Ashkan Karbasfrooshan over at Montreal-based Mojo Supreme is blogging about the forecasted fall in online ad revenue in 2009. He points out that all this talk of an ailing economy will have a multiplier effect on ad rates as media buyers convince themselves that lowballing publishers is the best tactic and publishers scramble to book what they can. Karbasfrooshan's entire blog post is worth a read but here's the kicker - All Things Are Relative: At Least We’re Not in Radio, TV or Print!
If online advertising sentiment is this bad, even if the outcome is half as bad, then imagine what the radio, TV or print outlook is right now. Can you really imagine a media buyer paying $1M - let alone $50M, as Dell balked at - to be in print? What about radio or TV, which represent a black box in advertising where you don’t get to even track or target anything?
Newspapers like NYT and Tribune are - or are at risk to - defaulting right and left. TV companies like CBS are seeing declines in revenues. Radio companies are not faring better.
The point I am making is: there is a bull market somewhere at all times - even these times - and that market is online. It’s time to balance the reporting, too. I find it appalling (alright, strong word) that a site like Tech Crunch inflated the bubble on the way up, and is now ringing the bells of doom in the downturn… but that is publishing… and Tech Crunch does it well.
Who does the doomsday scenario thing best? Henry Blodget. Reading his Alley Insider, you’d think he and his talented staff of writers were typing on a ledge somewhere, choosing between the Publish button and jumping out of the window. For a great piece on his comeback, read this Wired piece. Mind you, in all honesty, I am technically guilty of this as well, the title of this piece should be “Will Online Ads Fall by 50%”, and not “What Happens if Online Ad Revenue Falls by 50% in Q1?” - but when I started writing it, I was thinking more of the impact on print… but then I started to ask myself, can this even really happen?
Well, maybe. At the end of the day, we just saw a major evaporation of wealth throughout 2008 in the housing, financial and automotive sector, to think that online advertising will go on unscathed is foolish, but to alternatively expect a 50% decline in what is the only bright spot in all of marketing is equally foolish.
Thoughts? Where do you think online advertising is headed in 2009?
WatchMojo.com - a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mojo Supreme Network - is one of the largest producers, publishers and syndicators of video... [more]
During a recession, the business landscape transforms itself. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Lucrative opportunities come about that are otherwise unattainable during better and brighter times. I believe when the going gets tough, truly great entrepreneurship shines. After all, you are forced to be more creative with your efforts to build value. You will likely consider new partnerships; new sales approaches; dump business models, projects and people that don’t perform; empower your remaining staff to do more; and, most importantly, reevaluate your marketing strategy.
Often, the natural inclination to recession-proof a business is to slash marketing costs. That is the last thing you want to do. Studies completed on marketing during the recessions of the 70s, 80s and 90s show that the smartest thing to do is to spend on marketing. In fact, a study published by McGraw-Hill shows that companies that continued or increased their marketing spend during a recession had 256% higher sales than the companies who chose to cut or halt their marketing budgets. Moreover, companies that went into hibernation and tried to reestablish their brand position after recovery paid 4 to 5 times the amount saved by their marketing budget cuts. (If you are a marketer and contemplating how to talk to your CFO, read this).
There is no doubt that marketing is costly, but we have to remember that it is what drives sales. Like every other aspect of a business, when there is less money to spend on marketing, we simply have to become effective.
Mobile marketing is an ideal recession-proof marketing tool. Text-message and mobile site campaigns let you initiate an opt-in conversation with your target audience for a fraction of the cost of any traditional media campaign. Depending on how you do it, you can typically pay only upon success (e.g. when a message has been delivered or a mobile site is viewed). Because of this performance-based marketing approach, you can clearly measure the ROI of your efforts. In August, I published a Techvibes article listing the various studies that emphatically showed the positive correlation between mobile marketing, brand awareness and intent to purchase. Mobile Marketers’ Mickey Khan recently published an excellent SWOT analysis of mobile marketing. It is a must read if you are looking to shake up your marketing strategy with new and more cost effective tactics.
Despite industry analyst forecasted cut backs on traditional media and even online marketing, mobile marketing spend is poised to double this year. Of course, that’s not really all that difficult. Despite the very clear benefits of mobile marketing, it still remains a miniscule piece of the marketing pie. Thus, the only way it can really go is up. In a recession, that is a good sign. We should all be using it to differentiate ourselves and drive sales in the same direction.
Earlier this month, Yangaroo CEO Cliff Hunt wrote about Making Music Green over at The Huffington Post and how record labels are turning to digital delivery services to get their promo materials and music to radio stations.
