Most Major Papers Continue Circ Decline

By Jennifer Saba Published:

October 27, 2008 7:55 AM ET

NEW YORK For those holding out for some improvement in print circulation, this morning brings disappointment. The Audit Bureau of Circulations released the latest figures for the six- month period ending September 2008 and the report shows major drops in circulation at the big metros.

According to ABC for the 507 newspapers reporting in this period, daily circulation slipped 4.6% to 38,165,848 copies. For the 571 papers, Sunday dropped 4.8% to 43,631,646 copies.

For comparison purposes, in September 2007 reporting period, daily circ fell 2.6% and Sunday was down 4.6%.

Across the country, publishers have put in place plans to cater to core readers and subscribers. It's too expensive to bulk up circulation in unprofitable areas such as third-party, newspapers in education, and bonus day copies.

Not in the core market defined by the newspaper? You are out of luck, at least for the print edition. All daily averages below are for Monday through Friday. The percent change compares this September period to the same period last year.

Daily circ at The New York Times fell 3.5% to 1,000,665 copies.

The Wall Street Journal (as we reported last week) was virtually flat, up about 1,800 copies on a daily basis to 2,011,999. USA Today was also up a fraction of a percent to 2,293,310 copies.

But The Washington Post's daily circulation declined 1.9% to 622,714. Sunday was down 3.1% to 866,057. At the Los Angeles Times circ decreased a little more 5% daily and on Sunday to 739,147 and 1,055,076, respectively. Daily circulation at the Chicago Tribune was down 7.7% to 516,032. Sunday declined 5.7% to 864,845 copies.

The San Francisco Chronicle lost 7% of its daily circulation to 339,430 copies while Sunday was down a hair more, 7.4% to 398,116. The San Jose Mercury News was down slightly, 1.9% to 224,199 and Sunday was down much more, 4.3% to 241,518.

On the East Coast, daily circulation at The Boston Globe plummeted 10.1% to 323,983 copies. Sunday circ was down 8.4% to 503,659. The Baltimore Sun’s daily circ declined 5.9% to 218,923 while Sunday fell 3.8% to 350,640.

Daily circulation at The Philadelphia Inquirer slipped 11.0% to 300,674 copies. Sunday plunged 13.7% to 556,426. At the Daily News in Philly, daily circ slipped 13.2% to 97,694.

Daily circ at The Arizona Republic declined 5.5% to 361,333 while Sunday 3.6% to 463,036. Its sister paper the Indianapolis Star lost 3.3% of its daily circ (244,796 copies) and 4.6% of Sunday to 321,760.

In Florida circulation fell steeply at the Miami Herald - its daily circ was down 11.8% to 210,884. Sunday was down 9% to 279,484. The Orlando Sentinel lost 3.3% of its daily circ to 206,363 and about the same on Sunday (-3.2%) to 307,976 copies.

Daily circ at the Denver Post dropped 6.5% to 210,585 and at the Rocky Mountain News it was down 6.6% to 210,281. The combined Sunday circulation for the JOA papers declined 9.1% to 545,442.

In Detroit, the Free Press lost 6.8% of its daily circ to 298,243 copies. The Detroit News’ daily circ plunged 10.0% to 178,280 copies.

Go here for the list of the top 25 daily newspapers in the country and the top 25 Sunday newspapers.

*CHECK OUT OUR TWO NEW BLOGS TODAY for political campaign news and views and business analysis:The E&P Pub Fitz&Jen

NEW YORK Here are the top 25 daily papers ranked for the six-month period ending September 2008 based on a Monday-through-Friday average, according to the new FAS-FAX from the Audit Bureau of Circulations released today. The percent change compares this period to the same period a year ago.

USA TODAY -- 2,293,310 -- 0.01%

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL -- 2,011,999 -- 0.01%

NEW YORK TIMES -- 1,000,665 -- (-3.58%)

LOS ANGELES TIMES -- 739,147 -- (-5.20%)

DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK -- 632,595 -- (-7.16%)

NEW YORK POST -- 625,421 -- (-6.25%)

THE WASHINGTON POST -- 622,714 -- (-1.94%)

CHICAGO TRIBUNE -- 516,032 -- (-7.75%)

HOUSTON CHRONICLE -- 448,271 -- (-11.66%)

NEWSDAY -- 377,517 -- (-2.58%)

THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC -- 361,333 -- (-5.51%)

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- 339,430 -- (-7.07%)

THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS -- 338,933 -- (-9.28%)

BOSTON GLOBE -- 323,983 -- (-10.18%)

STAR TRIBUNE, MINNEAPOLIS -- 322,360 -- (-4.26%)

STAR-LEDGER, NEWARK, N.J. -- 316,280 -- (-10.40%)

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES -- 313,176 -- (-3.94%)

PLAIN DEALER, CLEVELAND -- 305,529 -- (-8.58%)

THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER -- 300,674 -- (-11.06%)

DETROIT FREE PRESS -- 298,243 -- (-6.84%)

THE OREGONIAN -- 283,321 -- (-8.45%)

THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION -- 274,999 -- (-13.62%)

SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE -- 269,819 -- (-3.00%)

ST. PETERSBURG (FLA.) TIMES -- 268,935 -- (-6.88%)

THE SACRAMENTO BEE -- 253,249 -- (-4.22%)

Go here for more numbers and E&P’s coverage of the FAS-FAX and here for the top 25 Sunday papers.

Google Profit Tops Estimates on Ad Sales; Shares Rise

By Crayton Harrison

Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., owner of the most popular Internet search engine, said third-quarter profit climbed 26 percent as more customers used Web search ads to spur sales in a slowing economy, sending the shares higher.

Net income rose to $1.35 billion, or $4.24 a share, from $1.07 billion, or $3.38, a year earlier, the company said today in a statement. Leaving out costs such as stock-based compensation, profit was $4.92 a share, beating the $4.75 average estimate of analysts in a Bloomberg survey.

