Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

The Power of the Keys

Advertising, Audience Demographics, Audience Engagement, Marketing, Media, Online Video, Television | Posted by Larry Greenberg
May 20 2011

 

Will Boomers Soon Dictate TV Programming Tastes or Will Young Viewers Remain in the Driver’s Seat?

When I was a ‘yoot’, as Joe Pesci might put it, my friends and I had an expression for the one among us who was doing the driving on a given evening.  This person, we said, had “the power of the keys.”   The driver, it was tacitly understood, determined where we went – and when. The driver, in other words, had final say over that night’s entertainment.

America’s ‘yoots’ have had “the power of the keys” over ad-supported television for a half century.  Advertisers prize young audiences –particularly 18 to 34-year olds – because, among other reasons, they seek life-long brand relationships with consumers.

At first glance, this week’s network upfronts suggest nothing has really changed.  TBS advertised its lineup in The New York Times business section, “We Don’t Just Create Great Comedy, We Create Young Fans.” Fox’s 2011 fall lineup underscores its efforts to remain the champ of the youth demo.

Some industry watchers, however, think they are starting to see a shift in advertiser outreach strategy, away from a younger to a chronologically more inclusive viewer base.  The Times recently noted that Kellogg’s, Skechers and 5-Hour Energy drink are targeting the over-55 crowd, and that the networks are unveiling more shows with a broader audience appeal.  Alan Wurtzel, the president of research for NBC Universal, told The Times the network was mindful of Boomers when putting together its new fall programming. For example, NBC has renewed Harry’s Law, starring 62-year old Kathy Bates, and is launching Playboy, which, like Mad Men, appeals to 1960s nostalgia.

Meanwhile, Nielsen made news when it announced that the percentage of American households owning televisions dropped for the first time in 20 years.   One main reason:  Young audiences prefer accessing their entertainment via Internet alternatives such as Netflix . So as 78 million Boomers age, they are being joined in front of the TV by a shrinking percentage of viewers from succeeding, smaller generations.

In 2010, the CW began a concerted effort to follow young viewers to the Internet.  This year, Variety reports, CW’s “convergence of screens” approach is paying dividends, as viewers seem willing to consume advertising online.  According to the article, about 94% of the CW’s online ads are being watched to conclusion.

So will the networks start paying more attention to older viewers?  It seems so.  Will the networks continue to put young audiences in the driver’s seat?  It seems so – as far as the broader entertainment universe is concerned.  But targeting of audiences will have to become more, well, targeted.

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Are Advertisers Ready to Embrace Baby Boomers?

Advertising, Audience Demographics, Audience Engagement, Internet, Marketing, Media, Social Media, Television | Posted by Larry Greenberg
Aug 31 2010

Is it time for advertisers to cast aside 50 year-old assumptions about 50 year-olds?

Pew just released a study that reports social networking among the over-50 set has nearly doubled – from 22 percent in April 2009 to 42 percent in May 2010. Although still heavily dependent on email, “many older users now rely on social network platforms to help manage their daily communications,” said Pew Senior Research Specialist Mary Madden, author of the report.  “Young adults continue to be the heaviest users of social media, but their growth pales in comparison with recent gains made by older users.”

Indeed, wrote Nielsen, 8 of the 10 most frequently visited web sites for 18 to 34-year-olds are the same for baby boomers, the generation born between 1946 and 1964. Nielsen also reported that the boomers spend 38.5 percent of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) dollars, yet less than 5 percent of advertising dollars are targeted toward the 35 to 64-year old age group.

Baby boomers number 79 million, according to USA Today, the largest age demographic in the nation.  Are advertisers missing an opportunity with this enormous group?  Are marketers still wedded to the notion, which became conventional wisdom some 50 years ago during television’s early days, that most advertising dollars should be spent in pursuit of the youth market? Or are we about to witness a shift in advertisers’ approach to older consumers?

Boomers, said Pat McDonough, Senior Vice President, Insights, Analysis and Policy at the Nielsen Company, “… are the largest single group of consumers, and a valuable target audience. As the U.S. continues to age, reaching this group will continue to be critical for advertisers.”

