Report: Time spent on Google+ has stagnated

The amount of time U.S. users spend on Google+ has increased in a slower rate in recent weeks, according to Experian Hitwise. This indicates that it may have difficulty to make headway against Facebook, Bloomberg reported.

During the week ended Aug. 27, an average user spent 5 minutes and 47 seconds on Google+, up about 4 percent from the previous week. Time spent on the site peaked in the week of July 16, at 5 minutes and 50 seconds, Hitwise noted.

According to Charlene Li, an analyst with Altimeter Group in San Mateo, California, even though the new service provides some good features, “Facebook is an entrenched rival with more than 750 million users.”

“The people that you’d want to add are in many cases very happy on Facebook and they don’t want to have another social network,” Li said.

U.S. visits to Google+ dropped 5.5 percent to 1.16 million during the week ended Aug. 27, compared to a 2.6-percent traffic growth in the previous week, according to Hitwise. The site had gained 283 percent in traffic during the week ended July 16.

However, Google hasn’t made the service public to everyone yet, so it’s too early to judge user numbers, Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with Stamford, Connecticut-based Gartner Inc., said, Bloomberg reported.

Groupon traffic drops nearly 50%

Groupon’s traffic has dropped nearly 50 percent since its peak in the second week of June,

according to new Hitwise data, Media Post reported.

The data is based on Web-based traffic, excluding mobile and app-specific traffic.

During the same time period, however, competitor Living Social has seen a growth of 27 percent in visits to its site.

In general, traffic to Hitwise's custom category of Daily Deal & Aggregator sites declined 25 percent for the same time period.

"Perhaps it is simply a case of increased number of competitors and deal fatigue among consumers or simply not enough of the right deals," said Bill Tancer, GM of global research at Hitwise.

A Local Deals Survey released by PriceGrabber in June pointed out that 44 percent of respondents said they use or search daily deal sites, but 52 percent felt overwhelmed by the number of bargain-boasting emails they receive every day.

Looking into the future, the daily-deal market will be virtually nonexistent by 2016, according to Forrester’s prediction.

"Standing out above the clutter [will become] harder for marketers as ad exposures grow. Consumers will grow so conditioned to micro-impulse offers they'll lose practice at considered decisions ... Facing a cultural descent into maladroit judgment, employers (and spouses) will blacklist impulse deals to keep people intentional," Forrester analyst Shar VanBoskirk noted.

Image: Daily Steals Blog

Online ad spending to hit $77 billion by 2016

By 2016, online ad spending in U.S. will total $77 billion, which comprises 35 percent of overall ad spending, according to a new study by research firm Forrester.

Mobile ads will surpass social ads and email marketing this year, and hit $8.2 billion in revenues by 2016, as advertisers will want to reach consumers while they’re on the go, either on mobile or tablets, not just searching at their desk, Forbes reported.

Search ads will lose its market share from 55 percent to 44 percent. No wonder Google is stepping aggressively into display and mobile advertising, as well as social media.

Display ads will rise to nearly $28 billion, or 37 percent of total online ads by 2016 as brand ad spending hikes online. Display ads provide more image-oriented messaging, compared to other direct-response search advertising. Also, advertisers will like to reach people in particular on social media sites, instead of just while searching on Google.

In addition, daily deals will drop, said the study author Shar VanBoskirk. “Consumers will grow so conditioned to micro-impulse offers that they’ll lose practice at considered decisions — in all walks of life, not just when buying spa treatments. Facing a cultural descent into maladroit judgment, employers (and spouses) will blacklist impulse deals to keep people intentional,” Forbes reported.

Image: Forrester

Pandora reports gains on subscriptions and mobile ads

Pandora Media reported its first quarterly earnings up, as well as growth in subscriptions and mobile advertising since going public in June, New York Times reported.

For the three months that ended July 31, its fiscal second quarter, the company reported $67 million in revenue, increasing 117 percent year-over-year, and beating analysts’ expectations. It was also the sixth consecutive quarter of triple-digit growth in revenue, year-over-year.

Pandora posted a net loss of $1.8 million, or 4 cents a share.

Advertising revenue totaled $58.3 million, and about half came from ads for mobile devices. According to the company, it was the first time mobile ad revenue had reached that level of ratio.

In July, Pandora said more than 100 million users had signed up for the service. And according to Steven M. Cakebread, the chief financial officer, 37 million users tuned in at least once a month. Pandora users listened to a total of 1.8 billion hours of music in the second quarter, a gain of 125 percent year-over-year.

Facebook receives 1 trillion pageviews

Facebook has reached 1 trillion pageviews in June, according to new data compiled by DoubleClick, a subsidiary of Google, ReadWriteWeb reproted.

