A Wall Street report Wednesday says that even with a bumpy economy, advertisers aren't pulling back on spending commitments made in the TV upfront market, while the scatter business remains robust. Also, national cable ad spending for 2011 is estimated to increase by 12%. With upfront agreements being wrapped now, there is "little apparent breakage so far," according to Credit Suisse analyst Spencer Wang. Also, the scatter market for national TV has broadcast networks commanding between 10% and 25% hikes over upfront levels, with cable networks between 5% and 12%. More broadly, Wang noted that the economy appears to be weathering the turmoil enough to prevent a change in a forecast of 2% growth for the U.S. ad market this year. That's largely fueled by the search (up 15%), online display (14%) and national cable (12%) sectors. He did, however, suggest that a further economic decline might cause a downgrade in growth projections for 2012 -- from a 3% uptick to 2% -- even in a year with an Olympics and presidential campaign. One reason for the prediction is a belief that the ratio between ad spend and GDP will remain about the same next year as this. As Wang touted the cable ad market, he projected the cable upfront pulled in a combined $9.3 billion in commitments versus $9.1 billion for the broadcasters. A year ago, broadcasters continued to land more ($8.6 billion) compared to cable's $8.2 billion. Still, as a 12% growth for cable in 2011 is projected, the rate of growth could be slowed next year if the economy ushers in a slowdown in scatter pricing, since cable networks can leave about 50% of inventory to be sold in the walk-up market.
Gannett Co. and Yahoo are expanding a local advertising partnership under which the media company's newspapers and TV stations sell Yahoo inventory as part of their digital ad offerings. The companies will extend the year-old deal from nine to all of Gannett's 19 broadcast markets nationwide. It already covers Gannett's 81 local newspapers around the country. Under the agreement, the company's TV stations and newspaper sites package Yahoo ad space with their own online inventory, using Yahoo's APT platform to deliver targeted display advertising. At the same time, Gannett provides editorial content across Yahoo properties, including the home page. Gannett's ad pact with Yahoo currently involves its TV station sites in Atlanta; Cleveland; Denver; Grand Rapids, MI; Minneapolis-St. Paul; Phoenix; St. Louis; Tampa; and Washington, D.C. The expanded deal will add mid-tier markets, including Bangor, ME; Buffalo; Columbia, SC; Greensboro, NC; Jacksonville, FL.; Knoxville, TN; Little Rock; Macon, GA; Portland, ME; and Sacramento. Anthony Diaz, vice president of sales strategy and development at Gannett Broadcasting, said the Yahoo alliance has helped the broadcast stations increase digital ad sales 30% in the second quarter from a year ago. In particular, he cited the targeting capability the Web portal offers for reaching specific audiences, based on extensive demographic and behavioral data. "We saw a nice uptick in our ability to drive results, based on this additional layer of targeting that we drove into our overall mix," he said. "As we've gotten into deeper layers of targeting, our CPMs have increased." Diaz noted that the broadcast sites have also drawn ad dollars from categories such as health care that don't typically advertise on on-air as heavily as segments like automotive. One campaign for a medial weight-loss center on Gannett station KARE11 in Minnesota, for instance, launched on TV, but also tapped Yahoo's system to hone in online audiences interested in health and wellness topics. Gannett uses APT to serve ads on Yahoo inventory and deliver ads on its broadcast sites. In addition to bringing more refined targeting, the alliance also expands reach in local markets for both Gannett and Yahoo. "A large part of the partnership is having local TV stations be able to sell a much wider audience on the Web in their local markets," said Lem Lloyd, vice president, North American sales channel for Yahoo. Between them, he said the companies reach about 95% of local audiences. "For us at Yahoo, we're seeing a lot of new local advertising on our site because of this partnership," he added. Details of the ad revenue-sharing arrangement between Yahoo and Gannett have not been disclosed. Total digital advertising sales -- encompassing display and video -- for TV stations last year grew 14% to $1.4 billion, accounting for 10.5% of local online ad spending, according to Borrell Associates. The media research firm projects a 17% increase in local online revenue for TV broadcasters this year.
