspaper readers are shifting to online comes from the Readership Institute. Although two-thirds of Internet users surveyed in July 2008 said they still used print newspapers about as much as they did before they started visiting news sites, more than one-quarter said they were reading print less as a result. That figure has grown significantly in the past five years.

In addition, newspaper visitors are typically older, wealthier and better-educated than the average US Internet user. However, young Internet users are getting their news online more often than from print—a trend that bodes well for newspaper sites as these visitors age and, it is to be hoped, maintain their online news habits.

Brands Adjust to Media Fragmentation

JUNE 27, 2008

One way media synergy might pay off

Marketers have long focused on segmenting consumers, to approach them via the media channels and destinations they use most. But in many markets, media fragmentation has made reaching a large enough audience increasingly difficult.

Addressing this problem, Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO of Denuo and chief innovation officer at Publicis Groupe Media, discussed future trends and brand strategies at the recent Online Publishers Association (OPA) Europe conference.

Mr. Tobaccowala said that a shift is on from segmentation to reaggregation, thanks to the key role of search and clever use of online options by brands to appeal to a wider range of consumers. Marketers, he said, should think less about "spaces" where their audiences spend time and more about the audiences themselves. Focusing on the way one target group—college kids, for instance—moves through the media landscape can alert brands to big opportunities.

Fox Interactive Media, the fifth-most-popular media property in the US, is an example. The Fox online empire includes AmericanIdol.com, FOX.com, GameSpot and MySpace. Fox is already doing much to encourage appropriate crossover of content elements, ads and promotions between its own properties. So advertisers working intelligently with one or more of these properties can leverage the interconnections to reach their potential audiences in more places.

Interviews with contestants on American Idol may appear on the program's Web site, for instance, and a viewer's favorite clips can be posted on MySpace—where brands associated with the show have a second or third chance to connect with likely buyers.

For marketers, the challenge is to reach communities at multiple touchpoints, using both online and offline channels.

Carmaker BMW is doing well at this. Its global Web presence now includes a polished, award-winning site with an emphasis on video.

The BMW-web.tv site highlights many aspects of the brand, including the latest models, its design history, Formula One involvement, breakthrough technologies, contributions to major charities and support for headline music festivals. Fans and customers can register at the site, post car-related videos and rate videos posted by others.

Because BMW is an aspirational brand, its appeals to a wide spectrum of consumers—including owners, potential buyers, history buffs and design creatives. Clever sponsorship deals also bring BMW and its brand values into the lives of sports and music fans.

Similarly, Nokia's Green Room ties mobile with music fans. The concept began with a Web site offering exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of performers, an insider blog and links to the Nokia Music Store. Now Channel 4 in the UK is putting some of this material on broadcast TV. Inevitably, some Green Room content has also migrated to social networks and (surprise!) into the mobile sphere.

Tero Ojanpera, executive VP for entertainment and communities at Nokia, stressed at the OPA conference that the company is moving beyond its handset focus, to take a central role in an always-on environment. Now the iconic Finnish brand aims to be a hub for consumers' media experience, providing access to music and "everything else that matters to them."

"The proliferation of online and offline channels is not such bad news for brands as it used to be," said Karin von Abrams, senior analyst at eMarketer. "Not every brand has the market clout or technological know-how of Nokia. But most brands can take a leaf from Nokia's or BMW's book, and think of new ways to reach consumers—wherever they are."

Media Revenue to Hit $2.2 Trillion By 2012: PwC

Filed at 6:17 a.m. ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Global entertainment and media revenue is forecast rising by an average of 6.6 percent a year to $2.2 trillion by 2012, boosted by advertising-supported digital and mobile media and an explosion in the adoption of broadband.

According to the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) annual forecast released on Wednesday, advertising tied to the burgeoning interest in watching videos on the Internet and on devices, such as Apple Inc's iPod, will account for 24 percent of growth in the sector and is projected to grow fastest at a compound annual growth rate of 19.5 percent to 2012.

Total entertainment and media revenue growth is seen outpacing global gross domestic product, which will increase 5.7 percent, according to the report.

Despite the acceleration of digital businesses, revenue from traditional media venues such as television will still dominate global market share, if not growth. Digital and mobile revenue will account for only 11 percent of total spending, or $234 billion, in the next five years.

PwC's report presents a more stable view of large media and entertainment companies. Those shares have sunk more than 13 percent since the beginning of the year -- at a steeper rate than the Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.SPX> -- on fears that the weak economic climate could curtail consumer spending and spark an advertising recession.

Last week, Lehman Brothers argued that with entertainment company valuations near 10-year lows, it might be a good time for investors to shop for deals, such as News Corp .

One surprise: Advertising on over-the-air television globally -- the sector viewed by Wall Street as one of the most vulnerable in a weakened economy -- is expected to rise 5 percent on a compounded annual growth basis to 2012, making it the most resilient to threats posed by digital growth.

"The oft-reported death of traditional media remains greatly exaggerated," according to the report.