In June 2011, Facebook received about 870 million unique visitors, which exceeds the number of its registered users by about 120 million. It is because many of the site's pages appear in search results and usually are visible to non-users, if only partially, according to DoubleClick.

The data showed that Facebook got about 1,150 pageviews per visitor, which implies it’s an extremely sticky website.

YouTube was the second most-visited site, with 790 million unique visitors in June and 100 million pageviews.

The data does not include adult websites, ad networks and certain sites owned by Google.

Carat lowers global ad outlook; Digital still key driver

Aegis' Carat unit announced to downgrade its global ad spending outlook to 5-percent growth from 5.7 percent, citing “global macro-economic factors, natural disasters and political instability,” but still expects it to expand at a healthy rate this year, Media Post reported.

"Carat's updated global ad forecasts demonstrate that the recovery in most major advertising markets has continued in 2011 and is set to continue in 2012, against the backdrop of uncertain times," said Aegis CEO Jerry Buhlmann. "The impact of global macro-economic and political issues, combined with natural disasters, has led us to soften the full-year outlook for 2011 and 2012."

Carat only lowered its 2012 projection on global ad spending growth from 6.2 percent to 6 percent, because of incremental stimuli from special advertising-related events, including the Summer Olympic Games in London, the UEFA European Football Championship and the U.S. presidential elections, Media Post reported.

According to Buhlmann, the fast-growing and emerging markets keep offsetting the lagging major industrialized nations in ad spending growth. "At the heart of the market, the long-term trend of the two-speed advertising world and the rapid growth of digital are very much in force. The faster-growing regions of the world - particularly China, Russia and Latin America - will continue to eclipse performances from the developed economies. In terms of the growth in media share digital remains the leader of the pack, with out-of-home and TV growing faster than the overall market."

Echoing with industry estimates from other sources, digital is still the key driver for overall growth. However, some traditional media, such as TV and out-of-home, are sustaining factors, Media Post reported.

Image: Impact Lab

Online still the sweet spot for global ad spending

Worldwide ad spending is expected to rise 4.4 percent this year, according to the new "consensus" estimate by Warc, which lowered its original prediction made in April from 5.1 percent, Media Post reported.

The consensus is based on a weighted average of ad spending projections at current prices from a collection of ad agencies, media monitoring services, analysts' reports, and Warc's own proprietary projections, Warc noted. It is generally more negative than most of the other industry sources.

Among 13 major advertising markets Warc has covered, Western Europe is the least performed, especially Italy, which is expected to drop 0.7 percent this year, down 3.3 percentage points from its April outlook. Spain is also estimated to decline 0.7 percent, down 3.1 percentage points from April.

According to Warc, the downward revisions are consistent with the "recent loss of confidence in these economies."

Some markets improved their outlooks from April, including Russia, which is now expected to expand 19.8 percent this year, up 3.6 percentage points from April. China's outlook gained 0.8 points to 14.1 percent growth, while Canada's increased 0.1 points to 5.4 percent growth.

In terms of media segments, Warc said online will expand the most, boosting 14.6 percent in 2011 and 13.3 percent in 2012. TV is expected to rise 5 percent this year and 7.5 percent next year.

Global ad spending consensus for 2012 for all media is now 6.3 percent, up slightly from the 6.2-percent projection in April, Warc said.

Image: Corbis / Ruediger Trebels via paidContent

Study: iTunes top U.S. online movie market; Wal-Mart beat Amazon

Apple’s iTunes store still dominated U.S. online movie market in the first half of 2011, followed by Microsoft's Zune Video Marketplace, while Wal-Mart's Vudu movie service beat Sony's PlayStation Store and Amazon's digital movie offering, according to the new research by IHS, CNET reported.

As part of the Screen Digest Media Research program, the study found that iTunes saw its first market share increase since 2009, from 64.9 percent of the market in 2010, to 65.8 percent in 2011.

"Much of iTunes' success can be traced to the rising usage of Apple's AirPlay system, which allows wireless video streaming to consumer electronic devices including televisions," according to Arash Amel, research director, digital media, for IHS in a statement.

"This has expanded the reach of iTunes to new platforms, boosting sales of movies from the system."

Vudu boosted from just 1 percent market share to 5.3 percent year-over-year, while Amazon only increased slightly from 4 percent to 4.2 percent this year.

Microsoft's Zune Video Marketplace dropped from 18.5 percent to 16.2 percent year-over-year, which IHS blames on the cool-down of holiday console sales, which were boosted by Microsoft's Kinect accessory. As for Sony, the report pointed out that Vudu cannibalized potential Sony sales with its application for PS3, as well as the temporary shut down of Sony's PlayStation Store following the security breach.

