Unfazed by the sharp economic downturn and their own financial woes, newspaper publishers are pushing ahead with initiatives to expand their cooperative digital distribution and ad sales platforms. On the sales side, the latest round of expansion comes at QuadrantOne, a company formed by four major newspaper publishers for online ad sales, while Yahoo's newspaper consortium has recruited new members. QuadrantOne, a national network for online display ads formed by Tribune, Gannett, Hearst and The New York Times Company in February 2008, announced a slew of new hires as well as some promotions in recent weeks. At the top level, the company hired Monika Belur as marketing director; previously, Belur marketed media brands like the Travel Channel, Discovery and TLC. She has experience in consumer, sales, online, and traditional direct marketing. In New York, the company also hired Stacy Freedman as the East Coast account executive for entertainment and Melanie Pursglove as Midwest account executive for entertainment. Around the country, it hired Carolyn Goldfarb as sales development manager for the central region, based in Chicago; Matthew Aporta as the West Coast account executive for entertainment, based in Los Angeles; Maria Caruso as sales development manager in San Francisco; and Danielle Morris as sales development manager for the Central region, based in Detroit. Finally, Kim Ripps was promoted to East Coast sales manager. The Yahoo Newspaper Consortium, founded in November 2006 to bring newspapers together for ad sales as well as content distribution, announced two new members at the Newspaper Association of America's MediaXchange summit: The Boston Globe and The St. Petersburg Times joined a member roster of almost 800 newspapers. On the ad sales side, Yahoo also said that over 120 of these are using its "Apt" ad sales platform, which allows them to use behavioral targeting in ad sales and placement. The digital expansion comes on the heels of good news for newspaper Web sites from Nielsen Online, which tracks Web site traffic for the NAA. According to Nielsen, in January the number of monthly unique visitors to newspaper Web sites increased 7.9 million to 74.8 million, a jump of 11.9% over the same month in 2008. Per the same measurements, 44% of all Web users visited newspaper Web sites in January, an increase of 7.3% over January 2008. The number of page views generated increased 15.4% to 3.7 billion.
The recession is cutting a wide swath through the event business, with a series of industry conferences and trade shows canceled due to concern about costs. The latest casualty is the annual conference planned by the Audit Bureau of Circulations for November 2009 in Toronto. Mike Lavery, the president and managing director of ABC, explained: "Many of our member organizations are under widespread travel and budget limitations and are trimming discretionary expenses, such as attending industry conferences." There is no question that both of ABC's core client groups--newspapers and magazines--are suffering major drops in revenue due to the cyclical economic downturn and a long-term shift in media consumption from print to the Internet. Instead of the Toronto event, the ABC said it will hold a less time- and travel-intensive meeting in New York, tentatively scheduled for Nov. 11. The ABC is the latest in a series of industry groups to cancel their annual meetings. In February, the Outdoor Advertising Association of America said it canceled its annual national convention, originally scheduled for May 17-19 in Miami. Also in February, the Magazine Publishers of America said it canceled the American Magazine Conference, the industry's annual trade show and expo originally scheduled for October, citing the economic downturn. Like the ABC, the MPA is hosting a substitute conference closer to home in New York, where executives will be able to attend without running up travel expenses. "We recognize that this year, our members are looking at a variety of ways to achieve savings, which would include curtailing certain discretionary travel and hotel expenses," said MPA President Nina Link. Finally, the Direct Marketing Association has cut back on its events schedule. The DMA still plans to hold its annual conference, the Non-Profit Federation Conference, the Email Evolution Conference and various partner events, but is nixing all other conferences and events. In making the announcement the DMA also said it was laying off 26 employees, or about 20% of its staff, with many of the cuts coming in the conference and events division.
