Media Trending: Spending Up, Usage Slightly Declining
Labels: 2007, Consumers, Future of Radio, Joint Communications, Media, Media trending, Predictions, Radio, Revenue, Usage, VSS
Has media reached a new usage plateau? A new level of consumer saturation? What's a new view of the future for media?
Private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) has released a new study forecasting spending in the media industry into 2011. The study found that while communications spending increased in 2006, consumer media usage actually dropped after multiple years of growth.
Total communications spending grew 6.8 percent to $885.2 billion in 2006. VSS predicts that in the first half of 2007, the industry will grow by 6.4 percent, making it among the fastest growing sectors of the U.S. economy.
VSS also predicts that Internet advertising will replace newspapers as the largest ad medium by 2011.
Meanwhile, media usage per person declined last year by 0.5 percent, according to their data, due to changing consumer behavior and the efficiency of digital media. VSS found that digital alternatives for news and entertainment require less time investment than traditional media. VSS predicts consumer media usage to stabilize this year and slightly increase through 2011.
Consumers are also moving away from ad-supported media, such as broadcast TV and newspapers. VSS labels options such as video games and cable TV "consumer-supported platforms," and says their usage is increasing as time with ad-supported media decreases.
"We are in the midst of a major shift in the media landscape that is being fueled by changes in technology, end-user behaviors and the response by brand marketers and communications companies," said James Rutherfurd, EVP and Managing Director for VSS. "We expect these shifts to continue over the next five years, as time and place shifting accelerate while consumers and businesses utilize more digital media alternatives, strengthening the new media pull model at the expense of the traditional media push model."
If we have reached a new plateau of media consumption, it is worthwhile to take a look around the media landscape right now. Who has survived? Which platforms are still thriving? Still hanging on?
More specifically, take a look at radio. Good news...radio still operates with strength. It is simple, reliable, cost-effective and still is used weekly by 94% of the population. Radio has gone through tremendous industry change and competitive challenge from new media options...and radio still survives.
Is radio ready to rev it back up and go after the demographic it has nearly lost (teens) or the demographic it has turned away from (Boomers)?
posted by Unknown @ Saturday, August 18, 2007,
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No va? Free FM is stuck in the repair shop
Labels: CBS Radio, Free FM, Humor, JV and Elvis, No Va, NYC radio, Post-Imus, Radio, Ratings, Revenue, Suspension
Since its launch 16 months ago, Free FM has spent more time in the repair shop than out on the open road.
Firings, content train wrecks, show suspensions, schedule changes, weak ratings, weak revenues...
Is Free FM running out of gas?
In branding, words often contain more than one meaning. Take the word "Nova". Chevy thought it sounded good for a line of small-muscle sport cars back in the 70s. Of course, as the well-worn urban legend goes, the "Nova" became "No Va"...a "Doesn't Go" joke. Soon after, sales dropped and Chevy stopped producing the car.
CBS Radio is facing their own "Nova" problem trying to find life after Howard Stern. 
Or, at least they're getting very familiar with the phrase "Don't Go There".
When Stern left in late-December 2005, CBS (then known as Infinity Broadcasting) installed a new "Hot Talk on FM" format in its major markets across the nation that formerly broadcast Stern's morning show.
In a not-so-subtle move countering satellite radio (Stern's orbital home for the past 16 months), CBS decided to name the new format "Free FM".
Hot talk on satellite radio = you pay.
Hot talk on traditional radio = it's free radio. Or, Free FM.
Get it?
Get the difference? The advantage? The Free-dom?
Nope, me neither. Nor have millions of radio listeners in NYC, Los Angeles, Chicago and other markets.
The problem with naming the new national format "Free FM" in this post-9/11 traumatized society is that America is not feeling quite so free. Rather, among the Homeland Security warning lights, anthrax dustings, relentless White House manipulation scandals, a no-end-in-sight War on Terror, wardrobe malfunctions, celebrity meltdowns (physical, verbal and mental), global warming doom-gloom, likely $4-a-gallon gasoline...all the way to Imus ho's, Virginia Tech slayings and Karl Rove's screams at Sheryl Crow, America's mood feels less than free lately.
America seems more obsessed with Fear (on Fox) than with Free (on FM or elsewhere) right now.
Formerly known as WXRK K-Rock for 30 years, WFNY in New York City became the flagship for Free FM post-Stern.
The ratings? (mired at a 1.2 Arbitron rating 12+ all persons).
The revenue? (from $50.8 million in revenue 2005 down to $18.7 million in 2006).
Imagine the costs to operate, advertise and manage...
One thing Free FM was supposed to represent was "free speech", "free attitude", "free humor". Not just "free" from subscription fees; free for wild, open, surprising, unexpected content. Something capitalizing on the "extreme" culture and attitude trend. And that is how it has been promoted. How Free FM has tried to position itself.