Image: IHS

Zero Hora bets on hyperlocal content and younger audiences

By Samantha Barthelemy

Marcelo Rech, the first general director for products at RBS Group, sees the future in hyperlocal news and a proactive and innovative online strategy to engage younger audiences.

Zero Hora, the group’s flagship title, is Brazil’s sixth largest newspaper by circulation, with 4.37 percent of the national market and an annual average circulation of 186,157 daily copies, according to Brazil’s circulation body, Instituto Verificador de Circulação.

Voted 2009 Young Reader Newspaper of the Year by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, Zero Hora has a 78 percent penetration rate among readers ages 20 to 29 in its market, and a 71 percent penetration rate among those ages 15 to 19.

RBS Group is headquartered in the southern city of Porto Alegre. Among other businesses, the media conglomerate's television arm, RBS TV, contains 18 television stations. The company also owns 25 radio stations, eight newspapers and four Internet portals.

Zero Hora aims to expand its coverage and production of quality local content both in print and digitally.

“Local content is not available online with the quality traditionally offered by our product,” says Rech. “We are tapping into an audience not yet reached by digital products. With hyperlocal news, we create an immediate association between a brand that seemed distant with the quotidian of smaller communities,” he adds. “When a large communications group pays attention to street pavement in a small suburban city, that population feels, in a way, protected and defended.”

According to the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, about 37.5 percent of Brazilians are Internet users and the numbers are rising fast.

Engaging readers of all ages

Rech says the growth of digital media pushed for the strengthening of Zero Hora’s content quality. The paper seeks to improve its multimedia culture by training and hiring personnel, particularly for its online edition, applications’ development and hyperlocal websites. By the end of 2011, RBS expects to have more than 15 hyperlocal websites.

Rech guarantees Zero Hora is working hard for constant originality and creativity, and to offer stronger context and analysis in print to accompany straight news stories abundantly available online.

“Once news became a preferential territory online, the print newspaper identified its growth path and gained readers’ recognition precisely through the strengthening of reporting and analysis,” he says.

Zero Hora focuses on the differentiation of its online and print products and “their respective trademark traits.” The print edition carries more analysis, plurality of opinions and exclusive stories, while the online version focuses on breaking news and multimedia. Zero Hora then links its print and online content to increase interest across platforms. If the paper plans on including an exclusive story on the following day’s print issue, it will place a teaser on its website and add “to find out more read tomorrow’s paper.” The following day the story will be published in print first, and later online.

Zero Hora is also working to make its online version more innovative and interactive, to appeal to its younger audience. The staff takes advantage of Porto Alegre’s generally unstable weather and invites readers to send in pictures and short reports of storms. Readers of all ages are also invited to submit photos, audio and video pieces and reports of events happening in their neighbourhoods, cities or states for online publication. The best images can then be selected for print publication. Zero Hora welcomes content and opinion from its audiences. The circulation department asks around 120 readers what they think of the paper every day and then sends a detailed report to Rech by 1:00 p.m.

The paper also promotes story writing contests for children and adolescents, offering published stories or visits to the printing plant as a prize. Zero Hora tends to its younger audiences by including a children’s section, called ZH Criança (ZH Children), with series about childrens' lives, games and contests. It also tends to young adults by offering information about universities, entrance exams, postgraduate studies and employment and career opportunities.

Rech says the newsroom has been integrated since 2007. Every member of the team is expected to understand and contribute to the work across different platforms. Zero Hora was one of the pioneers in having a social media editor, responsible for monitoring the newspaper’s social media presence and extracting valuable content from different portals.

Business strategies for the future

Grupo RBS uses its different businesses to carry out “regular cross-promotion.” The radio stations promote the newspaper's print edition, which then refers to its website, which includes TV-produced content and so on. For coverage of important events, like the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the group focused on producing a strong synergy. While TV stations did most of the coverage, a TV reporter blogged on the newspaper’s online portal, and radio and print journalists participated in TV interviews and commentaries during the events.

Zero Hora began charging for access to its online content in September 2010. Stories published in print are behind a digital paywall or accessible only to print subscribers, while exclusive online content, including videos and blogs, can be accessed free of charge.

Zero Hora was also the first daily newspaper in the state of Rio Grande do Sul to launch an iPad application. By the end of 2011, the paper plans to have a second application.

Rech said Zero Hora was “well prepared for difficult moments” and survived the global financial crisis without having to make cuts. In fact, Grupo RBS’s eight newspapers grew in circulation in 2010, requiring increased investments in personnel and logistics.

