Ben Shepherd: A Blog About Digital Media

Follow my new blog - Talking Digital

2009-01-15T10:51:00.001+11:00

Hi subscribers - just wanted to let you know I am still very active and blogging ... just on my new blog Talking Digital - http://talkingdigital.wordpress.com

Why the move? Well ... I like Wordpress more, and it also allowed me to join up with Liam Walsh ... who is someone I respect and a really sharp mind ... so hopefully what that means is a better experience for us and also, more importantly, the reader.

Posts are coming thick and fast and some of the comments have been fantastic, so I encourage you to have a look ... and if you like what you see - sign up via email!

Cheers, Ben

Introducing 'Talking Digital' - a new blog

2008-11-10T15:06:00.004+11:00

Just wanted to get everyone across a new blog I have started with the Australian MD of DrivePM, Liam Walsh.

It's called 'Talking Digital' and basically the premise is to get the different perspective of an agency guy (me) and a publisher guy (Liam) across a variety of topical issues relevant to the digital media world and the wider media world.

Liam has been active within the industry for years, and has played pivotal roles in developing both Fairfax Digital and emitch into market leading companies at crucial times.

We haven't really seen anything like it in our travels across the blog world and over time it should hopefully serve to be a neat resource for those looking for information or opinion.

It also builds a small bridge over the 'Melbourne V Sydney' river.

What we're trying to do is write content and explore issues that we would find interesting and helpful.

http://talkingdigital.wordpress.com

Enjoy and give us your feedback!

IAB/PWC Q3 report out: Positive signs all round (unless you're in classifieds)

2008-11-07T16:13:00.004+11:00

The latest IAB/PWC figures are out and the sentiment is very positive.

In Q3 of 2008, total online spend on advertising was $451m - up 30% YOY (from $348m Q3 2007) and up 9% on Q2 2008.

All categories contributed to the growth, Display, Classifieds and Search. Display was up 29% YOY, Search 33% YOY and Classifieds up 25% YOY.

When you look at quarter on quarter growth the picture is a little different.

Search was up 9% Q2 to Q3 to $212m for Q3. Display was up 10% to 126m. Classifieds was only up 2% Q2 oto Q3 to 114m.

For display advertising these quarter on quarter figures are a triumph. It outpaced the market in terms of growth, gaining ground on search for the first time in a long time.

For classifieds it signals the start of more bad news to come. Seek today forecast zero profit growth for this fiscal year and the next 6-12 months will hit the main classifieds operators hard as the job, auto and real estate markets flatline.

Display was definitely helped by the Olympics falling into Q3 2008, and was given a kick by some solid and encouraging improvements within the Automotive, Media and Real Estate sectors, alongside strong increases spend wise from the mainstays - Finance, Technology/Telco and Travel.

This report also broke out segments within categories - allowing those who use it to get a better idea of how specific areas such as Music, Home Loans, Gaming, Beverages etc went.

On that note, the music industry definitely need a swift kick up the arse with their online investment - the ENTIRE industry only spent 365k on digital in Q3.

All in all, very encouraging results for the digital advertising world. Q4 will be interesting - publishers seem to be scrambling a little but this is a probably a result of overzealous revenue targeting rather than the bottom dropping out of the market.

2009 - who knows what it will hold ... if I was a Sales Director I'd make sure I was extremely cautious on Q3 09 in terms of YOY growth ... I'd also be somewhat concerned that the big 4 categories for online display spend - finance, automotive, tech and travel are copping a bit of a battering already as a result of a sluggish economic climate. Can they maintain the same spend levels in terms of dollar amount they invested in 08 in 09, let alone increase them?

Thankyou to Patty Keegan for supplying me with this report today.

Oops Patrol - Strip Tease BTYB Bigpond

2008-11-04T13:36:00.003+11:00

I saw Bigpond have a sponsorship on Heavy.com - which is sort of an integrated thing.

Problem is - it seems to go across ALL video content on the site. Even strip teases as the screengrab shows.

I wonder if Heavy told Bigpond this was a possibility ...

Oops Patrol - Career One

2008-11-04T12:38:00.004+11:00

Last night I was watching a documentary on the gang MS13. Today I wanted to do some further reading and came across a site called Know Gangs.

Career One are all over the site - through Google content network ads.

Here's an interesting screengrab of a 'Lift Your Lifestyle' placement I came across.

Takeout ... this Google Content Network needs a lot of work on both ends.

Sensis finally caves to Google

2008-11-03T20:41:00.003+11:00

I read today that Sensis has finally decided to play nice with Google as opposed to trying to compete against them and losing badly.

http://www.bandt.com.au/news/A4/0C05B6A4.asp

It's not a bad move - back in February I touched on Sensis's problems - http://mimelbourne.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-vulnerable-is-sensis-right-now.html

When I wrote this I copped a bit of heat from some Telstra/Sensis people, which was never really clarified. It was implied what I was saying made no sense, however in hindsight I think it actually did make perfect sense ...

I raised 5 key areas they needed to sort out in 08 - my comments as of today are in bold

1. Do they maintain a search engine that cannot compete against Google let alone a MSHOO joint play ... or do they walk away from SEM or look to offer Yahoo or MSN a search distro deal across their network and rev. share?

They have walked and handed it to Google in what is no doubt a revshare similar to the above scenario.

2. How can they adapt Yellow to become more appealing to users? How do they adapt the way advertisers pay to be in Yellow given Google has changed the way many SMEs want to pay for leads

The Google alliance will probably help but doesn't solve the issue that Yellow isn't relevant in 2008

3. Can Whereis hold itself against Google Maps. What can it do better than its competitors - it's not enough to simply match them.

I think this product will be put to sleep in 09 given what has happened today. Yellow will now use Google Maps.

4. What does Sensis actually mean to consumers? Do you retire the brand or simply push it to the background?

Pushed to the background would be my bet now they have backed away from search and conceded to Goog. The media assets are under the Telstra Media stable so it appears they are moving towards the more trusted parent brand.

5. Do they walk away from search and maps and focus on mobile - an they have a pretty sophisticated offering to give the market now the walled garden approach has been abandoned.

They have walked from search and they will walk from maps. They are still making good headway with mobile and have a pretty solid first mover advantage still. However, they need wider distribution that they presently have, so this is the key challenge in this space.

"Bruce Akhurst, chief executive of Sensis, said: "This agreement combines Sensis' strong capabilities in advertising sales and local business content and Google's strong capabilities in online search and mapping technology."

If this isn't conceding defeat I'm not sure what is ...

There's no shame to losing to Google in these 2 specific areas. What Sensis/Telstra has done is a smart obvious move that makes more sense given the climate right now.

Pay Per Lead TV?

2008-11-01T12:34:00.002+11:00

Saw this on ESPN this morning

http://advertisingadvantage.com.au/html/ppl.html

How can this work unless the only media you are doing is TV?

And if you have other media in the mix (which you in most cases would if you are a DR advertiser), how can you precisely quantify where leads are coming from ... given leads are generally a by product of many touchpoints not just one.

Case in point. You run this Pay Per Lead TV with a tactical offer ... the consumer doesn't immediately act but the next day goes to Google and searches for your brand. As a result there's a conversion - who do you attribute the action to?

Interesting that the client has to use the company to produce the TVC and also buy the media. Is this just a clever way to extract more revenue?

Oops Patrol: Fairfax Digital ad placement

2008-10-30T13:22:00.003+11:00

I am sure Honda and Mazda would be rapt with this placement.

Thanks to my source(s) for this.

With oops's like this happening, I don't think 'heritage media' has too much to worry about in the short term if their digital cousins can't avoid competing vehicles running next to each other.

Yahoo!7 streamline their processes and bring new agility and efficiency to how they work as an organisation

2008-10-30T13:19:00.003+11:00

Read: They fired people yesterday.

How many? No one is really sure. I know of 5 definites across production and engineering ... reports are up to 20 were asked to leave, including one very senior staffer.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,24572546-7582,00.html

Edit: Just 6 days earlier Y7 told The Oz they had no immediate plans to make local redundancies - http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24540225-5013040,00.html

Ad Networks on the way out ...

2008-10-28T14:13:00.003+11:00

In the US anyway ...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122514803617173825.html?mod=fox_australian

Other ad networks "are in severe trouble and could be closing their doors in the back half of this year or the beginning of '09. People are bracing for the worst," says Ross Sandler, an Internet analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

When I was at adtech in April I was shocked at the amount of ad networks in the US - it was out of control. Funny thing was, none of them really had a point of difference. They sold eyeballs simply because they were there to be sold.

VC liked ad networks as there was a promise of low initial setup and large immediate returns. Problem is - there's really no long term asset in an ad network as you don't really own any IP - you sell banners on sites you don't own, through technology you don't own via agencies you don't own. Effectively you're an agent and not much more.

Yes, there are some great ad networks ... but not many. You could count on one hand the good networks in AU. Most have offerings that are primative at best - failing to capitalise on the gap for strong vertical buys and the need for exclusivity. Not to mention transperency ... but that's another matter.

In AU there's a lot of these operators - not as many as the US - but more than we need. How long until this space thins out?

Oops Patrol: News.com.au

2008-10-27T19:38:00.003+11:00

Was on news.com.au today checking out the redesign (not bad - like the logo and the personalisation) but noticed they were running ads for two directly competing products right next to each other.

Hrm - wonder what the media agencies of Onedirect (emitch) and Suncorp (Starcom I believe) would think. Surely trafficking should stop this from happening?

Are third party Facebook apps the great digital scam?

2008-10-27T18:42:00.002+11:00

The last 6 months I've heard the sentence 'hey lets build a facebook app' from clueless agency people more times than I care to remember.

When you ask why - there's generally not an answer.

Well, okay ... there IS an answer. It provides revenue to the agency that build it.

Are they a scam? In 99% of cases I think they are. Just like some iPhone apps (I wouldn't want to be the person who thought the Toyota dealer locator app for iPhone was a smasher of a concept ...)

Check this out - http://www.new.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=5588308018

I was served up an add to take their cheese toast challenge today on facebook - problem is I live in Victoria, a place where (thankfully) Sizzler doesn't have any locations.

How does this provide anything useful to the user? And what are they doing wasting their media dollars targeting people who can't visit their restaurants?

IAB launches brand effectiveness study

2008-10-27T16:00:00.003+11:00

http://www.bandt.com.au/news/AB/0C05B3AB.asp
They call it "unheralded" ... not sure whether it deserves that sort of praise. Isn't it what most of us have been doing for the last 3 years - ad effectiveness studies and measurement of incremental movement of consideration, intent, advocacy etc as a result of online activity?

Strikes me as odd that the IAB is behind the industry in terms of this sort of measurement. Shouldn't the IAB be focusing on how digital channels can work with other media channels and true cross media measurement - not just digital in isolation? This is the largest issue facing digital.

Not to mention it's only across the 5 major publishers ... not the hundreds/thousands of other sites most of the market is using. It also doesn't include search.

“There is no doubt that online advertising is effective for performance advertising campaigns and we believe the project results will clearly show that online advertising also has a strong role to play for marketers focused on brand development.”

I don't think this has ever been questioned guys ...

It's 1996 again for Andrew Bolt

2008-10-26T12:08:00.001+11:00

Hits??

Surely someone in the News Digital Media world could tell him no one has used that as a metric for at least 10 years

Ray Martin's comments from Andrew Olle lecture

2008-10-23T10:11:00.001+11:00

Ray Martin delivers this bomb - and boy is it true.

The below is from the Andrew Olle lecture which Martin took. Definitely worth reading the whole thing (link below)

Television is no longer a window on the world – it’s now a mirror.

Incidentally, Max Uetchtritz, who now runs Nine MSN News, cites Australian surveys which reveal more than half of our viewers also regularly watch TV with a computer on their lap.

The big difference is WE don’t give them anything to do which CONNECTS them to our news programs.

By way of contrast, the American networks are NOT waiting for the audience to come to them. They’re going after the audience – feverishly.

In fact, the boss of CBS said recently: ‘CBS is no longer a television company. No longer a radio company. It’s not an on-line company. It’s an AUDIENCE company.’

An ‘audience’ company.

The best newspapers are counter-punching much more effectively.

The New York Times, for example , has become ‘ ubiquitous’- on the web and the mobile. As well as its newspaper network.

You log onto NYT dot com and… let’s say… press ‘Humour.’

That gives you all the television nightly talk show jokes about the Presidential election. Or ‘Saturday Night Live’ skits. And Emmy-award winning political comedy like The John Stewart Show and the Colbert Report. Heaps more.

They’ve got nothing to do with newspapers. But , everything to do with audiences. The internet now brings the New York Times 300 million dollars a year, 10 percent of the company’s revenue. It’s growing at an astonishing rate.

We all know that Australians are confirmed ‘junkies’- when it comes to ‘new tech toys’. But our ‘internet cravings’ are simply not being satisfied.

Young Australians love – and live with – MUSIC.

It’s an integral part of their daily lives.

On their i-pods, their mobiles, their mp3’s and in the car.

So, where’s the music on prime time television? There isn’t any.

Not even music videos ‘to stream’.

Where are the innovative I.T shows for young Australians? Same answer.

How’s that for breeding a new generation of TV viewers? So far there’s been little attempt to ‘connect’ with them. That has to change.

Within a few years everything will be mobile.

The Australian TV networks’ integration still muddles along – without vision or publicity,
without equipment or serious financial backing. On the proverbial ‘smell of an oily rag. ’

Despite such deficiencies Nine MSN now streams ELEVEN million videos a month.