Sunday evening 6 p.m. EST was liftoff for Matt Carstens. As soon as the 65 teams in the NCAA tournament were announced, he scrambled to launch a March Madness YouTube channel in a matter of hours. Mission accomplished. Carstens, the vice president of digital media at marketing firm Intersport, had coaches--whose teams were selected--lined up to star in a slew of videos where they offered advice for people filling out brackets and picking upsets. Due to advance planning, the Intersport-produced vignettes were shot and quickly edited with few hiccups, then posted. And the coaches didn't pull punches in some instances. Memphis' John Calipari suggested Cleveland State would knock off Wake Forest, while Tennessee's Bruce Pearl predicted Kansas would go down to North Dakota St. But Carstens was careful not to force coaches into providing "bulletin-board material" by picking games involving teams they may face in the tournament. The YouTube channel, which will remain relevant until the first-round games begin Thursday, is a marketing vehicle for LifeLock. As the sponsor, the identity-theft protection company is running billboards--promoting a sweepstakes--at the beginning and end of the 35-plus short videos. On Monday, when the American pastime of picking games in office pools was building toward a zenith, LifeLock had what's referred to as a "home page takeover" at YouTube.com. That brought a sizable ad in the upper right, which prompted a click-through to the channel. "There aren't that many opportunities to get people engaged with your brand," said LifeLock Vice President of Marketing Andrew Wyant--citing the intersection of YouTube's massive traffic with how top-of-mind filling out brackets is this week. "It's unbelievably relevant Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday," said Intersport CEO Charlie Besser. LifeLock will continue to promote the sweepstakes--where a person who signs up for a trial can win a trip to a college slam dunk and three-point shooting event--after Thursday via banner ads on some 10,000 sites (purchased through an ad network). (The videos on YouTube are also available on other Web video sites, where LifeLock also has a presence--as well as Verizon's VCast service.) LifeLock has traditionally been a direct-response-type advertiser. But Intersport Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, David Curran, said that initiatives such as the YouTube channel and links with NASCAR programming are part of the company increasingly allocating resources for developing a "branding look and feel." Nonetheless, LifeLock's direct-response roots will steer it to carefully gauge the effectiveness of the YouTube gambit over the next month. Mike Alvarez, an Intersport senior vice president, said there will be "deep diving into the data to see how it performs." Intersport has some trademark rights to the term March Madness, and outside the LifeLock/YouTube arrangement has been (and will be) producing a slew of sponsored programming affiliated with it--airing via time buys and barter deals. Three tournament preview shows on Fox Sports Net with coaches are coming during the ensuing weeks. Intersport will also produce the telecast of the college slam dunk and three-point shooting contests on ESPN, where the LifeLock sweepstakes winner will be in attendance. When all is said and done, there will be four specials on ABC, including one involving well-known announcer Dick Vitale, and one on CBS airing the day before the national championship game.
We know what's in a name, but what's in a letter? What if that letter is an icon that hasn't changed in more than 150 years? If you are The New York Times Co., scrapping for your place in a new world, the answer is: quite a bit. Maybe the Times Co. was still a little touchy after announcing that it was cutting back T, its glossy style magazine, which uses the familiar Old English letter as its logo, from 15 issues to 12. But the company's lawyers got awful huffy all of a sudden about Web news aggregator Newser using said letter to denote content from the Times. Newser founder Michael Wolff responded to the cease-and-desist letter the paper sent to his offices with a protracted attack post that accused the Times of--among other things--being paranoid, running "long and windy" stories that can only benefit from his summaries, and having ripped off Newser with its "article skimmer" interface. (In the interest of full disclosure: MediaPost received a similar letter from The Times' lawyers claiming that our synopsis of Times stories accompanying links to them constituted infringement and asked that we not encapsulate the paper's stories on our Web site - a request we've honored since it was made in August 2008.) Despite an effort to incorporate open-source initiatives into its API releases, heralded by the much vaunted New York Times Open, the company seems reluctant to extend this model elsewhere--although they have largely had no choice when it comes to content. Walling off their stories would cost readers. The two are not equivalent, but it's fair to say that an "open source" information model that gathers and skims stories--adding commentary here and there, like Newser--is broadly analogous to open-source code. However, the Times Co. has had a tenuous relationship with aggregators, such as Newser and Huffington Post. "They have a closed model in terms of control they exert over both the information they create and the information they allow into their ecosystem, so to speak," Wolff says. "It's as old-fashioned and as top-down as you can get." The Times Co.'s grumbling about their letter seeping out over the Web amounted to little more than saber rattling; it seems like a rather tepid effort to staunch seepage of its content. Newser still uses the "T," but Wolff has acidly offered to replace it with a skull and crossbones if it pleases the Gray Lady. "I think the 'T' business is mostly about their continuing discomfort with a flat or open-source information structure," says Wolff. "No matter that they've invested bazillions into this medium, it's not their natural habitat." Then again, Wolff, a respected journalist and author, has a dog in this fight. "Their world is ending," he wrote in his response to the lawyer's letter, "but not before everybody gets a chance to make a fool of themselves." The question still remains: Even if they can get that "windy" story down to a snappy blurb, what happens when the aggregators have nothing left to summarize?
Discovery Communications, one of the inventors of the modern-day TV documentary, believes it is the first inventor of a modern-day delivery device for electronic books --and it wants the legal system to recognize that. Discovery is suing Amazon for copyright infringement for its popular Kindle and Kindle 2 electronic book delivery system. Discovery did not disclose a dollar amount in its filings, only that according to its general counsel executives, it "is entitled to fair compensation." Industry estimates are that Amazon has already sold around 300,000 Kindle units at $399 apiece. (Amazon gets to hold onto around 50% of that revenue.) The average rate per book is $9.99, and estimates are that Kindle owners will buy $120 to $150 worth of books for each device. Amazon could sell around 2.2 million by 2010, giving it a massive $750 million in revenue from unit and book sales. Discovery credits company founder John Hendricks as a significant player in developing this type of digital content and delivery system back in the 1990s. Two other inventors credited include Michael Asmussen and John McCoskey, according to court documents. Timing is everything. Discovery said it got a United States Patent number 7,298, 851, on Nov. 20, 2007. The first edition of the Kindle launched in the U.S. Nov. 19, 2007. Discovery initially filed for the patent in September 1999.
