Friday, January 25, 2008

Traditional Media Ready to Elevate the Conversation Online — with Moderation

From MediaShift - Major media sites have started to get the religion of audience participation, but there’s been one big hitch: How do you harness the audience’s knowledge and participation without the forums devolving into a messy online brawl that requires time-intensive moderation?

Over the years, traditional media sites have tried forums, killed them, and tried them again, this time with more moderation. But still, the unruly aspect of online commentary continues to upset people, as the Hartford Courant’s public editor Karen Hunter recently railed against the “uncivil discourse” on her site’s comments, blaming it on anonymous commenters and calling for a requirement that people use their real names. Then Topix CEO Chris Tolles defended anonymous contributions, comparing unregistered commenters on Topix to those that register and found that while unregistered comments are slightly more likely to violate posting guidelines, three times of all comments came from unregistered commenters.

What has changed in the last year is that major media companies are no longer arguing over whether they should have comments under stories or blogs; instead, the debate is about how they should moderate them and even highlight the best ones in eye-catching editorial spaces. Many sites are embracing the concept of “news as a conversation,” and trying to create active conversations among reporters, editors and readers online. The New York Times released a more robust commenting function recently, where readers can recommend each other’s comments, and there are “Editor’s Selections” for the best comments in a thread. And last weekend BusinessWeek.com started highlighting one commenter per day on its home page, with a photo of the commenter. | Read full article

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Headwinds for online advertising

From The Globe And Mail - The explosive growth of online advertising may slow somewhat because consumers are beginning to find some of its techniques intrusive, consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu believes.

While many consumers find advertising annoying, Deloitte said there are signs they are taking a particular dislike to ads in the online world. It cited a survey last year of consumers in the United States that found the majority noticed print ads more than those online, but also found them less invasive.

People are also objecting to advertisers following their every move online, according to Deloitte. Perhaps the best demonstration of that came last month when Facebook pulled its Beacon ad program that tracked the purchases its members made online and then alerted their social networks.

A slowdown in online ads would be discouraging news for companies looking to expand beyond traditional advertising, as well as for the media companies and websites that rely on online ads for growth.

Nevertheless, Deloitte expects this segment of advertising will expand further in 2008. “Even if the growth of online advertising does slow in 2008, slower growth should be put in perspective. Online advertising is expected to generate tens of billions of dollars worth of revenues in 2008 from a relatively small, addressable market.” | Read full article

CBC Radio show adds a wiki

From The Globe And Mail - Much of what we call "public" radio often isn’t that public -- if by public you mean interactive -- apart from maybe the call-in shows, where everyone gets to rant about how the prime minister is a moron. Some radio programs are trying to change that, however, including a couple that are featured on our national broadcaster, the CBC.

Spark, a show about technology and culture hosted by founding Definitely Not The Opera host/producer Nora Young, has launched not only a blog (something many shows have), but has taken the idea one step farther and has added a “wiki.” The term wiki -- which comes from a Hawaiian slang term meaning “quickly” -- refers to websites that anyone can edit or contribute to easily. One of the most popular examples is Wikipedia, the “open source” encyclopedia, which allows anyone to add a fact or create an entry.

Ms. Young says that she hopes that listeners will use the Spark wiki, located here, to offer thoughts about show topics, to contribute questions for guests who might be coming up on the program, and generally to interact with her and the rest of the show staff. | Read full article

Last.fm, labels launch free music on-demand

From The Globe And Mail - Last.fm, the social music network owned by CBS Corp., said on Wednesday it is introducing a free service for fans to listen to their favourite songs on-demand.

The new service is being launched in partnership with the four major music companies, as well as over 150,000 labels and artists.

When fans in the United States, Britain and Germany search for an artist on the Last.fm website, they can now stream the artist's song for nothing or pay to download an MP3 version of the song via Amazon.com.

Last.fm said the streaming service is funded by advertising revenue, which is shared with the music companies.

The move comes nearly six years after Last.fm first started reaching out to music companies to license songs to stream on its site.

“They wouldn't even take our calls back then,” said Last.fm co-founder Martin Stiksel.

“But our motto to always do the right thing by respecting artist copyright has helped us in our discussions,” he said. | Read full article

Last.fm, labels launch free music on-demand

From The Globe And Mail - Last.fm, the social music network owned by CBS Corp., said on Wednesday it is introducing a free service for fans to listen to their favourite songs on-demand.

The new service is being launched in partnership with the four major music companies, as well as over 150,000 labels and artists.

When fans in the United States, Britain and Germany search for an artist on the Last.fm website, they can now stream the artist's song for nothing or pay to download an MP3 version of the song via Amazon.com.

Last.fm said the streaming service is funded by advertising revenue, which is shared with the music companies.

The move comes nearly six years after Last.fm first started reaching out to music companies to license songs to stream on its site.

“They wouldn't even take our calls back then,” said Last.fm co-founder Martin Stiksel.

“But our motto to always do the right thing by respecting artist copyright has helped us in our discussions,” he said. | Read full article

Digital music sales up 40% in year

From The Globe And Mail - Record companies' revenue from digital music sales rose 40 per cent to $2.9-billion (U.S.) over the past year, but the growth is still failing to cover losses from collapse of international CD sales, the music industry's global trade body said Thursday.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, or IFPI, said the increase in legitimate music sales did not come close to offsetting the billions of dollars being lost to music piracy, with illegal downloads outnumbering the number of tracks sold by a factor of 20-to-1.

But the trade group said it welcomed efforts by French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who has proposed a clampdown on those who violate copyright laws.

Mr. Sarkozy called in November for Internet service providers in France to automatically disconnect customers involved in piracy. | Read full article

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

What Do Casual Games And Pharmaceuticals Have In Common?

From Video Insider - I recently flipped through an issue of Time magazine and noticed that pharmaceutical companies not only push their latest sleep aids, cholesterol suppressors and erectile dysfunction meds, but they also compete for market share amongst themselves.

The issue I looked at had ads for Actonel, AdVair, Ambien, Cymbalta, Cypher Stent, Medco, Rozerem and Zetia. My first thought was, There is an awful lot of money used to advertise these well-known drug brands. At the same time, I thought about the value proposition of online video advertising:

* touches millions of consumers each month.
* has sophisticated consumer targeting and tracking with each ad served.

Out of curiosity I looked at Time's online rate card, and with simple math I calculated the combined monthly ad-spend of all the pharmaceutical companies to be in the neighborhood of $3 million — just one issue. I looked deeper into what Time offers advertisers and found that the magazine guarantees 19.5 million impressions per month, charges a hefty $48 CPM for black-and-white full-page ads and a whopping $74 CPM for full-page color ads. I also noticed that each pharmaceutical ad was two full pages:

* Page one — the actual full-color ad.
* Page two — the full-page disclosure that generally appears on the back of the page of the color ad

This suggests each drug company buys two pages per month for an average cost per thousand of $61. WOW. | Read full article