Even though most consumers don't think of CDs when they think of new music thanks to iPods and other digital devices, the music industry still relies heavily on them to promote their artists' new music. In a process that hasn't changed much in decades, record labels send out CDs packaged with printed promotional materials to what are hoped to be the right influencers at radio stations. Radio station personnel, bombarded by these packages, end up not having the time to go through them all and many end up in the trash.
Hunt goes on to report that the Canadian music industry leads the world in this area and has virtually eliminated the distribution of wasteful promotional CDs entirely.
In Canada all four multinational major label groups have exclusively switched to digital distribution for all their promotional releases, preventing the manufacture and shipping of millions of ecologically harmful CDs and packaging. The Canadian industry has significantly decreased their environmental impact and saved on expenses at the same time! This win-win situation has been catching on in the US as well; digital promo distribution has increased exponentially during 2008 as the entire industry has begun to follow the lead of the major label groups.
Nice work Canadian music labels and radio stations. Only time will tell if there is room for both Yangaroo and fellow Canadian competitor Destiny Media Technologies in this leading edge space.
Destiny Media Technologies, Inc. is a leader in developing easy-to-use tools for distributing digital media through the Internet. The company's... [more]
YANGAROO's patented Digital Media Distribution System (DMDS) is a leading secure B2B digital delivery solution for the music and advertising... [more]
As a follow-up to our December Canada Startup index earlier this week, comScore has provided us with their take on the top contenders.
In the above chart, the Online % Reach is the percentage of Canadians online that each entity reaches. As an example, Metrolyrics.com reached 8.8% of all Canadians during October 2008, making them the hands-down leader.
Suite101.com had the biggest month-over-month improvement rising from 2.3 to 3.0. We've expanded the list since our November comScore update. New to this list with impressive reach are established sites RedFlagDeals.com at 2.8 and Clubzone.com at 1.9.
Thanks again to comScore for sharing this valuable data with Techvibes!
The 3rd annual Canadian New Media Awards were held recently in Toronto as part of the nextMEDIA conference. The event was MC-ed by the comedian Sugar Sammy at the gorgeous CiRCA nightclub. The winners at the event included Viigo, a Toronto-based mobile RSS startup, and marblemedia, among others. The complete list of the winners (along with the finalists) is below:
COMPANY OF THE YEAR
MOST PROMISING COMPANY OF THE YEAR
EXCELLENCE IN SOCIAL MEDIA WEBSITES
EXCELLENCE IN SOCIAL MEDIA APPLICATIONS
EXCELLENCE IN GAMING
EXCELLENCE IN CHILDREN'S
EXCELLENCE IN CROSS PLATFORM
EXCELLENCE IN NEWS/INFORMATION
EXCELLENCE IN CULTURE, LIFESTYLE ARTS
EXCELLENCE IN LEARNING
EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR
PROGRAMMER OF THE YEAR
PRODUCER OF THE YEAR
DESIGNER OF THE YEAR
Viigo™ is revolutionizing the way users access information on their smartphone. Every day, people around the world rely on Viigo as their gateway... [more]
marblemedia is a content creation company on the forefront of television and new media production, devoted to telling stories that entertain and... [more]
Big news earlier this week when Canwest Global Communications Corp announced initiatives to reduce their annualized operating costs by approximately $61 Million. The move translated into 560 layoffs - about five per cent of the company's workforce through voluntary buyouts, attrition and reductions. Canwest management pointed to the current economic environment as well as the structural challenges in the conventional television model as the reasons why.
Interestingly, CEO Leonard Asper stresses in the announcement that Canwest is still eager to transform into a multi-platform media company and build its audience using digital media.
"Having completed an assessment of our Canadian operations and, after careful consideration, we are implementing a number of initiatives that will provide savings that will allow us to better compete in the current economic environment, without compromising our core products and services,” said Leonard Asper, President and CEO, Canwest. “It will not impact our strategy to invest in growth media like digital online, mobile and specialty channels.”
I'm not sure why Asper felt the need to assure shareholders and employees that the operating cost reduction wouldn't impact their digital media strategy... until yesterday.
Word on Vancouver streets is that NowPublic is about to be acquired by Canwest. While a NowPublic acquisition may not seem like a significant transaction, keep in mind that Canwest's current market capitalization is a paltry $80 Million - down from $700 Million only one year ago. NowPublic raised $10 Million in venture capital in July of 2007.
This rumour may have legs. NowPublic Co-founder Len Brody has advised Canwest in the past.
