paidcontent reporting:
Magazine
publishers will have to adopt more nuanced digital pricing strategies
as tablets take off. They can look to book publishers — who are a lot
further along in the digital revolution — for some help.
A recent Wall Street Journal article by Keach Hagey
takes a look at trends in digital magazine pricing and finds a number
of publishers charging more for tablet editions than print. As ad
revenue declines, publishers are turning to digital magazines as a way
to “become more leveraged toward consumer revenue and a little less
dependent on advertising,” in the words of Hearst president David Carey.
And here’s Condé Nast president Bob Sauerberg: “We’re using this new
platform and the clear demand for all access to our content as a way to
redefine our subscription offerings at a higher price. The industry is
trying to take a step forward because we’re all trying to get more money
from the consumer.”
But how long will these pricing strategies work? Digital still makes
up only a tiny percentage of magazine publishers’ overall revenues: The
Alliance for Audited Media (formerly the Audit Bureau of Circulations)
reported in August that digital replica editions (which replicate most
of a print magazine’s editorial and advertising content, and make up the
vast majority of magazines’ digital versions) made up just 1.7 percent of overall circulation. The WSJ story says big magazine publishers think digital won’t hit 10 percent of circulation until 2015.
Pricing strategies that very early adopters appear to be accepting
are not likely to work for a general population. Magazine publishers may
need to adopt more nuanced digital pricing strategies as tablets take
off. And they can look to book publishers — who are a lot further along
in the digital revolution, with ebooks now making up over 20 percent of
revenues at large publishing houses — for some help. Here are a few
things they’ll have to think about:..
http://paidcontent.org/2013/01/25/what-digital-magazines-can-learn-from-ebook-publishers/
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Print Media Bastion May Be Giving Way in Germany
NYT reporting:
MUNICH — Long after newspaper audiences started defecting to the Internet in other Western countries, Germany still looks like a bastion of print.
MUNICH — Long after newspaper audiences started defecting to the Internet in other Western countries, Germany still looks like a bastion of print.
On any train, plane or bus, readers unfurl broadsheets that still do
justice to the word, thick with advertising. More than 72 percent of
Germans who are older than 14 read newspapers regularly, according to
the Federation of German Newspaper Publishers.
So it came as something of a shock when, at the end of last year, news
of trouble emerged at several German newspapers and other news
organizations. In October, DAPD, a news service, filed for bankruptcy
protection. In November, Frankfurter Rundschau, one of the first dailies
to begin publishing in occupied Germany after World War II, took a
similar step. In December, The Financial Times Deutschland shut down.
Is the newspaper industry in Germany about to go the way of its counterparts elsewhere in the developed world?
Perhaps. Certain technologies, including the Internet, have taken longer
to catch on in Germany than elsewhere. Advertising has already declined
sharply at German newspapers; perhaps now readers will move on, too.
...
The downturn in print advertising has affected German papers, but they
have largely been able to compensate by raising their cover prices. Over
all, newspaper revenue was flat last year, according to the publishers’
group — a relatively buoyant performance, given the slide elsewhere.
The number of newspapers in Germany actually increased in 2012.
In an effort to head off further declines in advertising, the publishers
of four German national papers — Handelsblatt, Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit — formed an alliance this
month to promote their appeal to marketers.
Publishers have also persuaded the government of Chancellor Angela
Merkel to introduce legislation that could result in a new source of
revenue: licensing fees from Internet companies like Google. The measure
would authorize the publishers to demand fees from search engines or
aggregators that link to their articles. The publishers’ success in
lobbying for the measure, which is bitterly opposed by Google,
demonstrates their continued clout, analysts say.
Future of libraries
appnewser reporting:
OpenSite.org has created an infographic called, “The Future of Libraries,” which imagines what libraries will look like in the future.
According to the graphic, there are more than 121,000 libraries in America and 69 percent of Americans use libraries. In addition, the infographic reveals that 67 percent of libraries offer eBooks and 28 percent lend eReading devices.
We’ve embedded the entire infographic below for you to check out.
http://www.mediabistro.com/appnewser/the-future-of-libraries-infographic_b31564
OpenSite.org has created an infographic called, “The Future of Libraries,” which imagines what libraries will look like in the future.
According to the graphic, there are more than 121,000 libraries in America and 69 percent of Americans use libraries. In addition, the infographic reveals that 67 percent of libraries offer eBooks and 28 percent lend eReading devices.
We’ve embedded the entire infographic below for you to check out.
http://www.mediabistro.com/appnewser/the-future-of-libraries-infographic_b31564
Most newspaper stories are still too long
Newsosaur reporting:
With all due
respect to my colleagues and friends in the business, newspapers are
written by journalists for journalists, who not only love their words
but also tend to equate the length of a story with the importance of the
subject, if not the writers themselves....
http://newsosaur.blogspot.fi/2013/01/most-newspaper-stories-are-still-too.html
The news
cognoscenti gasped when the Columbia Journalism Review recently reported
that the nation’s leading newspapers aren’t writing as many long
stories as they used to. But I think most stories are still way too
windy.
In a moment, I’ll tell you why, as briefly as I can. First the background:
Tallying yarns topping 2,000 words on Factiva, CJR found the number of long-form stories at the Los Angeles Times dropped by 86% between 2003 and 2012. In
the same period, stories of similar heft fell by 50% at the Washington
Post, 35% at the Wall Street Journal and 25% at the New York Times.
“When it
comes to stories longer than 3,000 words, three papers showed even
sharper declines,” said CJR. The number of super-sized stories dropped
everywhere but the NYT, which actually had a 32% increase in articles of
3,000 words or more. Remember the epic Snowfall?
The reasons for what CJR called a “meltdown” in
long-form journalism are well known: Skinnier news holes, shrinking
staffs and more digital chores for slimmed-down staffs to perform –
24/7, if you please.
But the
constraints of the modern publishing business actually may be a bad
thing that’s a good thing for newspapers laboring to sustain their
relevance and utility for the time-constrained multi-taskers also known
as their remaining readers.
http://newsosaur.blogspot.fi/2013/01/most-newspaper-stories-are-still-too.html
BII REPORT: Here's What Smartphone Users Are Doing With Their Phones
BusinessInsider reporting:
According to eMarketer, mobile now accounts for 12 percent of Americans' media consumption time, triple its share in 2009.
Where is this consumer attention being focused?
The biggest beneficiaries have been mobile apps. Time spent on apps dwarfs time spent on the mobile Web, and smartphone owners now spend 127 minutes per day in mobile apps.
Mobile gaming has become a juggernaut: Mobile games are the biggest time bucket of the mobile app era. According to Flurry, games account for 43% of the time spent on mobile apps on iOS and Android. Not surprisingly, games, which are usually monetized through in-app purchases, are also the biggest app money-makers. According to a BII analysis of Apple's App Store, games accounted for 70% of the top-grossing apps in the store.
Social and mobile usage and monetization is exploding: Social networking is the second most popular mobile app category, accounting for 26% of time spent in apps. The
percentage of all U.S. mobile users that accessed a social network on
their phone rose from 14% in September 2009 to 39% in November,
according to comScore. The growth of mobile social underscores that companies like Twitter and Facebook are now essentially mobile businesses. Mobile is not a superfluous sideshow, but central to these companies' businesses.
Weather, video, email, and search are all increasingly popular mobile activities: As
of September, comScore reported 46% of U.S. mobile subscribers have
accessed email on their phone, 40% checked the weather, 36% used a
search engine, and 31% looked at maps. Mobile
video is the third most popular smartphone activity in the U.S., with
two-thirds of smartphone owners watching at least an hour of video
weekly, according to a study released in December by the IAB
According to eMarketer, mobile now accounts for 12 percent of Americans' media consumption time, triple its share in 2009.
Where is this consumer attention being focused?
The biggest beneficiaries have been mobile apps. Time spent on apps dwarfs time spent on the mobile Web, and smartphone owners now spend 127 minutes per day in mobile apps.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Connecticut Introduces Bill Mandating Publishers Sell Ebooks to Libraries
dbwreporting:
A bill has been introduced into the Conn. General Assembly that would mandate publishers sell ebooks to libraries “at the same rates as offered to the general public.”
...Government has been famously involved in the ebook business in the U.S. since 2011 when there were rumblings of a Department of Justice investigation into Apple and five of the largest U.S. publishers concerning alleged ebook price-fixing and collusion. In July in the UK, the Labour party called for a task force to investigate library ebook lending.
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/connecticut-introduces-bill-mandating-publishers-sell-ebooks-to-libraries/?et_mid=600462&rid=233619411
A bill has been introduced into the Conn. General Assembly that would mandate publishers sell ebooks to libraries “at the same rates as offered to the general public.”
...Government has been famously involved in the ebook business in the U.S. since 2011 when there were rumblings of a Department of Justice investigation into Apple and five of the largest U.S. publishers concerning alleged ebook price-fixing and collusion. In July in the UK, the Labour party called for a task force to investigate library ebook lending.
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/connecticut-introduces-bill-mandating-publishers-sell-ebooks-to-libraries/?et_mid=600462&rid=233619411
Saturday, January 26, 2013
4 Reasons Why Content Marketing is Scaring the Pants Off Media Companies
CMI reporting:
...
“When will B2B marketers take their content programs to Pulitzer, NMA, Oscar level?”
It’s an interesting question, and one for which I don’t have a very good answer. Traditionalists will say that because brands always have an ulterior motive for their content (to attract and/or retain customers in some way), that type of content quality will never be possible.
With that, I strongly disagree. All content has a point of view; some is just more obvious about it than others (think Fox News).
I have more to add to this. But first, a few stories…
---This is not a post about how publishing is dead. Far from it; in fact, publishing has never been stronger. What is dying is the business model of ad-supported content. The dozen-plus amazing examples shared at the IAB event provided ample evidence of brand-supported content (like the example to the right, from Cisco Systems), rather than ad-supported content (as in traditional models).
There is nothing to fix here, and no toolkit for marketers or publishers. This is just the truth and, as such, it presents opportunities and challenges for both sides. But from my perspective as a publisher, here are the new paradigms that I see content marketing being driven by:
Media companies are trying to do the same thing. Exactly the same thing. The only difference in this business model is that media companies are supported by different revenue streams (paid content or sponsored content).
Coke’s content marketing is a needle in a traditional advertising haystack. It’s simply a rounding area. If Coke ever decided to really get serious, it has more money and resources than any media entity in the world to develop world-class content...
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8672091774752856243#editor/target=post;postID=3722513154889909064
...
“When will B2B marketers take their content programs to Pulitzer, NMA, Oscar level?”
It’s an interesting question, and one for which I don’t have a very good answer. Traditionalists will say that because brands always have an ulterior motive for their content (to attract and/or retain customers in some way), that type of content quality will never be possible.
With that, I strongly disagree. All content has a point of view; some is just more obvious about it than others (think Fox News).
I have more to add to this. But first, a few stories…
---This is not a post about how publishing is dead. Far from it; in fact, publishing has never been stronger. What is dying is the business model of ad-supported content. The dozen-plus amazing examples shared at the IAB event provided ample evidence of brand-supported content (like the example to the right, from Cisco Systems), rather than ad-supported content (as in traditional models).
There is nothing to fix here, and no toolkit for marketers or publishers. This is just the truth and, as such, it presents opportunities and challenges for both sides. But from my perspective as a publisher, here are the new paradigms that I see content marketing being driven by:
Brand publishers and media companies have the same goal
Big goal = audience that leads to subscription. Brand publishers are challenged with trying to get found in Google, drive leads, and figure out social media. At the center of making all this happen is storytelling. It’s all about brands creating helpful, valuable, and compelling stories that position them as trusted experts in their fields. That content, if worthy, will convert casual, passerby readers into loyal ones. In turn, those loyal readers may then be converted into loyal customers.Media companies are trying to do the same thing. Exactly the same thing. The only difference in this business model is that media companies are supported by different revenue streams (paid content or sponsored content).