Frenemies have emerged once again in the multichannel provider space. Customers of satellite operator Dish Network can now purchase movie tickets via Fandango with their remote controls using an interactive on-screen offering. Fandango.com is owned by Comcast, the country's largest cable provider and competitor with Dish for subscribers. Providing similar functionality to what Fandango offers on the Web, Dish users can tune into a channel and using a remote control instead of a mouse, enter a ZIP code and watch Fandango provide listings and show times at nearby theaters. Those with phone lines linked with their set-top boxes can further use a credit card to buy tickets. And as they do with Fandango.com, customers can then display the credit card at a theater to redeem tickets. The application serves as another example of the capabilities of interactive TV--which has shown promise for years--but may finally be gaining some traction with the evolution of set-top boxes. That should accelerate in the coming year as Canoe Ventures, a research and development operation funded by the cable operators, is set to begin offering opportunities in the arena. Dish Executive Vice President Michael Kelly said that the Fandango deal is a first step, indicating the company may have an opportunity to surround its purchase function with marketing capabilities. "In the future, we envision banner ads for upcoming titles, movie trailers and more for our interactive advertising clients," Kelly said.
President Barack Obama, who has conducted a surprising number of interviews since taking office two months ago, will do one Thursday that smacks more of the campaign trail than the Oval Office. In fact, when Obama makes an appearance on "The Tonight Show," it will mark the first time a current president will be on a late-night gabfest. Obama's sit-down with host Jay Leno will no doubt include some banter. But the goal is to build support for his economic plan, NBC said. Obama has given interviews since taking office to Arab-world network Al-Arabiya (his first in a symbolic gesture); Canadian broadcaster CBC; the anchors from the three leading broadcast news in the wake of nominees withdrawing over tax problems; and The New York Times aboard Air Force One. At one point during the 2007 campaign, Obama pledged to tell the American public "what you need to know," and suggested that a more transparent presidency would be coming. While Obama's Leno appearance will be a first for a president in the White House, Vice President Al Gore memorably appeared on "The Late Show with David Letterman" in the fall of 1993. Bill Clinton also had a notable appearance in late night, playing the saxophone on "The Arsenio Hall Show" as a 1992 candidate. Obama is not a "Tonight Show" neophyte, having appeared once before--in late 2006, two months before he announced his presidential campaign.
There must be those out there for whom The Bad Girl's Club is not salacious enough a dose of reality television. For those lecherous souls, there's Playboy TV's slate of reality shows. You had no idea? Join the club. Most people probably think Playboy TV is still an endless loop of Miss March in the shower and films used as "marital aids." And this is because the channel, which offers subscription and VOD options, has never staged a full-scale external effort to promote its programming. That changes in April with the "A Better Reality Awaits" campaign, aimed at hawking the uncensored reality shows "Search for the Perfect Girlfriend"; "Foursome: Season Three" (this is not about golf); "King of Clubs: Palomino," set in a Vegas strip club; and "69 Things to Do Before You Die," which is, of course, a travel show. The cross-channel campaign by Toronto-based zig will comprise print, radio and online ads, but is anchored by two TV spots that are short spoofs of reality shows-- "Eligible", apes Bachelor-type competition shows and "Date", which takes aim at Blind Date's vintage pop-up balloons. The parodies are followed by scenes from the Playboy TV shows and imply that their stars will go the Full Monty. The ads will be given to cable and satellite providers to air at their discretion. "Mainstream reality TV tries to be sexy but in the end, the best parts are either blurred, bleeped or blocked," says Gary Rosenson, senior vice president, sales and marketing, Playboy TV. "With Playboy TV's reality television, no one gets eliminated, no one seeks immunity and the cameras never shut off--which makes Playboy TV far more interesting than the competition," adds Stephen Leps, creative director, zig Chicago. This logic is based on the assumption that audiences watching Rock of Love secretly hoped to catch a glimpse of one of the female suitor's sagging implants and not Brett Michael's piece. (And by piece we mean wig.)