Finance Guru Ross Greenwood’s live coverage of the RBA’s recent ‘ONE PERCENT RATE CUT’ got almost as many hits on the website, as it had Channel 9 viewers.

We need vision. We need innovation. And we certainly need investment. What we’re getting instead is ‘benign neglect.’

Benign neglect …on-line and on-television.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,24513977-7582,00.html

Is Twitter another broadcast channel?

2008-10-21T20:37:00.004+11:00

Is it broadcast media or is it social media?

I've been on the channel for over 18 months and I'm not sure ... most people I follow are more about broadcasting their message to others rather than entering into a dialogue. Sure, sometimes people I know and I will exchange banter ... but most of the larger names I follow are moreso pushing out a message to their followers - which strikes me as the '1 to many' push communication many frown upon.

I am not so close minded I don't think Twitter can be both social and broadcast - it's just maybe it's a lot more about broadcast and lot less about social.

Yes, the channel has potential ... but right now it's being hyped well beyond its current worth. And are the Social media flock any more influential than people not using these channels but socially active in a non digital (and less measurable but potentially as effective) sense. Measurability is great but lets not misconstue the ability to measure as 'more effective than channels we can't quantify as immediately'.

And can marketers actually use Twitter? Lets look at that point in the context of Australia. I don't know. It's tempting to want to utilise every single social channel available in a desperate effort to be looked at as progressive, but surely we have to look at resource versus reward.

Side note: I use Twitter but don't really look at it as anything more than a journal for my inane thoughts.

Eric Beecher at The Domain this Thursday

2008-10-21T17:26:00.003+11:00

Looking forward to this interview between Brad Howarth and Private Media head Eric Beecher this Thursday.

The interview is based around the following premise.

Survivor 2.0: In 2008 a group of media companies found themselves stranded on the world's largest island, washed ashore after the sinking of the global financial markets. With a population of only 21 million to feed on, slow-moving traditional media companies struggled to reinvent themselves in time to fight off the challenge of new media upstarts. Who will survive...?

Rest assured Beecher will pull no punches, and I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to say.

Register here - http://www.the-domain.org/ - but get in quick as it's this Thursday

Some observations on what is happening in the US digital media world right now ...

2008-10-21T09:45:00.005+11:00

It's impossible not to feel the overriding tone of impending doom that is all over the US tech media blogs/journals right now.

From SAI to TechCrunch, Valleywag to Paid Content, the tone has changed from unrestrained optimism to a grim reality. TC and Paid Content used to be dominated with stories on startups receiving huge valuations and big funding, Valleywag reported the new wave of dot com excess ... not anymore.

What are the main areas we are seeing being covered and how could these relate to the local industry

- Layoffs

Remember fuckedcompany.com? Well ... I do. If you worked at a dot com around 2000/2001 and things were looking shaky you could rely on fuckedcompany to show you there was another start up somewhere else in the world that was more fucked than yours. All of the media are reporting layoffs - with ebay, Glam, Heavy, Seesmic, Gawker, Wikia, SearchMe, AdBrite, Hi 5 all laying off staff, and Yahoo being reported to be announcing laying off anywhere between 1-3,000 employees within the new few weeks.

TC covers it here - http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/17/keeping-count-the-techcrunch-layoff-tracker/

Yes, some of these companies were bloated to begin with ... and some probably had no real way to generate revenue ... but many are successful and do monetise well. Regardless, you can be sure that we've only seen the beginning of the layoffs.

No real public announcements of layoffs in AU - will they happen? Hopefully not but you'd have to assume if US companies like ebay and Yahoo! are cutting costs there would have to be some flow on effect here.

- Ad Slowdown

Blodget came out this morning with this bomb - http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/let-s-be-serious-online-display-ads-will-fall-sharply-in-2009

For a year, we've listened to analysts passionately explain how online ad spending will power through any broader economic and advertising weakness. Eyeballs are moving online, this story went (goes), ad dollars will follow. Online advertising is accountable. Online advertising is the future. Blah, blah, blah.

It's time we woke up and faced reality. Online display-ad spending will fall in 2009, probably sharply. It will probably fall again in 2010.

Is he right? Maybe ... display ad spending in AU could flatline over the next 18-24 months. Why? Q4 will be soft, as will Q1 and Q2 of 2009 ... Q3 2008 was very strong with the Olympics and a pretty robust economic outlook, as a result Q3 2009 will struggle to show much growth.

The US was already seeing a general slowdown in YOY growth (surely a by-product of the market maturing) and now the general consensus is this will get worse.

The three biggest display categories in AU are finance, motor vehicles and technology products - three categories that will feel some pressure from tougher times. These 3 categories combined accounted for 51% of display spend in Australia for Q2 2008 ($59m)

The bigger issue is online - across the board - needs to do a better job at showing its value than reverting to the tired accountability argument. The reality is most marketers struggle with online metrics and need measurement that is tied closer to actual marketing objectives and not impressions and clicks. Agencies and publishers need to work closer together to resolve this. This is a global problem however it is probably worse in AU than in Europe and the US - and has been a problem even during prosperous economic times.

However, the current situation presents huge opportunities to both publishers and agencies if they can go beyond what they see as their core purpose (publishers = selling display ads, agencies = buying display ads) and expand their offering to the market and offer more value and insight. And this is the exciting thing.

It's not all doom and gloom, it's more about avoiding complacency.

- Consolidation

Google CFO Patrick Pichette made an interesting quote in this article - http://valleywag.com/5064903/google-cfo-hints-at-future-starve-the-losers

"One of his priorities, Pichette said, "is pushing to make sure all the resources are used efficiently, that you feed the winners, starve the losers."

Gawker also published this - http://gawker.com/5065922/the-scary-future-of-internet-ads

Here's what you can expect in the coming year, internet lovers: lots of young internet companies going broke. The ones you love! Including, but not limited to, user-generated video sites, ad networks, fringe social media sites, and companies that make all those sweet apps. Why? Because in our brave new economy, companies are slower to buy bullshit ads of questionable efficacy on every random "Web 2.0" site.

Not sure I really agree with their defintion of "bullshit ads" but the general point is valid. The "me too" online industry will struggle. From publishers to networks to agencies. Web businesses that set up because it seemed like a good idea and there was plenty of capital to go round might find things will get tough.

Lets look at locally? Do we need 10+ ad networks selling the same remnant inventory? Probably not ... Do we need as many third party repping houses? Doubtful. Do we need as many media/creative/strategy agencies who effectively are doing the same thing. No.

Consolidation in this regard isn't a bad thing, as it won't do anything to harm the market. This huge array of choice/supply doesn't do anyone any real favours. A cull should improve the overall level of the industry and rid the market of the more questionable operators.

Another thing to watch is increased attention paid to digital media businesses. Last month AdNews ran a story on 3rd party networks placing premium brands on porn sites without their knowledge. Classy look for the industry hey ... And then yesterday The Oz's Lara Sinclair ran a great article on dubious 20% rebates paid by publishers to certain agencies who believe that is a fair 'pay to play' policy.

Times up for the 20% rebate?

2008-10-20T08:59:00.002+11:00

Lara Sinclair has written an article in todays Australian that finally documents what has been going on for years - some agencies are demanding 20% commission rebates from publishers.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,24520533-7582,00.html

"The warning comes as media agency Initiative has introduced a so-called "preferred partnership" scheme under which some internet publishers and online advertising networks are being asked to pay them a 20 per cent commission to become a favoured supplier.

But even as some media agencies -- including Emitch, the digital arm of the Mitchell Communications Group and Toyota's dedicated media agency the Media Store -- charge more than the standard 10 per cent commission, internet publishers are pushing back. "

The big question remains - are these higher that 10% rebate savings being pushed back to the client and/or being disclosed?

It's also interesting to see the publishers being so vocal about the issue - which was in the past an unspoken inconvenience - especially in regards to emitch and The Media Store. Wonder if they'll cop any blowback from these two.

Google UK to allow gambling advertising from today

2008-10-18T16:19:00.002+11:00

Brand Republic is reporting that Google in the UK is allowing gambling related search advertising effective today.

"Google is changing its advertising policy to allow gambling-related advertising to appear against search queries in the UK from 17 October.

Previously, businesses could not advertise any form of online gambling or related websites on Google. The ads will still not be allowed on Google sites outside the UK.

UK companies registered with the Gambling Commission will be able to target text-based ads to users in England, Scotland and Wales. Non-UK advertisers based within the European Economic Area wishing to target Great Britain can do so if they are licensed to advertise gambling in their respective countries."

http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/854689/Google-reverses-UK-policy-allow-online-gambling-ads/

In AU it does not allow gambling based SEM - but how will long will it uphold this position?

You can be sure if it did it would open up a nice revenue stream ...

Malcolm Turnbull on Twitter

2008-10-16T17:18:00.001+11:00

Nice work Julian

News Digital Media: The Unemployed spend 40hrs a week on Internet

2008-10-16T15:27:00.004+11:00

That's the word according to News Digital Media and their Aspiring Australian's market research.

It tells us that unemployed users of NDM sites spend 6 hours per weekday on the Internet, and 5 hours per weekend day. Total = 40 hours.

Effectively, these people do have a full time job. It's called surfing the net.

So maybe an economic slowdown and higher unemployed rates might be good for digital media consumption ;)

The full report is here - http://media.news.com.au/sales/marketing/pdf/NDMreport03SEP08LO2.pdf

The research is pretty generic, which is disappointing because it's good to see News Digital take the step and try and work out their audience a little better.

There's no new insight into why people use online (real motivations), their usage across different areas (ie maps, video, search, content, contribution), emerging trends or cross media consumption. This is the only first release of the report, and you can be sure it will evolve moving forward as it's released every 3 months.

It does have one statistic that is interesting - that the average NDM user is spending 27 hours, 49 minutes on the Internet per week.

As a figure this feels high to me and surely must be skewed by the respondants being online at work - which needs to be clarified more. Are they 'online' - ie connected - or are they actively using the Internet?

Personally, I work in digital media and I wouldn't be actively online more than 20 hours a week across home and work.

According to Nielsen, the average Internet user in AU spends 14 hours, 34 minutes online per month - which works out to around 3.3 hours per week online.

Who is right? The difference is pretty significant.

September Nielsen data: Yahoo!7 takes a massive hit, other players hold

2008-10-16T10:32:00.004+11:00

Nielsen has just released September Netview data and the numbers would be causing a few sighs over at Yahoo!7

Just over 6 weeks ago Yahoo!7 PR was out in force trumpeting the success of their Olympics initiative - and with good reason - it was pretty successful.

However most insiders were more concerned with what they could do with the audience once the Olympics were over. Could they hold enough of them and bring them into the Yahoo!7 fold (be it through Mail, Messenger, Answers, News, Homepage) to become regular users.

The first warning sign would have been last month when the Nielsen data showed Yahoo!7 didn't actually add any new users in August of 08 (when compared to July) - most would have expected an incremental gain in user numbers as a result of an official Olympics alliance at the very least. It wouldn't be too bold to predict internally Yahoo!7 would have forecasted a 10-20% traffic increase.

However this would have seemed like a minor blow compared to the traffic king hit the site experienced in September, down 9% from 5.35m uniques to 4.87m uniques.

This drop mirrors the drop Yahoo!7 experience just after the 2006 World Cup. Remember, the World Cup site in 06 was a Yahoo! co-brand and the traffic fell into Yahoo's topline. However once the action stopped in Germany, the traffic left and didn't return.

On these current September numbers, Yahoo!7 has less momentum with its audience than it did pre Olympics, which is undoubtedly the worst possible outcome for the site.

You can bet the financial investment required to secure the online rights to the Olympics was a mid term initiative financially - based on using the Olympic brand as a carrot to bring new eyeballs to the site and Yahoo!7 working out a way to transition these people into long term users.

Tough questions will no doubt be asked. How has this happened? Did the company have a real plan to try and keep the Olympics traffic it generated? Why, with the number 1 TV network is this JV not generating much traction with users over 2 years in? What has happened to Rohan Lund's vision of being a leader in news, homepage, mail and search?

These are prickly questions - but it seems now globally the Yahoo! brand is being forced to address them across the board as the share price flounders. How will it address these issues it is facing in AU?

The only question I have is, what is Yahoo7's strategy? It's hard to see a real direction from an outsiders point of view.

At the same time, Yahoo!'s main competitors either held their audience in September or grew marginally.

Ninemsn and Fairfax Digital held topline audience numbers, whilst News Digital Media grew 4% (up 150k users)

YHOO dips below $12 a share

2008-10-16T10:05:00.005+11:00

Has anyone else been watching the rapid descent of the Yahoo share price?

Well ... right now it's at $11.75 and its market cap is just north of $16b USD.

Blodget covers it here - http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/yahoo-cracks-12-valuation-now-officially-ridiculous

Lets not forget in February MSFT offered Yahoo! $31 per share ... and they declined. Since then the situation has gone from bad to worse.

What's causing the decline? The flogging the company is copping in search combined with large questions around Jerry Yang and Sue Decker and a very public stoush between those 2 and Carl Icahn earlier in the year. The Google AdSense distro deal being stalled wouldn't be helping either, nor would over 100 senior exec defections in the past 18 months.

Key thing to remember is in the US and most areas of Asia - Yahoo is still very strong. Very strong - a leader in many key categories across these large, critical markets. Even with this, many are expecting large layoffs and scaling back of operations. Some have predicted 20% of staff could go.