All newsrooms are set to receive three types of training in 2011: expansion of multimedia culture to assist professionals in dealing with non-text media; offering senior editors a more strategic vision on changes in the media and communications environment; and classes for multimedia professionals on perfecting the use of voice and video.

In addition, RBS’s collaborators are going through an extensive meetings and workshops programme to strengthen the company’s core values and stimulate a culture of continued change. On March 3, 2011, Grupo RBS and BR Investments announced a partnership for the creation of HSM Education, to be based in São Paulo, offering executive training and editing courses and consultancy.

“As long as there is no complacency, whoever innovates and tends to audiences with adequate products and an obsession with quality will have a lot of room to grow in this new market,” Rech says. “With communications extremely fragmented, credible brands have a head start in conquering readers’ confidence and preference. We have a lot of faith in print, especially in Brazil were masses are only now reaching the market of media consumption. Millions of Brazilians are beginning to cohabit with newspapers, starting now.”

This interview and more will be available in the World Newsmedia Network's upcoming World Newsmedia Innovation Study. To secure a free copy of the report, please take our survey, available in nine languages.

Weekly digital news round-up

More people use Google for search in the U.S. than any other search engine; however, both Yahoo! and Microsoft's Bing were more effective than Google when it comes to getting users to actually click through to another website, data released Monday by Experian Hitwise shows.

Google had 66.05 percent of the search market in July, while Yahoo made up15.07 percent and Bing 12.98 percent. However, because Yahoo! and Microsoft had a search deal in 2009, Bing has officially started powering Yahoo's search results in the U.S. and Canada beginning in 2010, which made Bing-powered searches account for 28.05 percent in the United States.

The United Kingdom's Premier League and Championship football governing bodies have made a deal with news organisations, enabling them to give live updates during matches, it was reported Monday.

The previous deal, made for the 2003-04 season, restricted newsmedia outlets to giving updates only at certain times during a game and did not give any provisions for Twitter, which had not yet been created. Under the new deal, newsmedia outlets may report with a time delay of a few minutes, and journalists can update coverage throughout a game, including using social media. The practice of charging media outlets for “end user licenses” to publish content from news and photo agencies has also been ended.

MediaNews Group, the publisher of 57 U.S. daily newspapers, announced it will erect online paywalls for 23 of its smaller newspaper sites, it was reported Tuesday. The paywalls, which will ask online readers to pay for digital content access, also includes those who subscribe to the print edition. Under the new system, visitors to the MNG sites will be allowed to see up to five articles for free per month, and will need to pay for access after that.

As video-watching becomes increasingly popular on mobile devices, video encoding and URL shortening service Vid.ly executives hope the service will provide video publishers with enough value that they will be willing to pay for it, it was reported Wednesday. Vid.ly allows publishers to upload a single source file, which is then transcoded into 25 video renditions and given a unique, shortened Vid.ly URL. Then, the correct file is served up to the individual user, based on the device she is using and the network bandwidth available.

Numbers from Vid.ly seem to indicate that although Android is the biggest mobile operating system, iPhone users enjoy videos much more often.

In advertising news, digital ads with more interactivity are good for business, new research has found.

Readers perceive brands with more interactive digital ads, such as those with photo galleries, sponsored videos and 3D product views, as being more “innovative,” research from Affinity's VISTA Digital Service reported.

In social networking news, Facebook still dominates the market, but new research by Trendstream has found that in some of the site’s biggest markets, including the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom, the usage for activities, such as status updates, sharing content, messaging and installing apps, has plunged sharply.

Magazines are continuing to create their iPad strategies. Reader's Digest subscriptions are now available through the magazine's iPad app, at US$1.99 monthly or $14.99 yearly. Print subscribers also now have access to the magazine's digital version, so they don't have to pay twice to read on different platforms. However, free access for print subscribers will only last for six months, which means the magazine may be hoping to push readers onto digital platforms, which could be more cost-effective in the long term.

Study: QR codes yet to hit mainstream in U.S.

Mobile QR codes are still far from gaining mainstream adoption in U.S., according to a new comScore study. In June 2011, only 14 million people, or 6.2 percent of all mobile subscribers in the country, had scanned a QR or other type of barcode on their device, Media Post reported.

In addition, the usage of the codes skewed to young, affluent males - 60.5 percent of QR code enthusiasts were males, 53.4 percent were between the age of 18 to 34, and 36.1 percent had a household income of $100,000 or higher.

