Month: February 2003

Online publishers have discovered that the Internet is the best advertising medium for reaching customers during the day, and they’re spreading the news. Both the Newspaper Association of America and the Online Publishers Association have released studies promoting the advantages of buying online advertising by dayparts.

The NY Times charges a 25% premium for daypart-triggered ads, according to the Internet Advertising Report. And Sun bought 100% of Forbes.com ad space between 9 am and 1 pm.

It’s refreshing to see online advertising sold on value and being differentiated more creatively from traditional ad media.

Here are some findings from the OPA report:

• There are five distinct Internet dayparts characterized by differing usage levels, demographics and type of content accessed: Early morning (M-F 6am – 8am), Daytime (M-F, 8am – 5pm), Evening (M-F, 5pm – 11pm), Late night (M-F, 11pm – 6am), Weekends (Sat-Sun, all day).
• Daytime is the largest daypart (measured in terms of both total audience and total usage minutes), followed by Evening and Weekends;
• Affluent, working people between the ages of 25-54 make up a larger share of the Daytime audience than any other daypart;
• Children under the age of 18 are three times more likely to be reached during the Evening and Weekend dayparts;
• Internet utilities such as search engines, e-mail and chat show little variation in usage by daypart; online content sites, in contrast, exhibit distinct differences in usage by time of day;
• Use of News and Information sites is concentrated in the Early Morning and Daytime dayparts;
• Entertainment/Sports site usage increases dramatically during Evening and Weekend dayparts compared to Daytime;
• On average, eCommerce activity accounts for only 5.3% of time spent online; a considerably larger share occurs on Evenings and Weekends than during the Daytime.

The NAA report is only available to members. I don’t understand why they’d want to keep this to themselves.

It’s important to remember that although each daypart has distinct demographics, that daypart advertising is no substitute for demographic targeting.

“If many people could redo history they would prefer that the everything-is-free Internet model had never gained ascendancy.” says David Hiller, president of Tribune Interactive, in Columbia Journalism Review. That pretty much sums up the spirit of denial that is gripping more and more newspaper industry executives.

Meanwhile, Newsday reports:

Only 33 percent of U.S. families led by someone age 25 to 34 bought a daily newspaper in 2001 compared with 63 percent in 1985, according to surveys of consumer spending by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This decline in newspaper purchases is accelerating with a drop of 21 percentage points in the five years ended in 2000, or triple the rate seen during 1985-1995.

They go on to report that 80% of 18 to 34 year olds in the NY metro area get their news from the Internet and only 55% get it from the web.

Meanwhile Steve Outing at Poynter shares the story of an online news editor who lost his job because he opposed charging for the newspaper’s web site.

Some people get it. In a comment on Steve Outing’s posting, Henry Copeland tells us the NY Times has sold 160,000 subscriptions from its web site. Neil Budde, the former publisher and founder of the Wall Street Journal Online, and hero of fee-loving newspaper publishers everywhere, tells PAID, “Too many people are making a rush towards the subscription model because everybody says now is the time they should go for that.”

I’m stunned that this debate is still going on. What’s clear is that, as monopolists accustomed to 25% profit margins, newspaper publishers are intellectually ill-equipped to publish on the Internet.

Twenty-five percent of people with Internet access say they or or a family member have their own Web site. Thirteen percent say they or a family member has their own domain name. This, according to the University of Maryland.

This is an odd statistic, because it doesn’t look at individuals, or even at households, but at families. I did some work to make this more useful. According to the Statistical Abstract of the US, there are about 2.7 people per household. For the moment let’s assume one household per family (it’s somewhat higher than that) and assume one person in each family holds the web site and the domain (it’s probably a little higher than that).

I estimate that 9% of people with Internet access have a web site. Keep in mind that the study’s margin of error was 4% and that is compounded by my assumptions. Five years ago, at IDC, we determined that about 10% of Internet users had Web sites.

The share of Internet users with Web sites has not changed significantly in the last five years. [Thanks, eMarketer!]

Two-thirds of online advertising is direct marketing, according to Neilsen/NetRatings. This is up from 59 percent in fourth-quarter 2001. Eighty percent of banner and other large ad formats were direct marketing ads.
If you can’t deliver mass quantities of readily-identifiable people who are ready to buy, you’re going to have a tough time selling ads online. [Thanks, Marketingfix!]

The Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture has some interesting answers to the question “What problems have you experienced when designing for or implementing content management software?”

It’s not surprising that the number one answer was “Commercial software too expensive”. But it is surprising that so may respondents checked so many items on the multiple-reponse list–8.3 problems per respondent!

There are eight complaints suffered by more than 40% of respondents:

Why would anyone put themselves through this?

Console video game sales are growing and PC game sales are declining. Let’s face it, it makes more sense to have a dedicated, inexpensive device that is purpose-built for playing games than to tie up the family computer.
This is more evidence (if more is needed) that device convergence is a myth. Someone once told me (attributing it to Andy Seybold) that the only successfully converged devices were the toaster oven and clock radio.
Meanwhile, visionary journalists still cling to the idea of back-end (newsroom) convergence–one reporter, many media. Despite their optimism, this will result in newspapers selling out to broadcasters, newsroom staff cuts, and “convergence” between edit and advertising.