Have to wonder what might be about to happen in AU - where the company isn't a market leader and of late has seemed to lack longer term direction when compared to its competitors.

Looksmart's Thought Leadership series

2008-10-14T22:48:00.004+11:00

Great initiative - http://blogs.looksmart.com/thought_leadership/

They have tapped into the likes of John Battelle and Danny Sullivan to make this happen - both highly respected names, particularly in the search world.

Would be great to see this done locally - tapping into respected players in the AU market to try and give the wider market access to quality opinion in the world of digital marketing and media.

This sort of thing adds value to clients and agencies - which is what they are all screaming out for.

Looksmart wants to offer "articles from industry thought leaders on topics aimed at equipping you to make smart choices in online advertising."

Simple.

So who will be the first player locally to do this? It could be a creative agency, media agency, ad server, publisher, ad network ... the opportunity exists for all of them.

Battelle on media ...

2008-10-14T22:45:00.002+11:00

Good post by John Battelle on the Looksmart Thought Leadership blog.

http://blogs.looksmart.com/thought_leadership/2008/10/algorithms-and.html

"I believe that in the media world, there are several buckets of what one might call "value creation." There is clearly value in traditional approaches to content creation - editors, producers, and writers corralled into media-making factories like the New York Times or NBC (I call this kind of media "Packaged Goods Media"). There's value in a different kind of media, media created by ongoing conversations between communities of media consumers on blogs, social networks, and sites like Digg (I call that kind of media "Conversational Media.")

Finally, there's value in the aggregation and curation of media, whether it's packaged goods or conversational. Curation (or put more traditionally, editing and filtering) is increasingly valuable in the information economy - there are simply too many potential streams of information for anyone to grok, and we need trusted sources to curate it all for us. Google News is a good example of that curation, as are Digg, NewsVine, Wikipedia and any number of other sites - every vertical seems to have similar service - from music (http://www.thesixtyone.com/) to women's interest (http://www.kirtsy.com/).

But here's the rub: There's a critical difference between curation based on algorithm (Google News) and curation based on human insight (Digg or Wikipedia) - and that difference can be summed up in one word: Voice. In short, sites that allow people to be part of the curation process have voice, and sites that are driven by algorithm, don't.

No matter how hard we try, we can't come up with an algorithm that creates a truly human voice."

Worth a read. Also applicable to advertising online I think ... but more on that later.

6 reasons why a economic downturn might be good for the AU digital media industry

2008-10-14T16:56:00.003+11:00

1. Less cash floating around combined with more conservative spending should mean less new sites pop up that fail to offer anything new to either the audience or the ad market. I don’t think in this climate Fairfax would have invested in something like http://www.thevine.com.au …

2. There will be increased pressure on sales teams to offer real value, insight and service to both agencies and clients; rather than being order takers. Right now, this doesn’t happen, and frankly it doesn’t need to given the growth the digital ad market has had to date ... yet I think in the next 18 months there will need to more focus given to how digital channels can both answer business objectives and work closer with ‘broadcast’ media in the sales pitch.

3. In addition there will be pressure on publishers generally to differentiate themselves to competitors in the market and compete for ad spend based on more than unique users. To date, there is very minimal research that proves that any of the major options offer a superior audience – and those who have developed their own research have generally missed the mark in terms of bringing it back to their own product. Newspapers, radio and TV all have lobby groups that generate research and insight to help the ad market understand their product. Digital has the IAB – which publicly hasn’t done anything to help the medium in more than 2 years. Now is the time the IAB needs to become active as its stakeholders (ie the large publishers) are going to need an industry lobby group to show value in the medium.

4. Enhanced focus on strengths. My personal feel is publishers will need to get rid of ‘nice to have’ elements of their sites. What this will probably mean is job losses, especially in production, but more importantly it should mean each publisher focuses more time and effort on the areas they are really good at, which should make them better. If you look at the big publishers – Fairfax, ninemsn, News, Yahoo – they are all excellent at 3-4 things, good at 4-5 and average at the rest. I think there will be closer attention paid to the average performers – page views, revenue, yield, costs etc – as now isn’t the time to be carrying excess weight.

5. The ‘measurability benefits’ stance of digital will be under greater scrutiny. Digital has and still does trade off a foundation of ‘measurability’. “Digital is more accountable than other media”, “Digital offers better ROI” … I think we need to look at this in a more honest fashion … and also look closer and quantify the relationship between online media and offline media. What will this mean? Less data probably, but better data … and data more aligned to business objectives. So – your campaign for an FMCG reached 4m people and generated 55,000 ppl through to the website … but what did it do to increase the unit sales of the client?

6. Untargeted ad networks will struggle. There is a reasonable business right now in buying cheap inventory off US or European remnant ad pools and selling it back to AU clients at a premium. This has to stop and will stop ... the US/Euro remnant networks will look to establish direct relationships with AU advertisers to generate growth, and advertisers will look to cut costs on these buys by wiping out the middleman. If your ad network doesn't offer either an elusive audience, sophisticated technology, or exclusivity I think your position in this market is under threat.

So Obama is using In Game advertising ...

2008-10-14T15:39:00.003+11:00

Gigaom is reporting Obama is using In Game advertising via Massive in the US - http://gigaom.com/2008/10/13/confirmed-obama-is-campaigning-on-xbox-360/

Interesting, but why is anyone surprised. Most progressive marketers have used the medium.

The same thing happens when politicians use search or twitter or youtube to campaign - we seem to be surprised - like they and their campaign team are so out of touch with the modern media world they wouldn't even be across these channels.

Clickable food for thought

2008-10-07T10:49:00.004+11:00

So I have a client who wants to do a campaign online.

Trouble is - they don't really seem to feel that having an online 'destination' is that important. All they really want to do is let people know the product is available and give people an image of it in action.

I tend to agree with them. The nature of the product doesn't lend itself to finding out more - it's extremely straight forward.

So when I was asked whether they could run a campaign without the ad being clickable my first response was, 'erm ... I really don't know.'

For this advertiser, they want to look to use the web purely as a medium to build targeted reach for their brand in relevant environments. For them, response doesn't actually have any value for the campaign in question.

The more I thought about it, the more it actually made me smile. Here's a brand that is looking at online more than either response or 'creating a dialogue.'

I know some people will say 'this campaign is all about interruption, the hallmarks of old media blah blah blah' ... and maybe they're right ... but it also offers many benefits - right place, right time, right consumer.

So I asked around the major publishers and networks on whether they'd accept an ad creative that didn't click anywhere.

All of the groups I asked said they would, except one.

Google - in the context of their display media content network (purchased on CPM mind you) flatly refused. I asked for a reason, none was given.

It made me wonder - is Google indirectly making a statement that if you can't click on an ad online it doesn't hold any value for the advertiser or user?

Tech getting the jitters from the economic hammering

2008-10-07T10:15:00.004+11:00

Last week I touched on the impact of the US financial issues on tech stocks.

http://mimelbourne.blogspot.com/2008/09/no-vote-on-700b-bailout-impacts-tech.html

Now there is finally talk on how this will impact the advertising market ... with some sentiment that digital will probably benefit from any economic turmoil as it offers a perception of more accountability than other media.

Some have stated Google will benefit - which is interesting. I'm not so sure it should - Google is about demand fulfillment, not demand creation. In times like this brands need to create more demand - not look at making fulfillment more efficient. I sometimes feel most misunderstand the role of SEM in a marketing mix and the variables that impact what search can do for a company. For almost all categories, search relies on 'ATL' media (for want of a better term) to drive demand for brand and category terms ... by taking money out of brand building activity, it will impact the amount of traffic you can funnel using search. If advertising is a mix of art and science (magic and logic or whatever other analogy ppl use), then I am not sure it makes much sense to lean more towards straight science in leaner times.

Locally it will be interesting to see what happens. The first half of 08 was very flat ... however the environment has rallied in the second half and we should see approx. 20% YOY growth in the online advertising sector.

However, it's not clear yet what will happen in Q1 and Q2 of 2009 - which I think would be making the local players nervous given how soft the same period was in 08 without such powerful economic factors at play. In the US the past few months have seen layoffs at a lot of key players, the same situation is entirely possible here - I wouldn't be surprised to see layoffs in product/editorial areas over the next 2-3 months in AU. Either that or we will see publishers trim the fat off their offerings - ie, get rid of the elements of their portfolio which on their own are not viable. It's not the time to be carrying excess baggage.

So lets check in with 6 key stocks I looked at last week and see how they faired over the past 7 days.

Yahoo! - market cap down 2.18b in past 7 days
Google - market cap down 5.87b in past 7 days
Microsoft - market cap down 1.56b in past 7 days
Research In Motion - market cap down 1.84b in past 7 days
Apple - market cap down 6.86b in past 7 days
Time Warner - market cap down 6.07b in past 7 days

AFL on twitter

2008-10-06T18:45:00.001+11:00

The AFL (the worlds greatest game in my opinion) has launched a Twitter feed for trade week.

http://afl.com.au/News/TradeTalk/Twitter/tabid/13323/Default.aspx

Will be interesting to see what happens when the trade action heats up.

Cool initiative and good to see the sporting giant using the platform.

A bogus heart attack, Steve Jobs and Citizen Journalism

2008-10-06T13:44:00.000+11:00

It was the first weekend I'd had without AFL for 6 months, so luckily something interesting happened over the weekend that I could follow in between trying to save my garden from the weeds

It occured in the developing world of 'citizen journalism', and the star players were Apple Chief Steve Jobs and CNN's 'citizen journalism' initiative, CNNi.

On Friday night I was home enjoying some red wine, watching Goodfellas for the 20th time, when I quickly logged onto Silicon Valley Insider. Henry Blodget the sites editor started with, "Citizen journalism" gets its first real test. A story of major consequence that, thus far, no one else has reported"

It then went onto report that CNN's CNNi had run a story on it's front page that Apple head, Steve Jobs, had suffered a heart attack and had been taken to hospital. This happened around 11pm EST ... so just before trading opened in Wall St. SAI merely reported the story and linked out to CNNi - it claimed it was following up Apple sources to see if the story was legitimate as the rest of the media world didn't seem to be following the story at the time.

But Twitter was ablaze with chatter regarding the alleged heart attack. Apple stock dived - but nowhere near as much as one would expect.

SAI also stated "Meanwhile, very interesting that this report appears on CNN's site. If it proves correct, CNN will look great. If it is wrong, CNN's credibility will likely be hit."

The whole situation is outlined here - http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/why-we-published-that-steve-jobs-heart-attack-report

So ... a few hours later it turned out the post on CNNi was bogus. SAI amended the story and CNN took the post down. It apppeared that in this case, the initiative had failed. Apple stock rallied and now the hunt is on to find out who the culprit was.

Blodget is getting absolutely hammered for posting the story as news - I don't think he has anything to answer for. Jobs is the biggest name is tech without a doubt and his health is an often discussed issue almost to the point that when Jobs gets up and launches a new product there is often more discussion about his weight (or lack of) than the products.

It will be interesting to see how CNN approach this - an error this large with a personality as big as Jobs is a real stumble ... and will this impact on other traditional media experiments into letting their readers contribute editorial?

FoxSports consolidate with MCN

2008-10-03T16:15:00.003+10:00

MCN will sell Foxsports.com.au from Jan 1, 2009, replacing News Digital Media.

This will be a bit of a hit to News - which would have generated around 5-10% of its display revenue from Foxsports.

But will it be a bigger hit to Foxsports - who would have generated a stack of traffic from being the sports site across the News Digital Media network?

Who knows ... News have inked a deal with ESPN, which isn't really on the same scale that FoxSports currently is, but isn't a bad save.

My thoughts are News should focus on building their own sports offering through their masthead sites - like they have done with Superfooty. This, to me, seems like a better long term strategy than representing someone elses content.

The pressure will now be on MCN to deliver strong, integrated responses, which they haven't nailed to date across their other properties. FoxSports has potential for cross platform deals but the execution must be right.

Jason Scott scores primo US gig with MSN

2008-10-02T10:15:00.003+10:00

Fantastic news that Jason Scott, ex ninemsn Commercial Director, has been appointed Director of Global Agencies for MSN

http://business.smh.com.au/business/aussie-packs-his-bags-for-global-odyssey-via-seattle-20081001-4s2m.html

From the article: "Mr Scott will take up his new role in November. In it he will oversee a diverse portfolio of Microsoft media products that carry advertising, including the gaming console Xbox, online gaming sites, MSN portals including ninemsn in Australia, Hotmail and such Mp3 players as Zune, which are starting to incorporate commercial messages. Mr Scott will also oversee the Atlas online adserving technology Microsoft acquired in May last year when it paid $US6 billion for the internet ad firm aQuantive."

Great to see some Aussie talent making in roads globally in the digital world. Congrats Jase.

Fantastic Wii execution on YouTube

2008-10-02T09:28:00.001+10:00

Very clever!

http://au.youtube.com/experiencewii

The Top 5 Biggest Digital Marketing Cliches

2008-10-01T09:32:00.003+10:00

Thanks to Ad Age - so true

http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=131347

Anyone who reverts to one of these cliches out of context in todays environment, in my opinion, shows a lack of conviction/belief in their own ideas and is looking to do something purely because it's topical or someone else has and has gotten PR.

Thankfully it doesn't happen that often ...