Darren Rovell will host a show this fall on the soon-to-named NBC Sports Network focusing on sports business, a topic he covers for CNBC. The series is part of a push by the NBC network, now known as Versus, to move widely into studio programming. Rovell's show, "CNBC Sports Biz: Game On," will air Fridays at 7 p.m. Both CNBC and the NBC Sports Network fall under a Comcast umbrella. The soon-to-be former Versus -- the NBC Sports Network name comes Jan. 2 -- will debut Sept. 8 with a block of live programming on weeknights in the 6 p.m. hour. Shows will come under the "NBC SportsTalk" brand used on the Web, covering multiple sports, notably the successful ProFootballTalk. The Monday and Friday shows will focus on football, with ProFootballTalk guru Mike Florio on Mondays, while the other shows will delve into newsworthy topics. In another example of corporate synergy, Russ Thaler, an anchor with a Comcast regional sports network, will serve as host. Other NBC Sports talent will also appear. Rovell's half-hour show will include interviews with leading sports business figures and a rundown of the winners and losers of the week. Rovell is a Twitter standout with some 115,000 followers; his tweets will be integrated into the show. On Mondays during the hockey season, the NBC SportsTalk show will be shortened to a half-hour leading into an NHL pre-game show.
With the U.S. Hispanic population growing, Spanish-language news media has fared better than its mainstream (English-language) counterparts, according to Pew Research Center. This continues to be the case despite the number of Hispanics born in the U.S., who are more likely to be bilingual or primarily English speakers. Some of the biggest success stories in Spanish-language news media come from TV, where Univision now rivals ABC, CBS and NBC in terms of audience size. It even recently launched a 24-hour Spanish-language news station. According to figures cited by Pew, total Spanish-language TV ad spending increased 10.7% in 2010 -- or double the growth rate for network TV in general -- due in part to the FIFA World Cup ad bonanza. Overall, the 2010-2011 Spanish-language TV season is expected to bring in $1.5 billion in ad revenue, with Univision and its TeleFutura property accounting for $1.1 billion of this. The revenue growth reflects audience growth, with Univision's 18-49 prime-time audience growing 8% to 1.9 million in 2010-2011 -- compared to percentage declines in the same demo at ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox. No surprise -- the Internet is the next big growth area for Spanish-language news media -- but it still faces some important barriers. Hispanics are still less connected to the Internet than the general population. Roughly 65% of Hispanic adults went online in 2010, compared to 77% for white adults -- while just 45% of Hispanic households had broadband access last year, compared to 65% of white households. By the same token, these numbers are increasing steadily from year to year, and all the major Spanish-language news sites are seeing increased traffic as a result. Internet usage among Spanish-language-dominant Hispanics increased from 36% in 2009 to 47% in 2010. Univision Communications Web sites attracted 3.34 million unique visitors in May 2011, followed by Yahoo en Espanol with 1.92 million, Terra-Telefonica with 1.9 million, and MSN Latino, with 1.7 million. In radio, the number of Spanish-language radio stations increased 8% from 1,224 in fall 2008 to 1,323 in fall 2009 -- the most recent count available -- although most of these are not news-talk format. Once again, Univision continues to be the major player, with 70 stations around the country attracting roughly 21.7 million listeners in any given week. Although Spanish-language radio revenues have suffered from a tough advertising environment, their audience growth is a positive long-term trend. Pew also noted that Spanish-language broadcasters have mostly agreed to begin encoding their audio signals for measurement by Arbitron's Portable People Meter, a passive electronic measurement device. While Univision is still holding out on actually subscribing to PPM outside of Houston, the simple fact that they now have comparable data could make them more competitive with mainstream radio in the long run. Spanish-language magazines apparently fared better than English titles in terms of advertising revenue, according to Kantar Media, which has total ad spending here increasing 5.5% -- compared to 2.9% for the consumer magazine industry overall. However, the picture here is less rosy, as Spanish-language print media suffers from the same trends affecting mainstream print. Another research outfit, Media Economics Group, estimated ad revenues grew 3.9% to $178.8 million -- but also noted that total ad pages dropped 4.7% in 2010, a sign that Spanish-language media is not immune to broader secular trends. Still, it's worth noting that the largest U.S. Spanish-language magazine, People en Espanol, saw total ad pages increase 3.2% from 702 in 2009 to 724 in 2010. The story was also less positive in Spanish-language newspapers. The total number of Spanish-language newspapers published in the U.S. dipped slightly, from 835 in 2009 to 832 in 2010. On the other hand, total audited daily circulation (among the minority of titles which pay for third-party auditing) grew 1.9% to 1.02 million -- compared to another decrease in overall circulation for the newspaper marketplace at large, according to separate figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, including a 5% decline in English-language dailies. But it wasn't all good news on the circulation front: total circulation at Spanish-language weeklies slipped 2.5% to 1.08 million. Meanwhile, ad revenue for Spanish-language newspapers overall crept up 2% in 2010, according to Kantar Media -- although another organization, Latino Print Network, calculated a 5.6% drop. Either figure is favorable next to a total print advertising decline of 8.2% for the industry at large, per the Newspaper Association of America.