Advertisers are shifting budgets away from TV and print media toward ads that run alongside search listings, targeting online shoppers. The Internet will account for 8.7 percent of the $284 billion in U.S. ad spending this year, up from 7.2 percent in 2007, according to Barclays Capital.

This was exactly the kind of shot in the arm that investors need,'' said Jeff Lindsay, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York. ``People lost a lot of faith in the Internet, but this is exactly what the doctor ordered.''

Excluding revenue passed on to partner sites, sales expanded to $4.04 billion, compared with the $4.05 billion average estimate. Total revenue climbed 31 percent to $5.54 billion.

Google, based in Mountain View, California, rose $21.39, or 6.1 percent, to $374.41 in extended trading after closing at $353.02 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The shares have dropped 49 percent this year.

Being `Realistic'

We are realistic about the poor state of the global economy, but it's Google, so we'll manage accordingly,'' Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette said today in an interview. ``We had a good third quarter, with strong traffic and revenue growth.''

In the U.S., Google fielded 63 percent of online searches in August, double the market share of Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp. combined. That dominance has helped Google command higher prices for ads, according to Yahoo, which is awaiting government approval of an agreement to let Google sell some ads on its sites.

The economic situation is so fluid that we're all sort of in uncharted territory,'' Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said on a conference call. ``We've always been in this for the long term, and we believe that's even more important today than ever.''

Resilient Business

The slumping U.S. economy had been expected to drag down results, said Clay Moran, an analyst at Stanford Group Co. in Boca Raton, Florida. ``What we're seeing is that Google is a resilient business that's going to fare relatively well in this recession, but it's not immune from the overall macroeconomic environment,'' he said.

Google, which doesn't forecast results, is seeing a slowdown in spending from some types of customers, such as U.S. auto and home financing companies, Pichette said.

Google recorded $280 million in costs for stock-based pay, up from $273 million the previous quarter. Those costs will reach $1.1 billion in 2008, leaving out stock awards granted after Oct. 1, Google said.

Sales outside the U.S. made up 51 percent of Google's revenue, up from 48 percent a year earlier. If foreign exchange rates for currency had remained constant over that period, Google's third-quarter sales this year would have been $168 million lower, the company said.
Slower Growth?

The credit crisis may cost the Internet ad market $6.7 billion in lost sales through 2010, according to Collins Stewart Plc. Big and small businesses, from General Motors Corp. to Simplexity LLC, are reducing ad spending plans, while some financial companies, such as Wachovia Corp., have disappeared.

The reductions will push down growth in U.S. Internet ad outlays to less than 20 percent next year for the first time since 2002, said Sandeep Aggarwal, a Collins Stewart analyst in San Francisco.

Google, which gets almost all its revenue from search ads, is testing ways to advertise with images and video. The company struck a deal this month to offer full-length shows from CBS Corp., splitting revenue from the ads.

Microsoft, seeking to close the gap with Google, bid as much as $47.5 billion for Yahoo this year. Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo rejected Microsoft's offer in May, opting instead to strike the advertising partnership with Google.

To contact the reporter on this story: Crayton Harrison in Dallas at tharrison5@bloomberg.net Last Updated: October 16, 2008 17:03 EDT

Magazine 1st-half newsstand sales drop 6.3 percent

Monday August 11, 12:01 pm ET
By Jeremy Herron, AP Business Writer

Magazine circulation flattens, but newsstand sales slump 6.3 percent in 1st half

NEW YORK (AP) -- Newsstand sales of U.S. magazines fell 6.3 percent in the first half of 2008, an industry group said Monday, as rising gas and food costs led consumers to cut back on nonessential spending.

Most top titles, including best-selling Cosmopolitan and O, The Oprah Magazine, had sharp declines. Of the top 10 newsstand sellers, only People, the entertainment news magazine, and In Style posted gains.

"This is nothing more than really just the impact of the economy," said John Harrington, an industry analyst with Harrington Associates. "People are shopping very cautiously and less frequently, avoiding impulse buys, which are what magazine purchases are."

Publishers redouble efforts to sign up subscribers during economic slowdowns because they know newsstand sales will ebb, which they need to offset because advertising rates are based on minimum circulation targets.

Newsstand sales are far more lucrative than subscriptions, though, meaning circulation revenue is dropping at most titles.

"It is easy to manipulate subscription numbers because publishers can sell them at a loss just to meet their rate base," Harrington said. "The growth may not be high-quality subscribers that will renew."

Overall magazine circulation, which includes subscription and newsstand sales, was flat at 349.9 million copies in the period, as paid subscriptions edged higher to 290.2 million copies, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported in its biannual tally.

Single-copy magazine sales in the six months ended June 30 fell to 44.1 million copies from 47.1 million a year ago. The survey included 467 titles that reported results in both periods.

Like newspapers, magazines have been struggling with declining advertising revenue as readers increasingly go online for news and entertainment. In the second quarter, magazines had 8.2 percent fewer ad pages, the Publishers Information Bureau reported.

Hearst Corp.'s Cosmopolitan magazine, the top-seller on the country's newsstands, had a 6 percent decline to 1.75 million copies -- nearly 114,000 fewer magazines. Top 10 sellers US Weekly, Woman's World and O, The Oprah Magazine each posted a double-digit decline in newsstand sales.

People, published by Time Inc., boosted newsstand sales by 5.2 percent and remained the No. 2 best-selling magazine at kiosks around the country. In Style was also able to increase newsstand sales.

"People has been steady over the years and there's probably more quality to the magazine in terms of what they do" compared with the crowded field of celebrity gossip titles, Harrington said.

In Touch Weekly, down 28.7 percent at the newsstand, and Life & Style Weekly, down 30.2 percent, both added 50 percent to their cover prices in the period.

Everyday With Rachel Ray, the cooking magazine featuring the popular Food Network host, had 6 percent higher newsstand sales and a 36 percent increase in total circulation.

Rolling Stone, the venerable music magazine, said Monday that it will abandon its iconic size for a smaller, more rack-friendly format starting in fall.

Publisher Jann Wenner said the change is not to conserve costs, but partly to offer advertisers and sellers a more uniform size. Wenner Media said the new size will allow for more editorial pages and higher quality paper that will result in sharper photos.