The weakest area in the next five years will be the music industry. Ravaged by online piracy, recorded music sales are expect to fall by 0.6 percent to 2012, but is seen growing again by 2011, when digital sales will overtake CD sales.

What's unlikely to be solved in the next five years? "While companies are making bold moves to follow consumers into the digital/mobile future, they continue to wrestle with the challenge of creating business models that adequately monetize their efforts," the report said.

PwC's report, which surveys 15 major industry segments in 59 countries, underscored a trend over the past few years. The United States will continue to account for the biggest share of revenue by country, or $759 billion by 2012, but will grow the slowest at about 4.8 percent, outpaced by the Asia Pacific and Latin America.

Does engagement need a common definition?

Is it really necessary for all marketers to settle on a common definition of engagement? Here's a breakdown of the issue.

Several presenters at the iMedia Breakthrough Summit, which wrapped up yesterday, carried a common theme throughout their presentations. Quite a few of them touched on how advertising's history is characterized by standards and standard definitions. Whether it is reach, frequency, GRPs, or even early-stage interactive success metrics like clickthrough rate, adoption is contingent on the industry deciding on a common definition that is accepted by all.

This is how the ad industry has approached the notion of engagement. The three- and four-letter ad organizations have been bickering for years about how to define engagement precisely in the context of an ad campaign. It is thought that a standard will make it easier for marketers to dump money into engagement campaigns. And yes, standards would accelerate this.

But standards aren't necessary.

Marketers are certainly free to define engagement any way they want to. If, to your brand, "engagement" means that someone went three pages deep or more on your website, or that they responded to a blog post or played around with a Flash game for more than 30 seconds, that's fine. What matters is not how a brand defines engagement, but what that engagement does for the brand and its success metrics.

One of the ways we've been determining impact of engagement on brands at Underscore is through the use of what we call a "3D Brand Study." You're likely familiar with the run-of-the-mill brand studies from the likes of FactorTG, Dynamic Logic or Insight Express. Their exposed-control methodology is widely accepted as a way to gauge lift in key brand metrics for online brand advertisers.

A 3D Brand Study executed through any one of these vendors recruits an extra exposed group. That group answers the same survey questions as the control group and the group exposed to banner ads, but the respondents in that group also happen to meet the brand's criteria for engagement. Thus, we can see not only what exposure to advertising does for the brand, but also how much additional lift we get when prospects are engaged.

3D Brand Studies allow marketers to set their own criteria for engagement and not wait for the industry to set standard definitions. Determining what impact engagement has on a campaign isn't going to wait for those standards. Most marketers know intuitively that engagement does a lot more for the brand than mere exposure, so they can't afford to wait for the bickering to end.

So don't wait. Work with your brand teams to define engagement your way, then work with your agencies and research companies to structure campaigns, such that a 3D Brand Study can recruit enough engaged respondents to gauge a lift in metrics.

Let me know what you think in comments.

Is there a digital primetime?

By Michael Estrin

Making sense of the web's fast-growing but fragmented video audience isn't easy. But the truth may be that reach is already here. It's just up to the marketers to find it.

At some point in my life 8 p.m. stopped being all that important. When I was a kid, primetime defined my media world, and I can pretty much chart what I know about pop culture from the shows I watched, all of which aired in that three-hour block called primetime.

Sad to say, but when the clock struck 8 p.m., a near Pavlovian response took hold as I raced to the TV to find the shows that defined my generation.

But fragmentation has eviscerated that shared media environment, and the on-demand culture of the web has made time irrelevant.

Is this a bad thing? No. Consumers seem to love it. Media companies, though stunned by how niche their audiences have become, seem to be adapting, and marketers are turning to technology companies to give them the reach they came to expect in the days of network TV.

And so it appeared that everyone in the media triangle (consumers, content producers and marketers) was coping -- with varying degrees of success -- in an increasingly fragmented world. True, a handful dinosaurs masquerading as media executives still insisted on a primetime audience, but that idea -- that users would actually band together for a shared experience subject to the dictates of a clock -- seemed laughable at best.

But then something weird happened -- at least, if you believe a piece in The New York Times.

It turns out that the web hasn't killed primetime after all. But like so many things on the internet, it's not what you think.

For starters, the web's primetime (if there is one, more on that in a bit), is a midday event. What some refer to as dayparting and others call video snacking is actually a trend of students, office workers, housewives and possibly the perpetually unemployed turning away from the TV and embracing new media in a big way.

It's noon; do you know who's looking at your ads?
Speaking mostly to publishers, The New York Times found that there is a growing push to get content up in time for a midday audience.

"Go take a walk around your office [at lunchtime]," Alan Wurtzel, head of research for NBC told the paper. "Out of 20 people, I'm going to guarantee that five are going to be on some sort of site that is not work-related."

According to The New York Times, portals like AOL and Yahoo have taken note of the trend, gearing their content toward a noon audience.

For Rob Barnett, CEO of MyDamnChannel, there's little doubt that there's such a thing as a midday video spike.

"We've been able to prove that noon -- no matter what geographic region you're looking at -- is the new primetime," Barnett says. "Wherever you look, there's a significant spike around noon."