In a sign of broadcasters continuing to experiment with multicast channels, the NBC station in Philadelphia, WCAU, will offer a package of football games this year that would have been unlikely without such real estate. The NBC-owned station, known as NBC 10, will carry ACC conference football games on Saturdays that involve schools with no regional connection. Offering a further twist, the games will air on the station's news and lifestyle multicast outlet, NBC Philadelphia Nonstop, the city's only local 24-hour news and lifestyle channel. The nearest ACC school to Philadelphia is the University of Maryland, and games will include teams from Virginia, Massachusetts and North Carolina. Some ACC basketball games could follow in the winter. The games come via a syndication deal with Raycom and the ACC, which sub-licenses them from ESPN. With the chance to expand its reach outside an ACC footprint under a new deal, Raycom and the ACC say they have added 25 new markets for the 13 Saturday games. Within the ACC territory, the gridiron games will be streamed online on the ACC's Web site, as well as via a mobile app. Outside, ESPN3.com will stream them. Also under its new deal with ESPN, Raycom and the ACC will syndicate ACC games on some Fox regional cable networks.
The University of Texas at Austin is launching a campaign promoting the university on the new Longhorn Network and on broadcasts of UT games, as well as at school events. The ads feature footage of a video projection on UT Tower that spotlights famous alumni and uses 3D graphics to make the building look as if it is made of spinning blocks that fit together like puzzle pieces. The effort, via GSD&M in Austin, and Klip Collective, comprises five spots extending the university's 10-year-old "What Starts Here Changes the World" tag. Under the themes of "Look Up," "Why," "Footsteps," "Competition," and "Awards," the ads show images of famous graduates like Walter Cronkite, Michael Dell, heart surgeon Denton Cooley; NASA astronaut Alan Bean; and writer John Coetzee, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The first of the ads aired Aug. 26 on the Longhorn Network. The ads will also air in-game on stations like FSN, ABC and ESPN, the UT JumboTron, and online at www.UTexas.edu. Kathleen Mabley, director of brand communications for the University of Texas at Austin, says the majority of the airtime will be with the new Longhorn Network on ESPN, "so it's a fairly specific audience of Texas fans." Of the new Longhorn Network, which launched on Aug. 26, Mabley says the ESPN partnership will be 90% sports content. Two NCAA conferences have started dedicated networks, while a third will be doing so in 2012, but UT is the first university to do this solo. "The goal is primarily to reach our alumni base. There isn't as much funding from the state now, so even though we run very efficiently we are a very large university so budgets and funding are tight. So a primary goal is to motivate alumnae to think about the next generation." Mabley says there are around 400,000 living UT Austin alumni.
The quote above is attributed to Steve Jobs, now the former CEO of Apple. What the quote means is the reason I admire what he has accomplished and will continue to influence as Apple's chairman. More on that below. Since Job's resignation as CEO, there has been no shortage of commentary, particularly relating to the impact of his move on the share price of Apple stock. I have no opinion about that. I read extensively the writings of those who do have opinions about that, and they are evenly split between the geniuses who state with certainty that there will be little impact and the geniuses who state it will crash and burn. If Jobs' record of achievement, to date, included nothing more than the Super Bowl spot called "1984," it would be impressive. That's how good the commercial was and how legendary it remains. But he is also listed as the primary or co-inventor of 338 U.S. patents. He acquired a company called Graphics Group, and renamed it Pixar. Its first film was "Toy Story" -- with which, and the films that followed it, he launched the modern computer-animated film industry. So far he's given us the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. Mainly he brought design and technology together and demonstrated what we all talk about when we say "branding." President Reagan awarded Jobs the National Medal of Technology, Fortune magazine named him the most powerful person in business, and Forbes listed him as one of the most powerful people in the world. Not bad for the adopted son of Paul Jobs and Clara Hagopian. My own view is that he is the most brilliantly instinctive marketer of our time. That's because he never, ever took his eye off the central tenet of marketing, the thing we often forget as we get more involved in the technology of advanced platforms, and the silos of specialized organizational design: the tenet that says our job is to create value for the end user. Doing that requires an understanding of who the end user is at the core, what he or she needs and wants, not just in product features but in aspiration -- and doing what it takes to fulfill these needs. "Real artists" do more than imagine and design. They develop, they produce, and "ship." This balance of vision and discipline, around the deeper needs of the consumer he has always served is the genius of Jobs and his Apple. The epitome of an entrepreneur and leader is that he or she will take responsibility, take charge and commit to a goal. Entrepreneurs set agendas, they don't react to them. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal, "An Entrepreneurial Fix For The U.S. Economy," outlined the two authors' views of our best hope for economic recovery. Steve Jobs must have smiled at this thought, having begun with only an idea about consumer value, and creating from it the world's most valuable technology company. Who's next? NOTE: It has been my privilege to share these thoughts with you over the past months. As my commitments have increased, I will now become less of a regular weekly contributor and more of an occasional voice. My thanks for your time and attention -- and especially for your thoughtful feedback.