The magazine had 6.6 percent lower newsstand sales of 115,644 issues in the latest period.

TV viewers' average age hits 50
Study: Median age outside the 18-49 demo
By MICHAEL SCHNEIDER

Find The Story Here: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117988273.html?categoryid=14&cs=1

The broadcast networks have grown older than ever -- if they were a person, they wouldn't even be a part of TV's target demo anymore.

According to a study released by Magna Global's Steve Sternberg, the five broadcast nets' average live median age (in other words, not including delayed DVR viewing) was 50 last season. That's the oldest ever since Sternberg started analyzing median age more than a decade ago -- and the first time the nets' median age was outside of the vaunted 18-49 demo.

Fueling the graying of the networks: the rapid aging of ABC, NBC and Fox. The three nets continue to grow older, while CBS -- the oldest-skewing network -- has remained fairly steady.
"The median ages of the broadcast networks keep rising, as traditional television is no longer necessarily the first screen for the younger set," Sternberg wrote.

For the just-completed 2007-08 TV season, CBS was oldest in live viewing with a median age of 54. ABC clocked in at 50, followed by NBC (49), Fox (44), CW (34) and Univision (34).
When live-plus-7 DVR viewing is factored in, the nets (except CW and Univision) drop by a year -- which still reps the oldest median age ever for the nets.

Sternberg notes that Fox and CW maintain median ages that are closer to the actual age of the population. The median age for U.S. households is 38.

Among ad-supported cable nets, the news nets (along with older-skewing Hallmark Channel, Golf Channel and GSN's daytime sked) sport the most gray, with Fox News Channel's daytime and primetime skeds the absolute oldest, clocking in with a median age above 65. Youngest nets are the daytime skeds for Noggin and Nickelodeon, with a median age under 10.

At ABC, youngest series was "Supernanny" (with a median age of 41), while oldest was "Women's Murder Club" (57). At CBS, youngest was "How I Met Your Mother," "Kid Nation" and the Tuesday edition of "Big Brother," tied at 45; oldest was "60 Minutes" (60). NBC's youngest show was "Scrubs" (34), and oldest was "Monk" (58).

At Fox, the youngest shows were "American Dad" and "Family Guy" (29), while the oldest was "Canterbury's Law" (55). At CW, "One Tree Hill" was youngest (26), while "Life Is Wild" was oldest (45).

Among latenight gabbers, "Tonight Show With Jay Leno" is oldest, with a median age of 54, followed by "Late Show With David Letterman" at 53. Interestingly, "Nightline" -- which should conceivably be older than those talkers, is younger, at 52. ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live," meanwhile, passed the 18-49 threshold for the first time, clocking in with a median of 50. "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" is getting closer at 46.

Papers Facing Worst Year for Ad Revenue

Monday June 23, 11:35 pm ET By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

NY TIMES

For newspapers, the news has swiftly gone from bad to worse. This year is taking shape as their worst on record, with a double-digit drop in advertising revenue, raising serious questions about the survival of some papers and the solvency of their parent companies.

Ad revenue, the primary source of newspaper income, began sliding two years ago, and as hiring freezes turned to buyouts and then to layoffs, the decline has only accelerated.

On top of long-term changes in the industry, the weak economy is also hurting ad sales, especially in Florida and California, where the severe contraction of the housing markets has cut deeply into real estate ads. Executives at the Hearst Corporation say that one of their biggest papers, The San Francisco Chronicle, is losing $1 million a week.

Over all, ad revenue fell almost 8 percent last year. This year, it is running about 12 percent below that dismal performance, and company reports issued last week suggested a 14 percent to 15 percent decline in May.

“Never in my most bearish dreams six months ago did I think we’d be talking about negative 15 percent numbers against weak comps,” said Peter S. Appert, an analyst at Goldman Sachs. “I think the probability is very high that there will be a number of examples of individual newspapers and newspaper companies that fall into a loss position. And I think it’s inevitable that there will be closures in this industry, and maybe bankruptcies.”

Analysts and newspaper executives find themselves revising their forecasts downward every few months, unable to gain a stable footing on a sinking floor. Papers have cut costs by shedding thousands of workers, eliminating some distribution routes and printing fewer, smaller pages, but profit margins continue to shrink.

Since the fall, when Media General, the owner of a major newspaper chain in the South, set its 2008 budget, “We have pulled our thinking down twice with respect to revenue,” said Marshall N. Morton, the chief executive.

Over the next few years, he predicted, “There’s got to be some assimilation,” with some major American newspapers going out of business or merging. At the corporate level, he said, “I would guess that rather than bankruptcies, you’d see combinations.”

Analysts have issued warnings about several companies’ abilities to meet their debt obligations, though the companies insist that they are at no risk of default.

Most of those companies are privately held, like the Tribune Company, owner of The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and many other papers; MediaNews Group, whose papers include The Denver Post and The San Jose Mercury News; and Philadelphia Media Holdings, which publishes The Inquirer and The Daily News in that city.

Some analysts also see a lesser risk in a major publicly traded chain, the McClatchy Company, owner of The Miami Herald, The Kansas City Star, The Sacramento Bee and others, which said last week that its ad revenue was down 15.4 percent through the first five months of the year.
The company announced plans to eliminate about 1,400 jobs, leaving it with 21 percent fewer employees than it had a year and a half ago. Some other newspaper chains had already made comparable cuts.

“It’s going a lot worse than anybody predicted, and if we have double-digit ad declines for two years, some newspapers will be in real financial jeopardy,” said Edward Atorino, an analyst at the Benchmark Company. Even with less severe losses, “You’re going to see structural changes: papers could drop a day or two per week, they could outsource printing.”

He said that he expected the decline in ad sales to slow, with 2008 producing a 10 percent drop for the year, but he cautioned that, like other analysts, he had not been pessimistic enough so far.

The primary long-term threat to newspapers is the Internet’s siphoning away of ad revenue, a trend that has been under way for more than a decade, but one that has picked up speed in the last year. Advertisers have vastly more choices online than on paper, so newspaper Web sites win only a fraction of the advertising that goes digital, and it pays much less than advertising in print.

