“My clients used to have $100 million dollar budgets and I would slice those up, using 60% on TV, 15% in magazines, 7% in newspapers and some on Internet, events, promotions. A year ago, we were working on interaction and cross-platforms, but now I’m seeing a very spastic reaction back to TV, TV, TV.”
– Donny Deutsch, CEO Deutsch Inc speaking at the Audit Bureau of Circulations annual conference in November 2002.
As reported in Media Life Magazine and elsewhere today, Business 2.0’s President Ned Desmond is now also Exec Editor Time Inc.
Interactive where he’ll be in charge of putting content from People Magazine and Entertainment Weekly behind the AOL paid-only wall. AOL hopes this content will encourage non AOL users pay for access even if they rely on another ISP for Internet access. DSL and cable-modem users are specifically targeted.
Which is a great idea, except for the branding. In general people who don’t use AOL are kinda snooty about those who do. To sell content to this I’m-smarter-than-AOL-Net-Dummies demographic, the brand is gonna kill you. If, however, AOL simply hopes to stem current account losses to cheaper or faster ISPs, then this move might help a bit for the time being.
http://www.medialifemagazine.com/news2002/dec02/dec16/1_mon/news1monday.html
The three biggies in performance marketing management (Commission Junction, BeFree and Performics) have joined together to issue a Publisher Code of Conduct. All Web publishers working with any of these companies have 60 days from Dec 10 2002 to comply with the following:
Publisher Code of Conduct
The following actions, practices and conduct, whether active or passive, direct or indirect, are prohibited:
Interference with referrals. No Web publisher (“Publisher”) or software download technology provider (“Technology Provider”) may interfere with or seek to influence improperly the referral of a potential customer or visitor
(“End-User”) to the Web site of an online advertiser (“Advertiser”). No Publisher or Technology Provider will automatically replace or alter any component of a Service provider’s technology that results in a reduction of any compensation earned by another Publisher.
For example, a Publisher or Technology Provider may not use methods or technology to automatically replace a Service Provider’s tracking identifier of another Publisher with its own Service Provider’s tracking identifier or otherwise intercept or redirect an End-User from being referred by another Publisher.
Publisher may notify an End-User once that End-User has arrived at the Advertiser’s Web site of an opportunity to utilize technology employed by that Publisher and obtain the End-User’s consent via affirmative action upon each occurrence to proceed with the operation of such technology. Implementation of software application functionality requires that the notification be easily understood by the average End-User, that it occurs on each instance that the functionality is to be activated, and that it is not objectionable to the Advertiser.
Altering another Publisher’s site. Publishers may not alter, change, substitute or modify the content of or appearance to an End-User of another Publisher’s Web pages, use that Publisher’s content to obtain an End-User referral, or obstruct access to another Publisher’s Web pages (regardless of receiving permission from the End-User).
Software installation and de-installation. Publishers may not bundle downloadable shopping software applications with other applications, whereby the installation and de-installation is not obvious, easy or complete. Licensing and terms of all software downloads and applications of any type must be clearly presented to and accepted by the End-User, and de-installation must be obvious, easy and complete.
BusinessWire just released their 2003 rates chart, which reminded
me to share my favorite PR savings tip with you:
BizWire price distribution by the city or region you’re sending
your release to. For example, New York State is $225 and US
National is $595. But you probably don’t need to pay that much.
Why? Because no matter where you pick, even the cheapest city for
$120, you get Internet distribution tossed in without any extra
cost. And, most reporters, investors and other newswatchers rely
on the Internet-side of BusinessWire to see your release.
When you send a release just to Miami, it also shows up on AOL,
Yahoo, FT.com, CBSMarketWatch, Hoovers, Lycos and NewsAlert
immediately. Plus it’s into a feed that goes to many of the Global
2000 via Factiva’s information service.
Oh yeah, local TV, radio and newspaper reporters in Miami get
an alert.
Instead of automatically paying $595 for national distribution
next time you have a release, try picking a $120 city instead.
BTW: Yes, PR Newswire has a similar deal; you get Net distribution
tossed in as part of your regional distribution purchase.
BusinessWire just released their 2003 rates chart, which reminded me to share my favorite PR savings tip with you:
BizWire price distribution by the city or region you are sending your release to. For example, New York State is $225 and US National is $595. But you probably don’t need to pay that much.
Why? Because no matter where you pick, even the cheapest city for $120, you get Internet distribution tossed in without any extra cost. Most reporters, investors and other newswatchers rely on the Internet-side of BusinessWire to see your release.
When you send a release just to Miami, it also shows up on AOL, Yahoo, FT.com, CBSMarketWatch, Hoovers, Lycos and NewsAlert immediately. Plus it is into a feed that goes to many of the Global 2000 via Factiva’s information service.
Oh yeah, local TV, radio and newspaper reporters in Miami get an alert.
Instead of automatically paying $595 for national distribution next time you have a release, try picking a $120 city instead.