In fact, one of Barnett's shows, "Horrible People," has a decidedly soap opera quality to it on the theory that midday audiences may have shifted platforms but kept their taste in content pretty much the same.


Not so fast
But not everyone agrees with Barnett's assessment, and numbers for video snacking seem hard to come by.

YouTube, the 800-pound gorilla of video sites, boldly declares that all times are primetime, saying it doesn't have publicly available data on when viewers are watching content. A YouTube spokesperson added that the site's audience is a global one and the concept of primetime is both dated and irrelevant.

According to comScore, one of the few firms able to give specific data on video consumption by time of day, there is a midday peak, with 37 million unique viewers looking at web video in the midday block. By comparison, comScore reports that the web's total video audience is about 19 million in the morning, with about the same number of viewers in the evening.

Cory Kronengold, director of marketing and communications for Tremor Media, a firm that specializes in placing ads in videos, confirms that there is a midday spike. But, he says, midday viewing is hard to quantify because of the geographic spread, and the spike occurs across all ad formats.

"I’d hardly call it the 'new primetime' because it's video snacking -- people watching news clips, the latest webisode or viral hit," Kronengold says. "They are blasting through more web pages and getting more ads, but not necessarily mimicking the primetime 'lean back' experience. Maybe its primetime for webisodes."

Pavlov's dog?
And then there's Break.com, the male-focused video portal-turned ad network. Break.com CEO Keith Richman says his site has actually seen a midday spike in the past, but what's happening now is actually a "flattening out of the day."

"We're seeing more people at all times," Richman says. "The peaks are much less than they used to be. From a marketer's standpoint, you want a specific person and you want to know the time that you're going to reach them. What I think [is happening with online video] is that marketers have a longer period of time over the day, rather than saying Thursday night primetime."

According to Richman, Break.com updates four times per day (10 a.m., 1 p.m., 4 p.m. and 10 p.m.), but he says that's got more to do with users developing viewing habits than publishers and marketers creating an artificial primetime.

So, perhaps it's the viewers that want primetime back. Or, if not primetime, something akin to a "regular time" when they can incorporate online video into their everyday habits. While that's good news for the medium -- the idea that web video is routine as opposed to a novelty -- it's hardly a sea change away from the on-demand world and back to a more temporal consumption pattern.

But there's another school of thought that says it's not the users who want their primetime back. Instead, it's reach-challenged marketers who are longing for the days of a primetime audience.


Wishful thinking?
"Audiences are enjoying their favorite programs on their own schedule and it's not just during their lunch break," reports Greg Mand, VP of sales for PodShow, when asked if he's seeing dayparting among his audience.

While Mand says PodShow's users are eagerly embracing the on-demand universe, a handful of advertisers have requested time-specific slots. But according to Mand, that kind of thinking won't keep pace with the fast-evolving market.

"Though a ton of folks consume online content at the office, I think we'll see usage spread out more evenly across the day and night as the market develops," Mand explains.

If dayparting for video is really just wishful thinking on the part of marketers, then the problem may go beyond simple numbers.

Think of it this way: Marketers who formerly used TV to obtain reach in the past probably didn't sweat reach as much as their digital counterparts do today. If you wanted 10 million viewers in the 1980s, Nielsen could tell you which network show had that number with the demographics you were looking for. The data may not have been exact, but for marketers, it certainly was easy to come by.

But there's no such thing as a one-stop-shop for content today. What's out there is a universe of publishers and ad networks, regular viewers and irregular viewers. And if that's the case, the new primetime is really just a quest to find "M*A*S*H" or "Seinfeld" where it does not -- and likely never will -- exist.

So what does all this mean for marketers?
It's not fair to call the idea of a new digital primetime a myth. For one thing, there are some numbers (though better ones are required) that point to a midday traffic spike, at least at some sites.

Anecdotally, the NBC researcher who told The New York Times that office workers are consuming a lot of video at lunch, seems to be right on the money. Scanning my office and talking to friends and family, I've found that a lot of people are watching internet video in the middle of the day.

But it's hard to say that there's any single thing that people are watching. In fact, it's hard to say that there's any single thing people are watching at anytime of the day. And so it stands to reason that midday is just as fragmented as all other times.

So what's a marketer to do? One piece of advice may be as simple as get over it. Like the 30-second spot, the idea of primetime may also be a digital casualty.

According to Keith Richman, primetime might exist for a core audience, but the bulk of the viewers have become untethered. That assessment seems to jibe with Rob Barnett, the CEO of MyDamnChannel, who insists audiences are embracing a new primetime on the web. According to Barnett, MyDamnChannel uses its regular publishing schedule to build an audience that is loyal to both its site and specific shows. Where the two part ways, it seems, is the degree to which time-specific publication can develop and drive an audience.

But marketers may need to keep their eye on a somewhat different -- and more complex -- ball. Marketers will have to ask whether they're buying an audience, as defined by content alone, or if they're buying eyeballs, which means creating a hybrid of content, time and targeting to obtain reach.