At the same time, the Internet has drawn millions of new readers to papers, and the major ones reach far more readers than ever before.

“As long as we’ve got content, we’ve got something nobody else has,” said Mr. Morton, of Media General. The industry’s challenge, he said, is to keep expanding that audience, “proving to the advertiser that we, in fact, are the right link so that he can have his conversation with the customer through us.”

Online ad revenue for newspapers grew 20 percent to 30 percent annually for most of this decade. Most analysts think the industry will return to that growth rate when the economy picks up again, but for now, it is closer to 15 percent. The Internet still accounts for less than 10 percent of newspaper ad revenue.

Declining sales of printed papers and rising newsprint prices have also hurt the business.
The industry will not bottom out for another three or four years, analysts predict. The question, Mr. Appert of Goldman Sachs said, “is how far things will fall before then.”

I am so proud... My son has hit two homeruns with his major league little league team. The first was about 205 ft and the second was 211 ft. Great Job Elliot!

REPORT: NO PAGE TURNER
BIG MAGAZINE TITLES SEE AD PAGES DWINDLE DOWN IN Q1
By KEITH J. KELLY

http://www.nypost.com/
April 15, 2008 --
Magazines that cover news, business and luxury goods were sent reeling in the first quarter of the year, while food magazines offered a few rays of light for the publishing industry, according to just released figures.

Ad pages for BusinessWeek, which just went through its third round of cuts in three years, tumbled 19.4 percent in the quarter to 429.5 ad pages while rival Forbes dipped 13.2 percent to 504.8 ad pages, according to the latest figures reported to the Publishers Information Bureau.

MORE COVERAGE
MEDIA INK: O's Success at Hearst
Fortune looked like the best of the lot, with only a 1 percent drop in the quarter to 429.4.
The newsweeklies are also taking it hard. Newsweek, which recently unveiled plans to downsize 111 people, saw ad pages drop 13.9 percent to 339.

Ad pages for Time, which also continues to prune staffers, skidded 17.8 percent to 371.
U.S News & World Report dropped even further, with its ad pages tumbling 37.5 percent to 229.46 pages.

Most industry observers tend to discount the ad-revenue figures that were just released because it uses a formula based on a one-time ad-page rate that does not account for the steep discounts that all major advertisers receive from publishers.

That is why the ad-page tally is seen as a more accurate barometer of a magazine's performance year to year.

Overall, in the quarter, the PIB said that rate card reported advertising for the period was $5.2 billion, a 1.2 percent decline from the $5.3 billion in the year ago quarter.

The ad-page tally showed a steep 6.4 percent decline.

Ellen Oppenheim, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of The Magazine Publishers of America said, "food & food products," were the bright spots.

Every Day with Rachel Ray saw ad pages soar 38.1 percent to 135.6 ad pages.
Everyday Food from the Martha Stewart empire saw ad pages up 11 percent to 120.76. Martha Stewart Living, the company's flagship tile, was up 2.6 percent in ad pages.

NAA Reveals Biggest Ad Revenue Plunge in More Than 50 Years By Jennifer Saba Published: March 28, 2008 12:55 PM ET NEW YORK

The newspaper industry has experienced the worst drop in advertising revenue in more than 50 years. According to new data released by the Newspaper Association of America, total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunged 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006

-- the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising expenditures in 1950. The drop-off points to an economic slowdown on top of the secular challenges faced by the industry. The second worst decline in advertising revenue occurred in 2001 when it fell 9.0%.

Total advertising revenue in 2007 -- including online revenue -- decreased 7.9% to $45.3 billion compared to the prior year.

There are signs that online revenue is beginning to slow as well. Internet ad revenue in 2007 grew 18.8% to $3.2 billion compared to 2006. In 2006, online ad revenue had soared 31.4% to $2.6 billion. In 2005, it jumped 31.4% to $2 billion. As newspaper Web sites generate more advertising revenue, the growth rate naturally slows.

The NAA reported that online revenue now represents 7.5% of total newspaper ad revenue in 2007 compared to 5.7% in 2006. That growth could not stave off the losses in the print however. National print advertising revenue dropped 6.7% to $7 billion last year. Retail slipped 5% to $21 billion. Classified plunged 16.5% to $14.1 billion.

"Even with the near-term challenges posed to print media by a more fragmented information environment and the economic headwinds facing all advertising media, newspapers publishers are continuing to drive strong revenue growth from their increasingly robust Web platforms," John Sturm, president and CEO of the NAA, said in a statement.

* E&P Editor Greg Mitchell's new book is "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq" (Union Square Press). It includes a foreword by famed war reporter Joe Galloway and a preface by Bruce Springsteen and has been hailed by vets leader Paul Rieckhoff.

---

Jennifer Saba (jsaba@editorandpublisher.com) is E&P's associate editor.

Study to Track All-Day Media Usage

What better way to track people's video consumption than to have someone follow them around all day?

Steve McClellan, AdweekFEBRUARY 25, 2008 -

What better way to track people's video consumption than to have someone follow them around all day -- literally from the time they wake up until they retire at night -- making detailed notes about when and how they watch, listen, surf, read, play video games, download, text and talk on the phone?

That's exactly how a new $3.5 million study--funded by the Nielsen Co.--will track the media usage habits of a panel of some 450 consumers in separate phases throughout this year beginning next month.

Ball State University--a pioneer in this type of shadow-the-consumer research--and Sequent Partners on behalf of the Committee for Research Excellence (CRE) are conducting the study. CRE, comprised of agency, media company and client executives, was formed in 2005 to develop studies that provide insights into consumer viewing habits and to help Nielsen sharpen the methodologies it uses to measure audiences across a growing array of media.

Results of the study will be released in stages beginning later this year. "We think this will be a landmark study with groundbreaking results," said Shari Anne Brill, svp, director of programming at Carat and chairwoman of CRE's media consumption and engagement committee. "It will give us a blueprint of consumers' access to media content across all screens, platforms and locations throughout their waking day.