'No' vote on $700b bailout impacts tech stocks bigtime

2008-09-30T09:31:00.003+10:00

The US House of Representitives 'no' vote on the proposed $700b bailout of Wall Street has as expected impacted the stock market - with tech stocks also vulnerable.

Lets have a look at what the last day has done to the value of some of the biggies.

Yahoo! - down 10.6% (market cap $23.4b)
Google - down 9.5% (market cap $122.6b)
Microsoft - down 8.39% (market cap $229b)
Research In Motion - down 11.07% (market cap $35.58)
Apple - down 17.4% (market cap $93.8b)
Time Warner - down 8.8% (market cap $46.3b)

That's in excess of $55b USD wiped off the value of the above 6 companies in 1 day. The fun starts locally in a few minutes

Joe Pollard named CEO of ninemsn

2008-09-25T15:10:00.002+10:00

Despite previously ruling out her candidacy for the CEO role at ninemsn (http://www.businessday.com.au/business/ninemsn-moves-to-calm-market-fears-over-turmoil-20080709-3cmp.html), Joe Pollard has been named the new CEO of the MSFT/PBL JV.

I've dealt with Joe on numerous occasions before and she is great. Earlier this year she invited myself and my colleague, Ben Maudsley, to speak at the ninemsn sales offsite and give an agency perspective on things and our broad thoughts on the next 12 months ... which was a great opportunity to speak with various people from publisher side on their thoughts and compare notes.

Congrats Joe.

Technorati State of the Blogosphere

2008-09-25T11:30:00.001+10:00

http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere

Essential reading. Very interesting for those involved in blogs, who read blogs, or who want to know more about the space.

Plugger rebrands as wotnews?

2008-09-24T21:28:00.004+10:00

Weird ... Plugger.com.au has changed its name to wotnews.com.au

"The name Wotnews acknowledges our relationship with Wotif.com. While we remain an independent business and a separately operated website, we're associated with them in that we now share the Wot brand via a licensing agreement"

Um ... okay. Question. What does wotif.com have to do with a news aggregator/search utility? Why would you licence the name?

I guess a name change doesn't take away from the strength of the product - it's a bloody good resource that will only evolve and improve over time.

Is this man the smartest guy in AU digital media?

2008-09-24T15:32:00.003+10:00

Former Text Media owner and Sydney Morning Herald editor Eric Beecher is building up a pretty impressive web business.

With Crikey established, Business Spectator growing rapidly, Eureka Report and Smart Company - Beecher has 4 publications that are hard not to notice.

Plus he has a team of people who are well respected - Kohler, Gottleibsen, Mayne, Amanda Gome, Jonathan Green and many more - who are delivering engaging content.

And he is making very strong in roads on an extremely valuable audience and showing that there will always be demand for strong, intelligent content.

So whilst the groups that used to dominate eyeball share of this lucrative audience focus on singles sites and trying to nail youth, Beecher has put together web assets that would be pound for pound, page for page probably the most valuable in the country. Advertisers want to reach a quality audience in quality surrounds - the Beecher sites achieve this.

Sure, the audiences aren't super massive - but they are strong and they are loyal to quality content. And right now, quality is the key differentiator as it is relatively easy to reach most audiences online ... but difficult to reach them in quality environments.

According to Nielsen Market Intelligence, to 22 September they had achieved the following user figures this month.

Business Spectator - 152,000 users

Crikey - 118,000 users

Smart Company - 65,000 users

Eureka Report - 39,000 users

These four are sites to watch - because I feel they haven't even started to scratch the surface on what they could do.

Audience, content or context?

2008-09-24T12:32:00.004+10:00

I've been thinking about this issue a lot lately.

Where does a publishers value lie? In their audience ... or in their content?

This 2007 article from Clickz talks about it in more depth - http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3626145

It comes down to this - how will media firms prove the value of their brands to advertisers when asking higher CPMs on their own properties?

We're seeing rate cards increase this quarter - but interestingly enough there hasn't been a huge amount of rationale behind these increases.

The Clickz article touches on two schools of thought ...

Thought 1: "Many media sellers and observers stress, when selling placements on branded publisher sites, the value proposition is not about the content per se. Rather, it's in the audience attracted to those sites by that content"

Thought 2: Shawn Riegsecker, chairman and CEO of local media planning and buying service, Centro, isn't so sure the audience is where a media brand's equity lies. "That audience that visits your site is the same audience that visits Yahoo….It's not the audience, it's the environment," he told ClickZ News. "The challenge to the publishers is to make sure the experience and the environment when someone reads a story on their site is a vast improvement to the experience on a portal."

Personally I think it's probably a mix of the two ... but I think moving forward there is more value in the second school of thought - and there will be a much better definition of 'content' - and what 'content' advertisers want to be associated with.

Locally, the publisher world are good at selling audience - big numbers, we have x% of ABs, we have x% of 14-17yo, 24% of GBs visit us weekly ... all great figures ... but hardly differentiators and hardly reasons why marketers will choose your site over another.

Much of what we're trying to achieve is reaching the right person, at the right time, with the right message in the right context. Yes, context is vital. Context in terms of the content but also in terms of the brands surrounding yours.

Yes Facebook can allow me to target curly haired bocce players who live in Eltham and drive a Vespa ... but if there's only 1 of him then it's futile. Likewise, Facebook might allow me to target GBs with kids who are interested in skin care - but if my ad is running next to a Lavalife or RSVP in my opinion it devalues the whole equation.

I like to use the below when looking to value an opportunity ...

Targeted audience + Focused editorial + Specific, relevant ads + Interested readers = Integrated community

What do you think is important when looking at value?

Media in 2015

2008-09-23T11:29:00.003+10:00

I'm working on a pitch at the moment and one of the areas we have to address in our response is ...

'How different the response might be in 2015 with all the changes predicted in the media marketplace'

It's an interesting question. In the scope of this pitch brief I think I have the answer. But geeez it'd be interesting to be a fly on the wall when the responses are presented by each agency to see where they believe things will go.

Personally it's been great for me as working on it has given me incredible clarity and I think allowed me to improve the way I look forward.

Over the top taken even further

2008-09-22T11:55:00.002+10:00

If FD keep doing this I reckon a few of their loyal users will leave.

Ad overkill to the extreme. I'm not convinced there's any real benefactor from FDTV other than FD and their EBIT - seems to bombard the user with more ads than they need, and I think advertisers might start to question their rates when ads are running on top of other ads.

Where's the content?

Diddy takes video blogging to new levels

2008-09-19T11:18:00.001+10:00

Take note video bloggers. Diddy somehow makes the normally boring world of videoblogging interesting.

Froot Loops in the heezy. The Diddy dance around 3m is hot fire.

Telstra Media is borne: Milne kicks it off with creepy comment

2008-09-19T10:53:00.007+10:00

Telstra launched their media division today. Sol pumped it up by saying it's an important part of the companies future and that content lay at the centre of what Telstra wants to achieve moving forward.

Then somebody let Justin Milne have a comment - a man with a reputation for sometimes saying the wrong things. I think today was one of them.

From the article on the heraldsun.com.au - http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24367438-664,00.html

Mr Milne said building a media-comms company involved combining the power of the media to attract customers to a telecommunication service.

"So the simple proposition is, 'Gee, I'm thinking about getting a new mobile, Telstra's got the footy, I'd better buy theirs'.

"Then we go 'great, you've bought our mobile service - we're making money from that - and now in addition to that we'd like to make money from serving you ads from selling new ringtones'."

Has anyone told the guy that consumers probably don't want to know how Telstra is trying to screw more money out of them through content and ringtones and ad targeting ...

Will ninemsn appoint a new CEO?

2008-09-19T10:53:00.003+10:00

News has broken today that ACP Magazines CEO Scott Lorsen has effectively been made redundant, as PBL Media have decided to phase out the role of a CEO within the magazine publishing group.

From a statement by Ian Law ... "The decision to phase out the role of CEO of ACP Magazines is part of an ongoing process to streamline the management reporting structure within the PBL Media group, ensuring the business has a structure that is focused on publishing and broadcasting the best content."

An 'ongoing process' ... does this mean it may include ninemsn? Could the current ninemsn executive team take on broader roles?

Tony Faure left at the end of August and announced he was leaving almost 3 months prior to that. Still, there's no replacement and no market murmurings about a possible new CEO.

Maybe the questions needs to move from 'Who will be the new CEO of ninemsn?' to 'Will there be a new CEO of ninemsn?'

So what is a media company?

2008-09-17T16:13:00.004+10:00

I was looking for some guidance on a defintion for a presentation I am preparing ... and came across this article that is even more interesting reading 2+ years on

http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794282

It's by The Economist and focuses on former Yahoo! CEO, Terry Semel. Semel was brought on board to turn Yahoo! into a “21st-century media company” ... however things didn't quite turn out as expected. Semel resigned in August of 2007.

Semel went heavy on original content before taking a bit of a U-Turn in 2006 when content aggregation was all the rage. This article was written almost at the very moment things went south for Yahoo!

Semel talks about three key changes - content/programming on demand and how the net has democratised information by allowing the user to be the programmer.

Secondly, that small audiences and many of them are as good if not better than large scale broadcast mass audiences and that Yahoo! wanted to mix professional and amateur content to create these small, niche audiences and monetise them accordingly.

Thirdly, "Where does all this lead? “It will look more and more like a stock exchange,” says Mr Semel. An exchange, that is, for users who “offer” (create) and “bid” for (search, navigate, share, enjoy) content. And a stock exchange for advertisers, who bid against one another to have their sponsored links placed in front of these users."

I feel the first 2 are still relevant, and point 3 was where it went a little awry. For the record, 2006 was when the stock price of Yahoo! plummeted (from $43 in January to $25 in December) and I think this cloudy vision was the straw that broke the camels back.

The idea of point 3 would never have made sense for Yahoo! - or MOST businesses aside Google - funnily enough the idea of an exchange (ie a market exchange) is still a live one.

Still, it's getting close to the end of 2008 and there is more debate than ever on what makes a media company. Is Google a media company? I'd say yes ... ask them and they say no. How do old media companies define what they are now?

The weird thing is - Semel was definitely onto something ... and right now his original vision is probably more relevant than ever. Semel's talk about user programming and the importance of the small audience is bang on in my opinion and still largely left unfulfilled (especially the large point) by large scale players.

So, what does the term 'media company' mean in 2008?

Yahoo!7 and other big players lose audience during Olympic period of August

2008-09-16T11:48:00.005+10:00

New Nielsen data is out and it's big.

Yahoo!7 - who had the official Olympics presence in AU - actually lost audience numbers in August.

August 08 saw 5.35m Australia' s visit the site, down 41,000 from July.

This would be an annoyance to the Yahoo!7 management team, who rely on this Nielsen data as it's their only source of audited third party measurement to take to market. (as they don't use Market Intelligence)

It may also raise questions about the value of the Olympics to Yahoo!7 in terms of exposing the brand and their services to a new audience.

All of the main players took hits in August - ninemsn was down over 200,000 uniques, Fairfax Digital down 100,000 uniques, and News Digital down over 300,000 uniques. Relative to these numbers, the Yahoo! result doesn't look too bad ... but would still be a worry as it will raise concerns as to what the numbers will do in September without the Olympic traffic to pump it up.

It would also be a surprise for the other networks - who wouldn't have banked on them losing audience numbers of this volume as they enter the absolutely crucial back quarter.

All data sourced from Nielsen Netview, August 2008

Q4 2008: 4 thought starters

2008-09-11T18:09:00.001+10:00

I am very interested to see what eventuates in Q4 of this year. Generally the last quarter of the year is a pretty robust period, but in 07 it moved from hunstoppable growth momentum to barely a whimper, with 2007 Q4 revenue only up 19% on 2006 Q4 revenue.

Compare this with a 67% increase form 2006 (compared to 2005) and similar increases in the previous years and this figure would have caught the attention of the main players.

Don't get me wrong, 19% YOY growth is nothing to sneeze at, but when you're used to 50%+ growth YOY it shows that the industry is maturing and the momentum off the back of the migration of spend from offline to online is slowing.

Here's 4 things I'll be keeping a close eye on across the next 3-4 months.

1. Emergence of the specialist

This applies for all areas of digital. Agencies. Publishers. Sales houses. Search. Display. I think specialisation and service level will become a key differentiator in a very competitive industry. Knowing your product. Understanding your audience. Understanding the brief. All fundamentals but generally missed most of the time. Agencies are going to want publisher partners who can address business problems and conceive solutions, not sell banners and medium rectangles. Clients are going to want agencies who really understand the digital space - from internet to mobile to emerging technologies, in game, video, social media etc

I also think media owners/publishers will need to do more to skill up their sales teams to truly understand their audience and their key points of difference. Portals are usually generalists in terms of their understanding of audience and context - there is an opening for specialists (like Gizmodo, Sportal, Cnet) to work with larger portals specialist areas (sport, tech, health, parenting) in terms of site representation and content syndication. The portals bring the audience to the content, the specialists extract the revenue it deserves. Being 'great at one thing' is severely undervalued in AU.

Edit: By the above what I am saying is we should start thinking about specialists selling specialist content. For me, it makes more sense for me to buy a parenting environment off someone who has experience in the area (they don't need to be a parent but they need to understand parenting) rather than a 25 year old single guy. It makes sense for a specialist who understands technology to be offering solutions to an advertiser wanting to reach this audience, not a salesperson who doesn't understand that environment. Just like it might not be feasible for an agency person to give you definitive info on ALL elements of digital media ... it's equally not feasible for one salesperson to sell 10 different environments with 10 different audiences and mindsets.

