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Webinar tomorrow!
Mobile Revenue Opportunities for Newspapers and Advertisers
Tuesday, September 30 at 2 p.m. (ET)
With more than 255 million mobile phone users in the United States, mobile advertising is set to skyrocket. Mobile ads can be highly engaging, relevant and useful to consumers – and they can boost revenue for newspaper companies. Learn how your newspaper and your local advertisers can reach out to readers through text messaging, mobile sites, mobile classified listings and more.
Speakers: Evan Neufeld of M:Metrics and David Herrold of The Houston Chronicle will present, and business writer David LaFontaine will guest host.
Register here.
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Digital Edge Blog Moves to New NAA Community
 The Digital Edge Blog has moved to a new, nicer, bigger home on the NAA Community! The NAA Community is a new opportunity to network and interact with your industry colleagues and NAA experts. In addition to the Digital Edge Blog, NAA has launched several other blogs on revenue, research and audience growth, and the NAA Community includes upgraded e-forums, file-sharing capabilities and much more.
Learn more!
If you've been reading this blog through an RSS reader, you'll need to update your feed.
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Video Ads Grow Engagement, Help Advertisers on Baltimore Sun Site
The Baltimore Sun, which hired a dedicated videographer and invested in equipment to shoot video ads, has found success, Editor & Publisher reported. The newspaper creates "custom solutions" for local advertisers who may not have broadcast commercials ready to put onto the newspaper's Web site. The newspaper's efforts will result in doubling video ad revenue in the next year. The Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, partly inspired by Baltimore, is starting similar efforts.
Source: Editor & Publisher
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NAA RESOURCE
 Making Money: Pre-Roll, Post-Roll and the Ads In Between
Video-related advertising can be very effective when used properly. Recent growth statistics from newspaper Web sites show that organizations are indeed on the path to developing successful revenue models. Learn how your newspaper company can grow online video revenue in this article from NAA's "Zooming In on Online Video: A Development & Growth Guide." |
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Traffic to Health Sites Grows 21 Percent in Past Year
Traffic to health information sites grew 21 percent in the past year, according to data from comScore – four times the growth rate of the total U.S. Internet audience, MediaPost reported. Despite declines in other categories of Web display advertising, recent statistics from Nielsen Online showed health-related ad spending increased 15 percent in the past year.
MediaPost also reported a number of newspapers are launching magazine-style inserts that focus on women's health, which could bring in more ad revenue.
Source: MediaPost
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Webcaster Settlement Act Passes House, Passage Expected in Senate
The Web radio service Pandora and others may not have to shut down after all. The Webcaster Settlement Act (H.R. 7084) passed in the House this weekend and is expected to easily pass in the Senate.
CNet's News.com reported the act gives Internet radio stations, which have been struggling since royalties collection group SoundExchange increased its rates, the ability to negotiate a new rate. The National Association of Broadcasters had been lobbying against the act, but dropped their opposition when legislators agreed to extend the negotiations timeline to Feb. 15, 2009.
Source: CNet
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Lee Combined Readership Up 18.5 Percent in 2008
Lee Enterprises reported its combined readership has increased 18.5 percent since the beginning of this year. The newspaper company is especially expanding its reach in print and online with young adults, Editor & Publisher reported.
A Wilkerson & Associates readership survey for 10 of Lee's largest markets showed combined reach growing 5 percent, from 66 percent to 71 percent, from 2007 to 2008. Both print-only and online-only readership grew.
Lee attributes the growth to frequently refreshed and unique Web content and aggressive cross-promotion between the print and online properties.
Source: Editor & Publisher
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AT&T, Time Warner, Verizon to Obtain Permission Before Sharing Subscribers' Info
AT&T, Time Warner Cable and Verizon Communications yesterday said at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing they will not give their subscribers' Web surfing information to ad companies without obtaining specific permission from subscribers first. MediaPost reported the three companies did not endorse any new regulations, but they said they would like all companies that engage in behavioral advertising – not just the ISPs – to obtain consent from Web users.
