• by June 13, 2002

StreamingAudio, Video Growth Reported by Ken Liebeskind, MediaPost Staff Writer The growth of streaming advertising is now being documented. DFC Intelligence, a San Diego based research firm, is generating reams of data on the instream audio and video avails being sold by a wealth of sites. The data is proprietary, because DFC sells its research, but it made these general numbers available: •The price of audio and video avails ranges from $25 to $100 CPM, with CNN.com charging the highest rates and sites such as SurferNetwork.com, an Internet radio streamer, charging the lowest. •The average size of a monthly commitment is small in comparison with other media. A typical buy is one million impressions, for $35,000-$50,000. •A $50 CPM could yield a gross margin of 0.017 per view based on the value of the impression (0.050) and the expenses, which include the rep firm at 30 % (0.015) and bandwidth fees (0.018). Deduct the last two from the first to get 0.017. •Streaming advertising rates compare favorably with television, with prime time TV programs costing $35-$60 CPM.

Among the recent success stories DFC documents is FMiTV, which took over Vidnet, an online destination and syndication provider. It added its own content, including celebrity interviews and sports, and generates 8 million accesses per month. It increased its instream advertising after adding the new content and now runs three avails per stream. A lead-in spot followed by another spot runs before the celebrity interviews. Fifteen-second ads are used and have been created to comply with AFTRA regulations, with original creative replacing AFTRA material. FMiTV says the medium is moving “to the TV model,” with the use of three commercials surrounding an interview.

On the audio side, Beethoven.com, an audio broadcaster with 300,000 hours of aggregate tuning per month and 25,000 unique listeners, is inserting 16 spots per hour (eight minutes of 30 second ads). The company has aligned with MediaAmerica, the leading radio rep firm, to sell the advertising. MediaAmerica has aligned with the Coollink Broadcast network to distribute the spots on its stations. The site reports sell out rates in the 40 to 50% range and is currently operating at a 15% avail sell out, with average CPMs in the $30 range. Pfizer is one of its advertisers.

Another radio success story is Clevelandhits.com, a site serving the Cleveland area that is demonstrating the viability of localized content—and advertising. Among the local advertisers is an amusement park. The site is running 7.5 minutes of audio spots per hour, all 60s, which is a preference of local buyers. The ad buys range from $200 to $1,500 per week, which includes the spots, banners, and click-throughs. It is estimated the station sells 384,000 avails per month for $7,680.

WirelessA Few Steps Forward... by Adam Bernard, MediaPost Staff Writer The Wireless Advertising Association recently unveiled a comprehensive set of proposed standards for WAP, SMS, and PDA advertising to a crowd of more than 100 of the industry’s top wireless companies. Through unanimous support of WAA member companies, those proposals for SMS, WAP, and PDA advertising became industry standards. The proposed standards were required by WAA guidelines to go through a 30-day review period before a final motion was accepted to adopt the standards. The standards being accepted create a common set of formats and sizes so that ad creative executions and inventory will be interchangeable.

In other wireless news, Jupiter Media Metrix reported that although the United States has had the largest base of cell-phone users in the world, less than $4 billion in shopping and travel will be transacted on Internet-capable mobile phones in 2006, representing less than 2% of all online shopping. According to the latest Jupiter wireless research report, consumer interest in purchasing items using a wireless device is not a priority, as only 7% of consumers express a desire to transact with a mobile phone. Jupiter analysts predict, however, that shopping-related content on mobile devices will influence transactions online via PCs and offline in brick-and-mortar stores—sales that will be valued at $39 billion in 2006.

Despite those predictions, Amazon.com and AT&T Wireless have teamed up to bring AT&T users wireless shopping on their mobile phones. The new feature will include one-click ordering, recommendations, customer reviews, and search. The agreement is Amazon’s 12th such deal with wireless service providers worldwide.

Real Media, the global provider of marketing solutions to the digital advertising industry, and Sonata Inc., a provider of location-ready, voice, and mobile applications for targeted and personalized marketing campaigns, have entered into a partnership to deliver advertising to wireless customers via voice or mobile devices. Real Media will represent Sonata to advertisers seeking targeted delivery to wireless platforms. The global partnership enables advertisers to target consumers via any wireless platform currently in use.

Adversoft, Inc., a provider of wireless, real-time communications, has launched e-TAS (Electronic Targeted Advertising System), the company’s wireless marketing solution. The product was first introduced in 1999, and now with the maturity of the wireless market in the United States, e-TAS is in Release Version 2.5. e-TAS is a web-based marketing and advertising database system that enables a company to manage customer data, as well as allowing them to sd tha custom and personalized text message to a customer’s mobile phone, personal digital assistant (PDAs), or email account in real-time.