In terms of where people are using QR codes, print magazines and newspapers are on the top - Nearly half (49.4 percent) did so via print sources. Product packaging came next with 35.3 percent, a desktop Web site with 27.4 percent, and a poster, flyer or kiosk with 23.5 percent. 13.4 percent of users scanned it on a business card or brochures, 12.8 percent on a storefront, and 11.7 percent on TV, according to comScore.

"For marketers, understanding which consumer segments scan QR codes, the source and location of these scans, and the resulting information delivered, is crucial in developing and deploying campaigns that successfully utilize QR codes to further brand engagement," said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile.

Although tech-savvy young guys seem to be the most likely to embrace QR codes, Ypulse found that nearly two-thirds of students have no idea what they are, while 6 percent have seen them but don't know how to use them. Also, among those who have heard of them, only 42 percent think they are easy and useful, Media Post reported.

Trinity Mirror's freesheet turns paid

Trinity Mirror has relaunched its free Wales weekly and is now charging 80p per copy, Journalism.co.uk reported. With this change, all of Trinity Mirror's North Wales titles are now paid.

The Bangor Mail is trading in its part free, part paid model, which saw 81 percent of its print copies given away for free. It is now a fully paid-for title with a revamped website.

The weekly title has a strong readership and has been a consistently strong performer, Trinity Mirror stated, according to HoldTheFrontPage.co.uk.

The Holyhead & Anglesey Mail, the Bangor Mail's sister title, will also be redesigned and remain a paid title.

Facebook Comments elevate discussions on news websites

Linking a real name with each comment means less name-calling and insults on the discussion sections of news websites.

Using Facebook Comments puts a real name with each comment, which leads to a high quality discussion and more referrals for news organisations, Poynter reported today.

For example, the Los Angeles Times began using Facebook Comments on its blogs, but continued to use traditional commenting on its news articles. When comparing the two side-by-side, the blog comments were generally well-mannered and stayed on topic. The news comments sections, which allowed pseudonyms, were quite the opposite – even for the same topics covered in both the news and blogs sections.

Although Facebook Comments doesn't guarantee an environment completely free of name-calling and insults, putting real names with comments does mean Web staff have a lot less clean-up to do.

Reader's Digest makes in-app subscriptions available on iPad

Reader's Digest subscriptions are now available through the magazine's iPad app, at US$1.99 monthly or $14.99 yearly, GigaOM reported today.

Print subscribers also now have access to the magazine's digital version, so they don't have to pay twice to read on different platforms. However, free access for print subscribers will only last for six months, which means the magazine may be hoping to push readers onto digital platforms, which could be more cost-effective in the long term.

Readers requested in-app subscriptions, and the company expects “more Reader's Digest brands becoming available via iPad subscription – both in the U.S. and around the world,” said Dan Lagani, president of RD North America, according to paidContent.

Magazine publishers Conde Nast, Time Inc., Hearst and Meredith Corp. have all agreed to Apple's subscription plan. By the end of the year, Time Inc. plans to have all of its 21 titles available for download, making it the first major publisher to digitise its entire magazine portfolio, Folio Mag reported today.

Youku shares boost on report Tencent may be in talks to purchase stake

Youku.com Inc., the biggest video website in China, had gained the most in a week in New York trading, after Tencent Holdings Ltd. is reportedly to be in talks to buy a stake in the company, Bloomberg reported.

Youku’s shares rose 13 percent, the biggest advance since Aug. 11, to $27.01 Wednesday. Tencent’s shares were up 0.1 percent to HK$180.00 at the close of trading in Hong Kong Thursday.

Youku is “in talks with industry players all the time for strategic moves or partnerships,” according to Jean Shao, a company spokeswoman, in a telephone interview Thursday. She refused to comment on if the company talks with Tencent, as did Jane Yip, a spokeswoman for Tencent.

According to Chinese website Phoenix Tech Wednesday, Tencent was in talks to buy a stake in Youku and for Youku to manage Tencent’s online video unit. The report only cited “reliable sources” but didn’t identify.

Image: Keith Bedford/Bloomberg

Study: Facebook activities drop in mature markets

Though Facebook still dominates the social networking market, a new research, GlobalWebIndex, by Trendstream, found in some of the site’s biggest markets, including U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom, the usage for activities, such as status updates, sharing content, messaging and installing apps, has plunged sharply declines, Media Post reported.

"Time has wearied users of Facebook," said GWI, while total worldwide usage continues to increase, thanks to the emerging markets.

The study interviewed about 100,000 individuals in 27 markets in June and July.

According to the study, In U.S., the proportion of users messaging friends on Facebook was down 15 percent in July compared to the previous month, while that of "joining a group" activity dropped 10 percent. "The trend is even more pronounced among U.S. college educated 20somethings, the original users of the platform," the report added.