Brand publishers have almost unlimited resources
A lot has been made of Coca-Cola’s content strategy. The company is investing millions, but let’s put that into perspective:Coke’s content marketing is a needle in a traditional advertising haystack. It’s simply a rounding area. If Coke ever decided to really get serious, it has more money and resources than any media entity in the world to develop world-class content...
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8672091774752856243#editor/target=post;postID=3722513154889909064
5 interesting findings from Scholastic's report on digital reading among children
The New York Times reported yesterday that "Digital reading is rising fast among children ages 6 to 17, but this is not necessarily translating into a greater desire to read, according to a report released on Monday by Scholastic Inc.". Here are the most 10 interesting things you can learn from the report:
1. "The percentage of children who have read an e-book has almost doubled since 2010, to 46 percent." This is a pretty impressive figure comparing to the general share of ebooks in the book market, giving you a pretty good indication how common the use of ebooks will be in 10-15 years (like you didn't know..).
2. "During the same period, the number of girls who reported being frequent readers declined to 36 percent from 42 percent." - does it mean that the growing use of ebooks doesn't necessarily translate into reading more books in general? The answer might be found in the next finding.
3. Children "are increasingly using tablets, like iPads, which allow for more activities than just reading. In fact, slightly more children reported having read a book on a tablet than on a plain e-reader device."
http://ecolibris.blogspot.fi/2013/01/5-interesting-findings-from-scholastics.html
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Newspaper readers are not graying as quickly as reported
Poynter reporting:
My friend Alan Mutter wrote something startling this week in his always thought-provoking blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur: “The population of people reading newspaper has aged dramatically in the last three years.”
By Mutter’s analysis, roughly three-quarters of newspaper readers are now over age 45. That, according to his calculations, is up dramatically from half in 2010 — a graying of newspaper readers by 50 percent in two years.
He based his analysis on data from the Pew Research Center that I was involved in producing from summer 2010 and summer 2012. (I left the Pew Research Center in December to take the helm of the American Press Institute).
The problem is, the analysis doesn’t reflect reality.
First, the numbers don’t track with any commensurate significant drop in newspaper readership in the Pew dataset. In the survey conducted in June 2012, 49 percent of adults said they read a newspaper “regularly,” the same percentage as in 2010. If you take the narrower number, the percentage of adults who read a newspaper “yesterday,” there is a slight change, a drop from 31 percent in 2010 to 29 percent in 2012, but nothing that would support the kind of dramatic structural shift Mutter estimates. Nor do recent circulation figures suggest it.
Mutter attempted to estimate the percentage of print newspaper readers by age cohort by comparing the Pew Research data with Census data. But the Pew data was a sample of adults. He compared that to the population overall, including children. So his percentages are not comparing the same populations.
The market research firm Scarborough Research produces analysis that covers the ground Mutter was trying to walk — the percentage of newspaper readers by age group. Scarborough’s data, which is based on a large sample of some 200,000 people, also find, like Pew Research’s data, relatively minor change in two years. According to that Scarborough data, 68 percent of the people who said they read a print newspaper “yesterday” were over 45, compared with 66 percent in 2010, a slight drop but also not an irrelevant one given long-term trends. (On the Newspaper Association of America site, where this data is publicly available, the numbers are broken out into slightly different age groupings.
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/201042/newspaper-readers-are-not-graying-as-quickly-as-reported/
My friend Alan Mutter wrote something startling this week in his always thought-provoking blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur: “The population of people reading newspaper has aged dramatically in the last three years.”
By Mutter’s analysis, roughly three-quarters of newspaper readers are now over age 45. That, according to his calculations, is up dramatically from half in 2010 — a graying of newspaper readers by 50 percent in two years.
He based his analysis on data from the Pew Research Center that I was involved in producing from summer 2010 and summer 2012. (I left the Pew Research Center in December to take the helm of the American Press Institute).
The problem is, the analysis doesn’t reflect reality.
First, the numbers don’t track with any commensurate significant drop in newspaper readership in the Pew dataset. In the survey conducted in June 2012, 49 percent of adults said they read a newspaper “regularly,” the same percentage as in 2010. If you take the narrower number, the percentage of adults who read a newspaper “yesterday,” there is a slight change, a drop from 31 percent in 2010 to 29 percent in 2012, but nothing that would support the kind of dramatic structural shift Mutter estimates. Nor do recent circulation figures suggest it.
Mutter attempted to estimate the percentage of print newspaper readers by age cohort by comparing the Pew Research data with Census data. But the Pew data was a sample of adults. He compared that to the population overall, including children. So his percentages are not comparing the same populations.
The market research firm Scarborough Research produces analysis that covers the ground Mutter was trying to walk — the percentage of newspaper readers by age group. Scarborough’s data, which is based on a large sample of some 200,000 people, also find, like Pew Research’s data, relatively minor change in two years. According to that Scarborough data, 68 percent of the people who said they read a print newspaper “yesterday” were over 45, compared with 66 percent in 2010, a slight drop but also not an irrelevant one given long-term trends. (On the Newspaper Association of America site, where this data is publicly available, the numbers are broken out into slightly different age groupings.
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/201042/newspaper-readers-are-not-graying-as-quickly-as-reported/
Hearst is Releasing Digital Magazines to iPad Before Print
appnewser reporting:
Magazine publisher Hearst has partnered with Apple to release digital editions of its magazines before the print books drop.
Hearst is the first publisher to participate in, “Read Them Here First,” a new program from Apple’s Newsstand which gives iPad users access to publications before these titles are available elsewhere. As of now 20 Hearst titles are available through Apple’s Newsstand’s new offering including: O The Oprah Magazine, Esquire and Good Housekeeping.
AllThingsDigital has the story: “via Hearst pr’s Alexandra Carlin: She says the length of Newsstand buyers’ headstart ‘varies’, depending on publication, and that the offer applies to single copy sales as well as subs. As far as the deal’s origins: ‘Apple suggested this initiative, and it’s a great offer they can provide to their newsstand users. We’re always working with our retail partners on unique ways to drive consumer sale and engagement.’”
http://www.mediabistro.com/appnewser/hearst-is-releasing-digital-magazines-to-ipad-before-print_b31287
Magazine publisher Hearst has partnered with Apple to release digital editions of its magazines before the print books drop.
Hearst is the first publisher to participate in, “Read Them Here First,” a new program from Apple’s Newsstand which gives iPad users access to publications before these titles are available elsewhere. As of now 20 Hearst titles are available through Apple’s Newsstand’s new offering including: O The Oprah Magazine, Esquire and Good Housekeeping.
AllThingsDigital has the story: “via Hearst pr’s Alexandra Carlin: She says the length of Newsstand buyers’ headstart ‘varies’, depending on publication, and that the offer applies to single copy sales as well as subs. As far as the deal’s origins: ‘Apple suggested this initiative, and it’s a great offer they can provide to their newsstand users. We’re always working with our retail partners on unique ways to drive consumer sale and engagement.’”
http://www.mediabistro.com/appnewser/hearst-is-releasing-digital-magazines-to-ipad-before-print_b31287
Amazon Kindle ebook rentals take the time out of reading
slashgear reporting:
This week Amazon has unveiled Kindle book rentals in an extremely quiet fashion, opting to test it out with the public before doing any sort of press on the topic – but you can try it out right this minute if you wish. What you’re going to be doing here is renting a title for a certain amount of time, with the price going up based on how many months you’d like to keep it around. Thirty day increments appear at the moment to be the turn-over for how much you’ll be paying, 30, 60, 90, and 120 day periods being available for less than a dollar difference.
If you’re paying for a digital book, you have the right to look at that book as much as you’d like – and in most cases, download it to a limited number of devices at any one time. Here with Amazon’s Kindle rentals, you’ll be doing the same – but instead of your limits stopping at the amount of devices you can download to, you’re limited to time. The price being significantly less for these limited amounts of time may just be the ticket to those of you out there that have steel trap memories and tight pocketbooks in the e-generation.--
http://www.slashgear.com/amazon-kindle-ebook-rentals-take-the-time-out-of-reading-18265921/
This week Amazon has unveiled Kindle book rentals in an extremely quiet fashion, opting to test it out with the public before doing any sort of press on the topic – but you can try it out right this minute if you wish. What you’re going to be doing here is renting a title for a certain amount of time, with the price going up based on how many months you’d like to keep it around. Thirty day increments appear at the moment to be the turn-over for how much you’ll be paying, 30, 60, 90, and 120 day periods being available for less than a dollar difference.
If you’re paying for a digital book, you have the right to look at that book as much as you’d like – and in most cases, download it to a limited number of devices at any one time. Here with Amazon’s Kindle rentals, you’ll be doing the same – but instead of your limits stopping at the amount of devices you can download to, you’re limited to time. The price being significantly less for these limited amounts of time may just be the ticket to those of you out there that have steel trap memories and tight pocketbooks in the e-generation.--
http://www.slashgear.com/amazon-kindle-ebook-rentals-take-the-time-out-of-reading-18265921/
Thursday, January 17, 2013
The Children's Digital Market: Still Uncharted Territory
PW reporting:
The growing complexity of the children’s digital
market was parsed by industry experts at the Publishers Launch
Children's Publishing Goes Digital Conference in New York on January 15,
as panelists and speakers agreed that the transition from print to
digital will not be a clean, easy movement and that things are still
very much in the experimentation stage. The day-long conference kicked
off with the presentation of the findings from a recent study by Bowker
that found that among children, there has been a marked decline in
bookstore and library influence as a source of recommendation and
acquisition, and that many purchases are instead migrating online to
vendors like Amazon. The study is part of Bowker’s Understanding the Children’s Book Consumer in the Digital Age.
Friends and family overtook bookstore browsing and libraries as the
top influencers, painting the picture of the children’s book market as a
highly local word-of-mouth economy. The erosion of libraries and
bookstores may be misleading, though, as Gretchen Caserotti of the
Darien Public Library used a case study involving Adam Gidwitz’s A Tale Dark and Grimm,
which Caserotti said the library system recommended to the local school
systems, and that based on the library’s recommendation (and a local
award for the book), the school system widely assigned the book in
classrooms. When asked how they heard about Grimm, students
would most often respond that they heard of it through friends, even
though the book was largely implemented because of the push of the
library.
The Bowker study had some surprises, most
notably: 84% of YA books were purchased by consumers 18 or older – and a
full 35% of YA books were bought by consumers aged 18-29, by far the
largest demographic. The second-largest demographic was age 30-44;
within that segment, dispelling the notion that the YA books are gifts
or purchases for teens, fully 80% of respondents reported “they bought
the book for themselves.”
New Report from Digital Book World: 54% of U.S. Children Reading Ebooks
DWB world reporting:
More Than Half of U.S. Children Now Reading Ebooks: 54% Are Ebook Readers, New Study Finds
January 16, 2013 – NEW YORK – Some 54% of kids are reading ebooks,
more than double the number of U.S. adults, a new study finds. Digital
Book World, a division of F+W Media, Inc., today released its study THE
ABC’S OF KIDS & EBOOKS: Understanding the e-reading habits of
children aged 2-13 created in partnership with PlayScience, a children’s
digital research firm. The report marks the first of three timed
surveys to be released by the partners aimed to measure the growth of
children’s digital reading habits in 2012-2013.
The
survey of nearly 1,300 parents with kids aged 2-13 is available for
sale beginning today at store.digitalbookworld.com. The report delves
into how parents and children make e-reading/ebook buying decisions,
what access to technology is available, what devices they intended to
buy over the holiday season, how much they spend on digital content, and
much more. The report is available for purchase, here: http://store.digitalbookworld.com/abcs-of-kids-and-ebooks
“Books
have always been an important part of childhood, and the rapid adoption
of mobile devices by families with children is bringing new life to the
reading experience. This study looks at the dynamics of kids, parents,
technology, and ebooks to understand how reading is changing for this
generation,” said Dr. J. Alison Bryant, Ph.D., president of PlayScience,
a New York-based children’s entertainment and education research
company.
eBook Pricing: State of Play and Analysis
Good E-reader reporting:
At the Digital Book World conference in New York City, two industry leaders sat down and discussed the semantics of ebook pricing, and how it is currently affecting the industry and looking into the inner workings.