At the hearing, AT&T Chief Privacy Officer Dorothy Attwood said, "The largely invisible practices of ad networks and search engines raise at least the same privacy concerns as do the online behavioral advertising techniques that ISPs could employ. A policy regime that applies only to one set of actors will arbitrarily favor one business model or technology over another."
Source: MediaPost
What do you think about the ISPs' voluntary move? Log in and discuss this article in the OPU forum on the new NAA community!
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Among Adults, Fewer Than Half Multitasking with Newspapers, Internet
Young people are more likely than adults to media multitask, especially while reading a newspaper or going online, according to research from Mediamark Research & Intelligence.
Among all adults, 55 percent of those who read a print newspaper at home do so "without involvement of other media," MediaWeek reported. When surfing the Web at home, 53.8 percent of adults do not media multitask. However, adults ages 18 to 29 are much more likely than adults ages 45 to 64 to media multitask.
"When multitasking occurs, it's most likely to be a combination of TV and another medium. Nineteen percent of at-home magazine reading is done while watching the tube, for example. With Internet use, it's 17.4 percent, while with newspaper reading, it's 15.3 percent," according to MediaWeek.
Source: MediaWeek
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NAA RESOURCE
Moving to Mobile: The Tipping Point for Mobile Local Search
 Significant advances in mobile technology, combined with people's increasingly hectic schedules and other lifestyle changes, have spurred people to jump online via their cell phones and other mobile Web devices to get information on the go. Technologically, GPS-based mobile search is feasible, says David Sawyer, executive vice president of sales and business development for Advanced Mobile Solutions. Yet privacy rights groups and even cell phone users themselves are unlikely to carry the equivalent of a homing beacon in their pockets.
Learn more about mobile local search in "The Tipping Point for Mobile Local Search," an article in NAA's Moving to Mobile: A Development & Growth Guide for Newspapers. |
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Google Looking at ‘Influence’ Rank for Social Networkers for Ad Targeting
Google has filed for a patent on technology that would rank the most influential people on social networking sites, BusinessWeek reported, which could ultimately help advertisers better target their messages. For example, an advertiser could target ads specifically to social network users who have high influence rankings in a specific topic.
"In a creative twist, Google is applying the same approach to social networks it has used to dominate the online search business. If this works, it may finally make ads on social networks relevant—and profitable," BusinessWeek reported.
Source: BusinessWeek
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Quote of the Day: Cheredar on Web-Only Coverage and Archiving Policies
"My guess is that some multi-version reports are archived separately and others are updated and archived without any acknowledgment of draft history. Logic would dictate that a final version (with corrections) should be the only one necessary to archive for the sake of clarity. On the other hand publishing everything could provide an absolute record of information as it happened. But [is] either action really the best policy?" -- Tom Cheredar in a NewAssignment.net blog entry encouraging newspapers to seriously consider their archiving policies and structures for Web-only coverage of breaking news and other events. |
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Twitter’s Election Feed Shows Importance of Groups, Discussions; Newmark Calls for Open Debates
The micro-blogging service Twitter launched a new feed just before Friday's presidential candidate debate that is dedicated to the elections. The functionality of the page and what it may mean for Twitter down the road, according to TechCrunch's Don Reisinger, shouldn't be ignored.
"What Twitter has done with that page is create an environment where people who care about the election and want to see what everyone else thinks can congregate and have a real discussion on the topics that interest them. That functionality provides significant value to users and it adds a totally new layer of usability that simply can't be overlooked," Reisinger wrote.
The feed is at election.twitter.com.
Source: TechCrunch
Other election-related news:
Which newspaper do you think had innovative coverage of the debates this weekend? (It's ok to brag a little!) Tell us on the Online Publishing Update e-forum.
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Bank Web Sites Show No Sign of Industry Woes
A company's Web site is not always the best place to get accurate information about that company's health. Virginia Heffernan wrote in The New York Times Magazine this weekend that with trouble financial institutions, "Even as they were sick, dying or dead, their Web sites had a chipper, customer-service vibe. They were still babbling about helping me realize my dreams."
Source: The New York Times
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