By contrast, total active usage of all social network sites has boosted significantly worldwide across all age groups. For example, usage was up 26 percent among group ages 16 to 24 and up 35 percent among those ages 35 to 44.

In general, emerging markets such as Malaysia and Indonesia are the driving forces for the growth of social networks, while users in more mature markets, including U.S. and the U.K. are shifting focus on e-commerce. Some markets, such as Singapore and Turkey, have both activities significantly popular, but tend to skew slightly one way or the other, Media Post reported.

Image: GlobalWebIndex

Report: Interactive ads boost brands

Digital ads with more interactivity are good for business, new research has found.

Readers perceive brands with more interactive digital ads, such as those with photo galleries, sponsored videos and 3D product views, as being more “innovative,” research from Affinity's VISTA Digital Service has found.

Eighty-eight percent of readers said they enjoy the experience of an interactive ad with video more, and 89 percent said they believe the advertiser is “innovative” for incorporating the video into their ad, according to the service, which measures ad effectiveness on iPad apps and other mobile platforms.

Of readers viewing photo galleries through a digital magazine ad, 88 percent said they are able to learn more about the product, and almost nine out of 10 said the brand is innovative. Meanwhile, 92 percent said experiencing a 3D view of a product enhances their overall magazine reading experience, and the same percentage consider brands using 3D views to be innovators.

Image: eurotuner

Vid.ly: Capitalising on mobile video

As video-watching becomes increasingly popular on mobile devices, video encoding and URL shortening service Vid.ly executives hope the service will provide video publishers with enough value that they will be willing to pay for it, Giga Om reported today.

Vid.ly allows publishers to upload a single source file, which is then transcoded into 25 video renditioned and given an unique, shortened Vid.ly URL. Then, the correct file is served up to the individual user, based on the device she is using and the network bandwidth available.

Numbers from Vid.ly seem to indicate that although Android is the biggest mobile operating system, iPhone users enjoy videos much more often.

Since its launch in January, Vid.ly has served 5 million videos. Of those, 62.5 percent were watched on iPhones, while 23.98 percent were watched on Android phones, according to Vid.ly.

Users watched 11.12 percent on Blackberries, and 2.38 percent were watched on iPads, said Vid.ly founder Jeff Malkin, according to paidContent.

Study: Consumers know when they're being targeted by behavioural ads

Increasingly digitally savvy consumers know when advertisers are targeting their behaviour, and understand the basics of the practice, research from Harris Interactive shows, eMarketer reported yesterday.

U.S. Internet users have noticed ad relevancy increasing over the past few years; however, they don't see most online display ads as being relevant to them. Still, those who say at least a quarter of display ads are relevant has been increasing since 2008.

Internet users are also learning the lingo: 30 percent said they are aware of what “do not track” means; 84 percent are aware of the term “Internet cookies;” 66 percent recognise the term “interest-based advertising;” and 65 percent recognise “online tracking, according to eMarketer.

Image: eMarketer

Designers bristle at HuffPost contest

Bloggers aren't the only ones angry with The Huffington Post's policy of trying to get content for free.

The AOL-owned website earlier this month announced a contest to design its new Politics icon, and many designers responded with a simple message: We don't work for free. The winning logo would be used “all over the interwebs,” and the designer would be credited, but not paid, the contest stated. Designers came together, saying that a competition or something similar to get work done for free is unethical, AdWeek reported.

“To ask designers to work for nothing suggests that design has no value,” Richard Grefé, executive director of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, told Poynter.

AntiSpec began a formal campaign against the HuffPo, announcing “Shame on them.”

“The Huffington Post was bought by AOL for a reported $315,000,000 back in February 2011.  Plenty of cash on the table to hire a designer to create a logo, right?” AntiSpec stated. “A logo is integral to a company’s branding and demands extensive thought and research.”

According to AdWeek, HuffPo spokesman Mario Ruiz responded to the news frenzy, saying that the contest was “a fun way of enabling them to express their passion for politics — and for HuffPost. As readers of our site know, we frequently engage our community with requests for feedback and suggestions. So while AOL Huffington Post Media Group employs an in-house team of more than 30 talented designers, we felt this would be a lighthearted way to encourage HuffPost Politics users to express another side of their talents. The post was in no way an attempt to solicit unpaid design services.”

MediaNews launches paywalls at 23 newspapers

MediaNews Group, the publisher of 57 U.S. daily newspapers, announced it will erect online paywalls for 23 of its smaller newspaper sites. The paywalls, which will ask online readers to pay for digital content access, also includes those who subscribe to the print edition, Media Post reported.