Online video has taken flack for not being able to deliver reach. But the truth may be that reach is already here. It's just up to the marketers to find it now.

Internet User Attention Often Divided

NOVEMBER 7, 2007

Ads need to resonate across multiple media.

More than eight in 10 Internet users also do some offline activity while online, according to Burst Media.

Burst found that nearly three out of five Internet users watched television while online. "TV and the Internet have long been multitasking buddies," said Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst at eMarketer. "It makes sense to create ad messages that resonate across media."

The second most common offline activity for online multitaskers was job-related activities (33.0%), followed by reading a book (31.1%), a magazine or newspaper (29.7%) and talking on a mobile phone (23.6%).

"Keep in mind that many of these activities are not representative of true multitasking," Ms. Williamson said. "It's one thing to go online with the radio playing in the background, but it's all but impossible to read text on a Web page and in a newspaper at the same time. Consumers are switching focus, rather than multitasking."

"Still, anytime your attention is divided, your ability to recall and comprehend ad messages is impacted."

The Web is not the only medium to which consumers are giving divided attention. Music listeners and instant messagers were even more likely than computer users to be juggling media consumption, according to a Bridge Ratings study.

Which Rich Media Type Works Best?

SEPTEMBER 14, 2007

Online video is flashy, but not all sites support it.

Online video gets all the attention these days, but consumers actually spend more time with online promotions and coupons — 30.8 seconds versus 16.26 — according to PointRoll's "Entertainment Performance Analysis: The Big Picture of Online Advertising" report.

The firm drew report data from entertainment advertising campaigns it delivered. These included campaigns for movies, DVDs, television shows and video games.

"More and more, entertainment advertisers are starting to embrace rich media as a key vehicle for ensuring online advertising success," said Chris Saridakis, CEO of PointRoll, in a statement.

The fact that consumers spend more time with promotions and coupons than online video makes sense since the only action required of most video viewers is to press play, whereas filling out forms for promotions takes longer.

Similarly, the interaction rate, defined as the numbers of interactions divided by the number of impressions, is higher for many types of rich media than it is with online video. Nearly twice as many consumers interacted with text messages as with video.

Although it is useful to consider these metrics in a directional sense, they do not speak to ROI-related considerations such as purchases made as a result of exposure to rich media. Branding efficacy is not really addressed, either.

It could be argued that all time spent with rich media constitutes engagement. But is a consumer really more engaged just because a form takes more time to fill out than pressing play on an online video?

As usual, the answer depends on the goals of a given campaign. These entertainment advertisers may have focused mainly on interaction rates, with ROI and other metrics lower down on the priority list.

One thing about rich media is that it is widely supported — even more so than online video, according to an Advertising.com study. This may be a consideration for a campaign that aims to run on the widest possible number of Web sites,

Nielsen, ComScore Taking A Measure Of Their Web Metrics

August 28, 2007: 08:05 PM EST

Aug. 28, 2007 (Investor's Business Daily delivered by Newstex) --

Companies in the business of tracking online usage are searching for measurements that reflect new technologies and ways people interact with Web sites.

Tracker comScore SCOR has introduced a slew of metrics this year that measure everything from site visits to time spent and what kinds of hardware and software users have. ComScore this month introduced qSearch 2.0, a service that expands the company's measure of online searches beyond leaders such as Google GOOG and Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) YHOO to include searches on commerce sites, via downloaded toolbars and through local desktop search.

The idea is to give clients -- companies that operate Web sites and/or advertise on sites -- a clearer picture of user behavior and into how to best to spend their search marketing budgets.

"When we see there's a better way to be tracking something, we're going to go out and do it," said comScore analyst Andrew Lipsman.

ComScore rival Nielsen/NetRatings, a unit of privately held Nielsen Co., last month added a total-minutes metric to its measurement service. It also added a service called GamePlay that measures use of console and PC video games.

ComScore and Nielsen/Net-Ratings provide research that helps Web site publishers set ad rates and helps advertisers get more for their money. The trackers hope their metrics will boost revenue. That will likely happen only if the metrics help sites gauge their worth to advertisers, help provide better online ad pricing and more effectively get ads in front of the right viewers.

What's driving the changes?

One factor is ways Web sites are created. A rising number of sites use Asynchronous Javascript And XML, or Ajax, a way of using Java, XML and other technologies. Ajax makes it possible for pieces of Web pages to be updated on the fly without refreshing the whole page. One result is visitors call up fewer Web pages -- and the site falls in rankings based on standard page-view measurements.

The rise of video is stripping additional relevance from the page-view metric, as people spend long periods viewing a single site page.

Another change in Web viewing, says comScore, is that up to one-third of Internet users regularly delete their cookies, the bits of software that many sites inconspicuously store on users' computers so users can be identified on future visits. That's how sites greet you by name, for example.

Without the cookie identifier, users will then be counted as new, or unique, visitors the next time they come to a site. That artificially inflates another standard measurement of Web site popularity, the number of unique visitors a site gets per month. (A person who enters the site once and another who enters the same site 1,000 times should both count as one unique visitor.) Cookie deletion is causing sites to overstate their audience by as much as 150%, estimates comScore. That can lead sites to overcharge for advertising.