Jeremy Greenfield, Editorial Director, Digital Book World, was the moderator and discussed his site developing their own best seller list that took the price of the ebook into account. Jeremy started to notice a trend that fewer high priced books are best sellers and that there was a pretty good chance that books on the Kindle best seller list are priced lower than a year ago. Deep discounting, when combined with promotion, is very successful.
Dan Lubart, Principal, Iobyte Solutions, SVP Sales Analytics HarperCollins also weighed in on the subject. He started to notice that electronic book prices decreased for Kindle bestsellers since last April and it is the same with the NOOK list. He agreed with Jeremy that fewer high priced books are on the main bestseller lists. The publishing industry is starting to see the price of new books over $10 is trending down. There was a sustained shift from ebooks over $10 to $3-$7.99 over the 2012 holiday season, and started to rise in price again in the second week of January.
One of the main aspects of discounted ebook prices from over a year ago was due to the recent Justice Department settlement with the big six publishers. This abolished the agency model and now offers flexibility for online retailers to strike down the prices. Four of the major publishers are now allowing discounting and this is being reflected in the lower pricing across the board. The volume in sales is staying the same after the holidays, though. Everyone is seeing sales going back to normal now that the holiday season is over. So we should be seeing the “new normal” appearing soon. Publishers are starting not to worry as much about the market bottoming out.
The next thing they talked about was the sales at a higher or lower price. When price drops on some books, they saw a significant increase in the Amazon sales. They also saw the same with NOOK sales. In many cases, when retailers drop the price, the sales increase, making up for the loss in revenue. When looking at the highest price point that actually sells any type of volume, $14.99 seems to be the ceiling in most cases for ebook bestsellers. The silver bullet in the publishing world is when they establish an entry level price and never change it. The best thing for publishers to do right now is to experiment with pricing and learn what is happening in the market.
http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/digital-book-world-ebook-pricing-state-of-play-and-analysis/
At the Digital Book World conference in New York City, two industry leaders sat down and discussed the semantics of ebook pricing, and how it is currently affecting the industry and looking into the inner workings.
Jeremy Greenfield, Editorial Director, Digital Book World, was the moderator and discussed his site developing their own best seller list that took the price of the ebook into account. Jeremy started to notice a trend that fewer high priced books are best sellers and that there was a pretty good chance that books on the Kindle best seller list are priced lower than a year ago. Deep discounting, when combined with promotion, is very successful.
Dan Lubart, Principal, Iobyte Solutions, SVP Sales Analytics HarperCollins also weighed in on the subject. He started to notice that electronic book prices decreased for Kindle bestsellers since last April and it is the same with the NOOK list. He agreed with Jeremy that fewer high priced books are on the main bestseller lists. The publishing industry is starting to see the price of new books over $10 is trending down. There was a sustained shift from ebooks over $10 to $3-$7.99 over the 2012 holiday season, and started to rise in price again in the second week of January.
One of the main aspects of discounted ebook prices from over a year ago was due to the recent Justice Department settlement with the big six publishers. This abolished the agency model and now offers flexibility for online retailers to strike down the prices. Four of the major publishers are now allowing discounting and this is being reflected in the lower pricing across the board. The volume in sales is staying the same after the holidays, though. Everyone is seeing sales going back to normal now that the holiday season is over. So we should be seeing the “new normal” appearing soon. Publishers are starting not to worry as much about the market bottoming out.
The next thing they talked about was the sales at a higher or lower price. When price drops on some books, they saw a significant increase in the Amazon sales. They also saw the same with NOOK sales. In many cases, when retailers drop the price, the sales increase, making up for the loss in revenue. When looking at the highest price point that actually sells any type of volume, $14.99 seems to be the ceiling in most cases for ebook bestsellers. The silver bullet in the publishing world is when they establish an entry level price and never change it. The best thing for publishers to do right now is to experiment with pricing and learn what is happening in the market.
http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/digital-book-world-ebook-pricing-state-of-play-and-analysis/
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Yet another down year for magazines
medialife reporting:
Heading into 2012, magazines hadn’t seen a year-over-year gain in ad pages since 2005.
That didn’t change last year.
For the seventh straight year, ad pages declined for the industry, down 8.2 percent, from 164,190.17 to 150,698.57 during 2012, according to new data from the Publishers Information Bureau.
Including Sunday magazine totals, ad pages were off 8.2 percent from 168,711.64 to 154,838.29.
That included a 7.2 percent decline in fourth quarter, the smallest decline for the year.
Certainly the economy hasn’t helped the industry. Last year marked the steepest magazine ad page decline since 2009, when the country was in the depths of the recession and pages plummeted 25.6 percent.
In 2012, with uncertainty over the European debt crisis and the looming fiscal cliff weighing heavily on consumers, advertisers cut back across a number of media. Magazines were impacted greatly, following a more moderate 3.1 percent decline in 2011.
But the economy isn’t entirely to blame for magazines’ woes. You have to go back to 2005 to see any ad page gains, and even then it was a modest 0.5 percent.
New media is responsible for some of the decline, whether it’s siphoning off ad dollars that would have otherwise gone to magazines or prompting the closure of some print editions, such as Motorboating, which went online-only last year. That alone led to the loss of almost 336 ad pages.
More such losses will come this year. Newsweek, which had 788.37 ad pages last year and was one of the few titles to gain, has gone online-only, and more titles are expected to follow.
Fifty-one magazines, or 23 percent of the 219 tracked by the PIB, saw ad page gains last year.
Reader’s Digest Large Edition saw the biggest ad page gains for the year, up 30.9 percent. Ebony was second with a gain of 22.9 percent.
The biggest decline was for Spa magazine, down 81.8 in 2012. Spa shut down last February.
Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel, Renovation Style, Spin and Sporting News all saw steep declines of 54 percent or more, but again those were due in part to limited publication or closures as well.
...
MH: lots of statistics here:
http://www.medialifemagazine.com/yet-another-down-year-for-magazines/
Heading into 2012, magazines hadn’t seen a year-over-year gain in ad pages since 2005.
That didn’t change last year.
For the seventh straight year, ad pages declined for the industry, down 8.2 percent, from 164,190.17 to 150,698.57 during 2012, according to new data from the Publishers Information Bureau.
Including Sunday magazine totals, ad pages were off 8.2 percent from 168,711.64 to 154,838.29.
That included a 7.2 percent decline in fourth quarter, the smallest decline for the year.
Certainly the economy hasn’t helped the industry. Last year marked the steepest magazine ad page decline since 2009, when the country was in the depths of the recession and pages plummeted 25.6 percent.
In 2012, with uncertainty over the European debt crisis and the looming fiscal cliff weighing heavily on consumers, advertisers cut back across a number of media. Magazines were impacted greatly, following a more moderate 3.1 percent decline in 2011.
But the economy isn’t entirely to blame for magazines’ woes. You have to go back to 2005 to see any ad page gains, and even then it was a modest 0.5 percent.
New media is responsible for some of the decline, whether it’s siphoning off ad dollars that would have otherwise gone to magazines or prompting the closure of some print editions, such as Motorboating, which went online-only last year. That alone led to the loss of almost 336 ad pages.
More such losses will come this year. Newsweek, which had 788.37 ad pages last year and was one of the few titles to gain, has gone online-only, and more titles are expected to follow.
Fifty-one magazines, or 23 percent of the 219 tracked by the PIB, saw ad page gains last year.
Reader’s Digest Large Edition saw the biggest ad page gains for the year, up 30.9 percent. Ebony was second with a gain of 22.9 percent.
The biggest decline was for Spa magazine, down 81.8 in 2012. Spa shut down last February.
Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel, Renovation Style, Spin and Sporting News all saw steep declines of 54 percent or more, but again those were due in part to limited publication or closures as well.
...
MH: lots of statistics here:
http://www.medialifemagazine.com/yet-another-down-year-for-magazines/
Publishers Must Think Like Agencies
Digiday reporting:
Paul Rossi, the managing director at The Economist, has spent the last quarter century at the venerated publication. During that time, he has seen the industry thrown into turmoil by the shift from analog to digital media.
The big overriding challenge he sees is how media companies have become brands. That means giving value to customers wherever they are, which is increasingly everywhere. “Media companies have to think about how they manage their brand and customer beyond the printed page,” he said.
The twin challenge is making advertising fit better. Call it “native advertising” or even “content marketing,” the modern publisher will need to act more agency-like for its advertisers.
If media companies have become brands, are publishers also starting to act more like agencies?
That’s right. Over time, what you’ve found, the agency world moved toward publishing, and the publishing world moved toward the agency world. It’s a combination of both. If you think of the driver of that change, it’s traditional advertising becoming less valued by marketers, and social is driving the need for engagement for different ways. I think native advertising has always been around in the simple form of advertorial. It’s not particularly new. The role it plays in the marketing mix makes it more compelling today than five or 10 years ago.
As you point out, “native” advertising isn’t particularly new. But is it significant?
It’s significant; it’s the new hot thing. It’s significant is that it’s part of a bigger trend. If you look at the real challenge that most media companies are facing, if you look at the traditional client-agency relationship, it was based on marketers having a problem, briefing an agency and then putting an ad in front of the audience. If you look at marketers today, they are building relationships and audiences direct through Twitter and Facebook. If you’re a marketer and want to talk to your customer, you don’t need an agency. As part of this bigger trend, native advertising fits into the trend as getting close to customers, but don’t necessarily have anything to say. The opportunity for media companies is to create content that’s compelling for users on behalf of advertisers. That doesn’t mean it has to be native, but the skills in telling stories are quite valuable to marketers as they build audience themselves.
Should every publisher get into the content-marketing game?...
http://www.digiday.com/publishers/why-publishers-need-to-think-like-agencies/
Paul Rossi, the managing director at The Economist, has spent the last quarter century at the venerated publication. During that time, he has seen the industry thrown into turmoil by the shift from analog to digital media.
The big overriding challenge he sees is how media companies have become brands. That means giving value to customers wherever they are, which is increasingly everywhere. “Media companies have to think about how they manage their brand and customer beyond the printed page,” he said.
The twin challenge is making advertising fit better. Call it “native advertising” or even “content marketing,” the modern publisher will need to act more agency-like for its advertisers.
If media companies have become brands, are publishers also starting to act more like agencies?
That’s right. Over time, what you’ve found, the agency world moved toward publishing, and the publishing world moved toward the agency world. It’s a combination of both. If you think of the driver of that change, it’s traditional advertising becoming less valued by marketers, and social is driving the need for engagement for different ways. I think native advertising has always been around in the simple form of advertorial. It’s not particularly new. The role it plays in the marketing mix makes it more compelling today than five or 10 years ago.
As you point out, “native” advertising isn’t particularly new. But is it significant?
It’s significant; it’s the new hot thing. It’s significant is that it’s part of a bigger trend. If you look at the real challenge that most media companies are facing, if you look at the traditional client-agency relationship, it was based on marketers having a problem, briefing an agency and then putting an ad in front of the audience. If you look at marketers today, they are building relationships and audiences direct through Twitter and Facebook. If you’re a marketer and want to talk to your customer, you don’t need an agency. As part of this bigger trend, native advertising fits into the trend as getting close to customers, but don’t necessarily have anything to say. The opportunity for media companies is to create content that’s compelling for users on behalf of advertisers. That doesn’t mean it has to be native, but the skills in telling stories are quite valuable to marketers as they build audience themselves.
Should every publisher get into the content-marketing game?...
http://www.digiday.com/publishers/why-publishers-need-to-think-like-agencies/
3 Critical Content Marketing Trends that Signal Big Industry Changes Ahead
Content Marketing Institute:
Right now, the content marketing industry, well over 100 years old, is going through as much change as we have ever seen.
The biggest reason, outside of the fragmentation of media, is that the barriers to entry have been obliterated.
There were three major barriers that used to exist as a gate to corporate publishing. Though they are no longer a concern today, I did discuss them in detail in Get Content Get Customers (published in 2008). Those barriers included:.....
...
There are well over 20 phrases that have been used over the years to describe the content marketing industry. When I started working in the industry in 2000, it was “custom publishing.” Later, it was “custom media.” Today, at least according to Google, the en vogue term is “content marketing.”
