by Gavin O’Malley

Local online ad revenues for television and radio are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 17.8% through 2014, according to a new report from BIA/Kelsey.

By contrast, the research group expects traditional local ad revenue for TV and radio to grow just 2.8%.

“Broadcasters must evolve to participate in more areas of the media ecosystem,” said Rick Ducey, BIA/Kelsey’s chief strategy officer and program director of Digital Strategies for Broadcasting. “This means developing the right multiplatform and multiple revenue stream strategies, which in turn requires new workflow, partnerships, business models and resources.”

Driven by advertisers’ desire to connect with audiences more directly, content creators of all stripes are investing in locally relevant fare.

Just last week, The Tribune Company said it invested in Perfect Market, a startup that helps publishers monetize their content throughout the so-called “long-tail.” Leading the startup’s third round of funding, worth some $6 million, represented a broader effort by Tribune to establish its online presence at ever more local levels. Last April, its Media Group launched ChicagoNow.com, a network of roughly 70 local blogs on a variety of Chicago-centric topics.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of the month, local online marketing company ReachLocal acquired reputation management manager SMB Live. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it came on the heels of ReachLocal’s $100 million IPO. The company saw revenue more than double in 2008, while during the first nine months of 2009, revenue was up 38% to $143.3 million.

What’s more, Web sites that report news and deliver other content at the neighborhood, or “hyper-local” level, are attracting the attention of big media and tech companies. The clearest example came last December with Google’s failed attempt to acquire Yelp for a reported $550 million. Successful deals last year included MSNBC.com’s acquisition of EveryBlock.com for an undisclosed amount, and AOL’s purchases of Patch Media and Going.com.

Hyper-local startups are also attracting funding — as in the case of Outside.in, which pulls together neighborhood blogs and other local content, and closed a $7 million Series B round of funding last month led by existing investor Union Square Ventures, with participation from new investor Turner Broadcasting System. As part of Turner’s investment, CNN.com will use Outside.in’s aggregation and curation tools to power hyperlocal news across all of its sites.

Despite its continued growth, however, the Web is hardly the most popular resource for local (or national) news consumption. On the contrary, it remains in third place — behind local and national TV stations, according to a recent report from the Pew Research Center. Pew found that 61% of readers surveyed said they got their news online on a typical day, compared with 78% from local news channels and 71% from a national TV network such as NBC or cable channels such as CNN or Fox News.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=123966

By Elizabeth Holmes and Miguel Bustillo

January 6, 2010

Clothing stores discounted less and sold fewer items last month than a year ago, a combination that undercut sales but likely will translate into higher fourth-quarter profits, according to figures released Tuesday.

Apparel and department stores remain among the weaker retailers, with sales well below pre-recession levels. December clothing sales fell 1.8% and department store sales fell 2.3%, both from the same month a year ago, according to MasterCard Inc.’s SpendingPulse unit.

Despite the softer sales, many retailers are expected to signal higher earnings for the crucial fiscal fourth quarter when they release results Thursday. Most mall retailers scaled back inventories dramatically last year to avoid a repeat of the drastic markdowns of the 2008 holiday season. As a result, the sales that did occur were closer to—or at—full price.

“It was a healthier season,” said Michael McNamara, vice president of research and analysis for MasterCard Advisors, which tracks sales by all payment forms.

“It’s still a tough credit environment. It’s still an economy in which there has been no job creation,” said John Long, a partner at consultancy Kurt Salmon Associates. “Until those two things change, we won’t see consumers changing their behaviors.”

Overall, the holiday season was slightly better than the year before, when economic turmoil gripped the country and consumer spending on discretionary items plummeted. Total retail sales from Nov. 1 to Dec. 24 rose 3.6% over 2008, according to MasterCard. The company didn’t provide a December figure for total sales.

December results were boosted by a late-month surge in shopping following Christmas, as customers cashed in gift cards and took advantage of post-season clearance sales, it said. Sales for the seven-day period ending Jan. 2 were up 2.5% compared with last year, according to estimates released Tuesday by the International Council of Shopping Centers.

As a result of the relatively strong finish, analysts now expect many chains to boost their fourth quarter earnings outlooks. Thomson Reuters Corp., estimates December sales for the 30 reporting chain stores that it tracks rose 2%. Retail Metrics Inc., which uses a slightly different methodology, puts the increase at 1.8%.

While overall retail sales continued to be soft, one notable exception was in electronics. MasterCard reported December sales were up more than 7% from last year.

