Some Up, Some Down According to Publishers Information Bureau, magazine advertising revenue for the month of April closed at $1.6 billion, a 1.2% decrease from last year. Pages for April were down 9.5% from last year. Year-to-date, advertising revenue rose slightly with a 0.3% increase to $5.2 billion, and ad pages were 79 thousand , down 7.5% over last year. Positive dollar growth for April was in Toiletries & Cosmetics; Apparel & Accessories; Food & Food Products; Drugs & Remedies; Transportation, Hotels & Resorts; and Direct Response Companies. In the year-to-date comparison, growth is in Apparel & Accessories; Food …

A More Medium Mass Medium Michael Bartlett of Newsbytes writes that "after years as 'elitist country club' for people with money and technical skills, the Internet is making way for Joe Six-Pack." His conclusions are based on the latest Nielsen/NetRatings Internet ratings report which show that in the past 12 months, home Internet access for blue-collar workers grew faster than any other occupational group. The number of factory operators or laborers online jumped 52% from 6.2 million to nearly 9.5 million. Homemakers had the second-largest percentage growth, zooming 49% from 1.6 million to 2.4 million. The study said the …

Up Close and Personal In a special reported in Interactive Week Forrester Research says that iTV revenue in the U.K. will hit around $14 billion by 2005. Europe is creating a new wave of interactive information and entertainment services that will beam into living rooms around the world in the next few years. Jesper Knutsson, vice president of iTV at Agency.com, says that "We are slowly changing TV as we know it to something much more dynamic, which entertains and informs." Research firm Jupiter Media Metrix predicts that iTV penetration in the U.S. will surpass that in Europe in …

An Old Medium In A New Light Richard Williamson, in a recently released article in Interactive Week, writes about new rules for interactivity and convergence. He points out that, at a time when many businesses are just beginning to recognize the need for coordinated online strategies, the Internet revolution is moving to television, forcing companies to adopt strategies for a medium that merges advertising, entertainment and electronic commerce into a single platform. This new interactive arena is built around "walled gardens," pay-to-play marketplaces that control an audience's access to content. The goal is to keep the viewer on your …

Media Belt-Tightening In its most negative outlook yet for the media industry, Myers Reports Inc. issued a report on May 1 showing a revised long-term media spending forecast that calls for a drop in U.S. ad spending in 2001, and virtually no growth in 2002. The forecast doesn't see material growth in U.S. media spending until 2004 (+3.6%) and calls for relatively flat growth for two years following that. "… we can expect some radical belt-tightening and shifting of business plans and strategies," predicts Myers chief media economist Jack Myers. Myers' Revised Media Forecast …

Cross-media Packaging A just-completed survey by BtoB and American Business Media, reported by Bill Niles of Erdos & Morgan, to be presented at the American Business Media spring meeting, finds that cross-media advertising packages clearly appeal to media buyers, but buyers and sellers judge the value and success of these packages quite differently. Among the survey's highlights: - 75% of the respondents reported their companies buy or sell cross-media advertising packages. - 40% whose companies do not buy or sell packages expect they will do so within the next year or so. - More than half of buyers …

Communicate! While the results of a new Jupiter Media Metrix study may be viewed as effective marketing direction for retailers, it may also be seen as an appropriate positioning strategy for an advertising campaign, or a window on the psychographics of an impatient retail consumer. Jupiter found that customer expectations for e-mail response have been increasing over the last two years, from 24 hours to 12 to six. And, concurrently, found that more than half, 53%, of retail companies respond to e-mail within six hours, as do most businesses in other industries. Only 38% of companies meet …

Works Well With Others A recent article at Clickz says that an incredible amount of hype has been generated about the potential of wireless advertising and marketing. At the same time, relatively little has been written about how to integrate this new medium with existing marketing channels. The two channels seem to be very similar. Direct wireless marketing involves the delivery of permission-based marketing offers and content to wireless devices, such as cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), wireless Internet-enabled phones, and two-way pagers. These messages are "pushed" to individual customers by request rather than set up as "pull" …

RadioSites in Depth As the Internet continues to grow, a radio station’s online presence becomes increasingly important. To date, however, the radio industry lacks a comprehensive synthesis of this information. This “Radio Station Web Site Content: An In-Depth Look,” is a report which addresses current content radio as well as recommendations as to what content they should have. Edison Media Research and Arbitron have been at the forefront of research on audio and the Internet with a series of insightful and provocative studies. Internet Study V, released in September 2000, focuses on topics ranging from the latest trends in …

They Do It For A Song A recent release from Pew Internet shows that, whether you're using banners, pop-ups, streaming, rich or what-have-you, there's an incredible spurt of adults and teenagers on the music download sites to whom you can appeal! Surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project show that between July-August 2000 and February 2001, the number of American adults who have downloaded music online shot up more than 40%. In the six months between August 2000 and February 2001 close to 30 million American adults have downloaded music files over the Internet and it has …