The chart below covers the five keyword phrases that I’ve been keeping my eye on (note: I usually include “branded content” as part of this group, but due to performance issues, I replaced it with “native advertising”).
Some thoughts…
Right now, the content marketing industry, well over 100 years old, is going through as much change as we have ever seen.
The biggest reason, outside of the fragmentation of media, is that the barriers to entry have been obliterated.
There were three major barriers that used to exist as a gate to corporate publishing. Though they are no longer a concern today, I did discuss them in detail in Get Content Get Customers (published in 2008). Those barriers included:.....
...
There are well over 20 phrases that have been used over the years to describe the content marketing industry. When I started working in the industry in 2000, it was “custom publishing.” Later, it was “custom media.” Today, at least according to Google, the en vogue term is “content marketing.”
The chart below covers the five keyword phrases that I’ve been keeping my eye on (note: I usually include “branded content” as part of this group, but due to performance issues, I replaced it with “native advertising”).
- “Custom publishing,” doing its best imitation of Kodak stock, is now on the verge of being overtaken by “native advertising.“
- Notice that “native advertising” arose on the scene just a few months ago and is picking up steam in consumer circles. Native advertising is not the same thing as content marketing, but some people think the terms are interchangeable.
- “Inbound marketing,” which often refers to top-of-the-funnel content marketing activities, came on strong in late 2008 and seems to be plateauing (here is an overview of the difference between inbound marketing and content marketing).
- “Content marketing” didn’t seriously hit the scene until early 2009. In early to mid 2012, the term seemed to gap up and separate itself from the rest of the terms...
- http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/01/three-critical-content-marketing-trends/?utm_medium=linkedin&utm_source=twitterfeed
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Paywalls are a short-term fix, not a long-term solution
emedia/vitals reporting:
Alan Mutter, in his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, hones in on the real problem. It’s not that newspapers are placing their bets on digital advertising, he says, it’s that they’re betting on the wrong kinds of digital advertising: banner and classified advertising, two weak performers that are rapidly losing share to other types of digital ad spend, such as search and mobile. That’s why, Mutter notes, newspapers are losing more than $13 in print revenue for every $1 they gain in digital sales.
“Transactional search is a format where newspapers never invested and never have been able to compete,” Mutter writes. “By their inaction, publishers have been shut out of nearly half the digital market.”
He adds that publishers are compounding the error by missing the boat on mobile and video advertising:
http://www.emediavitals.com/content/paywalls-are-short-term-fix-not-long-term-solution
Alan Mutter, in his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, hones in on the real problem. It’s not that newspapers are placing their bets on digital advertising, he says, it’s that they’re betting on the wrong kinds of digital advertising: banner and classified advertising, two weak performers that are rapidly losing share to other types of digital ad spend, such as search and mobile. That’s why, Mutter notes, newspapers are losing more than $13 in print revenue for every $1 they gain in digital sales.
“Transactional search is a format where newspapers never invested and never have been able to compete,” Mutter writes. “By their inaction, publishers have been shut out of nearly half the digital market.”
He adds that publishers are compounding the error by missing the boat on mobile and video advertising:
The bottom line is that most if not all successful digital publishing models require a blend of advertising revenue and paid content. It’s problematic when experts like Starkman continue to look at the newspaper business through the prism of traditional publishing models. He implies that innovation isn’t a strategy, but innovation is exactly what newspaper (and magazine) publishers need. They can continue to put band-aids on their bleeding business models and outdated infrastructures, or they can spend more time experimenting with new ways to monetize their content and their audience, such as: ...“While the IAB reports that mobile advertising has doubled in each of the last three years, most newspapers have only rudimentary capabilities in this rapidly developing area. Publishers also are weak contenders in video, the next-biggest area of growth after mobile. The challenges will keep coming.”
http://www.emediavitals.com/content/paywalls-are-short-term-fix-not-long-term-solution
Digital Cracks 50% of Ad Revenue at Wired Magazine
AdAge reporting:
Digital contributed half of all ad revenue at Wired magazine in the final three months of 2012, a first for the title and an encouraging sign for an industry where most big brands still rely overwhelmingly on the difficult business of print. Across the year as a whole, digital ads comprised 45% of total ad sales at Wired, according to the magazine.
The Atlantic has ratcheted digital ad revenue to an even higher share of the total, saying today that digital delivered 59% of its ad revenue in 2012. But Wired has a larger print business, guaranteeing advertisers a paid and verified circulation of 800,000 last year and running 885 ad pages, according to the Media Industry Newsletter, compared with The Atlantic's rate base of 450,000 and 463 ad pages.
Digital revenue for most magazines still runs at a significantly lower level.
Digital advertising contributed to about 10% of Wired ad revenue in 2006, when parent company Condé Nast bought Wired.com and reunited it with the magazine, according to Howard Mittman, VP-publisher at Wired.
"We spent a lot of time debating whether we were the best magazine with a website or the best website with a magazine," Mr. Mittman said. "And at the end of the day, I don't think we care. Hitting 50% is proof that there is a successful template inside of this industry that can be followed by others and that having a magazine doesn't necessarily need to be an analog anchor around your technological neck."
Wired ad pages declined 5.7% in 2012, according to the Media Industry Newsletter, but Mr. Mittman said digital's rise did not depend on a drop in print. "Real-world print dollars were flat year over year," he said...
http://adage.com/article/media/digital-cracks-50-ad-revenue-wired-magazine/238986/
Digital contributed half of all ad revenue at Wired magazine in the final three months of 2012, a first for the title and an encouraging sign for an industry where most big brands still rely overwhelmingly on the difficult business of print. Across the year as a whole, digital ads comprised 45% of total ad sales at Wired, according to the magazine.
The Atlantic has ratcheted digital ad revenue to an even higher share of the total, saying today that digital delivered 59% of its ad revenue in 2012. But Wired has a larger print business, guaranteeing advertisers a paid and verified circulation of 800,000 last year and running 885 ad pages, according to the Media Industry Newsletter, compared with The Atlantic's rate base of 450,000 and 463 ad pages.
Digital revenue for most magazines still runs at a significantly lower level.
Digital advertising contributed to about 10% of Wired ad revenue in 2006, when parent company Condé Nast bought Wired.com and reunited it with the magazine, according to Howard Mittman, VP-publisher at Wired.
"We spent a lot of time debating whether we were the best magazine with a website or the best website with a magazine," Mr. Mittman said. "And at the end of the day, I don't think we care. Hitting 50% is proof that there is a successful template inside of this industry that can be followed by others and that having a magazine doesn't necessarily need to be an analog anchor around your technological neck."
Wired ad pages declined 5.7% in 2012, according to the Media Industry Newsletter, but Mr. Mittman said digital's rise did not depend on a drop in print. "Real-world print dollars were flat year over year," he said...
http://adage.com/article/media/digital-cracks-50-ad-revenue-wired-magazine/238986/
The digital tinkering continues - and that's a good thing
emedia/vitals reporting:
Revenues may finally be catching up with the investments publishers have been making in their digital businesses. The most successful efforts, from brands such as Wired and The Atlantic, underscore the benefits of diversified product offerings and a willingness to experiment beyond traditional digital revenue models.
Conde Nast’s Wired is the latest big consumer title to achieve an important digital milestone: The tech brand announced that digital sales accounted for half of total ad revenue in the just-completed fourth quarter. For the year, digital ads comprised 45% of total ad sales, AdAge reported.
And while 90% of those digital revenues came from the Wired website, VP/Publisher Howard Mittman said Wired’s online strategy has evolved well beyond display media and "outdated CPC measurements" to include “rich and multi-faceted digital media recommendations that help to create strong connections with our ad partners.”
“Our diversity is our strength,” Mittman said via email, citing a cross-platform sales strategy that encompasses the web, print, tablet and an emerging conference business. “It’s a very powerful combination, one that allows Wired to tell stories across a multitude of distribution channels and optimize the consumer and advertiser experience based on what works and doesn't work inside a given medium.”
Mittman attributes the success to “a hundred small shifts” rather than one or two high-margin programs.
http://www.emediavitals.com/content/digital-tinkering-continues-and-thats-good-thing?utm_source=Vital+Guide+to+eMedia&utm_campaign=810852ef15-eMV_Vital_Guide_1_9_2013&utm_medium=email
Revenues may finally be catching up with the investments publishers have been making in their digital businesses. The most successful efforts, from brands such as Wired and The Atlantic, underscore the benefits of diversified product offerings and a willingness to experiment beyond traditional digital revenue models.
Conde Nast’s Wired is the latest big consumer title to achieve an important digital milestone: The tech brand announced that digital sales accounted for half of total ad revenue in the just-completed fourth quarter. For the year, digital ads comprised 45% of total ad sales, AdAge reported.
And while 90% of those digital revenues came from the Wired website, VP/Publisher Howard Mittman said Wired’s online strategy has evolved well beyond display media and "outdated CPC measurements" to include “rich and multi-faceted digital media recommendations that help to create strong connections with our ad partners.”
“Our diversity is our strength,” Mittman said via email, citing a cross-platform sales strategy that encompasses the web, print, tablet and an emerging conference business. “It’s a very powerful combination, one that allows Wired to tell stories across a multitude of distribution channels and optimize the consumer and advertiser experience based on what works and doesn't work inside a given medium.”
Mittman attributes the success to “a hundred small shifts” rather than one or two high-margin programs.
http://www.emediavitals.com/content/digital-tinkering-continues-and-thats-good-thing?utm_source=Vital+Guide+to+eMedia&utm_campaign=810852ef15-eMV_Vital_Guide_1_9_2013&utm_medium=email
Media’s Brave New Digital World
Digiday reporting:
Much has been written over the past week about journalists’ favorite topic: the future of journalism. For once, it’s been about the business side of things, coming on the heels of Andrew Sullivan’s decision to strike out on his own with a subscription model and BuzzFeed’s most recent funding haul.
It’s useful to add to this discussion these pieces by Lewis DVorkin, chief product officer at Forbes, and Henry Blodget, CEO of Business Insider. Both men describe a future where the analog-dollars-to-digital-dimes equation is cemented. The idea of that gap closing, in a world of 4 trillion ad impressions, has moved beyond wishful thinking to pure fantasy. The question now for news publishers is what to do about it.
Paywalls, meters and subscriptions are one route. And yet in many cases, they’re treating the symptom and not the cause. I recently did an interview with Blodget on why he’s excited for the future of news. The main reason, as he outlines in his presentation, is algorithms can’t make stories — yet. Beyond that, there’s the simple fact that Business Insider has a vastly different cost base than a publication like Forbes. Out of Blodget’s 91 slides, this is the most instructive.
During our interview, I summed up his position as: Everyone’s screwed, but some are less screwed. The less screwed are publications that have gotten their cost structures in line with the new economics of digital media. Blodget likes his hand because he isn’t crating around enormous legacy costs like an old-school media company.
This isn’t lost on DVorkin. He’s engaged in restructuring Forbes, root and branch, from a lofty magazine for globe-trotting execs to something more like The Huffington Post for business. He calls this “entrepreneurial journalism,” where Forbes rents space out to dozens of contributors. Some of the content from these contributors is quite good. Much of it is dreck. That’s the price you pay nowadays, however, in a world where pageviews are king.
The pageview game is brutal. Once on that treadmill, it’s quite hard to get off.
http://www.digiday.com/publishers/medias-brave-new-digital-world/
Much has been written over the past week about journalists’ favorite topic: the future of journalism. For once, it’s been about the business side of things, coming on the heels of Andrew Sullivan’s decision to strike out on his own with a subscription model and BuzzFeed’s most recent funding haul.
It’s useful to add to this discussion these pieces by Lewis DVorkin, chief product officer at Forbes, and Henry Blodget, CEO of Business Insider. Both men describe a future where the analog-dollars-to-digital-dimes equation is cemented. The idea of that gap closing, in a world of 4 trillion ad impressions, has moved beyond wishful thinking to pure fantasy. The question now for news publishers is what to do about it.