BTW: Yes, PR Newswire has a similar deal; you get Net distribution tossed in as part of your regional distribution purchase.
Rob Stuart, VP Marketing over at HCPro, just wrote in, “Another filter story for you. A customer’s e-mail system blocked our e-zine, to which an employee was a subscriber, because we quoted a guy from a company named Gage-Babc*o*c*k*” These days I work hard to find alternate words to stuff that’s filtered a lot, such as replacing “f^ree” with “no cost,” but how the heck do you replace a source’s name?”
Last night I heard from a (reliable) source who asked not to be revealed just yet that the USPS is about to help stop the whole filtering problem at the ISP level by allowing mailers to buy digitial safe conduct stamps. Which sounds great except for two things: The word “buy.” Many mailers I know operate on a very thin edge of profitability these days and I suspect USPS’s pricing won’t work for them. Improved deliverability would have to be really huge to make it worth the investment.
Plus, much of the filtering goes on at the client-side level as the HCPro example above shows. No USPS safe conduct is going to stop fed up consumers and IT directors from using their own filters and stopping mail.
I hope I’m being overly cynical here and there really is a solution. 🙂
Thanks to Peter Hobday who told me about a new article from the UK’s Independent newspaper, “Why does everyone think good writing is so easy?” which although it refers mainly to writing operatic lyrics, applies enough to writing online content that it will make you smile and nod in agreement.
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=360178
There’ve been a lot of rumors flying about on the fate of ABC interactive, the not-for-profit Audit Bureau of Circulations’ for-profit Interactive spin-off. I just called up ABC’s Corporate Communications gal Marybeth Miles to find out the truth.
ABC’s member-driven board decided to integrate ABCi into the main ABC during their most recent meeting in November. The for-profit corporation no longer exists and staff members were moved from the old i offices back into the main ABC building.
Every company that was a member of both organizations will continue getting the exact same online and offline auditing services at about the same price, with added benefit of being able to pop an officially approved “snapshot summary” of their online audit figures into a new section of their print publication’s audit statement. Which may make it easier for print sales reps to cross-sell online.
Companies that were only members of the i side (about 40% of total i members) have their choice of either continuing to get the same services by joining regular ABC for about the same price as before, or discontinuing service altogether.
Marybeth positioned this as a “wait and see” retrenchment noting that many of ABCi’s competitors have either gone under or are “trying to figure out their paradigms” as the online ad sales marketplace continues in its current lull. The door is open for ABC to push hard on growing its interactive side again someday.
From my perspective, the main thing holding such growth back is the fact that agency media buying isn’t all that integrated yet.
Interactive and print buyers are often different people. Print people are used to seeing a standard ABC audit statement in every media kit, especially US newspaper and consumer magazine media kits. Online media buyers haven’t been educated to look for or request that info, and since they are not comparing apples-to-apples across media channels, they don’t care.
http://www.accessabc.com
The Pew Internet & American Life Project just released a 26-page PDF (link below) on their results on how Americans use email at work. The actual study was conducted by phone six months ago in early May, so some of the results may be off from today, especially the level of spam reportedly received.
The study doesn’t touch on specifics relating to the publishing industry. They don’t ask how many subscriptions folks have or how they feel about news services they signed up for. (However, there is quite a bit of data on bizpeople using the Web for gossip.)
One bit of data that serves as a good reminder to all of us in the content business is that although 95% of users said they were able to stay on top of the workload email represents and the vast majority said they didn’t get much spam email at work addresses, 64% said they consider handling email “a necessary chore” and 5% said, “I dread it.” Just 26% said they look forward to email.
I’m willing to bet most of those 26% were English majors :-).
Fact is, email, like “reading,” is something the majority of people don’t like to do. We in the publishing business are love-to-read-stuff freaks compared to the general population.
Which is good to keep top of mind when it comes to editorial, subscription benefit sales copy, and layout.
http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=79
Since this Sunday’s article in The Washington Post, the cat’s out
of the bag. Yeah, I’m “Oz” and Sherpa is a 100% virtual company.
My team work out of home offices in seven different states. Many
of us have never even met “in person.” It’s mostly great, except
sometimes for the time zone thing.
I’m nothing compared to SitePoint’s Founder Matt Mickiewicz who
works out of a home office in Vancouver, Canada while the rest of
his company is based in Melbourne, Australia, and most of their
site visitors are in the US.
Matt tipped me off to one problem with home offices that never
occurred to me. His neighbors sometimes give him weird looks.
“They see a young guy with a nice house and a nice car and I never
seem to go out to work. So they figure I must either be a dealer
or maybe I’m running an Internet porn site.”
I just moved to a new neighborhood myself, and some of my new
neighbors have also given me weird looks.
After I talked to Matt, I thought, no it couldn’t be. Then
I asked my new cleaning lady. “Did you think I might be a drug
dealer at first?” “Of course!” she replied.