The television audience is getting older as well.  Forbes recently reported that the median viewing age for the four largest national broadcast networks is 51 years-old. The average age increase reflects in part the dwindling numbers of young people who watch the networks.

As a result, TV’s share of the advertising pie continues to shrink. A joint survey by ANA (Association of National Advertisers) and Forrester Research of more than 100 national advertisers showed that advertisers allocated only 41 percent of their media budgets to television in 2009, down from 58 percent in our 2008.  But that same survey also showed that about 80 percent of advertisers believe the 30-second spot will still be around in 10 years.

So as brands reassess their marketing mix, with branded entertainment and the Internet playing a bigger role, will they also reconsider their demographic strategy?  Instead of focusing predominantly on 18 to 34 year-olds, will advertisers also try selling more to older audiences?  Alan Wurtzel, president of research and development at NBC, told Forbes that advertisers are beginning to take a second look at this demographic.

This would likely please late-night host Craig Ferguson, who shared his own thoughts on television’s youth marketing strategy in a funny rant last year.  (See “Appealing to the Youngest Common Denominator.)

Most of all, it should make advertisers happy, as they see their sales increase.

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Gary Vaynerchuk: Insights from a Successful Web Entrepreneur

Audience Engagement, Branding, Free Content, Internet, Media, Online Video, Social Media | Posted by Larry Greenberg
Jul 30 2010

If you didn’t attend the July 28 NY Video Meetup, I recommend watching the following James Lipton-style interview that group founder Yaron Samid conducted with Gary Vaynerchuk.

nyvideo on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

A key discussion topic:  What can content producers learn from the 34-year-old Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library TV, a daily video blog about wine that he started in February 2006 and which now enjoys more than 90,000 daily viewers?

In 1997, before the emergence of such social networking platforms as Twitter and Facebook, Vaynerchuk used the web to rebrand his father’s wine business.  With the launch of Wine Library, a retail site, he increased the company’s annual revenue from $4 million to $60 million as of 2008.  Success begat success for Vaynerchuk, with the release of The New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, Crush It! Why Now is the Time to Cash in on your Passion, in 2009, numerous national television appearances including Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and the co-founding with his brother AJ of VaynerMedia, a boutique agency that works with personal brands, consumer brands, and startups. He is also an angel investor in various startups.

“There’s no overnight success,” Vaynerchuk told the NY Video audience, which consisted of about 200 video producers, entrepreneurs and other industry professionals.  Building an audience is a “marathon,” in which expertise is “massively important” and the traditional concept that ‘content is king’ is “really a big deal.”

He also said that content providers really need to care about their audience, taking the time to respond to each inquiry, including emails.  “If anyone follows you or watches you, you should be grateful.  It’s not the size but the emotion” of the following that matters.  Vaynerchuk said the Twitter phenomenon has hurt because, “it’s created a culture about numbers.  How many of those (followers) really care, at least from a business standpoint.  To get them to really care, you must care about them first.”

Vaynerchuk said online entrepreneurs should be focusing on the revenue-generating potential of mobile.  He foresees possibly developing a Wine Library smartphone application that would include a barcode scanner that enables shoppers in the store to see if his show has reviewed a particular wine or to determine whether a store has a recommended wine in stock.  He also envisions each Wine Library TV episode ending with shopping list.

Oh, and he made this one prediction: Facebook Connect is going to win search over Google. He said people would prefer getting a friend’s recommendations than some anonymous opinion positioned through SEO.  “Context of relationship is really powerful,” Vaynerchuk said.

If you’re interested in developing a following for original web content, I highly recommend listening to Vaynerchuk’s entertaining and insightful discussion.

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Gulp! Avoiding Being Hooked By Bad People – or Bad Information

Internet, Journalism, Media | Posted by Larry Greenberg
Mar 05 2010

You may consider yourself too worldly to fall for a phishing scam.  But be honest.  Chances are that some time in your internet life, overwhelmed by the daily barrage of emails and other messages, you let your guard down.  That’s when you received an authoritative-looking email with a link you clicked on in haste, only to learn you were tricked by a cyber-criminal seeking to take control of your computer and/or steal your valuable personal information.