Canwest is Canada's leading international media company. Representing a portfolio of world-class brands, the Company creates and distributes some... [more]
NowPublic is a participatory news network which mobilizes an army of reporters to cover the events that define our world. In twelve short months,... [more]
Professors might scoff at the herds of students wandering campus with those signature white iPod earbuds, but starting this semester at the University of British Columbia, those students may have been learning. This fall, UBC joined Apple's iTunes U program , wherein school content is made available for free download through their own section of the iTunes Store . Files can be restricted to enrolled students-only, but the majority is available free to all.
"If you are a student, you probably don't know how to find UBC web content because it's spread across university websites... We know students use iTunes, so this collects what UBC has and takes it to their environment," says Alfred Hermida, who helped to pioneer the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) news website as a journalist before joining UBC in 2006.
Other Canadian institutions doing the same include the University of Western Ontario, the Banff Centre, Queen's University, and Université de Montréal. UWO also started this semester and doesn't have any lecture content up, but has used it for other content like convocation addresses, school news, and recordings of student council meetings. Pacific Northwest schools on iTunes U include the University of Portland, Pacific University, and Seattle Pacific University. In total, over 75,000 audio and video files are hosted on iTunes U from 150+ institutions in the US, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and the UK.
It's great to see schools embracing new technologies, and that they can be presented in a way that's accessible to both instructor and student. Students get learning materials through the media player that they probably already have installed. Instructors are given an easy platform on which to host their content; UBC's page provides basic audio recording and editing instructions using free software. And everyone gets the benefit of all the free educational content available through iTunes U.
The Copyright Board of Canada has decided to extend copyright into the Internet with a new, expansive tariff, though it stopped short of cracking down on amateur podcasts and social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace. The tariff, created by prompting from SOCAN (the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) extends fees to commercial TV and radio station websites, gaming sites and online radio stations. Copyright Board officials described the tariff as extending to those who are already paying for music offline for use in commercial activity.
But the board was by no means unanimous regarding the tariff, with a split board parting ways with SOCAN, who favor applying the tariff to podcasters and other users who aren't primarily focused on musical content but do occasionally use it. However, those sites can expect only a temporary reprieve, as SOCAN first introduced their proposal in 1995 and has a history of attempting to extend its reach over an ever-changing Internet. Good luck with that, SOCAN.
The history of the Internet is littered with ideas that don’t quite gel, from the clunky consumerist nightmare known as boo.com to the Cuecat barcode scanner. But a Museum of Internet Failures would have to dedicate a special hall to the quest to create a stand-alone Internet radio, from the aptly-named Kerbango, a product of dot.com madness, all the way to current network streaming devices. Now Sanyo Canada is making a bid for the internet radio market (such as it is) with the imaginatively named Sanyo Internet Radio R227.
To be fair, the compact unit does boast decent specs, with the ability to integrate MP3 players, built in Wifi and Ethernet, support for multiple sound file formats, and a $219.99 price tag. It’s even set up to mimic a clock radio, so you can wake up to whatever station you’d like, rather than insipid local news. But the question has to be asked...why?
Part of the reason for Internet radio’s popularity is a gradual shift for much of the population from a world where media is consumed in discrete chunks at scheduled times to an always-on, hyper-connected society where we’re more likely to be in front of our laptops or accessing mobile devices than to need the presence of anything as old-fashioned as a radio. In fact, the $5.99 Tuner Internet Radio iPhone app does just as good a job as Sanyo’s stand alone radio, and it’s accessible on the go. Internet radios, like the quest for a 3d, game-like Web interface and video chat services like Seesmic seem like a solution in search of a problem.
SANYO Group's corporate philosophy is the guiding principle in accomplishing the key management policy of ensuring products and services that are... [more]
The Canadian New Media Awards take place November 18, 2008, as part of the nextMEDIA conference. In the lead up to this event, I'm going to profile the categories and finalists, one per day. Today's category is Excellence in Cross Platform.
Postcards from Crystal is an interactive Flash app with video. It follows Crystal Shawanda, a country music artist, as she makes it out of Northern Ontario and to Nashville and records her first album. The site was done by Lifecapture Interactive of Toronto.
Mobile Stories is a production of iThentic of Toronto. iThentic aggregates online and mobile video content from independent filmmakers and performers.
The Odd Job Jack site is a companion to the Comedy Network's animated series of the same name. The site includes video clips, a game, and downloadable wallpaper and screensavers. The site was done by Smiley Guy Studios of Toronto.