Paywalls, meters and subscriptions are one route. And yet in many cases, they’re treating the symptom and not the cause. I recently did an interview with Blodget on why he’s excited for the future of news. The main reason, as he outlines in his presentation, is algorithms can’t make stories — yet. Beyond that, there’s the simple fact that Business Insider has a vastly different cost base than a publication like Forbes. Out of Blodget’s 91 slides, this is the most instructive.
During our interview, I summed up his position as: Everyone’s screwed, but some are less screwed. The less screwed are publications that have gotten their cost structures in line with the new economics of digital media. Blodget likes his hand because he isn’t crating around enormous legacy costs like an old-school media company.
This isn’t lost on DVorkin. He’s engaged in restructuring Forbes, root and branch, from a lofty magazine for globe-trotting execs to something more like The Huffington Post for business. He calls this “entrepreneurial journalism,” where Forbes rents space out to dozens of contributors. Some of the content from these contributors is quite good. Much of it is dreck. That’s the price you pay nowadays, however, in a world where pageviews are king.
The pageview game is brutal. Once on that treadmill, it’s quite hard to get off.
http://www.digiday.com/publishers/medias-brave-new-digital-world/
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Magazine Advertising Kept Crashing in 2012
WSJ reporting:
By Keach Hagey
Magazines had a rough year on the advertising front in 2012, with ad pages dropping 8.2% for the year, according to data released today by the Publishers Information Bureau.
That was worse than last year, when ad pages only dropped 3.2%, and brings the total drop in ad pages since 2008 to 32%.
The biggest losers included All You, Ladies Home Journal, Lucky, Maxim, Martha Stewart Living, National Geographic, Saveur and Scientific American — all of which lost more than 20% of their ad pages.
The only winners to add more than 20% of its ad pages were Ebony, Martha Stewart Weddings, and the large print edition of Reader’s Digest.
This is bad news for an industry that has traditionally relied on advertising for about three quarters of its revenue. To make matters worse, the advertising fall-off is happening as magazines audiences are actually *growing* — up 1.6% for 2012, thanks in part to growth in digital editions, according to a spokeswoman for the Association of Magazine Media.
http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/01/10/magazine-advertising-kept-crashing-in-2012/?mod=dist_smartbrief
By Keach Hagey
Magazines had a rough year on the advertising front in 2012, with ad pages dropping 8.2% for the year, according to data released today by the Publishers Information Bureau.
That was worse than last year, when ad pages only dropped 3.2%, and brings the total drop in ad pages since 2008 to 32%.
The biggest losers included All You, Ladies Home Journal, Lucky, Maxim, Martha Stewart Living, National Geographic, Saveur and Scientific American — all of which lost more than 20% of their ad pages.
The only winners to add more than 20% of its ad pages were Ebony, Martha Stewart Weddings, and the large print edition of Reader’s Digest.
This is bad news for an industry that has traditionally relied on advertising for about three quarters of its revenue. To make matters worse, the advertising fall-off is happening as magazines audiences are actually *growing* — up 1.6% for 2012, thanks in part to growth in digital editions, according to a spokeswoman for the Association of Magazine Media.
http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/01/10/magazine-advertising-kept-crashing-in-2012/?mod=dist_smartbrief
The newsonomics of the digital-only paywall parade
Nieman Journalsim Lab reporting:
Paywalls have taken their share of abuse since The New York Times reopened the digital circulation debate three years ago. But in those three years, my, how things have changed. Charging for digital access has gone from experimental to mainstream. In fact, you’ll be hard-pressed to find many daily newspapers in the U.S., Canada, Scandinavia, or Germany that won’t be charging something for digital access by the time 2015 rolls around.
But as 2013 begins, we see a new twist: Now it’s digital-only news and magazine sites and journalists who are about to launch their own digital circulation strategies. Yes, it’s one of few times that old, tired legacy media — newspaper companies — are the leaders and digital-only media the followers. There’s an irony to be appreciated in that, if only briefly. It’s also another reminder that anything you think you know about our digitally disrupted media future may be wrong; early in this revolution, we’re all reminded to be humble.
It’s true that digital advertising passed print (newspapers + magazines) in the U.S., Brazil, Russia, and globally last year. So we’d expect publishers to be looking at a bonanza, with digital ad spending still rocket-propelled, growing about 15 percent a year. Instead, most are struggling to generate significant digital ad growth. The very short story: (1) Five companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, AOL) take 64 percent of that digital spending (Google alone takes 41.3 percent), leaving a smaller and smaller “other” slice for everyone else in digital publishing; and (2) The near-infinite inventory of ad opportunities creates downward pressure on pricing, especially for imperfectly targeted display ads, the main play of most publishers. For some, advertising is simply worth less effort — or none at all. As Andrew Sullivan put it, “We have emphatically not ruled out advertising forever. It’s just that, right now, it’s more trouble for a site like ours than it’s worth.”
Reader revenue, on the other hand, is on the upswing. Newspaper publishers have seen double-digit and higher increases in circulation revenue if they’ve deployed paywalls well. More than 100 Press+ clients have added all-access (tablet/smartphone-plus) and increased their subscription prices an average of 20 percent, says Press+ cofounder Gordon Crovitz. They are seeing circulation revenue gains of 15 percent or more, even as they lose a couple of percentage points of subscribers and see 10-15 percent of the subscribers check that “opt-out” box, keeping the print coming at the old price. For some, then, circulation revenue (in the first year at least) will more than make up for ad revenue downturn....
http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/01/the-newsonomics-of-the-digital-only-paywall-parade/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1394ad396c-DAILY_EMAIL
Paywalls have taken their share of abuse since The New York Times reopened the digital circulation debate three years ago. But in those three years, my, how things have changed. Charging for digital access has gone from experimental to mainstream. In fact, you’ll be hard-pressed to find many daily newspapers in the U.S., Canada, Scandinavia, or Germany that won’t be charging something for digital access by the time 2015 rolls around.
But as 2013 begins, we see a new twist: Now it’s digital-only news and magazine sites and journalists who are about to launch their own digital circulation strategies. Yes, it’s one of few times that old, tired legacy media — newspaper companies — are the leaders and digital-only media the followers. There’s an irony to be appreciated in that, if only briefly. It’s also another reminder that anything you think you know about our digitally disrupted media future may be wrong; early in this revolution, we’re all reminded to be humble.
How much do top-echelon journalists need media brands? How much do brands need top-echelon journalists?It’s Andrew Sullivan’s bold independent move — untethering his work and his business from a media company (The Daily Beast) — to go reader-direct and paid that has gotten the most notice. In the first 24 hours after he declared The Dish’s independence, he took in $333,000. That’s about a third of his $900,000 target, the amount he says he’ll need to sustain his small group of five staffers and two paid interns. Among digital-native media, Sullivan’s not alone....
It’s true that digital advertising passed print (newspapers + magazines) in the U.S., Brazil, Russia, and globally last year. So we’d expect publishers to be looking at a bonanza, with digital ad spending still rocket-propelled, growing about 15 percent a year. Instead, most are struggling to generate significant digital ad growth. The very short story: (1) Five companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, AOL) take 64 percent of that digital spending (Google alone takes 41.3 percent), leaving a smaller and smaller “other” slice for everyone else in digital publishing; and (2) The near-infinite inventory of ad opportunities creates downward pressure on pricing, especially for imperfectly targeted display ads, the main play of most publishers. For some, advertising is simply worth less effort — or none at all. As Andrew Sullivan put it, “We have emphatically not ruled out advertising forever. It’s just that, right now, it’s more trouble for a site like ours than it’s worth.”
Reader revenue, on the other hand, is on the upswing. Newspaper publishers have seen double-digit and higher increases in circulation revenue if they’ve deployed paywalls well. More than 100 Press+ clients have added all-access (tablet/smartphone-plus) and increased their subscription prices an average of 20 percent, says Press+ cofounder Gordon Crovitz. They are seeing circulation revenue gains of 15 percent or more, even as they lose a couple of percentage points of subscribers and see 10-15 percent of the subscribers check that “opt-out” box, keeping the print coming at the old price. For some, then, circulation revenue (in the first year at least) will more than make up for ad revenue downturn....
http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/01/the-newsonomics-of-the-digital-only-paywall-parade/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1394ad396c-DAILY_EMAIL
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
NYT Paywall Working Better Than People Expected, But That Doesn't Mean It's Working
techdirt reporting:
Over the past few days, there's been a lot of talk about the NY Times "paywall" and whether or not it's "working." It was kicked off by a Bloomberg piece arguing that things were going amazingly well with the paywall, proving the doubters wrong. I've actually had a surprising number of people contact me about that article, asking for my take on it -- so let's make a couple of upfront statements and then explore it:
Why has the paywall done better than expected:
Over the past few days, there's been a lot of talk about the NY Times "paywall" and whether or not it's "working." It was kicked off by a Bloomberg piece arguing that things were going amazingly well with the paywall, proving the doubters wrong. I've actually had a surprising number of people contact me about that article, asking for my take on it -- so let's make a couple of upfront statements and then explore it:
- First off, I agree that the performance of the NY Times paywall greatly exceeded my own expectations for it. I was quite harsh in predicting it would be a complete flop. I was wrong. It wasn't a flop. I explore why below.
- That said, I don't think that it's been nearly as big a "success" as some are making it out to be, and I still think that it wasn't the best play that the NYT could have or should have made -- and it's doubtful that anyone else following in the NYT's footsteps would find similar results. And that's a pretty big problem, because even if you think the NYT's paywall should be judged a "success" it doesn't change the fact that its revenue continues to drop (and not just its print revenue -- digital revenue is struggling too). Perhaps the paywall may have limited the revenue collapse, but it has done little to create a new and sustainable business model.
Why has the paywall done better than expected:
- It's not really a paywall! This was a point we realized soon after the details were released, when it became clear that the paywall was so porous that no one would ever have to pay. Ever. As we noted, it's really the Emperor's New Paywall, in that it's completely invisible. If you don't want to pay, you just don't use javascript, or you remove the text after the ? at the end of the URL, or you open another browser, or you delete your cookies, or one of the half dozen or so other tricks that means you'll never ever face the paywall. In effect, the NYT's paywall is a donation system made to look like a paywall -- sort of like some museums with their "recommended donations" at the entrance. You never actually have to pay, but many people do out of convenience.
- They don't count links/earned media:...
- http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121226/03553321486/nyt-paywall-working-better-than-people-expected-that-doesnt-mean-its-working.shtml
The New York Times Paywall Is Working Better Than Anyone Had Guessed
Bloomberg reporting:
Ever since the New York Times rolled out its so-called paywall in March 2011, a perennial dispute has waged. Anxious publishers say they can’t afford to give away their content for free, while the blogger set claim paywalls tend to turn off readers accustomed to a free and open Web.
More than a year and a half later, it’s clear the New York Times’ paywall is not only valuable, it’s helped turn the paper’s subscription dollars, which once might have been considered the equivalent of a generous tithing, into a significant revenue-generating business. As of this year, the company is expected to make more money from subscriptions than from advertising — the first time that’s happened.
Digital subscriptions will generate $91 million this year, according to Douglas Arthur, an analyst with Evercore Partners. The paywall, by his estimate, will account for 12 percent of total subscription sales, which will top $768.3 million this year. That’s $52.8 million more than advertising. Those figures are for the Times newspaper and the International Herald Tribune, largely considered the European edition of the Times.
It’s a milestone that upends the traditional 80-20 ratio between ads and circulation that publishers once considered a healthy mix and that is now no longer tenable given the industrywide decline in newsprint advertising. Annual ad dollars at the Times, for example, has fallen for five straight years.
More importantly, subscription sales are rising faster than ad dollars are falling. During the 12 months after the paywall was implemented, the Times and the International Herald Tribune increased circulation dollars 7.1 percent compared with the previous 12-month period, while advertising fell 3.7 percent. Subscription sales more than compensated for the ad losses, surpassing them by $19.2 million in the first year they started charging readers online.
http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-12-20-the-new-york-times-paywall-is-working-better-than-anyone-had-guessed/
Ever since the New York Times rolled out its so-called paywall in March 2011, a perennial dispute has waged. Anxious publishers say they can’t afford to give away their content for free, while the blogger set claim paywalls tend to turn off readers accustomed to a free and open Web.