Under the new system, visitors to the MNG sites will be allowed to see up to five articles for free per month, and will need to pay for access after that.

Online readers who don’t subscribe to a print edition can choose to pay $5.99 per month or $59.99 for access for one year, while print subscribers only need to pay $1.99 per month or $19.99 annually.

Those adopting the new paywalls are only small and mid-sized newspapers - MGN's bigger titles, such as the Denver Post, San Jose Mercury News, Oakland Tribune, Salt Lake City Tribune and Long Beach Press-Telegram, will remain free for online access.

According to a survey by the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri-Columbia, one-fourth of U.S. newspapers are already charging for some online content. The figure could increase to 60 percent in a few years, as publishers struggle to stabilise finances amid a continuing drop in print ad revenues, and only modest growth in online, Media Post reported.

The survey found that the proportion is even higher among smaller newspapers (circulation under 25,000) – 46 percent has some kind of online paywalls, compared to only 24 percent for newspapers with circulation over 25,000.

Image: Best Techie

Study: Too much TV associated with shorter lifespan

People who watch an average of six hours a day of television live an average of almost five years less than people who do not watch any TV, research from Australia has found, USA Today reported.

For every hour of TV watched after age 25, lifespan fell by 22 minutes, according to the study by Dr. J. Lennert Veerman of the University of Queensland. However, the TV watching itself isn't what leads to a shorter life; rather, longer time spent watching television is associated with an unhealthy lifestyle, such as eating poorly and less time spent exercising, other experts pointed out.

The report was published yesterday online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Researchers used data on 11,000 people ages 25 and up from the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study, which included information about how much TV people in the study watched weekly.

Last year, another study, also out of Australia, found that watching television for an hour each day led to an 8 percent increase in the risk of early death, MediaGuardian reported.

Image: stevetaylor.fivefour's flickr photostream

BBC departs from magazine publishing

BBC Worldwide is selling its stake in an Indian publisher and its business that controls magazine Radio Times in order to focus more on digital services and international video, the BBC announced today.

The UK broadcaster's commercial arm has sold most of its magazines to Exponent private equity group, as well as its 50 percent stake in its Indian joint venture, Worldwide Media, to Bennett, Coleman and Co., which owns the Times of India, paidContent explained. The deals total £121 million, according to the Financial Times.

Magazine titles Top Gear, Lonely Planet, Good Food and Easy Cook will be retained by BBC Magazines, but they will be published under contract by Exponent, the BBC noted.

In all, 11 non-BBC branded magazines were sold outright to Exponent, while 18 BBC-branded titles, such as Garners' World, BBC Music and BBC Wildlife, will be licensed by Exponent.

“The deal announced today offers the best prospects for the magazines business to continue on this path of success, while BBC Worldwide pursues a strategy increasingly focused on international video and digital services,” said John Smith, CEO of BBC Worldwide.

News outlets make online football coverage deal

The United Kingdom's Premier League and Championship football governing bodies have made a deal with news organisations, enabling them to give live updates during matches, Journalism.co.uk reported today.

The previous deal, made for the 2003-04 season, restricted newsmedia outlets to giving updates only at certain times during a game and did not give any provisions for Twitter, which had not yet been created. Under the new deal, newsmedia outlets may report with a time delay of a few minutes, and journalists can update coverage throughout a game, including using social media. The practice of charging media outlets for “end user licenses” to publish content from news and photo agencies has also been ended.

Representing media in the deal is the News Media Coalition, made up of agencies such as newspaper publishers, including News International, as well as Reuters, Getty, Agence France-Presse and others.

“Friday's agreement will put news-gatherers back in the press boxes at football grounds following a week in which a dispute with the football authorities over accreditation terms and conditions saw the media unable to attend matches,” the News Media Coalition said in a statement, according to Press Gazette. “The previous agreement, signed in in 2004, was perceived as placing unreasonably restrictive constraints on how news organisations could use and distribute their copyright football content at home and abroad.”

Social media has completely changed the digital landscape since 2004, and has become integral to how news is disseminated.

The old agreement was not “fit for purpose in the digital age,” the Guardian's Mark Sweney wrote. Even though news organisations must still delay coverage for several minutes online, the amount of time it takes to upload new information means that the new agreement is workable, he reported.

Image: jbelluch's flickr photostream

IAB asks ICANN to end top-level domain name plans

The Internet Advertising Bureau is calling on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to stop its plan to create top-level domains, TechCrunch reported today.

Domains, such as .facebook, .newyork, .coke, etc., would be expensive for advertisers and publishers, and would also “provide the opportunity for cyber squatters to extort money from companies by registering domains in 'bad faith,'” the report explained.