Syndication programs generally picked up more viewers for the first week in March, with a couple of rookie shows doing well. CBS Television's Distribution "The Doctors" had a 5% improvement for the week ending March 8 versus the previous week to a Nielsen 2.0 average household rating. NBC Universal's "Deal or No Deal" perked up 6% to a 1.8 number, good for second place among the newbies. Veteran game shows also had improvement. Disney-ABC Television's "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" climbed 13% to a 2.7. Syndication heavyweight CBS Television Distribution's "Wheel of Fortune" tacked on 3% to a 7.7, while its game-show partner in crime "Jeopardy!" grew 5% to a 6.5. Even smaller performer Debmar-Mercury's "Family Feud" rose 7% to a 1.5. Many sturdy talk shows also had gains. Disney-ABC's "Live with Regis and Kelly" shot up 17% to a 2.8; Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution's "Ellen" improved 9% to a 2.4; CBS Television Distribution's "Rachael Ray" didn't lose any ground at a 1.8; NBC Universal's "Maury" took 6% more to a 1.7; Warner Bros.' "Tyra Banks" was up 10% to a 1.1; NBC Universal's "Steve Wilkos" added on 10% to a 1.1. Court shows also either grew or held firm. CBS' "Judge Judy" added 2% to 4.6; while CBS' "Judge Joe Brown" was steady at a 2.2; Warner Bros.' "People's Court" came off an improved 11% to a 2.0; Warner Bros.' "Judge Mathis" was flat at a 1.6; Twentieth Television's "Judge Alex" was also flat at a 1.5. Twentieth's "Divorce Court" grew 8% to a 1.4. Only one magazine program showed improvement--Warner Bros.' "TMZ" was up 5% to a 2.3. CBS Television Distribution's "Inside Edition" was flat at a 3.1; as was NBC Universal's "Access Hollywood," CBS Television Distribution's "The Insider" and Warner Bros.' "Extra" at 2.1, 2.0 and 1.7, respectively. Some notable shows swinging for loss included CBS' "Oprah" and CBS' "Dr. Phil." "Oprah" was down 4% from the week before to a 5.4; "Dr. Phil" lost 12% to a 3.6. CBS' big magazine show "Entertainment Tonight" slipped 2% to 4.5, but continues as the dominant leader in the category. Its weekend show "Entertainment Tonight Weekend" shot up 14% to a 2.4 due to the assault story involving performers Chris Brown and Rihanna. Syndication's big off-network shows did not participate in any gains, but they didn't lose ground, either. Warner Bros.' "Two and a Half Men," Twentieth's "Family Guy" and Sony Television Distribution's "Seinfeld" were all flat at 5.1, 4.1 and 3.8, respectively.
Folks, it is way past time that media agencies hire creatives, make their scribbling and sketching a secondary part of the agency offering, lock them in the back of the office and joke with clients during communications planning meetings that "there's five minutes left, do you want to go to lunch or look at the creative?" Yes, this is that column. I was going to riff on my Gen X colleague complaining about Facebook -- "I don't want to throw sheep at you" -- or write a wild-eyed, nasty screed about yesterday's obscene "Twitterview" between George Stephanopoulos and John McCain. But then I read an interview with a big-agency creative team. Doesn't matter who they are or which shop they're at, if you read enough of these things -- by Crom, I have -- they all sound the same. I expected arch jokes and false modesty designed to showcase the duo's wonderfulness, and there was plenty o' that. But then I came to the part where they claim there's nothing creative about media, compared to the immortal art they produce. You know, I'd have been surprised if I hadn't read that, since I've heard it so often. Maybe this was just the snark that broke the camel's back. For whatever reason, though, I lost it. Like a creative knows how a media plan is put together or how it's activated. Creatives don't know anything about anything except typefaces, taglines and trashing their office. There are many reasons why these walking, talking affectations have become water-carriers for brighter members of the marketing communications community. But their failure to appreciate or respect any other aspect of the business, let alone learn about it and how it relates to what they provide (despite their tiresome claims that they do), is the biggest. Your typical creative director is like Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, sitting high in the saddle like a Latino Lee Garfinkel, serene in his fabulousness, as his troops assemble outside the Alamo. The Napoleon of the West will win the battle in a little over an hour. But he'll lose the war. And he will be bitch-slapped by history, which will be written by the Texicans who defeat him -- the media agencies in this tortured analogy. These are the same creatives who, 10 years after losing the unbundling war, still crankily contend that they should control strategic media planning -- at least. Good luck with that. Mexico isn't getting the Alamo back, kids. Media agency executives should be doing interviews where they observe that a fourth-grader could write a sandwich commercial, but it takes real talent to craft a communications plan. I mean a real plan, not a gimmick like putting your little car on top of a bigger car and paying someone to drive it around. Or they could note that any schmuck can shoot a Web ad, but you need real creative firepower to develop a media buy that nimbly navigates a landscape that's more minefield than marketplace. And no, paying someone to sit on a bar stool and boost your beer doesn't count. People, you won the war. Seize the spoils. Convince your clients it's time you took control of -- at a minimum -- digital creative. Then fight to steadily add more messaging responsibilities. And remember the Alamo.