Many electronics experts had forecast declining prices would keep revenues flat despite an increase in unit sales. Although falling prices for televisions hurt overall sales, their impact was more than offset by sales of hot gadgets including smart phones and electronic-book readers, MasterCard’s Mr. McNamara said.

The editors of MEDIA magazine have selected Interpublic’s Mediabrands division as the Media Agency Holding Company of the Year, and Havas’ MPG unit as the Media Agency of the Year for 2009.

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners took top honors among full-service agency media departments for the third year in a row. U.S. International Media was named MEDIA’s first ever “Independent of the Year.”

Publicis’ Spark Communications was named Media Boutique of the Year. Hulu was named the Media Supplier of the Year.

The awards are based on three primary criteria, including: strategic vision, innovation and industry leadership. MEDIA will publish a special “Agency of the Year” awards supplement in January profiling the winners and detailing their achievements. A gala awards show honoring the recipients will be held in New York, the evening of Jan. 11th.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=117689#

The Audit Bureau of Circulations released its fall numbers for most of the country’s newspapers on Oct. 26, and the figures for the six months ending September 2009 were as harrowing as they have been for several years — proving again that fewer people are buying the print edition. To cite just one example, USA Today’s circ fell 17%. But other stories loom behind that data: Publishers continue to pull back on unprofitable circulation, have redoubled their efforts to net quality subscribers, and, perhaps most interestingly, have started to raise cover prices that are so far sticking (see Mark Fitzgerald’s feature, here). Plus, the number of people dropping their subscriptions, or “churn,” has fallen dramatically. The Newspaper Association of America reported in its 2009 Facts, Figures and Logic study that industry wide subscriber turnover declined to 31.8% in 2008, compared to 54.5% in 2000.

As 2009 draws to a close, some are accepting that the future of print involves a smaller, more stable group of readers. The print edition will no longer have the reach it once did, but newspapers have a growing number of channels through which they can distribute content that should be accurately counted — or weighed more heavily, if they’re already counted. These don’t just include newspaper Web sites or Spanish-language and commuter editions, but any channel that readers might use, including Smartphones and e-readers. The latter are poised for growth in 2010, and should be considered in readership and circulation figures.

In a recent survey conducted by ABC, the organization found that more than 80% of those publishing executives polled (from the ranks of newspapers, magazines and business publications) believe people will rely more heavily on mobile devices as a primary information source in the next three years. Close to 70% of those respondents agreed that mobile is receiving more attention at their publication this year than last.

“Most are looking at it from the standpoint of giving the subscriber the opportunity to read on various platforms and meet their reading needs,” says Michael Lavery, the Audit Bureau’s president and managing director.

Several developers of digital readers and software mobile applications, including Plastic Logic, Sony and Scroll Motion, realize the potential for reaching consumers and advertisers, and this fall joined ABC.

Likewise, the bureau has noted an uptick in requests from its members about auditing Smartphones and other devices like digital e-readers. During its November board meeting, the bureau’s digital committee task force made up of advertisers, newspapers and magazine executives will convene to discuss how to incorporate these types of “editions” into future ABC reports. “Our goal is to make recommendations to the ABC board about how best to measure these newspaper reading platforms and how best to convey this information to advertisers within ABC reporting,” Yasmin Namini, co-chair of the ABC/NAA liaison strategic vision committee and senior vice president of marketing and circulation at The New York Times, tells E&P. The group hopes to have something approved in 2010.

Getting ahead of the curve
ABC doesn’t want to get caught flat-footed as more readers start accessing content through these devices.

It took what seemed like forever for the organization to embrace online readership in the form of the Audience-FAX, leaving newspapers even more exposed and vulnerable to troubling declines in print circulation. In fairness, ABC is such a large organization with so many constituencies with various and competing needs — there are vast differences even among newspaper members — it’s no wonder it’s sometimes perceived that ABC lumbers toward change.

This go-around, the bureau and its members want to be on the right side of trending and cultural change.

As David Walker, CEO of marketing/ media consultancy Geomentum and an ABC director explains, there is a “perceived and real loss in value in traditional mass media.” He points out it’s not just newspapers, but also magazines, network TV and other media: “There’s a mass localization going on across all media, one-to-many going to one-to-some, going to one-to-one. Advertisers are going to have an appetite for audited numbers.”

Walker adds, “We are not waiting for Moore’s Law” — the exponential rise of computing power named after Intel founder Gordon Moore. “We are not going to race to fix it after the fact, but build an infrastructure going in.”