"In addition to funding the study, Nielsen Media Research (like Adweek, a unit of the Nielsen Co.) will help recruit the consumer panels, which will be comprised of former participants in Nielsen's national TV ratings panel.

A panel of 350 consumers across five markets--Philadelphia, Seattle, Dallas, Atlanta and Chicago--will be monitored for a full day in the spring and fall of this year by trackers who will record (via electronic handheld note-taking devices) the use of 17 different media as the people use them alone and in multiple combinations. A separate panel of 100 users will also be tracked in the spring and fall. Before the second phase, that panel will have the option to purchase Slingboxes, DVRs and other state-of-the-art media units at discounted rates. The idea is to use the second panel as a predictor of how new media devices will affect future viewing patterns.

Ball State and Sequent won the contract to conduct the survey after a review that included two other undisclosed finalists. The researchers conducted a pre-test last year to prove to the CRE that a panel would cooperate and provide usable data that could be projected nationally, said Mike Bloxham, director of insight and research at Ball State's Center for Media Design. "The findings will provide an important platform for analysis and debate as the committee pursues its mission to inform future best practices in cross-platform video measurement," he said.


Links referenced within this article

Find this article at: http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/media_agencies/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003714901

Advertising During a Recession

By Jake Swearingen

Article from: http://blogs.bnet.com

January 31st, 2008 @ 3:33 pm

What should marketers in a flat lining economy do? It’s clear that consumers are going to be watching their wallets a bit closer, and advertisers will have to try harder to pry pocketbooks back open in order to justify their budgets.

On Monday, the Times ran a story on how marketers are quickly moving to capitalize on consumer worry. Wal-Mart went back to focusing on Every Day Low Prices with the slogan, “Save money. Live better,” and became one of the few retailers to post growth in the holiday season. Nissan has taken to hyping the Altima’s miles per gallon over style or performance. But Avi Dan at Ad Age points out in his tips to CMOs that focusing on price for a campaign can have short-term benefits and long-term drawbacks. “Reliance on price incentives as a marketing tool is dangerous — it devalues the brand, and it’s hard to wean consumers off it.”

CEO Drew Reisser of marketing consulting group Renegade offers sound advice to MediaPost on what marketers can do during a recession:

• Focus on advertising with clear and proven return on investment, such as Internet and promotional advertising.
• Be prepared to cut budget bloaters like trade shows, which have a harder time proving ROI.
• Focus on a brand’s core base, instead of going after more expensive new customers
• If a brand has made its bones on humor, don’t be quick to change that. “Acknowledging bad times might feel right, particularly if a recession is protracted, but consumers may not want to be reminded of that fact. And a little entertainment can go a long way, Neisser says. ‘If humor was right for your brand in good times, it’s even more right for your brand in bad,’ he says.”

Online advertising could be one bright spot, with a bevy of news sources declaring that Google, and by extension Internet advertising, seems to resilient to economic downturns. The Times UK expects online advertising growth to perhaps slow down, but not even begin to touch the depths of the 2000 crash, while Wired News declares Google may be recession proof, comparing their AdWords program to direct mail:

“We looked at all the past recessions from 1950 on and we found that direct mail — Google’s most direct predecessor — actually grew during six recessions,” Cowen and Company’s Friedland says. “Given the current environment, there’s no reason to think Google will outperform. But there’s no reason to think it will underperform.”

Thinking that Internet advertising will be the industry’s savior is a bit rosy, however. While Internet ad spending is growing incredibly rapidly, it’s forecasted to slow to 30 percent in 2008, and it still makes up less than 10 percent of total ad spending.

(Image of the killer deal at Gray’s Papaya from flickr user aturkus, CC 2.0)

Keeping Marketing’s Promises
by James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II

11/13/07
Ads that trumpet, “We’re unique!” are meaningless if the stores say, “No, we’re not.”

Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business School Press. Excerpted from Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, by James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II. Copyright © 2007 James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II; All Rights Reserved. http://www.strategy-business.com

Why did the American Advertising Federation launch the campaign “Advertising. The way great brands get to be great brands.” in 2001? Because advertising no longer works as well as it once did. Companies in consumer and business markets now pay more and more to reach fewer and fewer households and executive decision makers.

Advertisements appear everywhere — we see ads online, on movie screens, on sports uniforms, on the sides of vehicles, on mobile phones, ads nauseam. London-based agency Cunning at one point even paid people, primarily college students, to wear its clients’ temporary-tattoo ads and logos on their foreheads. In an initiative dubbed “Fake Tourist,” Sony Ericsson employed actors, called “leaners,” to promote its picture-taking cell phones by frequenting tourist traps (e.g., the Empire State Building in New York, the Space Needle in Seattle) and asking tourists to take their pictures. The company also hired models to demonstrate video caller ID and interactive games at nightclubs. For its clients, DVC Experiential Marketing paid “commuters” to read new magazines aboard rush-hour trains; it also paid doormen to display “packages” from catalog merchants in their lobbies, as if tenants had not picked them up yet. Rob Walker, the Consumed columnist for the New York Times Magazine, noted that agencies “have concluded that the most powerful forum for consumer seduction is not TV ads or billboards but rather the conversations we have in our everyday lives.”

The authors of Buzz: Harness the Power of Influence and Create Demand distinguish between spontaneously generated buzz and buzz marketing, which “is the scripted use of action to generate buzz. It is deliberate. One of the factors that sets buzz marketing apart from other forms of marketing is the illusion, the invisibility of the marketer. Authenticity is the key driver!” A key driver, yes, but one that so often pushes consumers away; such activity creates the perception of phoniness because it is not what it says it is.