More than a year and a half later, it’s clear the New York Times’ paywall is not only valuable, it’s helped turn the paper’s subscription dollars, which once might have been considered the equivalent of a generous tithing, into a significant revenue-generating business. As of this year, the company is expected to make more money from subscriptions than from advertising — the first time that’s happened.
Digital subscriptions will generate $91 million this year, according to Douglas Arthur, an analyst with Evercore Partners. The paywall, by his estimate, will account for 12 percent of total subscription sales, which will top $768.3 million this year. That’s $52.8 million more than advertising. Those figures are for the Times newspaper and the International Herald Tribune, largely considered the European edition of the Times.
It’s a milestone that upends the traditional 80-20 ratio between ads and circulation that publishers once considered a healthy mix and that is now no longer tenable given the industrywide decline in newsprint advertising. Annual ad dollars at the Times, for example, has fallen for five straight years.
More importantly, subscription sales are rising faster than ad dollars are falling. During the 12 months after the paywall was implemented, the Times and the International Herald Tribune increased circulation dollars 7.1 percent compared with the previous 12-month period, while advertising fell 3.7 percent. Subscription sales more than compensated for the ad losses, surpassing them by $19.2 million in the first year they started charging readers online.
http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-12-20-the-new-york-times-paywall-is-working-better-than-anyone-had-guessed/
Andrew Sullivan’s bold paid-content plan, and Al Jazeera’s play for the U.S. P
Nieman Journalism Lab reporting:
A bellwether for blog paywalls?: Legendary blogger Andrew Sullivan joined the parade of journalists requiring readers to pay for their content online last week, though his move was particularly significant because, after all, he’s not a news organization but a single blogger (with a few staff members). Sullivan, who had been at The Daily Beast, will use a metered model charging readers $19.99 a year for full access, and he won’t host any ads.
At least initially, Sullivan’s plan was a massive success, bringing in more than $300,000 from 12,000 subscribers in the first day alone. Sullivan told The New York Times he’ll need $900,000 a year, and said it’s time journalism “started earning a living like everybody else.” He also told BuzzFeed the lack of advertising will free him to cover more out-of-the-way topics, rather than trying to chase pageviews. Complex editor Foster Kamer was more skeptical, calling the independent paywall a sales pitch to other publications on the loyalty of Sullivan’s audience.
The immediate question that came to pretty much everyone’s mind, it seems, was whether Sullivan’s paid-content model could work for other bloggers, particularly ones without Sullivan’s reach. Sullivan told TechCrunch to hold off on the prognostication, but still saw no reason it couldn’t scale to smaller blogs with less overhead. Others were equally optimistic: GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram described Sullivan’s paywall as a finger in the eye of the industrial journalism model, and The Guardian’s Dan Gillmor explained why he was subscribing, while also suggesting that blogs might eventually be able to band together to charge for content to multiple sites.
NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen argued that the key to Sullivan’s success in charging for content lies in his audience’s loyalty, which is built on his own distinct obsessions. Whether you can charge for content “depends on how strong the relationship is between you and the regular users of your site. Sullivan and crew have ample reason to bet on that relationship,” he said.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/01/this-week-in-review-andrew-sullivans-bold-paid-content-plan-and-al-jazeeras-play-for-the-u-s/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=c074304896-DAILY_EMAIL
A bellwether for blog paywalls?: Legendary blogger Andrew Sullivan joined the parade of journalists requiring readers to pay for their content online last week, though his move was particularly significant because, after all, he’s not a news organization but a single blogger (with a few staff members). Sullivan, who had been at The Daily Beast, will use a metered model charging readers $19.99 a year for full access, and he won’t host any ads.
At least initially, Sullivan’s plan was a massive success, bringing in more than $300,000 from 12,000 subscribers in the first day alone. Sullivan told The New York Times he’ll need $900,000 a year, and said it’s time journalism “started earning a living like everybody else.” He also told BuzzFeed the lack of advertising will free him to cover more out-of-the-way topics, rather than trying to chase pageviews. Complex editor Foster Kamer was more skeptical, calling the independent paywall a sales pitch to other publications on the loyalty of Sullivan’s audience.
The immediate question that came to pretty much everyone’s mind, it seems, was whether Sullivan’s paid-content model could work for other bloggers, particularly ones without Sullivan’s reach. Sullivan told TechCrunch to hold off on the prognostication, but still saw no reason it couldn’t scale to smaller blogs with less overhead. Others were equally optimistic: GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram described Sullivan’s paywall as a finger in the eye of the industrial journalism model, and The Guardian’s Dan Gillmor explained why he was subscribing, while also suggesting that blogs might eventually be able to band together to charge for content to multiple sites.
NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen argued that the key to Sullivan’s success in charging for content lies in his audience’s loyalty, which is built on his own distinct obsessions. Whether you can charge for content “depends on how strong the relationship is between you and the regular users of your site. Sullivan and crew have ample reason to bet on that relationship,” he said.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/01/this-week-in-review-andrew-sullivans-bold-paid-content-plan-and-al-jazeeras-play-for-the-u-s/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=c074304896-DAILY_EMAIL
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
How we read, not what we read, may be contributing to our information overload
Nieman Journalism Lab reporting:
Every day, a new app or service arrives with the promise of helping people cut down on the flood of information they receive. It’s the natural result of living in a time when an ever-increasing number of news providers push a constant stream of headlines at us every day.
But what if it’s the ways we choose to read the news — not the glut of news providers — that make us feel overwhelmed? An interesting new study out of the University of Texas looks at the factors that contribute to the concept of information overload, and found that, for some people, the platform on which news is being consumed can make all the difference between whether you feel overwhelmed.
The study, “News and the Overloaded Consumer: Factors Influencing Information Overload Among News Consumers” was conducted by Avery Holton and Iris Chyi. They surveyed more than 750 adults on their digital consumption habits and perceptions of information overload. On the central question of whether they feel overloaded with the amount of news available, 27 percent said “not at all”; everyone else reported some degree of overloaded.
Holton and Chyi asked about the use of 15 different technology platforms and checked for correlation with feeling overloaded with information. Three showed a positive correlation as predictors of overload: computers, e-readers, and Facebook. Two showed a negative correlation: television and the iPhone. The rest — which included print newspapers, Twitter, iPads, netbooks, and news magazines, among others — showed no statistically significant correlations.
The mention of netbooks — that declining form factor — raises an important factor about the study: Its survey took place in 2010, which was like another world when it comes to news consumption platforms. The iPad was brand new; Android was just starting its rapid growth. The kind of early(ish) adopter who was using Twitter or a Kindle in 2010 is likely to be different from the broader user base those platforms have in 2012.
What the findings suggest, Holton said, is that the news platforms a person is using can play a bigger role in making them feel overwhelmed than the sheer number of news sources being consumed. So even if you read The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, The New York Times, and ESPN in a day, you may not feel as inundated with news if you read on your phone instead of on your desktop (with 40 tabs open, no doubt). The more contained, or even constrained, a platform feels, the more it can contribute to people feeling less overwhelmed, Holton said.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/11/how-we-read-not-what-we-read-may-be-contributing-to-our-information-overload/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_campaign=eca81dfd00-DAILY_EMAIL&utm_medium=email
Every day, a new app or service arrives with the promise of helping people cut down on the flood of information they receive. It’s the natural result of living in a time when an ever-increasing number of news providers push a constant stream of headlines at us every day.
But what if it’s the ways we choose to read the news — not the glut of news providers — that make us feel overwhelmed? An interesting new study out of the University of Texas looks at the factors that contribute to the concept of information overload, and found that, for some people, the platform on which news is being consumed can make all the difference between whether you feel overwhelmed.
The study, “News and the Overloaded Consumer: Factors Influencing Information Overload Among News Consumers” was conducted by Avery Holton and Iris Chyi. They surveyed more than 750 adults on their digital consumption habits and perceptions of information overload. On the central question of whether they feel overloaded with the amount of news available, 27 percent said “not at all”; everyone else reported some degree of overloaded.
Holton and Chyi asked about the use of 15 different technology platforms and checked for correlation with feeling overloaded with information. Three showed a positive correlation as predictors of overload: computers, e-readers, and Facebook. Two showed a negative correlation: television and the iPhone. The rest — which included print newspapers, Twitter, iPads, netbooks, and news magazines, among others — showed no statistically significant correlations.
The mention of netbooks — that declining form factor — raises an important factor about the study: Its survey took place in 2010, which was like another world when it comes to news consumption platforms. The iPad was brand new; Android was just starting its rapid growth. The kind of early(ish) adopter who was using Twitter or a Kindle in 2010 is likely to be different from the broader user base those platforms have in 2012.
What the findings suggest, Holton said, is that the news platforms a person is using can play a bigger role in making them feel overwhelmed than the sheer number of news sources being consumed. So even if you read The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, The New York Times, and ESPN in a day, you may not feel as inundated with news if you read on your phone instead of on your desktop (with 40 tabs open, no doubt). The more contained, or even constrained, a platform feels, the more it can contribute to people feeling less overwhelmed, Holton said.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/11/how-we-read-not-what-we-read-may-be-contributing-to-our-information-overload/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_campaign=eca81dfd00-DAILY_EMAIL&utm_medium=email
BII REPORT: How Mobile Is Waging Battle For The Multi-Screen Living Room
Business Insider reporting:
Here's an outline of how mobile devices are waging the battle for the living room:
Here's an outline of how mobile devices are waging the battle for the living room:
- Substitution: In a recent in-depth report, we found that mobile video is mostly complementary to traditional TV viewing. Mobile video is additive, creating more opportunities for watching video — whether it's watching a sitcom on your smartphone during a train commute, or viewing a Netflix movie at home in bed.
- Source: The ability to relay high-quality video (including online video and games) wirelessly places mobile in competition with a whole galaxy of devices. Wireless TV connections are becoming increasingly common, and with them, the ability to bring smartphones and tablets more easily into the mix.
- Selection: When hand-held mini-tablets and smartphones are able to send signals to audiovisual equipment and home theaters, consumers gain more flexibility with a remote control based on a smartphone or tablet. Many apps, with attractive displays and intuitive touch-screen interfaces, are being developed for TV. As Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes recently said, competition in the TV interface space is heating up, and we're going to see "as many interfaces as you can get."
- Synchronization: In the US, 85% of U.S. tablet owners use their tablet while watching TV. In order to leverage the second screen as a companion to what's happening on the TV, media companies must successfully migrate consumers from self-initiated use of the second screen to a programmed experience.
Forget The Smartphone, Forget The Tablet – The 'Phablet' Is THE Gadget Of 2013
Business Insider reporting:
SINGAPORE/HONG KONG (Reuters) - Call it phablet, phonelet, tweener or super smartphone, but the clunky mobile phone - closer in size to a tablet than the smartphone of a couple of years back - is here to stay.
A surprise hit of 2012, it is drawing in more users, more handset makers and is shaping the way we consume content.
"We expect 2013 to be the Year of the Phablet," said Neil Mawston, UK-based executive director of Strategy Analytics' global wireless practice.
While Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has blazed a trail with its once-mocked Galaxy Note devices, now other manufacturers are scurrying to catch up.
At this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Chinese telecommunications giants ZTE Corp and Huawei Technologies Co Ltd will launch their own.
ZTE, which collaborated with Italy's designer Stefano Giovannoni for the Nubia phablet, is scheduled to launch its 5-inch Grand S, while Huawei brings out the Ascend Mate, sporting a whopping 6.1-inch screen, making it only slightly smaller than Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet.
"Users have realized that a nearly 5-inch screen smartphone isn't such a cumbersome device," said Joshua Flood, senior analyst at ABI Research in Britain.
Driving the phablet's shift to the mainstream is a confluence of trends. Users prefer larger screens because they are consuming more visual content on mobile devices than before, and using them less for voice calls - the phablet's weak spot.
And as WiFi-only tablets become more popular, so has interest among commuters in devices that combine the best of both, while on the move.
