The XFL's viewership is down, way down, and they're going to do something about it. No, they're not going to get more talented players, they're going to give current sponsors more ad time. The league reached about half as many TV viewers in Week 3 as advertisers were told to expect when they paid close to $140,000 for the 30-second spots, so something had to be done. There will be one less sponsor now, however, as Honda has already decided it is done with the XFL.Games on NBC, UPN and TNN combined for a 5.5 national household rating last weekend, down 36% from Week 2, and nowhere near the combined 10-to-11 rating advertisers were promised.NBC, which jointly owns the XFL with the World Wrestling Federation, had its national rating for the XFL fall to 3.1 in Week 3, a drop of 33% from Week 2. That follows the 52% decline in ratings the league had from week one to week two.UPN's ratings have gone from 3.1 to 2.1 to 1.5. TNN, which didn't air a game in Week 1, went from 1.9 to 0.9 in national households.Saturday night's XFL broadcast on NBC was the lowest-ranked prime-time show on any of the four major networks last week, tying for 89th place with UPN's "Star Trek Voyager."One team is trying something of their own to draw fans. The XFL's Los Angeles Xtreme, and goZing, a permission-based, wireless direct marketing company, have agreed on a wireless advertising campaign for the 2001 season, designed to bring new fans to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Utilizing goZing's member-base in the Los Angeles area, goZing and the Xtreme will be sending advertisements for several upcoming games directly to members' wireless devices (cellular phones, PDAs and alphanumeric pagers) throughout the L.A. area. Of course, if these ads are treated anything like XFL broadcasts, they'll just be ignored. - Adam Bernard may be reached at AdamBernard@mediapost.com
By Anya Khait"Survivor II" and "Friends" are still battling it out on Thursday nights. "Survivor II" was seen by 28.2 million viewers, while the NBC sitcom had 21.7 million. Rounding out the hour on NBC was a 20-minute outtake package from past "Friends" episodes, which attracted 22.5 million viewers. As the lead-out to "Survivor," CBS' drama "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" ranked fourth with 22 million viewers. CBS claimed its fourth straight household ratings win, with ABC in second place. CBS averaged 13.0 million viewers (8.8 household rating, 14 share), ABC had 12.6 million viewers (8.4 rating, 14 share) and NBC had 12.1 million viewers (8.3 rating, 14 share). Fox had 10.2 million viewers (6.5 rating, 10 share), the WB had 3.7 million viewers (2.6 rating, 4 share), UPN had 3.7 million viewers (2.5 rating, 4 share), and Pax TV had 1.4 million viewers (0.9 rating, 1 share). The top 20 Nielsen rated shows for the week of Feb. 12-18 were:1. "ER," NBC, 18.1, 18.5 million homes. 2. "Survivor II," CBS, 16.6, 17.0 million homes. 3. "Friends Outtakes," NBC, 14.4, 14.7 million homes. 4. "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 14.1, 14.4 million homes. 5. "Friends," NBC, 14.0, 14.3 million homes. 6. "Law & Order," NBC, 13.8, 14.1 million homes. 7. "The Practice,'' ABC, 12.9, 13.1 million homes. 8. "Who Wants to be a Millionaire-Sunday," ABC, 12.6, 12.9 million homes. 9. "Will & Grace," NBC, 12.5, 12.8 million homes. 10. "The West Wing," NBC, 12.2, 12.5 million homes. 11. "Who Wants to be a Millionaire-Wednesday," ABC, 11.8, 12.1 million homes. 12. "Everybody Loves Raymond," CBS, 11.7, 12.0 million homes. 12. "Who Wants to be a Millionaire-Thursday," ABC, 11.7, 12.0 million homes. 14. "60 Minutes," CBS, 11.3, 11.5 million homes. 14. "ABC Monday Night Movie: These Old Broads," ABC, 11.3, 11.5 million homes. 16. "Who Wants to be a Millionaire-Friday," ABC, 11.2, 11.4 million homes. 17. "JAG," CBS, 10.9, 11.2 million homes. 17. "Just Shoot Me," NBC, 10.9, 11.1 million homes. 19. "The Drew Carey Show," ABC, 10.8, 11.0 million homes. 20. "Judging Amy," CBS, 10.6, 10.8 million homes.
