Category: Research

The broadband market will grow 361% by the end of 2007 according to the Yankee Group. Right now, they say 58% of the market is using cable and a third is using DSL.
It would be a mistake to use this prediction as an excuse to heavy-up multimedia on our web sites. The performance of text-oriented web pages on broadband connections is still inferior to ink on paper. We ought to be focusing on improving the performance of our pages: removing tables, promoting text advertising, eliminating unnecessary graphics, and using CSS.
Let’s agree to confine our use of graphics and animation to applications where they make sense and not simply to dress up our content.

There were two interesting media crossover research stories this week.
comScore Media Metrix reports that 45.1 million US net users have their net-enabled PC and TV in the same room, and roughly one-half use both at the same time (It’s also covered on InternetNews.com). Meanwhile, The Media Audit says 40% of those who regularly read print employment ads also regularly read Web classified job sites, and 14.9% of those who regularly visit Web job sites also regularly read print job ad.
This is bad news for traditional media.
If someone is on the Web, they’re probably not paying a lot of attention to the TV, especially during the commercials.
While The Media Audit tries to put the best face on the classified ad crossover rate, saying “We tend to forget that Monster.com is selling a single media, while CareerBuilder.com is selling a multimedia package of web and print. As our knowledge of the Internet increases, it becomes more evident that in many instances the ‘new media’ is becoming an extension of the old media.” However,

1. Net job seekers are happier with what they’re getting than newspaper users (they have a lower crossover rate).
2. The more desireable candidates, on whom the biggest ad budgets are spent, are more likely to be on the Net.

The Net doesn’t always win crossover battles (It’s still a lousy entertainment medium), but it’s clearly a strong competitor. [Thanks to eMarketer and Martha Stone at Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits]

According to the Edison-Arbitron study, 20% of the population rates the Internet as the “most essential” medium in their lives, and only 11% say that about newspapers. Among people with a college education, the percentage soars to 30%, but for newspapers it rises only slightly to 13%.
The numbers are probably even more dismal for newspapers if you look at younger people.
We’ve been chasing penetration at the expense of quality for decades, and it shows in the editorial product and readers’ response to it.
The Internet will almost certainly take both advertising and content from newspapers: classifieds, stock price listings, syndicated news, features, and columnists. As newspapers begin the inevitable process of shrinking themselves, they will have to choose whether to become focused products for the most educated consumers in their communities; or dumb the product down to keep it in circulation and satisfy the de mands of their current advertisers and keep their presses humming.

The Internet is more essential than TV, radio or newspapers — at least for 20% of Americans, according to a study by Edison Media Research for Arbitron.
That’s pretty amazing for a medium that has been a mass medium for about seven years. Clearly, the quantity and quality of the information on the Internet is better than all of TV and radio, and any reasonable selection of newspapers. Of course, a lot of it comes from newspapers, which post it for free on the net.
Combine the information with communication, and it’s not too surprising that the Internet is more essential than these passive media. I’m sure that more than one in five would rate the telephone as more essential than TV, radio, or newspapers — or the Internet.
However, I wonder whether the Internet has reached its natural market size. Will many more Americans will find this (ultimately pretty cerebral) medium essential?