According to the latest Ericsson Mobility Report, the monthly data traffic for every smartphone will rise fourfold between now and 2018 to 1,900 megabytes
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/forget-the-smartphone-forget-the-tablet--the-phablet-is-the-gadget-of-2013-2013-1#ixzz2HOwMMw00
SINGAPORE/HONG KONG (Reuters) - Call it phablet, phonelet, tweener or super smartphone, but the clunky mobile phone - closer in size to a tablet than the smartphone of a couple of years back - is here to stay.
A surprise hit of 2012, it is drawing in more users, more handset makers and is shaping the way we consume content.
"We expect 2013 to be the Year of the Phablet," said Neil Mawston, UK-based executive director of Strategy Analytics' global wireless practice.
While Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has blazed a trail with its once-mocked Galaxy Note devices, now other manufacturers are scurrying to catch up.
At this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Chinese telecommunications giants ZTE Corp and Huawei Technologies Co Ltd will launch their own.
ZTE, which collaborated with Italy's designer Stefano Giovannoni for the Nubia phablet, is scheduled to launch its 5-inch Grand S, while Huawei brings out the Ascend Mate, sporting a whopping 6.1-inch screen, making it only slightly smaller than Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet.
"Users have realized that a nearly 5-inch screen smartphone isn't such a cumbersome device," said Joshua Flood, senior analyst at ABI Research in Britain.
Driving the phablet's shift to the mainstream is a confluence of trends. Users prefer larger screens because they are consuming more visual content on mobile devices than before, and using them less for voice calls - the phablet's weak spot.
And as WiFi-only tablets become more popular, so has interest among commuters in devices that combine the best of both, while on the move.
According to the latest Ericsson Mobility Report, the monthly data traffic for every smartphone will rise fourfold between now and 2018 to 1,900 megabytes
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/forget-the-smartphone-forget-the-tablet--the-phablet-is-the-gadget-of-2013-2013-1#ixzz2HOwMMw00
Sunday, January 6, 2013
How to Make Library eBooks More Visible
goodEreader reporting:
Many libraries are investing in a digital infrastructure to allow patrons to borrow ebooks on their phones, tablets, and e-readers. Overdrive currently is the largest company that facilitates the entire lending process and many libraries are suffering from poor visibility to their visitors. Libraries traditionally spend $10,000 or more in setting up their digital ecosystem and trained staff on how to assist customers. The big issue is how do libraries promote the fact they have ebooks and what measures can they take to ensure public awareness?
Recently, staff members at Sacramento Public Library came up with a clever way to connect its physical and digital collections: they place “Now in eBook Format!” stickers on the covers of corresponding titles in the physical collection. These stickers were printed in bulk and direct customers to the library’s website where people can sign up to borrow books online. It promotes the ebook service, without having to spend more money in marketing materials.
Another great way to promote a library’s ebook collection is to develop shelf cards. These can be inserted into the books themselves or placed underneath them. This gives patrons a picture of the cover art and name of the book, as well as a web-link to the book entry in the library’s computer system.
http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/how-to-make-library-ebooks-more-visible/
Many libraries are investing in a digital infrastructure to allow patrons to borrow ebooks on their phones, tablets, and e-readers. Overdrive currently is the largest company that facilitates the entire lending process and many libraries are suffering from poor visibility to their visitors. Libraries traditionally spend $10,000 or more in setting up their digital ecosystem and trained staff on how to assist customers. The big issue is how do libraries promote the fact they have ebooks and what measures can they take to ensure public awareness?
Recently, staff members at Sacramento Public Library came up with a clever way to connect its physical and digital collections: they place “Now in eBook Format!” stickers on the covers of corresponding titles in the physical collection. These stickers were printed in bulk and direct customers to the library’s website where people can sign up to borrow books online. It promotes the ebook service, without having to spend more money in marketing materials.
Another great way to promote a library’s ebook collection is to develop shelf cards. These can be inserted into the books themselves or placed underneath them. This gives patrons a picture of the cover art and name of the book, as well as a web-link to the book entry in the library’s computer system.
http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/how-to-make-library-ebooks-more-visible/
How reading flip-flops from digital to physical
guardian reporting:
Robin Sloan, author of Fish, the acclaimed iPhone essay featured here a few months ago, used the term "flip-flop" to define an increasingly common process by which a work of art moves between different formats, and specifically between the physical and the digital. As an example, he gave the digitisation of a marble statue by a museum, its storage and restoration, and its physical recreation by a 3D printer – a process not too far off in many of the world's major institutions. The flip-flop also comes in very handy when we're trying to take advantage of the different functions of print and digital, reading and writing.
The Evernote Smart Notebook from Moleskine allows fans of the classic notebooks to save copies of the pages to Evernote's online suite of organisation tools. A special page design helps a smartphone camera capture sketches and handwritten notes as if they were digital documents. Brightly coloured bookmark stickers which turn into tags online can be added to pages, syncing the digital and physical versions.
It's also becoming easier to print the best of the web in order to digest it away from the computer or phone. Many of these tools are built upon existing digital collation services such as Instapaper and Readability, which allow you to save and read online articles when disconnected from the web. But these queues of reading, just like unread books on the bedside table, can stack up quickly.
...And a new service, Blackstrap, promises to produce beautifully laid-out books from your Instapaper stack....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jan/06/reading-flip-flops-digital-physical
Robin Sloan, author of Fish, the acclaimed iPhone essay featured here a few months ago, used the term "flip-flop" to define an increasingly common process by which a work of art moves between different formats, and specifically between the physical and the digital. As an example, he gave the digitisation of a marble statue by a museum, its storage and restoration, and its physical recreation by a 3D printer – a process not too far off in many of the world's major institutions. The flip-flop also comes in very handy when we're trying to take advantage of the different functions of print and digital, reading and writing.
The Evernote Smart Notebook from Moleskine allows fans of the classic notebooks to save copies of the pages to Evernote's online suite of organisation tools. A special page design helps a smartphone camera capture sketches and handwritten notes as if they were digital documents. Brightly coloured bookmark stickers which turn into tags online can be added to pages, syncing the digital and physical versions.
It's also becoming easier to print the best of the web in order to digest it away from the computer or phone. Many of these tools are built upon existing digital collation services such as Instapaper and Readability, which allow you to save and read online articles when disconnected from the web. But these queues of reading, just like unread books on the bedside table, can stack up quickly.
...And a new service, Blackstrap, promises to produce beautifully laid-out books from your Instapaper stack....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jan/06/reading-flip-flops-digital-physical
Thursday, January 3, 2013
4 Hyperlocal Trends to Watch in 2013
StreetFight reporting:
2012′s rush to capture the hyperlocal audience has begun to wane as the reality sets in that while the online SMB market is huge and untapped, it remains hard to get those mom-and-pops to spend money on newfangled marketing methods. Last year’s intense startup activity has revealed four trends going into 2013:
–Local no longer revolves around online news sites; channels connecting SMBs to consumers have multiplied
– Banner ads are no longer cost-efficient for SMBs
– Local media needs to retool client relationships, moving from “advertising” to “marketing”
– SMBs must start building brand advocate networks in lieu of advertising
1) Decentralization of local media hubs
Up until now, the online sites of local newspapers (and to a lesser extent online TV) have been the main media hubs for local communities. These communities (including arts organizations, civic groups, causes, and businesses) would route their marketing, advertising, and PR through these hubs and either hope or pay for publication. These entities are now shifting to content marketing and social media to publicize their events, and asking media hubs to link to them. Every tweet or status update they make points to their content. This newly created local content will become metatagged, curated and aggregated by a growing set of community publishers...
2) End of the Local Banner Ad...
3) Replace local media sales forces with ad networks and marketing talent...
4) The building of brand advocate networks...
http://streetfightmag.com/2013/01/03/four-top-hyperlocal-trends-to-watch-in-2013/
2012′s rush to capture the hyperlocal audience has begun to wane as the reality sets in that while the online SMB market is huge and untapped, it remains hard to get those mom-and-pops to spend money on newfangled marketing methods. Last year’s intense startup activity has revealed four trends going into 2013:
–Local no longer revolves around online news sites; channels connecting SMBs to consumers have multiplied
– Banner ads are no longer cost-efficient for SMBs
– Local media needs to retool client relationships, moving from “advertising” to “marketing”
– SMBs must start building brand advocate networks in lieu of advertising
1) Decentralization of local media hubs
Up until now, the online sites of local newspapers (and to a lesser extent online TV) have been the main media hubs for local communities. These communities (including arts organizations, civic groups, causes, and businesses) would route their marketing, advertising, and PR through these hubs and either hope or pay for publication. These entities are now shifting to content marketing and social media to publicize their events, and asking media hubs to link to them. Every tweet or status update they make points to their content. This newly created local content will become metatagged, curated and aggregated by a growing set of community publishers...
2) End of the Local Banner Ad...
3) Replace local media sales forces with ad networks and marketing talent...
4) The building of brand advocate networks...
http://streetfightmag.com/2013/01/03/four-top-hyperlocal-trends-to-watch-in-2013/
Hearst: “Nearly 800,000″ monthly digital U.S. subs, short of 1 million goal
paidContent reporting:
In a New Year’s letter to employees, Hearst Magazines president David Carey writes that the company has nearly 800,000 monthly digital subscribers in the U.S. “across iPads, Nooks, Kindle Fires and Android devices–the highest in the industry.” Hearst charges separately for its print and digital editions, and Carey writes, “More than 80 percent of our digital subscribers are new to our files, and their engagement levels meet or exceed the high levels we see from our print products.”
The “nearly 800,000 figure” falls short of the million digital subscriptions that Carey said was the company’s 2012 target in last year’s letter. (Last year, Carey did not break out how many digital subscriptions the magazines had.) The list of platforms also underscores how digital magazine reading changed in 2012: Last year, Carey mentioned subscriptions across “iTunes, Zinio, Nook, Amazon and Next Issue Media.” This year, Zinio, which is reportedly up for sale (and still without a buyer after six months), and magazine publisher joint venture Next Issue didn’t make the list.
Carey tells AdAge, “When I issued the one million goal, we had mid-300,000 e-subs in house, and while I knew it was going to be a real stretch, it was the right, super aggressive number to shoot for.”
A few other highlights from the letter: Carey says the company had 186 million monthly mobile page views by the end of 2012, up from 39 million in 2011; foodie site Delish.com introduced a print special that was sold with six titles at Wal-Mart, producing a 22 percent lift in single-copy sales; Hearts plans to “‘future-proof’ its digital business model at account for mobile viewing.
http://paidcontent.org/2013/01/02/hearst-touts-nearly-800000-monthly-digital-u-s-subs-short-of-1-million-goal/?utm_source=Daily+Buzz+from+eMedia+Vitals&utm_campaign=4de4f57010-nl_DB_01_03_2013&utm_medium=email
In a New Year’s letter to employees, Hearst Magazines president David Carey writes that the company has nearly 800,000 monthly digital subscribers in the U.S. “across iPads, Nooks, Kindle Fires and Android devices–the highest in the industry.” Hearst charges separately for its print and digital editions, and Carey writes, “More than 80 percent of our digital subscribers are new to our files, and their engagement levels meet or exceed the high levels we see from our print products.”
The “nearly 800,000 figure” falls short of the million digital subscriptions that Carey said was the company’s 2012 target in last year’s letter. (Last year, Carey did not break out how many digital subscriptions the magazines had.) The list of platforms also underscores how digital magazine reading changed in 2012: Last year, Carey mentioned subscriptions across “iTunes, Zinio, Nook, Amazon and Next Issue Media.” This year, Zinio, which is reportedly up for sale (and still without a buyer after six months), and magazine publisher joint venture Next Issue didn’t make the list.
Carey tells AdAge, “When I issued the one million goal, we had mid-300,000 e-subs in house, and while I knew it was going to be a real stretch, it was the right, super aggressive number to shoot for.”