By Ken Liebeskind It seems that the decline in Web portal traffic would lead to a complementary decline in portal advertising, but that's not necessarily the case. "The impact on ad dollars doesn't depend on reaching all people, but reaching the right people," says Eric Valk-Peterson, VP of media services for I-traffic, a division of Agency.com in New York. He says the drop in portal traffic, which has been reported by Media Metrix and other third party firms, doesn't necessarily result in fewer ad buys, because media buyers don't look at the aggregate numbers when they place portal buys. "We look for an audience profile and what they're engaged in," he says, noting the advertising seeks to reach users engaged in specific activities, such as researching a car buy or a vacation. Also, he doesn't make run of site buys, so the aggregate numbers of visitors to a portal isn't really relevant. Instead, he buys areas of portals to reach specific users. However, if traffic on those specific areas drops, ad buys will, too. "If we see a skewed decline against a lucrative audience, such as shoppers or businesses, that will hurt sales," Valk-Peterson says. Rudy Grahn, online advertising analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix, agrees that the quality, not the quantity of the audience is what distinguishes first tier from second tier portals. "The quality is determined by the degree to which they go to the portal to research and make purchases," he says. The best predictor of purchasing behavior is tenure. "The longer they're online, the best chance they have to transact." He says Yahoo has credibility among tenured surfers, while Disney's Go.com, which closed recently, "ran with no value to the tenured surfer." Two other portals which reported recent drops in visitors are NBCi and Lycos. NBCi "did a simplistic job of leveraging the strength of its online and offline properties," Grahn says. "It hasn't leveraged any unique application or synergy between the two properties. They mention it on TV, but there's nothing there. It generates traffic but not monetizable traffic." He says the most popular portals are the ones that were "organically built" rather than started by a giant media property like NBC or Disney. About.com, whose visitors grew 72% from Jan. 2000 to Jan. 2001, "was built by word of mouth and referral. They have quality users, so they're more monetizable than other portals." A lot of the portal advertising has been done through partnership deals, such as the one between Homegrocer and AOL that made Homegrocer the online grocer for the AOL portal. But NBCi "was too late to get into that, and Lycos, too," Grahn says. Valk-Peterson says two major reason portals are losing traffic is because there are too many of them and they have stopped buying advertising to support themselves. Portals evolved from search engines to navigational tools, but "there's not enough room for 20 plus portals," he says. The drop in dot.com ad
To launch its newest website, Nabisco, the Parsippany, NJ packaged foods giant, turned to email newsletter advertising. In early February, the company placed advertising in one million newsletters to introduce Nabiscogifts.com, a website that sells gift baskets filled with Oreos, Life Savers and other Nabisco products. It is the only Nabisco commerce site, according to Wayne Shurts, Nabisco's VP of e-business. The company placed the ads through Penn Media, a Chicago company that publishes its own newsletters and operates a network of 912 newsletters that reach 50 million subscribers, according to Roy Weiss, Penn Media's executive vice president of sales and marketing. Most of the newsletters are products of small independent publishers, such as three gardening hobbyists who started a gardening newsletter, he says. For the Nabisco promotion, only five to ten newsletters were selected, though their subscribers totaled one million. The ads appeared in the first or second position of each newsletter, Shurts says. The idea was draw readers to Nabiscogifts.com for the first time and later sell them Valentine's Day gift baskets. The initial ads didn't sell gifts. Instead, they offered free gift basket prizes readers could win by logging on to Nabiscogifts.com and filling out a form. Shurts says 19,000 of the readers who clicked through opted in to Nabisco's promotional email list. They received a second email, which actually sold gift baskets. Six percent of the recipients of the second email clicked through and 9% of those bought gift baskets, he says. The numbers aren't huge but they represent a stable audience, he says. "The 19,000 are lifetime customers we can continue to market to." The ad, with minimal copy that fit into the editorial content of the newsletters, was created by Digital River, the Eden Prairie, MN firm that hosts Nabiscogifts.com. The site receives 50,000 visitors per month, Shurts says. Shurts says the email newsletter was among the first promotions Nabisco used for Nabiscogifts.com. It hasn't used traditional advertising at all. "TV and other forms are a bad spend because you get a mass media draw when you're going after online buyers. The newsletter hits people who already shop on the Web so it's a more effective spend," he says. The Nabisco promotion is representative of recent advertising efforts by major companies who are either advertising in email newsletters or creating their own newsletters. While Nabisco advertised in other newsletters, Sam's Club, the giant retailer, sent out its own newsletter to 300,000 shoppers to promote holiday shopping on its Web site (www.Samsclub.com). It reported high site traffic and sales. Email newsletter advertising is growing because the number of newsletters has grown, with newsletters on all kinds of subjects, from consumer guides to kids games to humor and entertainment. "We started in early 1999 with a million subscribers and by the end of the year we had 10 million," Penn Media's Weiss says. "We hit 50 million two weeks ago. It exploded." The typical newsletter has 50,000 subscribers but some have more than a million. The newsletters are successful at generating high click through and conversion rates. A study by the Meta Group says click through rates of 15% and conversion rates of 5% are common, making them one of the most cost effective marketing tools. Mainstream marketers, such as Dell Computers, Doubleday Book Clubs and Office Depot are the biggest email newsletter advertisers. They use them to create brand awareness and direct response efforts that generate specific action. - Ken Liebeskind may be reached at kenrunz@aol.com