Consider clothing retailer Gap Inc. Its advertisements over the past decade, featuring line dancers and celebrities, have had several effects. First, they put off many current customers who saw images portraying Gap as different from how these individuals saw themselves. Gap no longer conformed to (and thereby confirmed) their own self-images. With each successive ad, the Wall Street Journal observed, such consumers grew “tired of [the] trendiness.” Second, in-store displays merely paid lip service to the advertisements — actual interactions with sales personnel fell far short of the energy and enthusiasm displayed in the ads. Third, Old Navy stores — also owned by Gap Inc. — carried essentially the same merchandise at a lower price, and without the overtrendiness. As a former Gap executive told the New York Times, “Being cool went to [Gap management’s] heads, and they lost their focus. They began putting Old Navys in malls right next to Gaps and undermining their own sales.” Finally, all Gap stores — thousands of them — look exactly alike. The process by which Gap grew revenues — adding more outlets while increasing advertising — became the process of killing the brand, as the perception of sameness permeated the marketplace. Gap’s advertising says “Unique,” but the in-store experience falls far short of what it says it is.

That is the fundamental problem with advertising: It’s a phoniness-generating machine. Think of the appeal of any hamburger in any advertisement versus the reality encountered in the actual establishment. Or think of any airline, hotel, or even hospital; if you could only check into the ads, you’d have a great experience. When you check into the actual place, however, it so often falls short of what the ads represented. When it comes to the Is What It Says It Is standard of authenticity, the easiest way to be perceived as phony is to advertise things you are not. This practice, endemic to the industry, may have worked when advertising could promote the availability of a new offering (even if not as new nor as improved as the ads said), when it could promulgate a cost advantage (even when it was short-lived or came with a catch), or when it could detail a distinction in quality (even though no one might be able to tell the difference). Today, however, wide availability, low costs, and high quality are merely “jacks to open” when what consumers want above all is authenticity.

What companies need, therefore, is a new approach to demand creation that actually enables — make that forces — a company to be what it says it is. To borrow the phrase architect Jon Jerde made famous, that discipline is placemaking. Places are what provide the primary means for companies to demonstrate exactly what they are for both current and potential customers. Companies that embrace placemaking understand a fundamental dictum for contending with authenticity: The experience is the marketing. In other words, the best way to generate demand for any offering — whether a commodity, good, service, other experience, or even a transformation — is for potential (and current) customers to experience that offering in a place so engaging that they can’t help but pay attention, and then pay up as a result by buying that offering. Stop saying what your offerings are through advertising, and start creating places — permanent or temporary, physical or virtual, fee-based or free — where people can experience what those offerings, as well as your enterprise, actually are.

Author Profiles:

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James H. Gilmore (jimgilmore@aol.com) and B. Joseph Pine II (bjp2@aol.com) are cofounders of Strategic Horizons LLP.

Poll finds nearly 80 percent of U.S. adults go online

NEW YORK (Reuters) http://www.reuters.com/news/technology/internet - Do you find yourself going online more and more? You're not alone.

Four out of five U.S. adults go online now, according to a new Harris Poll.

The survey, which polled 2,062 adults in July and October, found that 79 percent of adults -- about 178 million -- go online, spending an average 11 hours a week on the Internet.

"We're up to almost 80 of adults who now are online, or are somehow gaining access to the Internet. That's a pretty impressive figure," said Regina Corso, director of the Harris Poll.

The results reflect a steady rise since 2000, when 57 percent of adults polled said they went online. In 2006, the number was 77 percent.

When Harris Interactive, a market research firm, first began tracking online use among adults in 1995, the group found that only nine percent of the population -- or 17.5 million -- said they went online.

The poll also found that adults are spending more time online at home and at work, up two percent each at 72 percent and 37 percent respectively, from 2006. More dramatically, 31 percent of those surveyed said they went online elsewhere, up from 22 percent in 2006.

"They are finding however possible to get online...A third of the people who are online, that's how they're getting there - some alternate way," said Corso.

Demographically, the poll showed the online population aligning more with the general population.

For example, the poll showed that 25 percent of adults who went online were between 18 and 29 years old -- the same age group makes up 22 percent of the U.S. adult population.

Hispanics make up 13 percent of the adult population, and also made up 13 percent of the online population surveyed.

The poll also found that while online access is still dominated by younger adults, nine percent of those that go online are 65 years old and older, compared to the 16 percent of adults who are 65 and over.

"We're getting closer. Every year it's getting more and more like the general population picture," said Corso.

"Baby boomers are online. As they become more and more part of that population, we're going to see larger swings there."

As the online population gets closer to 100 percent, Corso said the next step was to see how people are getting online.

"It's not just a laptop or a desktop anymore. How many of these people are using some kind of hand held device for all of their online activity?"

(Reporting by Solarina Ho)

NBC to Offer a Free Video Download Service (TV meets the Internet!)

By BILL CARTER

NBC Universal, acknowledging that viewers are increasingly moving away from traditional television viewing, announced plans today for a service that will make popular NBC programs available to download free to personal computers and other devices.

The programs, including “Heroes” and “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” will be offered for a week immediately after their initial broadcasts. Commercials will be embedded in the programs and viewers will not be able to skip through them.

The move comes less than three weeks after NBC Universal announced it was severing ties with Apple Inc. after a dispute over how Apple was selling NBC programs on its popular iTunes service.

NBC first contracted with Amazon to offer its programs for sale to downloading devices like MP3 players. Now it is establishing its own downloading service, which NBC executives say they expect to become a viable competitor to iTunes.

“With the creation of this new service, we are acknowledging that now, more than ever, viewers want to be in control of how, when and where they consume their favorite entertainment,” said Vivi Zigler, the executive vice president of NBC Digital Entertainment. “Not only does this feature give them more control, but it also gives them a higher quality video experience.”

The NBC service, called NBC Direct, will begin a testing period in October with plans to be operational in November. The service will allow customers to download full episodes of NBC shows for seven days on Windows-based PCs. The file will expire after the seven days.

But NBC intends to transform the service into a model similar to iTunes by the middle of 2008 — that is, consumers will pay NBC directly to download episodes of the shows. “We did this to eliminate the middleman,” said Jeff Gaspin, the president of NBC’s digital division.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Internet Advertising Will Soon Top Newspapers, Study Finds

Overall, communications spending increased 6.8% in 2006 to a record $885.2 billion, outpacing GDP growth for the fourth time in five years, the report says.