Audience data point to a burgeoning trend. According to the Pew Research Center, 19% of Americans use a mobile device to access the Internet, up from 11% in 2007. The digital reader market is still small (Forrester Research estimates that as of the end of 2008 Amazon and Sony collectively sold one million e-readers in the U.S.), but will likely expand quickly as new products that allow for advertising models come to market next year.

John Murray, vice president of audience development for the NAA, notes that a growing number of the top 50 newspapers are already available on the Kindle. The ABC mobile survey found that nearly 60% of respondents said they format their Web sites for mobile devices. Twenty six percent said they are developing Smartphone applications in the next 12 months.

Murray, who is another member of the ABC/NAA liaison committee, observes that adding mobile and digital editions to ABC’s reports is a natural extension of the audience-FAX. “Anything less would be a step back,” he says.

Is it worth it?
Merle Davidson, chairman of ABC’s board and director of media services at J.C. Penney Co., says the primary reason he’s involved with the digital task force is that measurement of these new editions is critical. The process is still in its infancy, he adds: “We are really trying to think ahead about how this platform will be advantageous to both publishers and advertisers.”

One big issue at the moment is that there are precious few advertising opportunities with e-readers. “I’m thrilled to have a conversation about aggregated audience,” says Walker, “but if I can’t execute advertising, it doesn’t matter.” Walker wonders why newspapers are even bothering with distributing content through Kindles, for example, because advertisers currently can’t reach those readers. Why bother counting, if there’s no ability to advertise?

In The New York Times’ publishing statement, for example, Kindle subscriptions are counted under the “Electronic Edition” line. The Times publishes three versions: “Newsstand.com,” an exact replica of the print product in format and advertising content; the “Times Reader”; and one for the Amazon Kindle. The latter two are classified as non-replica editions. In the publisher’s statement for six months ending March 2009, the Times’ average daily circ (Monday-Friday) for electronic editions was 43,884 — about 4% of its total daily circ. On Sunday it was 15,544, or 1% of its total Sunday circ.

Redefining ‘circulation’
Some of the challenges in counting electronic editions foreshadow what’s to come in counting eyeballs on digital readers and mobile applications.

The Detroit Media Partnership, for one, has a lot at stake with new editions — and executives there are watching closely how profitable they prove to be. The operator of the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News relies on e-editions on the days it no longer offers home delivery: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday. Early next year, the group plans to test digital editions on e-readers in a partnership with Plastic Logic. Detroit’s e-editions are currently replicas of the print edition, both in content and advertising.
“We need to be able to provide the measurement on all different platforms and keep the FAS-FAX numbers very valid and clear,” says Janet Hasson, the Detroit Media Partnership’s senior vice president/development and strategy.

Hasson, too, sits on the liaison committee. She says the goal is to have future publishers’ statements contain distinguishing lines for each edition — e-editions, replicas, non-replicas, mobile, and the like — broken out under the Core Circulation column: “What we are able to accomplish as a committee is like lightning speed compared to the last six years. If we can get this nailed down in November, we could get it rolled out for the 2011 statement.”

In theory, measuring these types of editions should present little difficulty — but then, the same thing was once said about measuring online readership. As with counting Web users, it all comes down to metrics: Right now, there’s no clear standard for mobile applications and all forms of digital editions.

Says Patricia Kelly, the Detroit Media Partnership’s senior VP for digital/client solutions: “The whole ad model around e-readers is not formed, and because of that, neither are the expectations for capturing data. Who opened it? How long did they spend with it? It’s all undefined. One of the challenges is getting on the same page.”

The vendors providing the publishing software for e-editions are the ones keeping tabs on analytics. For Detroit, it’s a mix of Google Analytics and Omniture data — not as expansive as executives and possible advertisers would want. For example, a person might have access to the e-edition of the Detroit Free Press seven days a week because she signed up for home delivery, but that doesn’t mean she actually reads that e-edition every day. Or if she opens it, how much time does she spend with it? Right now, Hasson says there is a very strong correlation between the use of e-editions on non-home delivery days.

Researchers like Scarborough also need to incorporate mobile apps and e-editions into their surveys in order to learn exactly what people are reading, Hasson contends. In current studies, she explains, someone who says he reads the Detroit Free Press could be accessing just the mobile app. Or if the question posed is, “Have you read the print edition of the Detroit Free Press in the last seven days?” the response could be no, even though the respondent read a digital edition.