Google has employed Industry Marketing Managers whose job is to stay on top of all industry trends - essentially become an analyst - and they feed these insights to their clients. The result, more trust.

2. Service is the differentiator

Market tolerance of adops mishaps, under deliveries, misleading ad network buys, ambiguous creative specs, lack of knowledge about audience data, content etc will not be as tolerated as it's been before. The excuse 'we're such a young medium, it's a steep learning curve' is such a cop out - we need, as an industry to ensure we can deliver what we sell. As a result, revenue will move towards providers who have the above issues sorted out and have their back end in check. Everyone is going to have to work harder to earn their slice of the digital pie, and as a result we might see the first signs of some consolidation or even better, vastly improved service.

3. Forced mid-tail embrace

Mid tail consumption in AU is obvious - approximately 8% of pages viewed on the Internet belong to the big 5, and about 11% belongs to Google. What are people doing with the other 80%? They are using mid tail sites. Problem is, the dollars haven't flowed into this critical area - namely due to the market presence of the big guys, plus a lack of a great vertical network, time constraints etc. This might all change. Reason - most of the big players have increased their rate cards to levels that perhaps are above what is reasonable. This will force marketers to look elsewhere, namely the mid tail - which is far more cost competitive and generally gives you access to more engaged and credible audiences.

4. The hard TV/online cross-sell

For the 2008 Olympics, advertisers on the Olympics didn't have the choice regarding taking an online package, it was a deal mandatory. I can see this becoming more common across key in demand TV programming - inclusive deals that cover both TV and online. It's a good way for the cross media players (namely 7 and 9) to leverage their TV muscle to generate additional revenues for their online assets. With James Warburton now Chief Digital guy at 7 Media Group, I think it'll be the 7/Yahoo group that lead the charge across their key programming in the front half of 2009.

Yahoo! challenges Google with Bigpond mobile deal? Really?

2008-09-11T11:46:00.002+10:00

The Oz is reporting Yahoo! and Bigpond striking a deal for Yahoo! to power the Bigpond Mobile on deck search - http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24326440-26077,00.html

"The multi-year deal between Yahoo7 and Telstra's Sensis division means Yahoo's oneSearch technology will replace Sensis's search technology on 4.4 million Telstra BigPond 3G-enabled phones.

"Revenue from display and search advertising that appears on the mobile search service -- which will be accessible through a co-branded button on the content menus of all Telstra 3G phones -- will be shared between Yahoo7 and Sensis.

"The partnership will eventually be expanded to include Sensis's Yellow and Trading Post classified searches and Telstra BigPond content.

"Yahoo7 chief executive Rohan Lund said the deal was the most significant for the company in the mobile space and would give Yahoo's advertisers access to a much bigger audience."

Is this really much of a big deal. It definitely doesn't amount to a challenge to Google. Let's not forget Google is flogging Yahoo! in search globally and even more in AU.

People trust Google - they use it on their PC and will also use it on their mobile. It's questionable how much incremental traffic this will bring Yahoo! search and also about the real value/visbility it will give to its advertisers. It makes for nice PR but will it deliver much to their consumers - user/advertiser.

It's interesting to see the deals Lund is looking to strike - he is looking to build Yahoo! audience through distribution deals. It's not a bad play - it's generally cheaper than ATL marketing - and the new eyeballs generated can be added to the topline figure the large guys still like to throw around (we have 5m users etc) despite most marketers not caring anymore about topline network numbers.

Also, does this mean Telstra is putting Sensis search to bed? It's been a rough 4-5 years for Sensis search - it might make more sense to utilise Yahoo!'s better technology and enter into a revshare deal with them on advertising. Would cut a sh*tload of salary cost and they could no doubt negotiate a pretty good deal with Yahoo! as Sensis/Bigpond Internet distro could increase Yahoo!'s total search audience in AU by 50-100%.

ABC to include advertising on mobile services?

2008-09-11T11:40:00.003+10:00

That's what Crikey.com.au is reporting in this article - http://www.crikey.com.au/Media-Arts-and-Sports/20080908-ABC-advertising.html

Apparently dev has been outsourced to a company called Wapfly. The million dollar question (literally) is ... who will be selling the space?

All the big guys will want to give this a crack. Question is, are they equipped/skilled to do it justice? Justice in terms of maintaining the integrity of ABC content and also selling the mobile space and mindset appropriately.

The mobile space is a pretty fresh territory and the sophistication of the sell isn't quite there yet. Bigpond have a big lead on the rest of the market in terms of tools and measurement, but surely you couldn't expect Aunty and Sol to get into bed together ... what would the neighbours think!

One to watch ...

Online employment classified distribution heats up

2008-09-10T14:36:00.002+10:00

Was reading today that Seek and Yahoo!7 have re-married after 3 years of Yahoo! eloping with Fairfax's MyCareer offering.

Seek and Yahoo! were strong partners - Seek was Yahoo!'s first investment outside of the US - and the 2 enjoyed a mutually beneficial classified distribution arrangement up until the end of 2005 when Yahoo! migrated all classifieds deals over to Fairfax.

Now they're back in bed - and talking up a joint website (which I imagine is Seek's engine and backend with a Yahoo! top and tail frame job)

Full article - http://www.smartcompany.com.au/Free-Articles/The-Briefing/20080910-SEEK-and-Yahoo7-launch-jobs-partnership.html

For Yahoo! this is a good source of revenue. You'd estimate there's probably around $1m to be gained yearly dependant on the commercials. Plus they are aligning with the market leader, which is ideal.

Also saw that News's Careerone and Ebay have launched a similar distribution initiative called ebay jobs. The combination seems very odd to me - who goes to ebay to look for work?

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/Free-Articles/The-Briefing/20080822-News-Corp-and-eBay-launch-new-jobs-site.html

I guess it's a win/win. Ebay will getting paid based on the traffic it can deliver to careerone. Careerone is hoping that distribution across ebay's mega base audience gives them incremental traffic - traffic they can use to justify their charges to job advertisers. Despite some additional revenue for ebay (which they are under pressure to generate), I don't see the upside for ebay nor the benefit for their users.

The classifieds space is ultra competitive - so these deals, whilst they seem a little odd - come at a premium as each of the main players wants desperately to increase their base usage.

AU Dodgy patrol: Selling something you don't have

2008-09-10T11:44:00.004+10:00

Who is the AU repping house selling Facebook News Feed ad units to clients, but not actually being able to fulfill them?

I have experienced first hand, and heard from others of a third party sales company selling these ad units to agencies, then ignoring requests for screenshots and proof of posting ... and then when repeatedly pressed finally admitting that they don't actually have the right to be selling these ads and trying to allocate the dollar amounts into properties outside of Facebook.

It's dodgy sh*t like this that gives the industry a bad name.

You depend on Google more than you probably know

2008-09-10T10:58:00.004+10:00

Valleywag writes "really, isn't Google's move to archive centuries of newspapers a bit like the architects of a genocide dedicating a museum to the holocaust they committed" in an article discussing Google's plans to archive printed newspaper articles (as explained by Marisa Meyer at TC50/52). I laughed.

However the article, titled 'The Cuddly Embrace of the Google Monster' is definitely worth reading - http://valleywag.com/5047597/the-cuddly-embrace-of-the-google-monster

It oulines category traffic across key categories, and what percentage of that traffic is driven by search engines.

It's interesting data - especially for those working in media who need to be across the how/where/why/what of people accessing content online and where they are turning to for trusted opinion and information.

Over 44% of traffic to Health/Medical sites is driven by Google. 35% of the travel category is driven by them. 25% of shopping and classifieds. 23% of entertainment.

With those stats, and Google's slow but steady moves into the 'media biz' ... could it be appealing for the GOOG to enter a little deeper into the Health and Travel spaces?

The only 2 categories with minimal reliance on search are Sports and Social Networking.

The power Google holds with the media world is so large - and it's getting larger each day. And it will continue to grow as Google is used by more and more as their sole navigation tool on the web.

Interesting quote from the article: "The biggest threat to Google comes not from Redmond or Sunnyvale, but from its own headquarters in Mountain View. Hubris plagues Google's executives, who are so convinced they are doing good that they are blind to the damage they leave in their wake, and indifferent to outside viewpoints."

Remember too, these are global figures. In AU Google has between 90-93% of the search market (whereas in the US it has just over 70%) - so here their power is greater.

Google Ad Planner - barely worth a look

2008-09-08T15:49:00.002+10:00

I was pretty excited about Google Ad Planner when it was announced.

Why? Well ... the current measurement tools we have at our disposal in AU are pretty dire. They are either too light on in terms of depth of data, or packed full of data that really has no use.

So when Google stated "If you're a media planner at an ad agency, you know that planning an online display buy can be challenging, particularly in scaling your campaign's reach while keeping it relevant for your target audience", I thought things were on the up.

Not true. Well ... not true, yet.

Google AdPlanner is an epic anti climax in AU.

Why?

Well, you can't actually plan anything. Reason for this is when you start (and I mean START) drilling into an audience on even the most basic level (ie gender, age) it hits you with the error ...

"You have likely either specified an audience too small to display or a site without any data. Please change your audience definition."

I got the same error when I was looking up EVERY age bracket, and the only site that appeared when I looked for Males was BrisbaneTimes.com.au. Don't even bother with household income ... same result.

It turns out demographic information isn't available for sites outside of the US.

Still, AdPlanner is pretty basic. Where does it fall down?

1. Where are they getting their data from? It's not stated - this concerns me.

2. It gives preferential treatment to Google Content Network sites.

3. It gives really broad estimates of available inventory per day (ie 10K - 100K) which makes it very difficult to get accurate projections

4. It only focuses on unique users and page impressions - not time spent, pages per user, geolocation, media type (ie streaming video, audio, html etc). Very backward.

5. It is missing a LOT of AU sites - LOADS. I'd estimate 80-90%

6. It has a stack of sites that do not accept advertising - like CommBank and Public Transport sites - which is useless for an "Ad" Planner. No option to switch these off either (which Netview has)

7. No information on AU eyeballs across overseas sites. How many AU eyeballs on Digg? Don't ask Google Ad Planner - they can't tell you - which doesn't help given so much Internet use in AU is on o/s sites. Massive fail here.

8. Google claim "discover many relevant sites--small and large--that would otherwise be hard to find." Not true in AU - it's barely scratching the surface

The only groups/agencies this tool will benefit are those who can't afford to subscribe to market data sources. As much as it pains me to say it, Nielsen offers more robust user data and Morgan gives better insight into the consumer. Yes, both are very limited ... but right now they are still the best two.

Unless Ad Planner can dramatically - and I mean DRAMATICALLY - improve, I wouldn't waste anymore time on it.

"Google Ad Planner is designed with media planners in mind"

Maybe ask some media planners for input next time as I don't know any media planner who would find it useful in its current state.

Dell brings us Digital Nomads

2008-09-06T18:49:00.003+10:00

Nice branded content initiative from Dell

http://www.digitalnomads.com/

Much better than the low end banner ads they run ad nauseum in this market ...

Branded content has the potential to become a real boom for digital publishers in AU - the problem is they're not equipped sales wise or editorially (mindset) to deliver what is required ... yet.

Note to most - an xmas gift guide sponsored by an advertiser IS NOT BRANDED CONTENT. Nor is repackaging ideas you couldn't sell to other advertisers ...

Oops Patrol: Carat US lay off internal management info sent to entire company

2008-09-04T09:03:00.002+10:00

Carat US has layed off some employees, but made the mistake of sending out information meant for management to the ENTIRE COMPANY.

Information that now has been picked up by AdAge and goes into depth about what to say to those who are being let go, what to say to suppliers, clients and other staff and reasons for the redundancies.

Oops.

All the juice here - http://valleywag.com/5045091/ad-agency-mails-powerpoint-about-layoffs-to-entire-company

Six months on: Bebo still isn't the biggest social network in AU

2008-09-02T17:42:00.002+10:00

From http://www.marketingmag.com.au/case_studies/view/in-the-spotlight-bebo-170

"Within six months we’ll be the largest social networking site in Australia.” Bebo’s Jim Scheinman at the ad:tech conference in February this year.

Whilst there's nothing better than a bit of blow in foreign exec optimism to get the media excited, I wonder how Schienman would be feeling about Bebo's current position in AU.

In July Bebo was at 719,000 users according to Nielsen Netview. Myspace was at 2.6m people. Facebook 3.4m.

Techcrunch ask whether Hulu could be a bigger business than YouTube

2008-09-02T17:00:00.003+10:00

TC have run a pretty poorly written (my thoughts anyway - sketchy data and assumptions - still it's better than reading about social media startups with no business model and 400m valuations) article about YouTube v Hulu over here - http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/01/can-hulu-be-a-bigger-business-than-youtube/

Interestingly, TC head honcho Michael Arrington used to call Hulu Clownco (which was allegedly Google's internal name for the service) repeatedly (http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/09/wow-clown-co-got-that-1-billion-valuation-still-nameless-though/) and was pretty dismissive of the concept; and the tech media absolutely flogged the concept when it launched, lambasting it as a flop and giving the NBC/Fox brainstrust advice on how to make it really work (example: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hulu.php)

Now it seems the US tech media is embracing Hulu and maybe, just maybe, are open to the fact that a bunch of TV guys might actually have a more viable business with web video than YouTube. It will be interesting to watch TechCrunch cover Hulu over the next 12 months.

