digital deliverance

I'm in Paris where later this week I'll be representing my friend Gordon Borrell's firm at the World Association of Newspapers' Advertising Conference and be one of the conference's speakers about online revenues.

That's one reason why I'll be missing the Newspaper Association of America's Connections conference about online newspapers, which is underway in Orlando (where a section of of a theme park resembles a dwarf Paris but the food isn't anywhere as good). I haven't heard any news arise from the Connections conference — except that the NAA itself has launched a $50 million advertising campaign to "'surprise advertisers with the truth' about how engaged consumers are with newspaper advertising and to remind them of the reach of newspaper media in all its forms – print, online, niche publications, wireless, kiosks and even podcasts." I bet that really will surprise advertisers who are armed with tons of research showing that consumer actually are becoming less and less engaged with newspapers in print and only modestly more so online.

Meanwhile, 5,000 kilometers northeast of Orlando, the departing editor in chief of The Economist weekly news magazine in London, which has doubled its circulation worldwide, said that newspapers had played their part in his magazine's success by preferring 'entertainment' journalism to serious analysis. "I think we have been left a bit of space," Bill Emmott told the Guardian. "They [newspapers] have had a hard task of how to deal with and preserve a mass market in an age when their market has been eroded by television on the one hand and the internet on the other.... But I think they have left us some space by continuing to play in the mass, almost entertainment market. Very few have come in our direction of analysis. There's a choice - more entertainment or more information, and the numbers that have taken the more information route are very few."

Perhaps unrelated to that dichotomy, Associates New Media, the digital publishers of the Daily Mail's website, is launching an ad-funded video news service online. Every London weekday lunchtime, ANM will broadcast celebrity, music and film-related news clips online. ANM COO Mark Milner told Netimperative that “Integrating advertising with our video broadcast provides an excellent opportunity to reach and communicate with the Mail’s unique audience in a content rich environment whilst ensuring stand-out."

A thousand kilometers south of ANM, the chief creative officer of British TV show (Big Brother) producer Endemol told the 3GSM conference in Barcelona that the mobile network operators have failed to discover a 'killer application' for mobile phone (presumably besides voice calls and SMS?). Peter Bazalgette said a 'killer app' for mobile content would need to harness viceo, consumer participation, and the mentality of the 'user generation,' the Guardian reported.

Speaking of the 3GSM conference and the Guardian, that newspaper let Magic Lantern Production's Anthony Lilley boldface all the buzzwords he heard there, although you've probably heard most before.

I'm pleased to read that Times Newspapers of London has hired former FT.com COO Zack Leonard as its new digital media publisher. Savvy move. Leonard, like former Wall Street Journal Online Edition publisher Neil Budde, who's now general manager of Yahoo's news operations, is a pioneer in online publishing.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 03:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Every few years in new media, I find a consulting client whose business plan, product or service, and managers are refreshingly sharp, competent, and unusually opportune. In those rare cases, and particularly if it’s a startup venture, I’ll trade some of Digital Deliverance’s consulting fees for deferred compensation or future equity in the venture because I’m confident of its potential. And if I like the venture even more after working with it for awhile, I’ll even taken a very active stake in it by joining the venture as an officer.

That's been the case with Critical Mention.

Its founder & CEO Sean Morgan approached me last November, via an intermediary in London, about consulting to his company. Now, after three months of consulting to Critical Mention, I’ve joined the New York City-based company as its vice president of broadcast relations to implement the solution.

What is Critical Mention? It's a Twenty First century update of the old analog concept of a broadcast news monitoring company. Corporations hire it to monitor television news and talk shows for any mention of their corporations, products, products, and interests. It monitors all U.S. national network channels plus the local news broadcasts in the top markets.

Yet, rather than use its employees to monitor and videotape broadcast the way that traditional companies in broadcast monitoring do, Critical Mention instantly digitizes all the broadcasts. Because by law all U.S. broadcasts must all send closed captioning text streams with their videos, Critical Mention converts that stream into keyworded metadata associated with each minute of a broadcast. The result is a video news database that is searchable and can alert the moment a news or talk program mentions a corporation’s interest. Clients can then view these digitized, keyword-searchable broadcast via a secure, non-downloadable feed from Critical Mention.

Since Morgan started Critical Mention, more than 100 of the Fortune 500 companies (including 20 of the Fortune 100) have hired it to research and monitor their interests. Other clients include most major public relations firms, the offices of many U.S. senators, congressional representatives, a former president of the United States, and the federal departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Transportation. Not bad for a two year-old company.

Continue reading "Why I'm at Critical Mention" »

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AccuStream iMedia Research reports that the number of video streams online increased by more than 80 percent last year, for a total of 14.2 billion streams. Almost 80 percent of those streams were broadband (defined as 100 Kbps or higher).

One of the four factors cited for the growing number of video streams is that the number of broadband homes in the U.S. increased by 36 percent last year — broadband is now the predominant method of home access, accounting for 55 percent of all at-home users, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, which predicts that, if the broadband home rate continues, almost 70 percent of all U.S. home users will have broadband connections by the end of this year.

AccuStream says that music videos accounted for the greatest number of video streams (34 percent of the total), with news and information second (20 percent), and sports third (15 percent.

The report also found increased online radio usage. The average online 'aggregate tuning hours per month' in 2004 was 178.9 million, up 76 percent over 2003. AccuStream predicts growth in online radio use will trend ahead of video in 2005, growing 60 percent year over year.

What these increases may mean for online broadcasters should be astonishing.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 11:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)