As far as media storms go, Irene may be the most powerful one ever recorded. Yes, it's true that by the time she made landfall in the most populated areas of the Eastern Seaboard, Irene had been downgraded from a genuine hurricane to just a really bad tropical storm, but her media effects were a magnitude greater than any weather-related phenomenon before her. It all depends on your perspective, where you live, and the metric you use to measure it. And the metric I heard mentioned most often was not wind speed, rainfall, property damage, or even loss of life. It was the number of people that were knocked off the grid. That makes a great deal of sense, because while we all fear the devastation of natural disasters, few of us experience it directly. We watch it impact the lives of others, vicariously, from the comfort of our television sets. Until we lose power, that is, and scramble for flashlights, batteries -- or, if we're lucky to still have one stashed in junk pile drawer, a transistor radio to follow the news the way our grandparents did. Okay, so most of us now have smartphones capable of accessing the mobile Web, but they're only as good as their batteries are, so in our contemporary media times, the loss of electrical power is something many of us do experience, and consequently has become the primary metric for measuring the number of households -- and people -- displaced by a tropical storm. I don't have stats on the total number of households knocked off the media grid by Irene, but I do have them for my state, Connecticut, because the local TV news teams cited them over and over again as we watched the storm's approach and its aftermath. At last media count, Irene knocked a record 650,000 households off the grid in the Nutmeg State, beating the next biggest grid-buster, 1985's Hurricane Gloria, by 145,000 households, according to The Hartford Courant. That stat is particularly noteworthy, because Irene technically wasn't even a hurricane when she landed in Connecticut, a state that has only recorded seven genuine hurricanes beginning in 1858. The effects of Irene are telling in so many ways I cannot even begin to get into in a column that supposedly should be about television, the way we cover it, and the way it covers us. And if you believe what some respected scientists have been saying about climate change, we can expect to see many more Irene-like scenarios in the future -- powerful erratic weather patterns that disrupt our normal existence. So maybe the Grid Index is the right way to measure their magnitude -- a Richter Scale, if you will, for the media age. What I do know is that media plays an inextricable role in the way we experience things -- including weather-related things -- how we record them, how we remember them, and how we act and react to them collectively as a society. And by that scale, I think the media did an incredible job leading up to Irene. And I think society did a pretty good job of listening and responding to it. Yes, in the aftermath of a hurricane downgrade, plenty of pundits are second-guessing the media industry's coverage as hype, but if Irene had gathered momentum instead of winding down by the time she hit D.C., New York, and Boston, well, it might have been a different story. There's no question that natural disasters that strike the East Coast's mediaopolis generate disproportionate media coverage, because, well, they are striking Media Central. Just look at the impact a 5.8 magnitude earthquake in Virginia had when it rumbled through DC, New York and Boston only a week before Irene. Media events, including coverage of nature's wrath, get more media coverage when their epicenter is Media Town, because the media are located there, but also because they threaten our access to media. And as Irene's Grid Index suggests, access to media is a pretty important way of measuring things. Speaking of which, we don't even know yet how the massive power outages caused by Irene in some of our biggest media markets will affect the way we technically measure media in those markets. At presstime, Nielsen was still scrambling to determine how many households were knocked out of its "in-tab" database (the households that produce usable data that generate TV ratings), or whether ratings for some markets might be delayed or withheld due to lower-than-acceptable in-tab levels. But a Nielsen spokesperson said it might take some time to figure that out, because Irene also coincided with a heavier-than-usual vacation schedule for Nielsen executives, creating what might be tantamount to a perfect TV ratings storm.