Can Hulu be more viable than YouTube? I don't know. Right now, absolutely ... Hulu in my opinion could command 10-20x the CPMs YouTube can - plus they can monetise all their inventory (YouTube can monetise approx 3-4% of theirs) PLUS they can (if done smartly) bundle Hulu placements in with TV buys (ie you buy 30 Rock via 7 for TV and also buy in on the online component at the same time via Hulu). However the biggest thing is trust, traditional brand advertisers trust what they know - and they know TV, TV shows and the production houses.

They're not quite sure on YouTube. Case in point - show a brand manager at nameless FMCG company or Movie distributor the most popular videos (http://au.youtube.com/browse?s=mp) and they will turn their nose up and ask to not be placed near that content.

In the future - who knows - never discount Google to come up with a game changing idea ... however they need to hurry up as they might lose the momentum they had and Hulu is focused on global expansion so the clock is ticking.

Battelle asks whether Google are spreading their efforts too thinly

2008-09-02T16:53:00.003+10:00

John Battelle is someone I follow on Twitter. I love reading his stuff. I like what he is doing with Federated Media (giving advertisers access to 'conversational media', entering the world of branded content etc) and I like how he thinks about things related to digital.

He posted a few interesting 'tweets' (ugh I hate that word) today re Google. I thought I'd repost them here.

Follow John Battelle on Twitter - http://twitter.com/johnbattelle

Let's make a list of oceans that Google plans to boil, shall we?

1. Computer Operating Systems. Oh, well, no really, Web Operating Systems (Chrome et al).

2. Search. Check that one as boiled, but it's not easy to keep that ocean at true temperature.

3. Cloud computing, including applications (also known as Office).

4. Healthcare data. Really.

5. The entire mobile ecosystem, from OS to hardware (android).

6. Energy. Yep, energy (figuring out how to come up with sustainable energy below the cost of coal). Through Google.org.

7. The entire advertising/marketing ecosystem, offline and online.

8. Traditional methodologies and understandings of how a public company comports itself.

PS - # 7 includes analytics, ad serving, ad selling, integrated programs, TV, radio, print, etc.

9. Social networking. Yes, dead serious, they are playing against MySpace, Facebook, etc.

10. The entire UGC media world with YouTube and Blogger and Knol et al.

You tell me, is the company stretched too thin?

ninemsn get fixated

2008-09-02T16:44:00.004+10:00

Ninemsn have launched Fixated - www.fixated.com.au - with Citibank coming on board as the launch sponsor.

I've had a bit of a play - seems very similar to Hollywood Stock Exchange (http://www.hsx.com/) and Celebdaq (http://www.bbc.co.uk/celebdaq/). Not really a new concept (well, not at all a new concept) but they are the first to add a local spin. Yes, it's still a rip off but hey ... imitation is flattery.

Most interestingly, Citibank are the launch sponsor. Citibank's online efforts have generally been all DR focussed so it's fantastic to see them step into the area of sponsorships/branded content and outside of affiliate and CPA.

It's also good to see ninemsn really working at making thefix a consumer brand - which I think is indicative of ninemsn heading down the path of really building value and equity in their brands as opposed to being a faceless aggregator of feeds.

Facebook hiring in Oz

2008-09-01T14:39:00.003+10:00

So Facebook are looking for a Head of Sales in the Australian market - which suggests local operations (or at least a sales team) isn't too far away.

http://www.facebook.com/jobs/

YouTube to offer PDAs on homepage?

2008-08-29T11:06:00.002+10:00

Techcrunch is reporting (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/youtube-to-squeeze-more-money-out-of-homepage/) that YouTube will be "leveraging its homepage for profit by selling large format ads that expand to fill the whole page."

In the US it has experimented with click to expand PDAs for Pineapple Express, and this move brings the YouTube homepage in line with other prominent high traffic homepage placements in terms of impactful ad units available to advertisers.

The homepage for YouTube is key as it doesn't include any potential copyright infringements - so it is clear to monetise it as it pleases. It's not so easy with user uploaded videos - unless YouTube has a partner distribution arrangement with them.

The YouTube homepage locally does around 1m impressions a day, which would put it behind ninemsn, the Fairfax mastheads, myspace, News.com.au and Yahoo!7 for sheer volume. One would imagine it would be difficult to charge more than $40k for this placement (given that is the ballpark myspace charge for a full homepage reskin).

Still - one of these per month would generate around half a mil. annually for YouTube - which isn't exactly chump change, but probably doesn't start to scratch the surface on how much the channel wants to make.

Beijing 2008 over: Yahoo!7 release audience data

2008-08-25T13:41:00.001+10:00

Yahoo!7 today released some figures on the popularity of their Olympics presence this year.

The topline ...

- 1.2m unique users for Week 1. 1.15m unique users for Week 2
- 32m pageviews
- 4m video streams

What we don't know ...

- engagement stats (time spent, repeat visits)
- most popular time of day
- how many of the users were AU based (you'd estimate around 80%)

Yahoo! would be happy with these numbers. And they'd be happy with the way they utilised the TV coverage to push to web - which they did very well.

For next time (well, next big event as 9 has the next Olympics) they would probably want to add search capabilities to the online video, as this is the only area I think may have fallen short.

4m streams isn't bad, don't get me wrong. But on a site that was claiming around or above 300k users every day it's not great. 4m streams over the 16 days of the games equals 250,000 streams a day. Personally, I think these numbers would have been greater with a search function as finding some videos was very difficult. Also remember, they had some very strong content (all the good content) which would have been in demand from users - if they could find it easily. I also think they could have integrated video search for Olympic content into their own search engine - if you searched for Usain Bolt the day after the 100m there was no reference to watching the video on Yahoo!

However, the AU streams hold up well when compared with the stream data for the NBC Olympics site in the US (which had a load more content).

The US NBC site had around 75m streams (I am basing this number on 56m streams after day 12, extrapolating the number out to 16 days - http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2008/tc20080820_627259.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_digital+entertainment)

The US has 223.1m Internet users ... which works out at .29 video streams per total ppl online (US).

AU has 11.65m Internet users ... which works out at .34 video streams per total ppl online (AU)

If you apply a $60cpm to the 4m streams and assume a 90% sell through, if the Olympics were sold on normal CPM (which they weren't) it would have meant a $216,000 pay day for Yahoo!7 - which still means online video is small potatoes when compared to its broadcast cousin.

Still, Yahoo!7 held their own during the Beijing Olympics and no doubt surprised many on how well they delivered. Now we wait to see just how much incremental traffic the Olympics delivered for them, and whether they can hold onto them and push them across the network into their key areas of News, Mail, Search, Answers and Entertainment.

Excessive: AU Homepages Ad Count

2008-08-25T09:32:00.005+10:00

I have voiced my concern with the volume of ads appearing on publisher homepages in the past, and today I thought it'd be an interesting time to see whether ad messages are dominating publisher homepages still.

As an agency guy, I think the less ad units a publisher has on their homepage the better. I think as an advertiser if you're forking out between 50-130k for a homepage execution, it devalues the placement for it to be surrounded by countless text ads for credit cards and debt consolidation.

Plus, I think the user deserves the frontpage to be clean and easy to navigate.

So, effectively, the publishers are failing both their stakeholders.

And you would never see the front page of a newspaper filled with ads.

Anyway - lets look at the totals for Monday 25 August.

Yahoo!7 - 16 total ads
Excessive ad units add more clutter to an already cluttered experience. Overwhelming.

ninemsn - 14 total ads
Biggest positive is that the area above the fold is pretty clean - still, a lot of text placements here.

theage.com.au - 16 total ads
Admittedly, 8 of these placements are Sponsored Links ... and the page is pretty long ... but Fairfax are squeezing every penny out of their eyeballs and advertisers.

smh.com.au - 17 total ads
We have a winner! Optus have a med rec + OTP ... as well as the Sponsored Links placements and the awesome bottom leaderboard. More finance sales pitches than a bank manager.

news.com.au - 8 total ads
Good effort. Marks deducted for news still considering the 468x60 banner to be acceptable as well as two display ad units above the fold.

Bigpond - 4 total ads
Bigpond only have 4 external advertisers on their homepage - not bad. Let down unfortunately by their horrendous Bigpond Shopping page dominant ad.

Google - 0 total ads
And this is Australia's most popular page ... which says to me users enjoy less clutter.

I would like to see a publisher look to place LESS ads on their homepage, but extract more yield from these placements. Both advertisers and users would value less ad clutter and advertisers would be prepared to pay more.

Right now the amount of ads on homepages makes the industry look amateur and greedy in the eyes of most. And excessive ad placements effectively devalue these "premium" placements in the long term.

Yahoo!7 Olympics video frustrates ...

2008-08-21T13:53:00.002+10:00

http://au.sports.yahoo.com/olympics/video/

Why doesn't Yahoo!7's Olympic video content have video search functionality?

Try finding the video you're after - it's hard work ploughing through the pages when it would be easiest to tag everything and allow access via a simple search mechanism.

Better user experience and no doubt way more streams would have been generated.

Weird.

Real Estate sites feeling it as interest rates start to bite

2008-08-20T21:51:00.004+10:00

I saw this post on TC about selected US real estate sites bucking the downturn in the market and seeing strong usage increases.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/19/real-estate-sites-are-holding-up-despite-the-housing-slump-some-trulia-better-than-others-zillow/#comments

It made me wonder what impact the continuing interest rate rises have had on the Real Estate category online in AU.

We bought a place last year in November, moving in in January and have been bombarded with rate rises since.

However when we were in the market it was white hot. The market for new homes up until the end of December 07 was incredibly competitive.

Take a look at the below graph (taken from Nielsen Netview, July 2008) ...

Real Estate as a category was peaking around January 2008 ... and since Jan has dropped over 15% of users (until July). The trend is evident - and across market leaders Realestate.com.au and Domain as well as the category

You have to wonder what impact interest rates and economic uncertainty has had on this.

I have noticed some real estate sites have been a lot more aggressive in market seeking display advertising - offering very low CPMs to try and woo non real estate/finance clients over to their sites - which might be a consequence of falling revenues for their bread and butter - real estate listings and finance tenancies.

Are Destra telling the truth re redundancies?

2008-08-20T16:01:00.003+10:00

Destra CEO Perry Smith has told Ad News that Destra has not made any employees redundant in the process of restructuring its operations.

"I don't know where that rumour is coming from, there have been no redundancies at Destra Media," he told AdNews

http://www.adnews.com.au/News.cfm?NewsId=5146

However ... I was contacted by a former Destra staffer who says this is not the case and Destra has laid off employees.

From my source:

"In early April, nine employees of destra were made redundant -specifically, six from the development team, two from the destra mediateam and one from the destra music team.

"Basically, we were told there was a restructure and, as a result of'duplicate roles', our jobs had become redundant. We knew this to be a load, as we were the only people working on the sites (in a content capacity).

"Since then, most of the team has either taken a volunteer redundancy or left the place (across the whole division)."

Interesting ... Destra did tell AdNews they were 'streamlining operations' but as mentioned above, stated NO redundancies had been made.

Care to clarify Perry?

Jupiter: Pre-roll-phobia a thing of the past

2008-08-20T10:00:00.003+10:00

Following on from yesterdays blog post about pre-roll acceptance - http://mimelbourne.blogspot.com/2008/08/pre-roll-effectiveness-discussion.html - Jupiter have just released some research which show that the pre-roll is perhaps more effective than many thought and that consumer resistance to the format isn't as intense as first thought.

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=130375

"Half the people that leave because of the ad would have left because of the content anyway. It's like flicking through channels on TV." He calculates that on sites that do it well, only a 5% loss is directly attributable to advertising.

"It makes sense that in-stream ads are more popular, because everyone has broadband now and we expect to see richer content on the web," said Jeroen Matser, strategy director at Tribal DDB, London. "It's also a return to allowing people to sit back again. People can relax and be entertained, which might be refreshing in this cluttered, call-to-action environment."

Key quote from Nate Elliot of Jupiter - "Online video ads (if done poorly) can be horrendous for viewers."

Plugger redesigns

2008-08-19T20:26:00.002+10:00

Can't say I'm a fan at all.

http://plugger.com.au/

Looks nicer - but that's where the positives end for me.

Harder to navigate. Harder to find relevant information. Search results don't seem as relevant as before. Feels clunky.

I was a die hard Plugger devotee and would spruik it to anyone who'd listen. I'm not sure I'll be as vocal now.

Please Plugger - go back to the old interface!

The pre-roll effectiveness discussion continues ...

2008-08-19T19:45:00.004+10:00

Interesting post at Silicon Valley Insider on pre-roll full play rates - http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/8/video-ad-companies-people-love-watching-video-ads-

Talk pre-roll with someone involved in digital media and you'll generally get a robust discussion. Some absolutely loathe the format (mostly agencies and advertisers running of a sample size of 1 - 'I never click on those' etc) and some think it provides a legitimate alternative to Television (generally publishers or ad servers).

(Tremor Media) says only 20% of Web video watchers give up and leave when confronted with the pre-rolls it serves up. Or, as Tremor is putting it in a release later today, 80% watch the ads all the way through.

Not to be outdone, Break Media is claiming an even higher "completion rate" -- 87% -- for its pre-rolls, which includes a whole lot of user-generated video.