By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek
August 8, 2007 04:00 PM

Consumers are spending less time with media and businesses are spending more, according to a report released by private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS). If current trends continue, Internet advertising will eclipse newspapers as the largest advertising medium by 2011.

Overall, communications spending increased 6.8% in 2006 to a record $885.2 billion, outpacing GDP growth for the fourth time in five years, the report says. VSS projects that the communications industry will grow 6.4% this year and will continue to do so at a compound annual growth rate of 6.7% through 2011. This would make communications the third fastest growing sector of the U.S. economy.

But when communications-related spending finally tops $1 trillion in 2008, it will be alternative media and institutional sectors driving growth. VSS divides the communications industry into four major end-user groups -- advertising, marketing, consumer, and institutional -- that spend money in 19 separate media segments.

"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 at VSS, in a statement. "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."

The good news, at least for those concerned about the health of the communications industry, is that spending is rising. The bad news is that less and less of that money is likely to go to traditional media providers as consumer attention shifts online.

Consumers are spending less time (-6.3% from 2001 through 2006) with ad-supported media and more time with consumer-supported platforms like cable TV and videogames (+19.8% from 2001 through 2006). And for the first time since 1997, consumers spent less time (-0.5%) with media overall in 2006 than the year before.

Media usage by institutional users, meanwhile, grew at a compound annual growth rate of 3.3% from 2001 through 2006, reflecting the increased use of online platforms to boost performance and workflow.

VSS attributes the drop in consumer media usage to the fact that online news and entertainment typically are engaging consumers for shorter periods of time than traditional media like broadcast or cable TV. "For example, consumers typically watch broadcast or cable television at least 30 minutes per session while they spend as little as five to seven minutes viewing consumer-generated video clips online," VSS explained.

The fastest-growing media segments in the next five years will be Internet and mobile services, branded entertainment, out-of-home media, outsourced custom publishing, and public relations, according to VSS.

Young Adults Are Giving Newspapers Scant Notice
By JUSTON JONES
New York TIMES
Published: July 16, 2007

With the United States military fighting a protracted war in Iraq and a wide-open presidential campaign already making headlines daily, Americans of all ages are interested in current affairs and are consuming news like never before, right?

Not so, especially not teenagers and young adults, according to a report released last week by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

In fact, most teenagers and adults 30 and younger are not following the news closely at all, the report, titled “Young People and News,” concluded. It is based on a national sample of 1,800 Americans that included teenagers, young adults aged 18 to 30 and older adults.

Thomas Patterson, a professor of government and the press at Harvard who conducted the survey, said that young people today do not make an appointment with news every day the way older adults do.

“We found that most young adults don’t have an ingrained news habit,” he said. “Most children today, when watching television, are not watching the same TV set that their parents are watching. So even if their parents are watching the news every day, the children are likely to be in another room watching something else and aren’t acquiring the news habit.”

The survey went a step further to see what the respondents meant when they said that they did pay attention to the news. Those results, especially among the younger groups, were equally discouraging for the news industry, said Alex S. Jones, the director of the Shorenstein Center.

“What we found is that what people mean when they say they are engaged in the news has much more of a glancing, superficial basis than anything we would have hoped,” he said. “Young people seemed to think that just listening to the radio in the background was listening to the news.”

The results were especially grim for newspapers. Only 16 percent of the young adults surveyed aged 18 to 30 said that they read a newspaper every day and 9 percent of teenagers said that they did. That compared with 35 percent of adults over 30. Furthermore, despite the popular belief that young people are flocking to the Internet, the survey found that teenagers and young adults were twice as likely to get daily news from television than from the Web.
Despite this, some in the industry say the situation is not hopeless.

Jane Hirt, the editor of RedEye, a free daily newspaper that is published by The Chicago Tribune specifically for young, urban professionals, said that her publication had succeeded and had even expanded its audience by adopting some of the lessons learned from television and the Internet and by experimenting with ways to tell stories.

“We may have a short face-off with two sides of an issue,” she said. “We believe it is a way of delivering content in a form like younger people are used to getting on the Internet.”

She said that she reminds her editors that their younger readers are used to customizing their lives. “They pick and choose what they want on their iPods, what to TiVo and watch whenever they want, and so forth,” she said. “Therefore, because we are targeting that niche audience, we make story selections to really connect with them, and we can do that because we are thinking about them all day.”

Still, her publication and newspapers in general may be facing an uphill battle.

“My sense is that newspapers in their traditional form are not going to be able to recapture this audience,” said Professor Patterson. “What’s happened over time is that we have become more of a viewing nation than a reading nation, and the Internet is a little of both. My sense is that, like it or not, the future of news is going to be in the electronic media, but we don’t really know what that form is going to look like.”

Advertising outlook weakens in US
By Carlos Grande
Published: July 2 2007 12:13 Last updated: July 2 2007 12:13

Advertising forecasters have downgraded prospects for the US, challenging expectations of a boost to the marketing industry from the presidential election race and the 2008 Beijing summer Olympics.

Zenith Optimedia, the international media buyer, on Monday shaved its 2007 expectations of US advertising expenditure growth to 3.3 per cent at constant currencies.

Zenith, part of Publicis, the Paris-headquartered marketing services group, says weak expenditure on US network television and trade magazines to reduce further its previous estimate of 3.4 per cent, which had already come down from 4.1 per cent in December.

Zenith follows recently reduced US forecasts by Carat, part of Aegis, the UK-listed media and research group, and a gloomy analysis by Universal McCann, part of Interpublic, the US-listed marketing services group.

Universal McCann said US businesses were cutting back to focus on improving productivity and profits and building up cash resources. It puts US advertising growth at 3.1 per cent this year.
The US is the world’s biggest advertising market and the key profit territory for the world’s two largest marketing services groups - Omnicom of the US and UK-listed WPP.

Worldwide, the industry would normally expect a jump in expenditure during a period which includes the run up to the US presidential elections, the Euro 2008 football championships and the summer Olympics in China.

The current downgrades for the US contrast with upbeat assessments from Zenith and others of prospects for global advertising, especially internet marketing.