Alas, many people in this field concede there is no ideal way to measure online audiences. For instance, it's pointless to compare the audience that flocks to YouTube, which strives to hold onto visitors as long as possible, with that of a site like Google that's trying to get people in and out of its search engine as quickly as possible -- preferably by having users click its search ads to link to an advertiser's site.

The latest changes help, many say. Page views aren't "a very good gauge anymore of user behavior," said Scott Ross, product marketing director for Nielsen/NetRatings' NetView service. "Time spent (per site visit) is a much better common denominator."

Peter Daboll, chief of insights for Yahoo and former CEO of comScore, agrees.

The page view "does seem a bit archaic and doesn't seem to measure anything well," he said. "We're making progress in trying to understand what matters."

What matters is a combination of getting users to a site in the first place along with the extent to which those users are engaged once they get there.

That is best measured by time spent on a site, says Jack Wakshlag, chief research officer for Turner Broadcasting. "If people spend lots of time on a site, then it's an engaging Web site," Wakshlag said.

But relying on time spent on a site isn't perfect. Time Warner's (NYSE:TWX) TWX AOL family of sites moves up in the rankings because of its instant messaging service. It inflates measurements of time spent because it registers as site engagement while users have it running, and many users keep it running in the background.

Conversely, Google ranks low in time spent on a site, per session, because the site is designed to move people to other sites fast.

Such differences in what sites try to accomplish is why comScore plans further changes to its metrics.

It's preparing to launch a service that will measure ad impressions, or how many times an ad is "served" to a Web surfer.

It's also looking to refine its measures. If a user has an IM window open, along with streamed video of a baseball game and a text-based news site, comScore wants to measure how much time each application is in the foreground.

The new measurements from comScore and Nielsen/NetRatings could help online advertisers who face a confusing market of wildly fluctuating prices.

"The advertisers are going to see less variability in the prices they see from sources A, B and C," said Bill Cook, senior vice president of research and standards for the Advertising Research Foundation.

Advertisers strive to track the effectiveness of online ads.

The goal, says Yahoo's Daboll, is to best gauge the impact of advertising. "There's nothing worse," he said, "than throwing money at an ad campaign and not knowing how well it works."

Print and Digital Need Not Compete

AUGUST 27, 2007

The Web is effective, but some find it intrusive.

The printed word still holds a strong pull for many consumers, according to Deloitte & Touche's "State of the Media Democracy" study, conducted by the Harrison Group in March 2007.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents said they would rather read the printed version of a magazine even if they could get the same information online.

"Old media is surprisingly resilient," said Deloitte technology specialist Ed Moran in an interview with eMarketer. "Many people use magazines to keep up with apparel and other trends. Asked about their top-five media intentions for the coming year, No. 3 overall was to read a book."

The preference for print carried over into consumer attitudes about advertising. More than three-quarters of respondents said they found Internet advertising to be more intrusive than print ads. Nearly two-thirds said they paid more attention to ads in print.

These findings are a strong argument for using several media in campaigns. However, they are hardly cause for abandoning digital efforts. For a start, search advertising was more much more effective than print ads at driving Web site visits.

Also, print simply doesn't deliver the same bang for the buck as digital, according to an Intellisurvey-Radar Research study commissioned by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization.

Mr. Moran said the overall results of the study emphasized the need for integrated marketing.

"There should be no distinction between online and offline," he said. "There is no conceptual reason these days why marketers wouldn't consider using multiple media with campaigns.

"The idea that one is a threat to another is a knee-jerk reaction," he said.

CONFIRMED: Web Users Ignore Ads (and Newspaper Users Don't?)

Henry Blodget | August 24, 2007 6:59 AM

Jakob Nielsen offers another eye-tracking analysis (via Don Day at Lost Remote) that confirms what most people have long assumed: web users gravitate toward content, not ads. Thus, to make your ads more effective, make them look more like content, etc.

Such findings are usually cast as bad news for the online advertising industry--proof, finally, that it's just a sham, that the Internet is a terrible medium for advertising, that advertisers will soon come to their senses and rush back to...well, that's just it, where will they rush back to, exactly? What is less often mentioned in "web ads are ineffective" reports are the results of comparable eye-tracking studies for, say, newspapers.

You've never heard of such studies? Well, neither have we. Maybe that's because "eye-tracking studies" for newspapers would be putting the cart miles ahead of the horse. After all, what's the use of an "eye-tracking study" if a user's eye never settles on the section in question, let alone the page or area of the page? What's the use of studying what ads readers pay attention to when 90% of the paper ends up un-glanced-at on the rear stoop?

We spend a lot of time talking about the impending death of the print newspaper industry, but what is far more startling is that advertisers still spend $50-plus billion a year on a medium in which only a fraction of the ads are ever seen, let alone paid attention to.