What explains their popularity? In part, it's because advertisers geniunely think they're the most effective format available. And in part, it's because pre-rolls look and feel just like the TV ads publishers and advertisers are already comfortable with. Who's going to come up with a better solution? There's a big pot of money waiting...

I don't mind the pre-roll but like all formats it needs to be right for the advertiser. When it's right it's amazing - solus ad unit, fantastic response, engaged audience - all things we're constantly looking for.

However, I do think the pre-roll has four core issues that need to be addressed ...

- generally pre-rolls are just TVCs compressed and do not in any way take advantage of the interactive elements of the medium OR even add start and end frames that push to a web destination.
- 15/30 seconds are probably too long as formats (especially if it's just a TVC). 10 seconds I think is the max.
- why do pre-rolls have to be moving pictures and audio? Why can't they be simple flash builds (like Rich Media Eyeblaster placements, pre-stitials etc)
- a lot of AU online video clips are 45s to 2m long ... extremely short form ... which means that if a 30s TVC runs prior the ratio between advertising content and actual content is a little out of whack.

And these 4 aren't getting any better. Publishers still position pre-roll as a no brainer for TV centric clients. I think this is wrong - very wrong. Most will also buckle and run 30s formats if advertisers kick up enough of a fuss.

Creative agencies still don't take pre-roll seriously either - so they rarely allocate budget to edit a TVC or recut something fresh for a pre-roll/online video placement. Another one for the too hard basket (which is often very full)

Personally in my pre-roll recommendations to our clients I am requesting 5-7s creative MAX. Do we receive this - rarely ... Eventually we will I am sure as there is client interest in the format, however right now this is limited to pro content ... not UGC ... which raises questions about those faciliators of video UGC and how they'll remain afloat. But that's probably worth another post entirely ...

It would be interesting to get audited data on peoples opinions on pre-rolls in Oz. Right now the only groups that have data are the publishers and I can't see them telling the story if it isn't incredibly positive. On a side note, I really hope Nielsen and the IAB are looking at measuring issues like this and putting some science behind it ... What we do know is the format has real potential and the publishers see it as their next cash cow.

Lets invest in some research then ...

Muxtape shuts down

2008-08-19T13:27:00.001+10:00

.. albiet indefinitely ... citing an issue with the RIAA.

http://muxtape.com/

I wondered how Muxtape had done such a good job deflecting the music industries concerns here - http://mimelbourne.blogspot.com/2008/08/muxtape-deflecting-inevitable.html

I guess it's caught up with them and they'll have to accept the same realities Pandora, Last and imeem are working with now.

WAToday - more interesting numbers ...

2008-08-18T16:36:00.000+10:00

I took a look at the numbers for WAToday for last week (11/8-17/8) to see how the new FD site was performing.

Interestingly, a duplication check uncovers some curious figures.

How come 60% of WAToday's readers also visited SMH.com.au last week? And how come 54% visited The Age.com.au. AND ... how come 35% visited Brisbane Times?

*** All data sourced from Nielsen Market Intelligence, Market: Australia - News & Weather - Domestic > By Brand, Period: Weekly, 11/08/08 - 17/08/08

And how come less than 10% visited thewest.com.au? And just over 12% visited Perth Now? These are WA based publications with local news - why would Eastern Seaboard mastheads be more appealing?

And why would these WA eyeballs be visiting FD's other mastheads in such large volumes if WAToday was catering for this "highly engaged audience" and delivering them a "new perspective on news." (Jack Matthew's words, not mine)

I think there's a need for Fairfax to come out with numbers showing WA Today's WA audience - and also explain to market why there are such large audience duplication across their audience.

Battelle on Google Ad Planner

2008-08-18T13:33:00.002+10:00

John Battelle has an interesting piece about Google Ad Planner on his blog - http://battellemedia.com/archives/004574.php#comments

"The strong bias toward Google network sites is suspicious."

The article is about inconsistencies between the Ad Planner data and Comscore data for the same sites, claiming that Google is potentially favouring sites on their own Ad Network.

"In short: If you were a media planner using Google Ad Planner, and you were looking for larger sites, you would be led to sites that are running Google AdSense, on average, over sites that do not. Net net: This data indicates that Google Ad Planner pushes ad dollars to Google sites over non-Google sites."

I have signed up to the Ad Planner beta in AU and plan to give it a solid test to see how it performs and whether it has potential for agencies. Right now I am suspicious ... a publisher (which Google is more of than not) running audience measurement doesn't sit too well ... but at the same time the Nielsen and Morgan tools are so bad I'm open to alternatives.

The online Olympics? Or is it ...

2008-08-18T11:13:00.007+10:00

Many of us (including me) thought that the Beijing Olympics would be a huge shot in the arm for online.

It makes sense ... daytime events, people are at work and wanting immediate information. Online is the channel they turn to?

Right?

Well ... I'm not so sure after looking at last weeks Nielsen Market Intelligence data across the News and Sport categories.

Above are the Nielsen figures for the Sport category, Domestic browsers, 11/8-17/8

Foxsports is at number 1 at 654,834. SMH Sport and afl.com.au are at 2 and 3 respectively.

The interesting things about the above for me are ...

- The entire category sits at 3.5m UBs, only up 8.7% on the week prior. Last week was when the Olympics really heated up ... but it hasn't really brought any incremental traffic to the category

- Fairfax Digital's SMH Sport is up week on week 216% to 578k weekly users. Their The Age Sport is also up significantly, up 151% to 310k weekly users.

- ninemsn's WWOS is down 40% week on week, to 207k users

Now take a look at the News category ...

As a category, News is sitting at 5.8m domestic users a week for 11/8-16/8 ... a decrease week on week of 3.14%

Most Masthead News sections or web news sources are either flat traffic wise, or down. I personally expected News traffic to spike during the Olympics.

Interestingly, UB frequency is relatively flat, so are page views per person. Both key engagement metrics.

What does this mean? I'm not so sure ...

I would suggest a high proportion of Olympic traffic is going through to Olympics.com.au and also the beijing2008 site - both of which Nielsen does not have access to.

Yahoo!7 is claiming they had 1.2m unique visitors through to their Olympics site in week 1. Problem is these are internal figures and don't specify whether they are AU eyeballs only. I find it odd that Yahoo!7 chose not to put their Olympics site on Nielsen when it's 100% localised.

Yahoo! is also spruiking incremental traffic to their front page as well. Again, no audited data on this.

So ... maybe the Olympics isn't pulling in any NEW eyeballs for these providers. Already loyal users of sites like The Age, ninemsn etc are moreso visiting their Olympic sections as they navigate through the site as per usual.

Or maybe everyone is just watching it on TV in the office and at home?

What are your thoughts?

Telstra's mobile Olympics package a huge success ...

2008-08-16T14:05:00.004+10:00

Justin Milne is out and claiming that the Bigpond streaming of the Olympics is a hit.

From the Oz - http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24176832-7582,00.html

The Olympics -- for which Telstra is the official mobile carrier -- would be a watershed moment in the development of the mobile as a content medium, BigPond group general manager Justin Milne predicted yesterday.

Paid Olympics packages on Telstra include live streams of Seven and SBS TV content and cost $9.95 for the Games, or $3.95 for a single day, while a one-off video is 50c to view.

"We don't give out numbers but we're 50 per cent over the targets that we set for ourselves," Mr Milne said.

"We've had huge take-up," he said. "It has the potential to be a bit of a watershed because the Olympics is so mainstream. "

Now, it's very easy to say how awesome and successful and over projections something is if you don't actually give out the numbers.

Problem is I, for one, think that maybe the mobile coverage isn't the big success they are claiming it is.

For one, Seven and Yahoo!7 have been very active in terms of disclosing ratings, traffic for their Olympic coverage. As have other online publishers such as ninemsn and Fairfax.

I wonder why Milne is so reluctant. If the numbers were so good and it was a watershed moment, surely he'd want to let us know how many people have signed up, full streams etc?

Maybe I am a cynic, but I'm dubious on these big claims. Show us the numbers.

Yahoo!7 COO gets zany

2008-08-14T12:18:00.001+10:00

And Valleywag cover it.

http://valleywag.com/5036750/who-is-that-masked-man

They're running a caption contest. Noted AU blogger Duncan Riley chipped in with "Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's failed Olympic streaming boy! "

Great iPhone demo

2008-08-13T15:18:00.000+10:00

For Commbank's new iphone app.

Really liking this ...

http://webpromos.com.au/commsec/iphone/demo.html

To ad network or not to ad network?

2008-08-12T10:06:00.002+10:00

That is the question ...

Two good articles of late that I think illustrate the benefits of selling your inventory via CPM and not giving into the short term revenue temptation of remnant networks

Conde Nast bucks Ad Network System, revamps Sales Strategy - http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3630482

Good article on how Conde Nast is focusing on verticals within their sales teams. For a company like theirs, it makes sense. Conde Nast is about quality not quanity, to remain viable they can't play an eyeball numbers game, they need to extract yield from premium content and context.

""The brands that we do business with are used to buying content. They value the context and they understand the price; you have to pay for that."

On the other hand you have this article ...

Ad Nets Accounted For 30 Percent Of Publishers’ ‘07 Sales; Premium Price Erosion?: IAB, Bain - http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-ad-nets-accounted-for-30-percent-of-publishers-07-sales-but-eroding-pre

In the past year, ad networks accounted for 30 percent of major publishers’ online sales, compared to five percent in 2006.

It also talks about how remnant inventory may account for 25% of inventory sold, but only 2% of revenue (due to the rock bottom prices). "Publishers’ desire to reduce their unsold inventory levels appear connected to greater use of ad networks and, therefore, to lower CPMs."

Here's the dilemma. Speak to local publishers about ad networks and they will tell you it's completely not a focus at all for their business and only accounts for <10% of their revenues. sure, it might only account for 10% of revenue but it accounts for a lot higher % of inventory - and that's what really hurts ... as not many premium advertisers want to be seen aside performance advertising. This then impacts the CPM you can charge ... which lowers your yield, increases your reliance on performance and so on.

It's not all bad news, as the article states that better targeting will lead to higher CPMs in future once/if rolled out. This may require consolidation though. And better targeting I'd imagine.

Want to confuse a client?

2008-08-11T22:13:00.004+10:00

Give him/her one of these ..... http://www.flickr.com/photos/briansolis/2735401175/

It's one of those diagrams that the intends to make things seem really easy but confuses the hell out of anyone not immersed in digital.

Found this at Ross Dawson's blog (which I read weekly and generally enjoy) - have to disagree with him that these are great. I think diagrams like this keep digital in the too hard basket for marketers struggling to keep on top of an already full workload.

http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2008/08/four_great_visu.html

Yes, I am aware that these potentially weren't intended for marketers ... but at the end of the day it's generally the marketers that make the decisions of where advertising money goes - be it into 'social media' channels or not.

Currently reading: Founders at Work

2008-08-11T13:33:00.003+10:00

Picked this up from Amazon and am slowly going through each of the interviews. It's written by Jessica Livingstone, who is a partner at VC Y Combinator.

http://www.foundersatwork.com/

Have really enjoyed the Max Levchin (Paypal, Slide), Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail) and Joe Kraus (Excite) stories.

Whilst most stories took place during the Web 1 chaos, most of the stories are still captivating - demonstrating the grit, confidence and patience required when building a web business.

Facebook's ad model in need of help

2008-08-11T09:47:00.005+10:00

Judging by their latest initiative

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/10/facebooks-redundant-ad-rating-system/

This allows users to rate ads with a thumbs up/thumbs down - it also asks them questions as to why they liked/disliked the ads.

Problem is - as TC point out - generally (and I mean generally) click through is a good indicator of this.

Another problem is - ads on social networks generally receive around .01-.03% CTR ... which begs the question ... if users on these platforms aren't interested in clicking on the ads ... why would they be interested in submitting feedback on them. A feedback mechanism implies users are taking notice of the ads, which generally they are not.

Another problem - the system will (for those with the time to add ad feedback) will be skewed towards negative sentiment ... not lukewarm/neutral responses - which are also a problem for the site (as neutral ads generate a low CTR, low yield etc).

Seems there's increasing heat for FB to justify it's massive valuation with inroads into the ad market ... but the more they try and the more they're getting it wrong.

The digital Perth landgrab

2008-08-11T09:27:00.002+10:00

Jack Matthews is out and about trumpeting WAToday's user numbers. The Oz is running a piece on it here --> http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24147236-26077,00.html

These numbers need a closer look I think.

1. They don't actually state how many of the users of WAToday are from WA
2. In terms of average daily UB's - WAToday is well behind the competition - PerthNow and TheWest.

Daily UB stats (August, source Nielsen Market Intelligence

PerthNow - 34,858
TheWest - 27,298
WAToday - 17,999

If we look at time spent per session

TheWest - 6m, 56s
WAToday - 4m, 4s
Perth Now - 3m, 52s

Matthews: "These results demonstrate that Western Australians were indeed ready for a new perspective on news and advertisers are reaping the benefits of our strong and highly engaged audience"

Problem is, thewest is still beating WAToday hands down for engagement. More repeat users, more time spent. And probably more WA eyeballs too ...

Freudenstein: The Way I See It

2008-08-07T12:07:00.003+10:00

Richard Freudenstein has a short piece in the PWC Entertainment and Media Outlook and makes a good point that I hope signals that the wider industry are starting to understand that not all eyeballs are created equal.