Interest in online video advertising and localised marketing on search engines has encouraged Zenith to publish upgraded figures for expenditure on internet advertising.

It now believes internet advertising will grow by 82 per cent between 2006 and 2009, while the rest of the advertising sector grows by 13 per cent during the same period.

Zenith estimates worldwide advertising expenditure will grow by 5.5 per cent this year and by 6.4 per cent in 2008. It calculates that the Beijing Olympics will generate about $3bn of extra advertising expenditure globally in 2008.

Sentiment towards western european markets has also improved: Zenith estimates that German advertising last year experienced its fastest growth rate since 2000.
Carat estimates that global advertising expenditure will increase by 5.8 per cent this year and 6.4 per cent in 2008.

Univeral McCann predicts worldwide advertising will grow by 4.2 per cent in 2007.
The Financial Times Limited 2007

I love this painting.

Dear Mast Research Report Readers,

Below is one of the better articles I’ve seen regarding the shift in MARKETING strategies which is resulting in the shift in advertising strategy and revenue, accordingly. Sometimes we (as media people) tend to forget that our valuable ad dollars are only a portion of an advertiser's marketing budget. As economic pressures continue to dictate stronger ROI and less "waste" in marketing, greater emphasis is being placed on pricing, incentives, customer retention and loyalty programs as well as shifts in media and advertising strategies to digital and newer forms of communication. That, coupled with the fact that traditional ad agencies can make more money as marketing services partners versus traditional advertising consultants and providers, we can anticipate that this is a trend that will only get stronger…

Where's the Money Moving? Out of Media
Ad Dollars Drop, but That Doesn't Mean Marketers Have Stopped Spending
By Bradley Johnson Published: June 11, 2007

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- U.S. ad spending -- at least the measured kind -- fell 0.3% in the January-to-March period, the first down quarter since the ad recovery began in 2002. But a drop in reported ad spending does not mean a drop in marketing spending. That's because what marketers need isn't just measured media; it's measurable results.

Omnicom President-CEO John Wren said his firm's emphasis on marketing services has given it an edge over rivals recently.

Budgets are gravitating from old-line measured media to an array of marketing-services -- digital, direct, customer relationship management -- that offers better tools to quantify results. Marketing services includes some media offerings, such as online ads. But much of marketing services doesn't fit in the box of an ad to be sold. For companies in the business of selling media space and time, a shift to non-media forms of marketing poses a fundamental challenge.

Marketing services win outMarketing-services disciplines often fly under the radar, unmeasured by ad trackers such as TNS Media Intelligence, which put out the first-quarter data. But the shift is clear: In 2005, U.S. agencies generated more revenue from marketing services than from traditional advertising and media, according to Ad Age's DataCenter.

The trend has continued. In the first quarter, the top three agency holding companies -- Omnicom Group, WPP Group and Interpublic Group of Cos. -- collectively generated 53% of worldwide revenue from marketing services. Omnicom last quarter generated even more revenue -- 57% -- from marketing services, and President-CEO John Wren said those disciplines have helped the firm outperform its rivals. "We are much larger in the marketing-services area relative to any of our leading competitors," he told analysts in April. "You know, I definitely think that's been a significant advantage for Omnicom over probably forever, but definitely for the last five or six years, and maybe even accelerated over the past couple of years."

To be sure, the economy is soft -- first-quarter GDP rose at an annual clip of 0.6%, worst since 2002 -- and ex-Fed chief Alan Greenspan sees a one-in-three chance of recession this year. Advertising can be a leading indicator: Measured spending began to fall three months before the official start of the 2001 recession, and it didn't begin a sustained rebound until six months after the downturn ended. But the agency business, boosted by digital work, is growing: U.S. agency employment in April hit its highest point since the 2001 recession. In contrast, traditional media companies have slashed 40,500 jobs -- 4.6% of workers -- since the measured-ad-spending recovery took hold in 2002.

Good for the web As traditional media disciplines struggle to adapt, internet media are gaining share. The internet's share of measured spending rose to 8.1% in the first quarter from 5.4% five years ago, according to TNS data. Even when they lose share, disciplines still can grow revenue. Consider the advent of TV: Every other consumer medium lost share from 1950 to 1960, yet every medium still managed to gain revenue during that booming decade. Even radio, most threatened by TV, managed a small gain. And by one measure, first-quarter measured media spending actually rose a little: Jon Swallen, senior VP-director of research at TNS, said the 0.3% drop becomes a 2.2% gain if you factor out Olympics advertising that boosted year-ago figures.

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New York Times May Ad Revenue Drops
New York Times May Advertising Revenue Down 8.5 Percent, Internet Ad Sales Up


NEW YORK (AP) Thursday June 14 10:19AM ET -- The New York Times Co. said Thursday that advertising revenue from continuing operations dropped 8.5 percent in May as national, retail and classified ads all declined.

The company said its total revenue from continuing operations fell 5.8 percent compared with May of last year.

The New York Times' media properties include its namesake newspaper, the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe and more than 30 Web sites including NYTimes.com and About.com.

Advertising revenue for the New York Times Media Group dropped 9.1 percent as national, retail and classified advertising all declined. Ad revenue for the New England Media Group fell 8.8 percent. The Regional Media Group saw the largest decline, with a 14 percent drop in sales.
Internet ad revenue for the New York Times, New England and Regional media groups surged 21.4 percent as display and classified advertising increased.

Circulation revenue for May rose 0.1 percent, as increased sales at The New York Times Media Group offset declines at the New England and Regional Media Groups.

Advertising revenue at the company's About.com Internet business jumped 32.6 percent with more display and cost-per-click advertising. The company said the data reflects the acquisitions of ConsumerSearch.com in early May and UCompareHealthCare.com in late March.

Unique U.S. visitors to the company's Internet properties gained 11 percent at 43.8 million, from 39.3 million unique visitors in the prior year.

The company said TimesSelect, a fee-based product on NYTimes.com offering columns and archived articles, has about 741,000 subscribers.

New York Times shares fell 40 cents to $26.04 in morning trading.