UPDATE: We had never heard of newspaper eye-tracking studies but that was evidently because we were web-provincial morons. As Kim Gregson points out in the comments, they've been around for at least 15 years. Here's a Poynter Institute story on the latest one. And here's Poynter's summary of them.

We will add this, though: When trying to assess whether your message has been delivered, the web can at least tell you whether a page has been viewed. A newspaper (or TV set) can't. And eye-tracking research doesn't make a bit of difference if papers are left on front steps or tossed in the recycling bin.

Study: TV is taking a back seat

By Georg Szalai

Aug 22, 2007

NEW YORK -- Personal time that consumers spend on the Internet is rivaling their TV time, with user-generated content and networking sites among the most popular destinations for entertainment seekers. Plus, people seem more open to mobile content and are looking for more traditional entertainment offerings on their mobile devices than previously thought.

These are among the findings of a new IBM survey of consumer behavior in the digital age, which suggests that studios, advertisers, ad agencies, content distributors and other industry players must continue to adjust their business strategies amid changes in media usage and consumers' increased expectations for control and community.

Among key lessons for studios: Make your content available everywhere, but don't expect to get paid for every platform. And keep an eye on key influencers on the Web to succeed in creating word-of-mouth.

The survey is part of an IBM study on the future of advertising, set to be released in the fall, and it showed that consumers are divided over their preferences for free online content with ads or subscription fee-based content without commercials. About a third is for free content, but about 20% are willing to pay for the HBO-style model, according to IBM.

"Given the rising power of individuals and communities, media and entertainment industry players will have to become much better at providing permission-based advertising and related consumer-driven ratings services," said study co-author Bill Battino, communications sector managing partner at IBM Global Business Services.

In the latest sign of television's decline as the primary media device, 19% of respondents said they spend six hours or more each day on personal Internet usage. That compares with 8% who said so about the TV. One to four hours of TV usage was reported by 66%, compared with 60% for the Web.

"The Internet is becoming consumers' primary entertainment source," said Saul Berman, IBN Media & Entertainment Strategy and Change practice leader. "The TV is increasingly taking a back seat to the cell phone and the personal computer among consumers age 18-34."

The number of TV viewers using DVRs continues to expand, with 24% of U.S. respondents saying they have a DVR and watch 50% or more of TV programming in replay mode, IBM found. Of those viewers, 33% said they are watching more TV since owning a DVR, in line with other recent studies.

Australians show opposing trends from the U.S., with most respondents preferring live TV and replaying less than 25% of programming, according to IBM.

Watching video content on the Web is a popular activity these days. An average of 67% of consumers surveyed by IBM globally said they have watched or want to watch online video.

For video content online, the most popular destinations are user content-generated sites like YouTube, with 39% of respondents saying that's where they go most frequently. TV network sites (33%), search engines (32%) and social-networking sites (28%) are the next most-popular locations for Web video offers, according to the IBM study.

In the U.S., 26% said they have contributed to a social-networking site, and 7% have done so to a user-generated content site, compared with Australia, which has a leadership position in these areas with 36% and 9%, respectively, the survey found.

As far as mobile video is concerned, an average of 35% surveyed globally by IBM said they have or want to watch mobile video. Seven% report having a video-content subscription for their mobile phones. Nearly a third of U.K. users said their mobile consumption ate in their TV viewing time, according to IBM.

Battino said his team was surprised that shortform content tailored to the mobile device was less popular than they had expected. About half of users said they prefer to access traditional video offers like TV shows on their mobile.

Could this lead consumers to one day watch more movies in mobile form as well? "We think that will be a natural progression from watching TV shows currently," the IBM expert said, adding that the under-20 age demographic especially loves portability of content. "They may start a film at home and then watch it on a laptop or cell on the go," he said. "And they like to watch in discreet time segments," meaning they might watch a movie in several 20-minute sessions.

The lesson of the IBM survey for studios is to continue making content available on various platforms. However, "don't expect consumers to spend incrementally on different devices," he warned. "People want to pay for content once and then move it" to whatever device they like.

Also, online ratings, reviews and word-of-mouth continue to emerge as key drivers of boxoffice success in the digital age, he added.

"Magnets," or online opinion leaders, are fast emerging as key influencers that media and entertainment companies must keep in mind when promoting their content, the IBM expert said. "Some companies have started putting such people on their payroll," he added without providing examples.

Battino said he thinks there is "very strong" consumer interest in day-and-date VOD releases by cable operators, which are testing such offers with studios. Hybrid purchases like allowing a movie buff to buy a ticket for a film plus get it on DVD at a theater as well also will be a wave of the future, he predicted.

Among key digital age gadgets and services, portable music offers are among the most popular, with 23% saying they are using them, according to the IBM survey. Also, 11% reported using a PC-based music service, and 18% reported an online newspaper subscription.

The online survey was conducted between mid-April and mid-June by the IBM Institute for Business Value and generated 885 responses in the U.S., 559 in the U.K., 378 in Japan, 338 in Germany and 263 in Australia.

How Software Is Quickly Becoming an Advertising Medium

Are Sponsored Messages Within Word-Processing, E-mail Applications the Future of B-to-B Marketing?