To all you advertisers, marketers and media buyers out there -- Have you ever considered the fact that at least a portion of your audience hates you?OK, maybe they don't hate you. But you sure do annoy the heck out of them? At least the 75% that aren't the right audience to begin with. After all, you interrupt their favorite programs with ads they don't want to watch, for products they don't intend to buy. They're not customers; they're freeloaders. They get their favorite shows for free ,while you fund those shows for them with your ad dollars. And they're ruining your advertising ROI. So why not get rid of the freeloaders and replace them with customers? After all, whether your audience wants to admit it, you are paying good money to entertain them. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Just like Google users put up with display ads, NPR listeners tolerate fundraising drives, and magazine readers deal with those annoying little postcards, television audiences have always had to suffer through commercial breaks or make quick pit stops at the fridge. Since the beginning of television, this has been an unwritten understanding between programmers, advertisers, and viewers: One plays, one pays, one stays. But these days, audiences no longer have to stay. They can skip commercials without even leaving the couch. They can watch online with lighter commercial loads, if any. They can even pay directly for content, cutting you out of the mix altogether. (Another Steve Jobs legacy: There are few if any freeloaders in Apple's world; every customer gets what he/she pays for.)Even so, television remains the most powerful marketing medium around. Data from eMarketer shows TV ad spending keeping pace with online. And even though TV is projected to stay flat over the next four years while Internet grows by 40% (as a percentage of overall marketing spend, that is), TV ad revenues will still be 50% greater than Internet ad revenues in 2015. As Sam Gustin wrote in Wired a few months ago, "Advertisers know they can still reach millions of people...who flock to such programming as "Jersey Shore," "Glee" and "Gossip Girl."A Microsoft/BBDO joint report cited by Bloomberg News chalked television's unmatched marketing resonance up to the fact that "its audience is receptive and waiting to be entertained." But TV advertising -- any advertising, in fact -- only works when it reaches the right audiences. And remember that demographics don't buy products, consumers do. So you need to make sure that the programming you pay for is going to entertain viewers who are interested in purchasing your product. And that means minimizing freeloaders. So don't cut your ad budgets, cut the waste out of them.Let's face it: Freeloaders aren't going away. Not unless you change where you advertise by honing your media strategy. The data's there -- set-top-box data, household-purchase info, demographic data -- but it's up to you to use it. And you don't have to necessarily buy the long tail in order to get the last 20 points of reach. Use the solution that gives you the reach you want -- at the price you want -- against your own current ROI-driving purchaser segments.Replace the freeloaders in your audience with customers who are interested in your product, and who buy your product (or your competitor's product, if you're feeling feisty). It's only sensible, and it's only efficient. Your ROI will thank you.
TV Networks are loathe to talk up one new show over another. But TV marketers do need to focus on particular concerns to shore up problem areas. Through an informal, very nonscientific survey, I'm guessing NBC is working pretty hard to let people know about "Whitney," the half-hour comedy from comedian Whitney Cummings. Evidence here comes from plenty of outdoor advertising -- always a costly media effort. If that isn't enough, consider NBC is offering the first episode of "Whitney" via video-on-demand, a week before it debuts on NBC on Sept. 22. The marketing push comes from a central theme: That couples living together, with no intention of getting married, can be a good thing. One theme pushed by NBC says: "Happily Unmarried." And then there is all the ordinary relationship stuff to consider. Bus shelter advertising includes simple white background with Cummings in the foreground and her on-air boyfriend in the background. All slugged with specific relationship thoughts and theories, such as: "Half of all marriages end... in sweatpants." Another display ad says: "Always a Trophy. Never a Wife." Still another reads: "Women are emotional ninjas. 'I'm fine' means I'm going to stab you in the neck." Then there's the TV promo: "I don't understand women who used the silent treatment," says Cummings, in a specially produced TV spot. "You want to make him miserable. Keep talking. Talk about your emotions. Tell him you think you look fat. [Talk about] your period." It ends with this message: "Punishment delivered." My response is: Ah, now that'll grab the men! And to make matters worse: This promo ran during a very male-target sporting event: The USA Cycling Challenge on Versus. My wife says this is perfect media placement: "It makes sense to me. Cyclists are use to punishing themselves!" No doubt the ad is also running on a number of other NBC Universal networks: Female-heavy USA Network original dramas, as well as women-targeted networks Bravo and Oxygen. Women viewers hearing messages about punishing men? Perfect. Then again, all this reverse psychology might work. Using the attractive and funny Cummings could be setting smart traps set for men. They might think: "Poor schlub. He looks miserable. Maybe my life isn't that bad!" It's set up for a few good laughs. But maybe not as much yucks as with mixed martial arts fighting or Nascar crashes.