If this has never happened to you, then you are most savvy.  Or maybe lucky.   Care to test your level of gullibility? SonicWall, a company that provides secure network solutions, has a 10-question quiz you can take to see if you can tell the scammers from the mere spammers.  According to the site, only 7.4% of those who have taken the quiz have scored a 100%, so if you don’t get an “A,” don’t feel too bad.

But in addition to being taken by bad people, how good are you about not to be taken in by bad information?  If fending off phishers is difficult, consider how hard it is to sift through the countless news resources – broadcast and cable networks, newspapers and magazines, email newsletters, blogs, tweets, comments, and on and on.  Even the most respected, best- intentioned members of the fourth estate can sometimes, if inadvertently, misrepresent the reality involving a particular issue or story.  And while the blogosphere and comments boards offer democracy the greatest forum in human history, the conversations often have less to do with sober scholarship and due diligence than with emotional and even juvenile partisanship (partisanship in the broadest sense of that term).  Even the most discerning information consumer will at some point, due to data-weary vulnerability, accept something as fact when it should have been treated with a healthy dose of skepticism.

The tools that make it so easy to disseminate inaccurate and distorted information also enable simple double-checking of facts.  So while it’s easy to get caught in the frenetic pace of an electronic news junkie, it’s also simple enough to step back and carefully consider an article or statement that’s been presented as truth.  Just as one might use the web to authenticate or debunk a phishy-looking email, one can conduct a Google web and news search to bring up a wide range of well-documented results covering a seemingly infinite range of topics.

There are also numerous sites dedicated to fact-checking.  One such site is, in fact, called FactCheck, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, which tests the validity of assertions made in the world of politics.   Another, Snopes, has become popular for verifying or discrediting urban legends across a wide range of categories.

So the next time someone tries to play on your emotions, whether with a scary looking email pretending to be from your bank or a terrifying-sounding message masquerading as the truth, don’t forget the power of the Internet to shine a light on the reality of the situation.  It can’t hurt to get information from more than one source.

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The Future of Paywalls for Online News

Journalism, Media | Posted by Larry Greenberg
Nov 09 2009

What’s a national newsprint magazine to do in an era of declining ad revenues?  Add many more pages and stories, and use more expensive paper stock, of course.

If that seems to contradict the prevailing industry wisdom about the future of news publishing, Bloomberg LP may know something others don’t.

MediaWeek reported recently that Bloomberg executives unveiled their plans for BusinessWeek at an internal staff meeting.  In addition to a bigger, glossier magazine, Bloomberg will make most of BusinessWeek’s general coverage available online for free.    Bloomberg is, however, considering a $100 annual online subscription fee for those wanting access to an extensive library of vertical-specific content.  Further, the Wall Street Journal wrote, Bloomberg is considering charging subscribers as much as $1,000 per year for access to certain content on Bloomberg.com.

This latest development suggests the publishing industry has cast another vote for the freemium model.

Although not a consumer publication in the mold of a general news weekly, BusinessWeek nevertheless appeals to a much broader readership than Bloomberg and other hard core business information services.  Will the industry see more mergers between B2B and consumer media outlets?  Will such arrangements involve B2B outlets, with their relatively lucrative corporate-paid subscriptions, supporting the ad-dependent consumer partner that, in turn, brings more readers and its print brand prestige to the table?

Getting consumers to pay for online content — either as subscribers or per article — is going to be a tougher sale.  Rupert Murdoch has indicated the News Corporation may delay plans to charge for the New York Post, the Australian and, in the UK, the Sun and the Times.  There seem simply to be too many competitors willing to give away similar online content.

The New York Times ran an article about how subscriptions remain the holy grail of revenue generation.    The piece noted that unlike a pay-per-use model, in which the consumer must make repeated value judgments, the traditional subscription model spares customers the bother of repeated decision-making and ensures a steady stream of revenues.   Most people, however, are already accustomed to free online content. Further, when a tough economy is pressuring individuals to reduce discretionary spending,  the task of getting consumers on  board appears even more daunting.

It seems online subscriptions would more likely succeed with business customers, because people are more willing to pay for the news they need, not want.

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