"And just as not every ad break or page in a newspaper is created equal in the eyes of advertisers, the digital media industry has to do more to communicate the value of premium inventory on our sites. The space on the internet may be limitless, but premium inventory - and its ability to deliver engaged audiences - is not."

Edit: Now I guess we have to work out what is meant by the term 'premium'

PWC Aust Entertainment and Media Outlook Report 08-12

2008-08-07T11:23:00.004+10:00

I'm going through the PWC Australian Entertainment and Media Report Outlook 2008-2012 to summarise for work.

I noticed an interesting point in their 'outlook in brief'

Performance or activity based remuneration of website operators by advertisers has taken hold as marketers seek genuine engagement with audiences on the Internet. This has significant implications for advertising supported web businesses which have been traditionally compensated on page impressions or clicks.

Reading between the lines I think they are mistaking performance based advertising as genuine engagement.

In an era of seemingly endless abundance ...

2008-08-07T09:33:00.002+10:00

.. what is truly valuable.

I came across this paper by a guy called Kevin Kelly written in February of this year. I think it's fantastic.

From the paper.

"Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?

I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus:

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

Well, what can't be copied?

There are a number of qualities that can't be copied. Consider "trust." Trust cannot be copied. You can't purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you'll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world. "

Digital advertising supply is super abundant - there is no shortage of supply and no shortage of vendors. So what is truly valuable to brands in this market when evaluating options?

Full article - http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/01/better_than_fre.php

Blog for sale - $3117 USD

2008-08-07T09:10:00.003+10:00

According to Websiteoutlook.com my blog has a valuation of $3117 USD.

http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.mimelbourne.blogspot.com

May as well sell out whilst the market is hot ...

Have a play around with the tool - according to it ninemsn is only worth around $4m USD! Facebook $481m USD. Interesting.

According to websiteoutlook, my blog is worth more than Yahoo!7 - flattering stat but hardly accurate - http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.yahoo7.com.au

Any prospective buyers can email me.

Myspace reaches new level of ad sophistication

2008-08-06T17:04:00.002+10:00

Thanks to Tommy W. Is this hypertargeting in action?

The Internet joins mile high club

2008-08-06T11:54:00.002+10:00

John Packowski is reporting on www.allthingsd.com that US airline Delta will will offer wireless Internet on its entire domestic fleet by mid 09.

From the article

"Provided by Aircell’s Gogo, Delta’s (DAL) in-flight broadband will offer 3.1Mbps-connectivity for $9.95 on flights three hours or less, and $12.95 on flights of more than three hours. Not an unreasonable price. According to a 2007 survey by Forrester Research, 26 percent of leisure travelers would pay $10 for Internet access on a two- to four-hour flight and 45 percent would pay that on a flight longer than four hours. For business travelers, the percentage is quite a bit higher. "

http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080805/delt/

Could we see Qantas and Virgin Blue offer this service on domestic routes in the near future?

Babblebaby launches in AU

2008-08-06T09:00:00.003+10:00

Allure Media (local publisher of Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, Defamer) has launched a new parenting site, http://www.babblebaby.com.au/

It's another addition to the burgeoning parenting space, which has seen rapid growth over the past 2 years locally with new offerings popping up and advertiser appetite for the space increasing.

Kidspot and Essential Baby are leaders in this space in terms of usage, with Huggies.com.au, bellybelly, Baby Centre, Bub Hub and Nestle Baby also visible.

Allure Sales and Marketing Director Ben Sharp feels the Babblebaby blog format fills a niche.

"The blog format - although commercially published - attracts an audience of media and technology savvy parents that tend to earn higher income levels, are highly educated and influential amongst their peers."

"Babblebaby will provide a non-judgemental discussion of though provoking and often controversial hot topics in parenting. "

Take a look.

Disclaimer: Ford Australia, a client of MindShare (my employer) are a launch sponsor of Babblebaby.

6+ months of the blog - some reflection, some data

2008-08-05T13:55:00.003+10:00

So it's been over 6 months I've been writing this and the response has been fantastic I think.

Originally I started this as a resource for the company I work for - to try and provide some structure to articles, opinion etc for the team. This became difficult when a publisher rang my national director having a whinge about me having an opinion and demanded it be taken down. My employer graciously gave me 2 options - take it down or make it a personal blog and keep on doing what I was doing.

The latter option appealed more ;)

I love writing this as it gives me a chance to sit down and think about issues I think are important. It's easy when you're flat out to sometimes become focused on task not thought ... and I felt I needed to consciously devote time to make sure I still gave time to the areas of digital I love discussing, debating and sharing.

I also felt there was a lack of digital blogs that covered media and the issues facing it in a way that offered value. I still think this is the case and would love to see more opinion around the digital media landscape and less straight linking or 'what do you think' murmurs.

Looking at my Google Analytics logs shows some encouraging traffic signs. Everything is increasing in terms of key metrics. In February I had 281 unique browsers, in July that figure was 833. Page Views during that time have almost tripled, Sessions have almost quadrupled. Either this means I am doing something right, or getting it so wrong people are sending it around. It could be a mix of both - who knows!

Anyway - big thanks to everyone who reads this, contributes, and gives me stuff to write about. I really appreciate it.

And apologies for the chest thump ...

Battelle launches Crowdfire

2008-08-05T10:44:00.003+10:00

John Battelle's Federated Media has launched a new initiative, http://www.crowdfire.net/

Crowdfire seems to be inspired by Battelle's trip to the 2007 Bonaroo festival.

He writes in a blog post celebrating the launch:

"Everyone says the music business is in collapse, but that's not true at all. The old industry may be dying, but the connection between fans and bands is stronger than ever. Thanks to the web, more and more acts can find their audiences, more and more fans can find music they love, and together they are changing the world of entertainment forever. It's nearly impossible to make money as a musician using the old system of record labels and Top 50 hits. But if you tour, if you are smart about what festivals you play, and if you use the web to connect directly with your base, well, there's clearly a great living to be made, doing what you love to do. And new companies like Superfly and Red Light and Another Planet were springing up to help artists do exactly that. It felt a lot like what I was trying to do with FM, the only difference being the medium. One was live music, the other was the conversational web. "

"In essence, we wanted to create a place where folks could mix their love of music with all the potential of personal and cultural technology. And if we could find a company or companies that both lived in the space and were visionary enough to help underwrite it all, well that would tie it all together. (We did, thanks Microsoft!) "

"The idea is pretty simple, really: Live music has always been a major production from the stage out to the audience: one to many, in essence. But with CrowdFire, we hope to provide all of us music fans a platform for doing with the experience of music what we're already doing with the experience of the web: a place where all of us can share and produce our experiences: a many to many celebration of live music, in real time, as well as as an ongoing, living archive of what has happened, and what might happen next. "

I've had a quick play around - seems functional. Not much content on there but it's only been live about 12 hours.

What I can't work out is whether this is a media play for FM or a branded content play for Microsoft consumer marketing.

Another element is how they will deal with copyright issues. People uploading clips from concerts they perhaps don't have the legal right to.

A further question is whether a MSFT branded community can tap into the spirit of passionate music goers ... or whether they'll continue to upload cam phone videos from local concerts onto YouTube.

Street View launches in AU

2008-08-05T09:27:00.003+10:00

Check http://maps.google.com.au

Great technology and the launch is sure to be fuelling office conversations (or diminishing office productivity) today as everyone looks for their house ... but my question is ... what's the actual use of street view for Joe Public?

Personally I can't see how it fits into the Google manifesto.

Muxtape - deflecting the inevitable?

2008-08-04T20:48:00.003+10:00

A few people have been talking up www.muxtape.com recently. My co-worker, Tyler, is always on the site.

The more I play with it the more I wonder - how is it legal?

Muxtape relies on people uploading mp3's to create a mixtape ... mp3's they generally (in most cases) wouldn't have the legal right to distribute (regardless of the fact you can only stream on muxtape, not download)

And we all know the music industry isn't the most digital friendly or literate ... and generally wheels out the cease and desist treatment to anyone doing anything online they don't understand.

Muxtape does a few things well. It's simple (too simple perhaps), and taps into the want of the hipster to create mixtapes that show off their musical depth. Yes, it has been done before ... Muxtape is just timed nicely. It also doesn't have to deal with the legal issues sites like imeem, last fm etc who have to be a little more conscientious/aware of the law.

That said, Muxtape founder Justin Ouellette had some interesting things to say when questioned on how the labels had reacted to the service when he spoke to Wired (back in April)

Wired: Have you been contacted by labels or other copyright concerns? If so, how is that going?

JO: I've heard from lots of interested parties, and it's actually been very encouraging. Labels big and small have told me that they're excited about Muxtape as a model for discovery and ultimately selling music, and I think that's extremely keen. Cassette mixtapes were such a great way to discover new music before the internet, and I think the lessons we learned from that era can be carried into this one. A concise mix with a personal touch is a powerful way to get someone to consider a song or artist in a way they might not just hearing it on the radio, and that's the kind of experience I'm trying to replicate on Muxtape.

imeem and last fm have label deals - right now muxtape does not. It will be interesting to see how the labels approach these deals and how they work out ways to generate revenue from these digital plays.

They need to - quickly. Check this local data on the Australian Record Industry sales by dollar value - down 1/3 in the past 4 years http://www.aria.com.au/pages/documents/Physical-Salesxvalue.pdf

Facebook ... when are you coming to Australia?

2008-08-04T20:11:00.002+10:00

Am I the only one confused as to why Facebook hasn't launched local operations.

For one, they have 3.2m users here.

Two, they currently have a pretty sluggish ad business here and don't seem to be nailing the premium advertisers.

Three, there will be a need sooner or later for Facebook to localise some elements of the platform. Myspace has, relatively successfully, incorporated local content via it's music, fashion, music and impact channels which has given them column inches as well as held most of their audiences interest.

Yes, I am aware Facebook and myspace are pretty different plays (Facebook is a platform and a connector, myspace is becoming increasingly more of a content play), but it still doesn't remove the need to integrate with the locals.

Personally I believe to really cut through in this market publishers need a local edge or at least an angle. Utilities don't ... but the bigger ad dollars aren't in placing ads on anothers utility.

As well as this, I believe Facebook needs to drive a category education job for advertisers and agencies in regards to the best ways to use the platform. Yes, we know users are on it and they are using it regularly. The confusing element is how advertisers can use Facebook without either being cliched, annoying or heaven forbid, both. No one knows the Facebook platform better than Facebook.

Facebook growth has flattened somewhat in the past quarter so the timing seems pretty good to step into the local market and press the flesh. Google has had some success in the past 12 months establishing a deeper agency sales team and knowledge base - in terms of visibility, market service and no doubt revenues. It has also meant Google has taken a leadership position in spruiking the business benefits of search to advertisers - something Yahoo! hasn't done as well.

So, Facebook ... where the bloody hell are you?

Two interesting articles in The Oz today

2008-08-04T15:56:00.003+10:00

Suspicion surrounds net advertising business

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24121648-7582,00.html

- "THE internet advertising industry is heading for a third year in which advertising networks will be among the fastest growing properties, but their new-found revenue clout does not appear to have dispelled the air of vague suspicion that continues to surround the sector."

*** Interestingly they haven't spoken to any advertisers - agencies/clients. Y'know - the people who actually SPEND the money. Good read regardless and an issue that is one of the toughest facing the industry.

Online ad firm trumpets its success

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24121652-7582,00.html

*** Hype piece on Adconion. Bit of chest thumping from Alex Littlejohn (tame compared to the chest shallacking Rohan Lund gave to AdNews earlier in the month mind you) and a weird quote from Lara Sinclair that seemed out of context ("That number, according to the comScore rankings, would have made Adconion the second biggest publisher in terms of Australian eyeballs, behind Ninemsn/MSN on 8.3 million." ... um, Adconion isn't a publisher hence so that figure is irrelevant).

Interesting these two articles ran on the same day. Good interesting. That said, although the performance 'industry' is topical at the moment (ie, most publishers are scared stiff that they are about to be commoditised into eyeball bulk sellers) it would be BETTER for the ad rags to talk about quality, respected digital publisher brands that are appearing online (cnet, lastfm, kidspot, carsales, business spectator, plugger, lost at e minor etc). I know as an advertiser I'm not spending my days looking for and researching the next mass remnant play ...

Richo inspires new domain

2008-08-02T20:02:00.002+10:00

I bought a new domain today

http://www.worldsbestbloke.com/

In honour of the worlds best bloke, Richmond footballer Matthew Richardson and the blistering season he is having in the AFL this year.

Grazia gets it right

2008-08-02T18:59:00.003+10:00

Have to say, the Grazia website - www.grazia.com.au - is pretty strong.

Content and opinion with an editorial direction. This is not a half baked version of the print mag ... it is a compliment to the print mag.

Much more bite than either Marie Claire - http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/marie-claire/ or Vogue - www.vogue.com.au - who have had years to improve their online sites but haven't seemed to manage to nail it. Marie Claire looks like every other page on Yahoo!7 ... and Vogue is desperately in need of a redesign as its clunky and difficult to navigate.

My feeling is Grazia will bring in new ad revenue from the Beauty/Fashion industry as well as take revenue off its competitors. Great execution from ninemsn/ACP on this one.

The Oz points out parent companies hypocrisy

2008-08-01T09:24:00.001+10:00

"JUST months after News Digital Media launched a low-cost performance advertising network, it is pitching its network of websites to advertisers as a high-engagement, high-quality medium that should attract premium advertising rates."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24103435-17061,00.html

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