The same goes for mobile apps. “The notion of the word ‘circulation’ doesn’t really apply to a digital media channel,” says Geomentum’s Walker. “It doesn’t apply to a mobile device like a Kindle. It really cracks open what are really going to be the grounds for measurement.”

Should a newspaper be able to count a person who merely downloads a mobile application? Or when the mobile app is actually used? Walker says he has a bunch of apps on his iPhone that for the most part just sit there. “This is going to require a degree of conversation,” he says. “Having an app for the New York Times doesn’t mean that someone is hitting it every day.”

Getting the full picture
Brenda White, senior vice president/ publishing activation director for media communications agency Starcom USA, isn’t buying into the in-vogue chatter that newspapers are a dead medium. On the contrary, “Consumers are still wanting the content,” she says, noting they’re just accessing it through many different means. While mobile and digital readers are still in nascent stages, from an advertising perspective it’s something that is very much on her radar. “I do think e-readers will catch on,” she says. “Right now, everybody is talking about the app. I think that any place we can grab consumers’ attention and send them someplace to buy a product is huge.”

For that reason, White likes to see every channel in one place, on one report. “I want to see everything — in my opinion, the more the better,” she says. “We are trying to get a full picture of who is getting these copies in digital or print. I think that newspapers and magazines have started to embrace this, and I think there is huge potential.”

Aug 6, 2009

Mediabrands Enables Clients To Tailor Local Media Usage To Maximize Retail Impact

New York, August 6^th, 2009 – Nick Brien, President and CEO of Mediabrands, today announces the launch of Geomentum, the advertising industry’s largest hyper-local marketing and media insights agency.  As a new center of excellence within Mediabrands, Geomentum unites hyper-local marketplace intelligence, proprietary technology and unrivaled local targeting capabilities to unlock the power of precision marketing and media investing.  With the proliferation of hyper-local data and insights, and local targeting capabilities emerging across many media, Geomentum enables marketers to pin-point their customers and plan the most relevant and responsive media down to the zip-code and even neighborhood block level.

Geomentum has been in development for more than two years.  A next generation business unit, Geomentum combines and integrates the best of consultancy, technology and media agency expertise for a range of clients in categories such as Retail, CPG, Financial Services, Telecommunications, QSR, and Automotive.  Geomentum is led by CEO Dave Walker, a former head of Marketing for Toys “R” Us, Musicland and Circuit City.  The creation of Geomentum marks Phase Two of Mediabrands Retail 3.0 solution, which began with the appointment of John Ross, to President of the Emerging Media Lab.

Creating a new standard for local media planning and activation, Geomentum applies a bottom-up approach, beginning with local level data (i.e.: sales, traffic, lead generation, etc.), to build and measure ROI, and then activates plans across targeted media and markets.  Geomentum extends and enhances the best-in-class resources and massive buying clout of Mediabrands’ current hyper-local agencies; NSA Media (Print), Wahlstrom (Local Search and IYP) and Outdoor Services (Out-of-Home).  In 2009 Geomentum will plan and place more than $2B in hyper-local media, according to RECMA.

Geomentum will also enrich Initiative, UM and the Specialty Service Groups ability to interpret local market data and enhance the effectiveness of media tied to a geographic unit.  Geomentum will closely integrate with other Mediabrands business units such as mobile (Ansible), search and social marketing (Reprise Media) and also work in partnership with third-party addressable media platforms as they evolve to support hyper-targeting capabilities (i.e. Navic, Canoe, Visible World, etc.).

As a multidimensional offering, Geomentum will impact the market in the following four ways:

1. HYPER-LOCALIZED, FACT-BASED DECISION MAKING: Delivers customized geography-based evaluation of local market conditions from localized macro-economic conditions to weather patterns to competitive forces; providing key intrinsic and extraneous factors affecting marketing efforts.
2. REDEFINING MEDIA PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: Powered by geographically aligned sales data and insight, establishes a closed-loop performance management process and framework, supported by decision support tools, resulting in custom plans – by market and custom local multi-channel media activation.
3. CUSTOMER BEHAVIORAL DATA DRIVES IMMEDIATE RESULTS: Insights developed through advanced statistical analysis techniques supported by propriety tools and technologies.  Seeks first to understand customer responsiveness and behaviors to media and marketing communications and then expands and refines insights and plans to optimize performance through testing and measurement of alternative hyper-local media mix variations.
4. RETAIL REVITALIZATION: Marketers gain more control over local market variations, thus cementing all metrics in hyper-local ROI (i.e. trade dollars, TRPs, promotional lift, comp. sales).  Momentum builds through every dollar of local market investment.  Geomentum simplifies the complex work of deep unit-level analysis and optimization of results.