By Abbey Klaassen

Published: August 13, 2007

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Trevor Nielsen used to spend much of his workday roaming from computer to computer at Pioneer Hospital, a Meeker, Colo., nonprofit, with an Excel spreadsheet, keeping track of the tech inventory, work orders and other tasks that fill an information-systems engineer's daily duties. Now, he does it all with one smart piece of software that he says only larger, better-financed IT departments normally could afford. For Mr. Nielsen, however, it's free -- underwritten by advertisers.

Spiceworks is an early leader in the nascent but growing business of ad-supported software.

The software is from Spiceworks, an early leader in the nascent but growing business of ad-supported software. The idea for the advertiser is that rather than simply interrupting your audience's day with a message of some type, you are offering them something truly useful -- something so useful, in fact, that it inspires the gratitude of people like Mr. Nielsen: "We're very happy. ... There are things it does that we just wouldn't be able to do without it," he said.

Up for debate
But whether ad-supported software can make a major play for marketer dollars is still up for debate. Discussion is unlikely to quiet anytime soon, however, thanks to the attention brought to the space by giants such as Google and Microsoft, which offer free, ad-supported e-mail and calendar applications through their respective Apps and Office Live products (as well as paid versions with additional features). More recently, Adobe offered basic, free web-hosted applications in exchange for allowing ads, and Microsoft has announced an ad-supported version of Works.

In a recent joint survey by McKinsey & Co. and Sand Hill Group, a software investor, 33% of software customers said they would consider ad-supported models.

"As the advertising business becomes more sophisticated, basic click-throughs or keywords are less interesting than focus sites or applications," M.R. Rangaswami, CEO of Sand Hill Group. Spiceworks, he said, is the best example of this to date.

Jay Hallberg, co-founder of Spiceworks

The company zeroed in on a specific market: the IT departments at small- to medium-size businesses. Jay Hallberg, co-founder of Spiceworks, said he's got 100,000 customers and is amassing a lucrative, hard-to-find audience. "It's easy [for marketers] to find Exxon or Citigroup," he said. Small- and medium-size businesses "are hard to get to."

"What I like is that it's very, very targeted," said Starlink's Vickie Szombathy, who chairs the American Association of Advertising Agencies' B-to-B committee. She has not advertised with Spiceworks but said the model makes sense.

Relevance
Mr. Nielsen, for his part, said he's clicked on ads in the Spiceworks application before -- when they were relevant. Advertisers using the platform include Hewlett-Packard, Dell, NetGear, Barracuda Networks and Sony Backup Solutions. He said early on, there was one issue with an ad from McAfee asking viewers how vulnerable their network was. It featured scantily clad women -- not that racy, he said, but not acceptable "when your CEO's standing over your shoulder."

David Koretz, CEO of Blue Tie, has shunned traditional web ads.

Another company with a different approach is Blue Tie, which offers web-based e-mail, calendars, contacts, files and instant messaging to more than 100,000 customers. CEO David Koretz has shunned traditional cost-per-click or banner ads, saying they're not profitable enough to pay for the services. Instead, he has coined a product called "featuretisements." The first is a deal with Orbitz in which Blue Tie's calendar product acts as an affiliate for the booking service: You drag in the time you want to fly, type in the route, and it'll search for available flights and overlay the results directly on top of your calendar. With a single click, the user can complete the transaction. He said he has several more of these partnerships lined up -- with the major restaurant-reservation engines, mapping services and even, possibly, ticket sellers.

Survey: Young keep it simple in high-tech world

While young people embrace the Web with real or virtual friends, and their mobile phone is never far away, relatively few like technology, and those that do like technology tend to be in Brazil, India and China, according to a survey.

Only a handful think of technology as a concept, and just 16 percent use terms like "social networking," said two combined surveys covering 8- to 24-year-olds published on Tuesday by Microsoft and Viacom unit MTV Networks, which includes Nickelodeon.

"Young people don't see tech as a separate entity--it's an organic part of their lives," said Andrew Davidson, vice president at MTV Networks International.

"Talking to (youths) about the role of technology in their lifestyle would be like talking to kids in the 1980s about the role the park swing or the telephone played in their social lives--it's invisible."

--Andrew Davidson, VP, MTV Networks International

"Talking to them about the role of technology in their lifestyle would be like talking to kids in the 1980s about the role the park swing or the telephone played in their social lives--it's invisible," Davidson said.

The surveys involved 18,000 young people in 16 countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, China, Japan, Canada and Mexico.

Terms most frequently used by the young when talking about technology related to accessing content for free, notably "download and "burn."

The surveyors found that the average Chinese computer user has 37 online friends they have never met. Indian youth are most likely to see mobile phones as a status symbol, while a third of U.K. and U.S. teenagers say they cannot live without game consoles.

"The way each technology is adopted and adapted throughout the world depends as much on local cultural and social factors as on the technology itself," Davidson said.

For example, the key digital device for Japan's young is the mobile phone because of the privacy and portability it offers those who live in small homes with limited privacy.