Yes, Free FM has its funny moments of comedy, Idol Watching and train wreck radio as well as serious topics, too. And it does have its fans as Free FM pokes fun at popular culture. I usually listen everyday during the week and I'd call myself a fan, not that Arbitron counts me in the ratings.
What Free FM often seems to be, though, is a "No Go". No Va. Post-Imus, it's an easy target for uncontrollable controversy. Just today, more jock suspensions were handed out for midday show "The Doghouse with JV & Elvis", with the show apparently crossing a racial line over some Asian jokes.
Now, how is that line defined again...?
Although JV apologized for the incident and said at the conclusion of today's show that "if this is my last show, at least I got to say what needed to be said"...their real feelings were posted on their blog, with this "censorship" jpeg:
How do their fans feel about this? Read their comments here and here...or watch this clip of Hannity & Colmes as they discuss the subject.
What exactly does Free Radio mean anyway? Is it Free when the audience knows there are FCC regulations, corporate restrictions and advertiser considerations?
Isn't this why Stern left for Sirius?
As a brand, what does Free FM really mean? Especially when the audience knows there are "costs"?
Will new CBS Radio President Dan Mason keep the Free FM experiment going...or will he simply say, "No va"? Can Free FM get repaired? Can he get it up and running?
posted by Unknown @ Monday, April 23, 2007,
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Media Trend Watching: Annoying Banner Ads
Labels: 2006, Ad dollars, Advertising, Annoying, banner ads, IAB, Internet, Media Trend Watching, New Media, PwC, Revenue, Snark
More ad dollars keep going to the Internet.
Last month, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) announced that Internet advertising revenues for 2006 were estimated to be $16.8 billion, a 34% increase over the previous revenue record of $12.5 billion in 2005.
Globally, 2006's Q4 totaled just under $4.8 billion -- the highest quarter ever reported.
Nine short years ago, total spent Internet advertising in the 4th quarter (1997) was just $424 million...more than an eleven-fold increase.
These ad dollars are being spent on search marketing, paid search links, streaming video ads, contextual GoogleAds, email campaigns and many other forms. Among all choices, the most popular -- and often most annoying -- are banner ads. Sure, they deliver "eyeballs"...but many of them are just plain bad. That can't be great for ROI and certainly not for brand building strategies.
American may love streaming video...but the only people who like the banners ads next to the video probably are advertisers.
I found an article for "The Top 5 Most Annoying Banner Ads on the Internet". No doubt you've seen these banner ads while visiting your favorite sites. They're everywhere. While it may be difficult to ever narrow it down to only a Top 5 Most Annoying (given there are so many available), the logic is sound (although there's no scientific basis for their list).
Here's the selections from Cracked.com (thanks, Cracked!):
The Jointblog avoids banner ads (except to get snarky with them). Which banner ads annoy you? And which ones do you think work?
5) TBS Very Funny Ads. This is everything that's wrong with the modern media in one convenient image, for the busy modern person who needs to lose faith in humanity 'on the go'. A website dedicated to the commercials which prevent you from watching the programs on television....Worse, they're targeting the most annoying demographic on the planet: the "I only watch it for the ads" vacuum-headed smirkers.
4) Win a Free Thing. Banner ads used to promise instant free prizes, but even the dumbest internet surfer eventually realized that just maybe there weren't magical love-powered companies dedicated to giving free electronics to everyone on the planet...One thing all these ads have in common is legalese fine print which, like mobile-phone cancer and minesweepers wrist, is a disease of modern society.
3) Surveys. It's looking for people to complete marketing surveys, but only gets the kind who click on banner ads. The sort who can be distracted from what they're doing by the chance to fill out a form! People who need time and a roughwork sheet to answer the question "Is this object shiny?"
2) Emoticons. In the beginning, there were text smileys. And it was good. People who could spell transmitted thoughts around the globe, finding uses for neglected keys to generally acting like smart people. But with the advance of technology the ability to "use a computer" or "think with mouth closed" are no longer required to get online and banner ads are ever ready to harvest the new subliterate hordes.
And topping the list (drum roll, please...)
1) Juggling Animation (scaled down in size to minimize the annoyance). The makers of these eye-wrenching monstrosities have fixated on "Get their attention," forgetting that it's part of the larger sentence, "Get their attention so they want to buy our product/service, and ideally aren't motivated to track us down, cement our legs into the pavement, and slowly tear our heads off with a length of chain and a monster truck."
Update at 6pm: The Fark forum board is posting many comments about more bad banner ads, such as this comment:There are worse banner adds (sic) than those. The mortgage dancing people, animals, anything with that freaking mortgage company. Anything that flashes so that I have a seizure while I am trying to do something. Then there is this annoying windows one I ran into yesterday. I thought it was because of windows but it only happened on this one website..and it was about weight loss...IT DROVE ME NUTS. So yeah anything that resembles any kind of error window.
Tell us more...what other bad banners do you despise?
posted by Unknown @ Friday, April 06, 2007,
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