“Geomentum starts from the premise that all sales are local.  Many marketers want to align with that singular insight, but the complexity of such an effort has proved overwhelming, until now,” says Dave Walker, CEO Geomentum.  “We’ve leveraged hyper-local data, with sophisticated technology and analytic methods to make hyper-local media considerations not only possible, but simple.”

“With its immense volume and scale, Geomentum’s infrastructure has the means and talent in place to revolutionize the local media industry,” says Nick Brien, President and CEO Mediabrands.  “Geomentum is ahead of the mass-localization curve and presents a major commercial motivation for media owners and technology providers to evolve their products to enable hyper-local addressability and targetability for marketers with a local presence.”

Geomentum Management: Dave Walker is supported by an executive team with extensive client-side marketing, technology and consultancy experience, including Mike Hayes, Chief Strategy, Development and Operations Officer (a former Retail SVP of Marketing and Senior Executive with Accenture), Jeff Haines, Chief Client Officer (also a former Retail SVP of Marketing and Merchandising) and Bob Bukala, Chief Financial and Administrative Officer (former CFO for Hewlett Packard’s Consulting Division).

About Geomentum: As a new center of excellence within Mediabrands, Geomentum unites hyper-local marketplace intelligence, proprietary technology and unrivaled hyper-local targeting capabilities to unlock the power of precision marketing and media investing.  With the proliferation of hyper-local data and insights, and hyper-local targeting capabilities emerging several media, Geomentum enables marketers to pin-point their customers and plan the most relevant and responsive media down to the zip-code and even neighborhood block level.   Geomentum applies a bottom-up approach, beginning with hyper-local level data (i.e.: sales, traffic, lead generation, etc.), to build and measure investment return, and then activates plans across a network of local media and markets.  Geomentum will extend and enhance the best-in-class resources and massive buying clout of Mediabrands’ three current hyper-locally oriented agencies – NSA Media (Print), Wahlstrom (Hyper-Local Search) and Outdoor Services (Out of Home) – Geomentum will plan and place over $2B in hyper-local media in 2009.

About Mediabrands: Created by IPG to manage all of its global media-related assets, Mediabrands employs 6,500 communications specialists operating in 90 countries and manages $30B in global media billings.  A proven entity in helping clients maximize the impact of their marketing investment to deliver explosive business results, Mediabrands enhances the communications offering and performance across its network of media agencies including Initiative, UM, MAGNA and a roster of Specialty Service Groups.  Mediabrands is part of Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG), one of the world’s leading organizations of advertising agencies and marketing services companies.  For more information, please visit www.mediabrandsww.com.

-By Joe Mandese

In a major push into the retail media space, Interpublic’s Mediabrands unit has hired former Home Depot CMO John Ross and named him president of its Emerging Media Lab, in what the media shop is touting as the first phase of “retail 3.0.”

The fact that Mediabrands has chosen to situate the head of its retail media practice within its emerging media think tank speaks volumes about the role new and emerging media technologies – everything from mobile to digital, place-based signage and media networks – are having on the way consumers shop at retail, and how marketers reach and communicate to them.

Interpublic executives said to “stay tuned” for phase two of the initiative this fall, but the initial move suggests that Interpublic is accelerating its efforts in the retail media sector – sometimes known as “shopper media.”

They emphasized that the first phase is part of a larger Interpublic strategy to better integrate the resources of the holding company’s “hyper local agencies,” shops like local newspaper specialty agency Newspaper Services of America, and directory agency Wahlstrom Group, into a bigger “retail 3.0″ play.

The move follows similar reorganizations at other big agency holding companies recognizing the increasing role of retail media, but the initial realignment of Interpublic’s operations with its new media think tank suggests that it is far more than a geographic strategy.

Interpublic said that part of Ross role will be ensuring that the lab creates and “merchandizes” proprietary retail media opportunities for Interpublic’s clients – both retail focused ones, as well as manufacturers.

“On the larger Mediabrands Retail 3.0 solution, John will work in lock step with our highly sophisticated hyper-local agencies led by Dave Walker, president-CEO, NSA and Geoff Kehoe, President, Wahlstrom,” Interpublic said in a statement announcing the reorganization.

Lori Schwartz, the senior vice president who has been directing Interpublic’s Emerging Media Lab, will continue to manage it, and will work with Ross to establish new technology partnerships.