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The survey found that Japanese children ages 8 to 14 have only one online friend they have not met, compared to a global average of five. Some 93 percent of Chinese computer users in that age range have more than one friend online they have never met.

Davidson said this was encouraging those ages 8 to 14 in China to select online content over television--a trend not seen in any other market in that age group.

The changes in how the youth market engages with technology is keenly followed by advertisers and content providers. For parents worried about what their children are getting up to amid the wave of gadgets, little has changed in a generation.

The surveyors found that the most popular activities among those in the 8-to-14 bracket are watching TV, listening to music and being with friends. The rankings for those older was similar, though listening to music was top.

Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited

Neilsen Retools metrics

Nielsen/NetRatings plans to drop its old methods of counting pageviews to gauge Web site popularity, instead opting for a system where it would measure how long a user stays on a site.

AJAX and other dynamic page generation techniques have rendered the page view a outdated metric and video also carries the same effect.

Nielsen/NetRatings will begin reporting total sessions and total time spent on a site in order to figure out site popularity.

Using this method will shake up Web rankings quite a bit. For example, under the old system, AOL was sixth in pageviews. However, using the new system, it is number one with 25 billion minutes spent on its pages in May. The opposite happens to Google which drops to fifth from third using the new method.

Other Web ratings firms also have addressed the problems new technologies pose to metrics with their own systems. comScore now defines its visits as the number of times a person returns to a site with at least a half-hour break between page loads.

Nielsen to focus on time spent, not page views, in measuring Web site popularity

The Associated Press

Monday, July 9, 2007

NEW YORK: A leading online measurement service will scrap rankings based on the longtime industry yardstick of page views and begin tracking how long visitors spend at the sites.

The move by Nielsen/NetRatings, expected to be announced Tuesday, comes as online video and new technologies increasingly make page views less meaningful.

Although Nielsen already measures average time spent and average number of sessions per visitor for each site, it will start reporting total time spent and sessions for all visitors to give advertisers, investors and analysts a broader picture of what sites are most popular.

Currently, sites and advertisers often use page views, a figure that reflects the number of Web pages a visitor pulls from a site.

However, Yahoo Inc. and others are increasingly using a software trick called Ajax to improve the user experience. It allows sites to update data automatically and continually, without users needing to pull up new pages. Page views decline as a result.

Page views also drop as people spend more time watching online video at sites like Google Inc.'s YouTube.

"Based on everything that's going on with the influx of Ajax and streaming, we feel total minutes is the best gauge for site traffic," said Scott Ross, director of product marketing at Nielsen. "We're changing our stance on how the data should be" used.

Nielsen will still provide page view figures but won't formally rank them. Ross said page view remains a valid gauge of a site's ad inventory, but time spent is better for capturing the level of engagement users have with a site.

Ranking top sites by total minutes instead of page views gives Time Warner Inc.'s AOL a boost, largely because time spent on its popular instant-messaging software now gets counted. AOL ranks first in the United States with 25 billion minutes based on May data, ahead of Yahoo's 20 billion. By page views, AOL would have been sixth.

Google, meanwhile, drops to fifth in time spent, primarily because its search engine is focused on giving visitors quick answers and links for going elsewhere. By page views, Google ranks third.

In both page views and time spent, Yahoo is ahead of News Corp.'s MySpace and other Fox Interactive Media sites, according to the Nielsen measures.

Yahoo has more than twice the time spent as Fox, but has less than a 10 percent edge in page views. That is because MySpace requires users to pull up a new page anytime they make a change or view a new profile, while Yahoo increasingly uses Ajax to continually pull new data, even if a user stays on the same page all day.

Nielsen's rival, comScore Media Metrix, also has addressed the rise of Ajax with the development of site "visits" — defined as the number of times a person returns to a site with a break of at least a half-hour.

TV Consumes Half of All Leisure Time

JULY 9, 2007

TV and PC are downtime faves.

On an average day, nearly everyone in the US ages 15 and older engages in some sort of leisure activity, like watching TV, using a PC, socializing or exercising, according to the US Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics' "American Time Use Survey."

Watching TV accounted for about half of leisure time, on average, for both men and women. Socializing accounted for about three-quarters of an hour per day for both sexes.

Time spent reading for personal interest and playing games or using a computer for leisure varied greatly by age. Those ages 75 and older averaged 1.4 hours of reading per weekend day and 0.2 hours (12 minutes) playing games or using a computer for leisure.

Individuals ages 15 to 19 read for an average of 0.1 hours (seven minutes) per weekend day and spent one hour playing games or using a computer for leisure.

Consumers have been watching more television and using the Internet more, according to a June 2007 study by Arbitron and Edison Media Research.

One of the other leisure uses for PCs is playing video games. An Ipsos study commissioned by the Associated Press and AOL Games found 30% of gamers spent less than five hours per week watching TV, while 33% spent more than four hours per week playing video games.

eMarketer's Consumer Electronics Online report will be published in July 2007. To be notified when it is released, click here.