A few other highlights from the letter: Carey says the company had 186 million monthly mobile page views by the end of 2012, up from 39 million in 2011; foodie site Delish.com introduced a print special that was sold with six titles at Wal-Mart, producing a 22 percent lift in single-copy sales; Hearts plans to “‘future-proof’ its digital business model at account for mobile viewing.
http://paidcontent.org/2013/01/02/hearst-touts-nearly-800000-monthly-digital-u-s-subs-short-of-1-million-goal/?utm_source=Daily+Buzz+from+eMedia+Vitals&utm_campaign=4de4f57010-nl_DB_01_03_2013&utm_medium=email
2013: Content Gets a Ride as King
Mediashift reporting:
(Quality) Content Will be King
"Experts" once told us that quality had been killed by the need for efficiency and scaling, and that editorial operations would thrive on user- or even machine-generated-content.BuzzFeed, which cut its teeth on quick-hit viral images, has been producing serious political journalism. Gawker has moved into longer-form analytical writing. Tumblr, Facebook, Flipboard and other aggregators have been hiring experienced editorial managers who know how to create and present stories.
On the marketing side, media companies like Forbes, The Atlantic's Quartz, as well as Gawker and BuzzFeed, have been offering advertorial content to sponsors placed within the editorial stream.
Those sponsors, often major consumer-facing companies like Best Buy, Remington, Starbucks or Walmart, are employing "content strategists" to help create winning arrays of words, images and video, wrapped with social media, to attract traffic, start conversations, and impart a glow to the brand.
It's almost a step back to the past, when sponsors like Texaco had singing servicemen to kick off Milton Berle and other hit TV shows, and the sponsor message was also part of the entertainment or information.
We're going to see more pushes for more quality content in 2013.
Corollary: Video Content Rises
Web-based video consumption is fast-rising, as access to high-speed bandwidth increases -- 76 percent in the U.S. alone since last year -- and people use more powerful mobile devices.Major purveyors such as Amazon, Netflix and Hulu have brought more content to the Web and, as they compete to cut pricey content deals, are also starting to delve into their own original programming.
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/01/2013-content-gets-a-ride-as-king003.html?utm_source=MediaShift+Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=52297061d1-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN
Turnover of electronic media doubled since 2001 in Finland
Statistics Finland reporting:
http://www.stat.fi/til/jvie/2011/01/jvie_2011_01_2012-12-12_tie_001_en.html
Over the 2000s, the growth of the mass media
market has hinged mostly on electronic media. The combined turnover
of television, radio and web media has doubled. Printed media and
especially recorded media were in 2011 only barely over the level
at the start of the millennium.
The development of mass media market, 2001=100
http://www.stat.fi/til/jvie/2011/01/jvie_2011_01_2012-12-12_tie_001_en.html
Finland Doubled Tablet Usage in 2012
eMarketer reporting:
Though penetration is still low in the Scandinavian country, the population of Finland was more than twice as likely to use a tablet in 2012 as it was the year before.
In 2011, according to market research firm Taloustutkimus Oy—Finland, just 5% of people in Finland ages 15 to 79 used a tablet. By 2012, the proportion was up to 12%.
Though penetration is still low in the Scandinavian country, the population of Finland was more than twice as likely to use a tablet in 2012 as it was the year before.
In 2011, according to market research firm Taloustutkimus Oy—Finland, just 5% of people in Finland ages 15 to 79 used a tablet. By 2012, the proportion was up to 12%.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
2013 Predictions From Online Ad, Marketing Experts
onlinemedia daily reporting: Welcome to online advertising and marketing
in 2013, where opt-in push advertising -- rather than pull -- becomes
the norm, as consumers feel more comfortable allowing brands to
recognize location, intent and preferences through devices.
Sensors will aggregate data from siloed campaigns that feed into one analytics platform, crunching numbers and spitting out data into CRM and online ordering systems.
Data and content will customize the Web to determine on the fly the best campaign that speaks to consumers. It all centers on personalized content with each new search query or visit to brand Web sites or social network pages.
In 2013, the "E" in SEO transforms from engine to experience on desktop and mobile devices, as brands that purchased branded top level domain names prepare to launch them.
Online advertising sits on the brink of a technological revelation. From Adobe to BlueKai to WordStream, executives weigh in to provide insight on how they think online advertising and marketing industry media trends will evolve in 2013.
Sid Shah, director of business analytics at Adobe, believes the explosion of content will surface in the "living room on the go" as licensing rights and better monetization capabilities enable seamless content portability for consumers. It will support the spike in mobile traffic and drive digital advertising. By the end of 2013, one in three paid clicks could come from a tablet or smartphone.
"Cross-channel and cross-device measurement will become paramount, and the industry can expect continued evolution of cross-channel measurement of products, reporting and analytics," Shah said.
Sensors will aggregate data from siloed campaigns that feed into one analytics platform, crunching numbers and spitting out data into CRM and online ordering systems.
Data and content will customize the Web to determine on the fly the best campaign that speaks to consumers. It all centers on personalized content with each new search query or visit to brand Web sites or social network pages.
In 2013, the "E" in SEO transforms from engine to experience on desktop and mobile devices, as brands that purchased branded top level domain names prepare to launch them.
Online advertising sits on the brink of a technological revelation. From Adobe to BlueKai to WordStream, executives weigh in to provide insight on how they think online advertising and marketing industry media trends will evolve in 2013.
Sid Shah, director of business analytics at Adobe, believes the explosion of content will surface in the "living room on the go" as licensing rights and better monetization capabilities enable seamless content portability for consumers. It will support the spike in mobile traffic and drive digital advertising. By the end of 2013, one in three paid clicks could come from a tablet or smartphone.
"Cross-channel and cross-device measurement will become paramount, and the industry can expect continued evolution of cross-channel measurement of products, reporting and analytics," Shah said.
http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/dear-newsroom-curmudgeon/
Buttry diary reporting:
Dear Newsroom Curmudgeon,
I sometimes share your anxiety and occasionally share your concerns about some of the changes in journalism. I learned journalism in the old school, same as you. I am steeped in the same values of accuracy, fairness, dogged reporting and good writing that you cherish. But I’m having as much fun as I’ve ever had in more than 40 years in journalism, I have as high regard for my colleagues’ work as ever and I’m as optimistic as I’ve ever been about the future of journalism and the news business. If you would like work to be fun again, if you’d like to be optimistic again (or, if you never were, to finally be optimistic), I’m writing to tell you about the fun and optimism that I find in journalism.
I wrote about you last fall, but you probably didn’t read that blog post. You’re probably not a regular reader of my blog or a regular user of Twitter, where a lot of journalists learned about that post. Maybe you’re reading this because a colleague emailed you a link or printed it out for you. That’s OK. I’m writing this because an editor asked me recently how to deal with curmudgeons who resist learning the skills, tools, techniques and principles of digital journalism. I gave him an answer off the cuff and sent him a link to that earlier blog post. But upon reflection, I think the best way to deal with a curmudgeon is to talk candidly and directly with him or her. So I’m doing that.
I’m going to speculate on some possible reasons for your resistance and address them (it’s informed speculation, because I’ve heard from lots of curmudgeons as I’ve evangelized for digital journalism, and some of your peers don’t hold much back):
Reason #1: Quality. You may be resisting digital journalism because you think journalism was so great back in the day and today’s journalism just doesn’t measure up...
http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/dear-newsroom-curmudgeon/
Dear Newsroom Curmudgeon …
April 6, 2012 by Steve Buttry
I sometimes share your anxiety and occasionally share your concerns about some of the changes in journalism. I learned journalism in the old school, same as you. I am steeped in the same values of accuracy, fairness, dogged reporting and good writing that you cherish. But I’m having as much fun as I’ve ever had in more than 40 years in journalism, I have as high regard for my colleagues’ work as ever and I’m as optimistic as I’ve ever been about the future of journalism and the news business. If you would like work to be fun again, if you’d like to be optimistic again (or, if you never were, to finally be optimistic), I’m writing to tell you about the fun and optimism that I find in journalism.
I wrote about you last fall, but you probably didn’t read that blog post. You’re probably not a regular reader of my blog or a regular user of Twitter, where a lot of journalists learned about that post. Maybe you’re reading this because a colleague emailed you a link or printed it out for you. That’s OK. I’m writing this because an editor asked me recently how to deal with curmudgeons who resist learning the skills, tools, techniques and principles of digital journalism. I gave him an answer off the cuff and sent him a link to that earlier blog post. But upon reflection, I think the best way to deal with a curmudgeon is to talk candidly and directly with him or her. So I’m doing that.
I’m going to speculate on some possible reasons for your resistance and address them (it’s informed speculation, because I’ve heard from lots of curmudgeons as I’ve evangelized for digital journalism, and some of your peers don’t hold much back):
Reason #1: Quality. You may be resisting digital journalism because you think journalism was so great back in the day and today’s journalism just doesn’t measure up...
http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/dear-newsroom-curmudgeon/
Who killed Newsweek? Tina Brown can’t just blame the internet
The Spectator reporting:
So farewell then, Newsweek magazine, which published its last print issue this week. After 79 years — 15 of them as my employer — the venerable old rag is to disappear into an uncertain, web-only future.
Many newspapers and magazines have folded as advertising shrinks and readers go online but Newsweek is perhaps the first of the titans to fall. Its demise is all the more resonant because it was one side of one of the great twin peaks of the press: Time and Newsweek, the New York Times and the Washington Post, the Times and the Daily Telegraph.
In its heyday Newsweek was an essential part of America’s national conversation. It was controversial, liberal, usually half a step ahead of Middle America. In 1963, a year before Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights Act, it dispatched 40 researchers to conduct 1,250 interviews for a special issue titled ‘The Negro in America’. It was a brilliant example of the kind of show-don’t-tell journalism that American newsweeklies used to do so well — a powerful indictment of segregation, told in people’s own words without polemic. In 1967 Newsweek published ‘Thanksgiving at Dak To’, a powerful report by Edward Behr with a photo-essay by Brice Allen which showed piles of American corpses in the carnage of Hill 875. It showed mainstream America the reality of failure in Vietnam years before it became a political commonplace.
...Things started to come unstuck under Jon Meacham, a devoted Episcopalian Christian with an eclectic interest in American history who became editor-in-chief in September 2006. It was under Meacham that Newsweek embarked on the fatal path from news to views. Columnists like George Will and Anna Quindlen had always been an important feature. But as profits began to slide, Meacham hatched a strategy to make Newsweek a ‘magazine of ideas’, with more blocks of text and fewer pictures to signal high seriousness. The idea was to compete with the Economist for the clever, rich readers....
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8802851/who-killed-newsweek/
So farewell then, Newsweek magazine, which published its last print issue this week. After 79 years — 15 of them as my employer — the venerable old rag is to disappear into an uncertain, web-only future.
Many newspapers and magazines have folded as advertising shrinks and readers go online but Newsweek is perhaps the first of the titans to fall. Its demise is all the more resonant because it was one side of one of the great twin peaks of the press: Time and Newsweek, the New York Times and the Washington Post, the Times and the Daily Telegraph.
In its heyday Newsweek was an essential part of America’s national conversation. It was controversial, liberal, usually half a step ahead of Middle America. In 1963, a year before Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights Act, it dispatched 40 researchers to conduct 1,250 interviews for a special issue titled ‘The Negro in America’. It was a brilliant example of the kind of show-don’t-tell journalism that American newsweeklies used to do so well — a powerful indictment of segregation, told in people’s own words without polemic. In 1967 Newsweek published ‘Thanksgiving at Dak To’, a powerful report by Edward Behr with a photo-essay by Brice Allen which showed piles of American corpses in the carnage of Hill 875. It showed mainstream America the reality of failure in Vietnam years before it became a political commonplace.
...Things started to come unstuck under Jon Meacham, a devoted Episcopalian Christian with an eclectic interest in American history who became editor-in-chief in September 2006. It was under Meacham that Newsweek embarked on the fatal path from news to views. Columnists like George Will and Anna Quindlen had always been an important feature. But as profits began to slide, Meacham hatched a strategy to make Newsweek a ‘magazine of ideas’, with more blocks of text and fewer pictures to signal high seriousness. The idea was to compete with the Economist for the clever, rich readers....
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8802851/who-killed-newsweek/
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