“ICANN's potentially momentous change seems to have been made in a top-down star chamber. There appears to have been no economic impact research, no full and open stakeholder discussions, and little concern for the delicate balance of the Internet ecosystem,” Randall Rothenberg, CEO and president of IAB, stated in a press release. “This could be disastrous for the media brand owners we represent and the brand owners with which they work. We hope that ICANN will reconsider both this ill-considered decision and the process by which it was reached.”

The Association of National Advertisers has also called the plan “economically unsupportable,” and has stated that it could “cause irreparable harm and damage to its membership and the Internet business community in general” and “contravenes the legal rights of brand owners and jeopardizes the safety of consumers,” the press release stated.

ICANN has created a video to explain the top-level domain names, which it calls gTLDs (generic top-level domains).

Study: Yahoo! searches most effective in U.S.

Although Google still dominates the U.S. search market, Yahoo! and Bing were more effective in getting users to actually click through to another Web site, according to the latest data released by Experian Hitwise.

Google had 66.05 percent of the search market in July, while Yahoo made up 15.07 percent and Microsoft's Bing 12.98 percent. However, as Yahoo! and Microsoft had a search deal in 2009, Bing has officially started powering Yahoo's search results in U.S. and Canada since 2010, which made Bing-powered searches totally accounted for 28.05 percent in U.S., PCMag reported.

But which search engine can offer results users actually want? According to Hitwise, Yahoo! had the highest "success rate" – with 81.36 percent of its searches resulting in a visit to a Web site. Microsoft's Bing followed with 80.04 percent, while Google came in third with 67.56 percent.

"The share of unsuccessful searches highlights the opportunity for both the search engines and marketers to evaluate the search engine result pages to ensure that searchers are finding relevant information," Hitwise noted.

The firm also found that one-word searches were still the most popular, accounting for 25.32 percent of all searches, while longer searches, or those with five to eight words, gained 3 percent between June and July, PCMag reported.

Image: Experian Hitwise

Axel Springer: Evolving from print to multimedia

By Tim Christiansen

Newspapers must become integrated media companies that use their brands effectively in order to survive, says Christoph Keese, president of public affairs at Axel Springer AG.

The German-based multimedia company has invested heavily in its digital media division and plans to erect paywalls for additional revenue streams in order to maintain high quality content.

With more than 11,500 employees and annual revenues of approximately €2.9 billion, Axel Springer is the leading newspaper publisher in Germany. The company is active in 36 countries, has more than 230 newspapers and magazines and 80 websites, and boasts holdings in television and radio stations. In 2009, Axel Springer was one of the most profitable publishing companies in Germany, with an EBITDA margin of 18.6 percent.

Circulation in Germany shrunk by 10 percent from 2007 to 2009 and advertising expenditure declined. But this didn't lead to a large decline in revenue for Germany´s publishing companies. Many have made up for revenue losses by charging higher prices. Although German publishing companies have experienced decrease in volume, the decline is moderate from a global perspective.

“Axel Springer´s core business is the provision of information and entertainment for different audiences,” Keese explains. To this end, Axel Springer has three primary strategic targets: the German market, the internationalisation of the model and the digitalisation of the business.

The newspaper business is the most lucrative segment of Axel Springer´s portfolio and subsidises the organisation’s online activities. But the primary goal for the future is to increase online revenues from 25 percent to 50 percent of total revenue. Axel Springer has also taken a decisive stance against the “free-of-cost” culture on the Internet.

“Journalism cannot be free of cost and high quality content needs a price tag,” Keese says. Currently, only search engines can appropriately price their product. Content contributors must participate more in order to generate adequate profits. “Content is not king, content is everything!”

Axel Springer’s high quality content and brand are of high strategic importance to the company. The consumer has the strong desire for orientation and curation. Due to the variety of products and competition in the digital age, strong brands are critical to the success of media companies.

Further, Axel Springer has quickly scaled internationally. Axel Springer AG and Ringier AG merged in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Serbia in 2010 to create a joint venture called the Ringier Axel Springer Media AG. To date, the new multimedia company has secured of €414 million in revenue and employs 4,800 people. It is already one of the leading media conglomerates in Eastern Europe, publishing more than 100 titles and managing over 70 websites. The goal is to have an IPO in three to five years.

Axel Springer has “evolved from an old fashioned newspaper publisher to a multimedia powerhouse!” Keese says.

This interview and more will be available in the World Newsmedia Network's upcoming World Newsmedia Innovation Study. To secure a free copy of the report, please take our survey, available in nine languages.