And Jeep, a division of DaimlerChrysler Corporation, is currently conducting a two-month wireless advertising campaign for the all-new Jeep Liberty on the AvantGo mobile Internet service. AvantGo, Inc. is a provider of mobile infrastructure software and services. The new customer acquisition and brand awareness campaign kicked off in mid-July.

iTVPortals Developing Ad Models by David Cotriss, Contributing Writer The summer has been hot for the still-young interactive TV industry, with a slew of deals that will broaden the range of opportunities available to advertisers. One of the greatest challenges faced by advertisers appears to be the cost-effective creation of ads that can be used across the disparate range of middleware platforms used by viewers to enjoy iTV services. Providing consistent messaging across the spectrum of emerging virtual channel environments may play a key role in the widespread usage of iTV ads.

In a major announcement, iTV firm RespondTV offered a solution. The company recently demonstrated integrated cross-platform capabilities across AOLTV, Liberate, Microsoft TV, OpenTV, Philips, PowerTV, Sony, WebTV, WorldGate, and UltimateTV, taking advantage of RespondTV’s scalable hosting, serving, reporting, and transaction processing capabilities.

The company also inked a deal with fresh-IT, a leading Spanish iTV content and applications developer, to extend the functionality and availability of enhanced advertising across all major middleware platforms to be deployed in Spain and throughout Europe. In yet another announcement, RespondTV will use RegieLine, an iTV cross-platform publishing tool from Paris-based IDP, to help clients develop across platforms worldwide. These deals may well make the development of iTV ads more affordable and lower barriers to entry.

iTV advertising firm Wink has announced a slew of new opportunities. Over the next three years, cable service provider Charter Communications plans to offer Wink’s technology to all of its digital cable customers. The service is currently offered to 500,000 digital Charter customers. Wink has also partnered with walled garden provider digeo to expand delivery of iTV services to cable operators throughout North America, the first of which is Charter.

In other Wink news, the company’s technology will be used for around-the-clock enhancement of home shopping channel ShopNBC, adding “click-and-buy” capability. The enhancements enable the purchase of the last five items seen on-air and the building of customized shopping lists. The impact on response rates is yet to be seen, but these developments may bode well for advertisers seeking to have products featured on the network.

Wink is also enhancing programming for ESPN and HBO, which may lead to iTV advertising opportunities such as the purchase of related products. In the DRTV (direct response TV) sector, Wink will enhance direct response and long-form ads for many of Tyee’s Fortune 1000 clients, including home fitness equipment seller Bowflex. Wink will also enhance Razor & Tie’s music compilation ads.

EmailUsers Give a Big Thumbs-Up by Susan Breslow Sardone, Contributing Writer In a country where half the population can’t agree upon who legitimately belongs in the Oval Office—or whether the Colonel’s chicken is tastier prepared according to the Original Recipe or Extra Crispy style—one aspect of modern life enjoys overwhelming consensus: Email.

According to the results of a Gallup poll of email users released at the end of July, more than nine out of 10 say that both email (97%) and the Internet (96%) have made their lives better. Despite the ease and availability of free web browsers and the vast amount of content across the Internet, sending and reading email is the dominant online activity. Nine in 10 say they use email at home, and more than eight in 10 use it at work. Fifty-three percent use email at both places, and the majority have more than one email address (23% have only one). Some 33% have two unique email addresses, 14% have three, 7% have four, and 22% have five or more.

Those who use email at work check it more often and send and receive more messages than home viewers. Most (51%) who use email at work check it at least hourly, including 32% who say they check it “continuously.” An additional 33% say they check email at work a couple times a day, and 11% check it once. Only 5% check it less often than once a day. At home, only 6% check email hourly, including the obsessive 3% who check it continuously. The majority check email at home either a couple times a day (30%) or once a day (41%), although 22% check it less often.

How much mail arrives? The typical email user receives 12 messages at work each day, while 28% receive 20 or more. Sending email is less common, as the typical user issues just six emails each workday. Only 16% send 20 or more messages daily. At home on a typical day, an email user receives just eight messages and sends only three.

Not surprisingly, respondents cited business associates and family members as those whom they email most often. Most recipients estimated three out of every 10 emails they receive are spam, 39% say they get more than that, and 18% claim at least half their email is spam.

When it comes to spam, 42% of email users insist they “hate it.” Another 45% say they find it “an annoyance, but do not hate it,” while the rest have no strong feelings either way (9%). Only 4% admit they sometimes find information contained in spam useful. But if you really want to irritate email users, show them Internet pop-up ads: By a 65% to 34% margin, email users find pop-up ads more annoying than spam.