Run pre-roll ads, and potentially lose up to a quarter of your audience

Here's an interesting statistic from those who are fans of embedded video

One of every six users who check out an online video will click away before watching any of the actual video if an advertisement precedes it, according to new research from the video analytics company TubeMogul.

and perhaps even more interesting

That number leaps to about one in four for videos streamed by newspaper and magazine publisher Web sites

"To publishers, these results present a clear tradeoff: run pre-roll ads, and potentially lose up to a quarter of your audience," TubeMogul said. "Coupled with the fact that audiences are not necessarily captive to any particular publisher online, it paints a picture to publishers that is not entirely positive about pre-rolls."

via E&P

Google hypocrisy in play over Adsense

According to Mark Cuban,Google is unquestionably the best at selling advertising on line.

So he asks

why isn’t Google taking advantage of this unique opportunity ? Why not just offer a specially tailored version of AdSense for Newspapers ? They do what they do, create content. You do what you do, generate content and sell ads ?

and the reason

Google hypocrisy in play. This argument is no different than the same argument they made with Youtube and the music and film industries. All those movies, tv shows, music videos on Youtube were GREAT PROMOTION. The music and movie industries shouldnt blame Google if they don’t know how to monetize all the billions of views and impressions Google and Youtube provided the content industry.

Ht-Adrian Monck

The web-the last chance for luxury branding

THE luxury goods industry, struggling through a recession that has threatened some well-known names with extinction, is trying to use technology to its advantage.

The New York Times reports that the move to capitalize on the Web has become a financial imperative for many brands as

executives say that attitudes are softening as brands realize that the Web provides one of the last untapped sources of potential growth.

but

Some executives also remain reluctant to invest heavily in digital initiatives because of costly failures in the past.

It reports on the example of Net-a-porter

One of the most successful ventures on the Web has been Net-à-Porter, a site based in London that sells high-end fashion and accessories, delivering them to homes or offices in black boxes. Though sales in the United States slowed during the depth of the recession, they have since recovered and have continued to rise at double-digit rates in other markets, the company said. It expects sales this year to top £100 million ($168 million), up from £82 million last year.
“It just made a lot of sense to allow women to shop when they wanted to shop, how they wanted to shop — at work, at home, in bedroom,” said Natalie Massenet, the company’s founder.

Marketers move to using previously offline information

Interesting article in the New York Times looking at the way that marketing and data companies have started connecting previously offline information to customer's browsers.

The information which includes income,purchasing habits and credit scores will

result in a sea change in the way consumers encounter the Web. Not only will people see customized advertising, they will see different versions of Web sites from other consumers and even receive different discount offers while shopping — all based on information from their offline history.

Signs of optimism for online advertising but SE goes into decline

It seems that the advertising slump has caught up with the search engine phenonoma according to this report in the FT this morning

Cuts in spending on search-engine advertising are accelerating even as the rate of decline in overall marketing outlay slows, according to a report by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising

says the report adding that at least up to now

Search advertising has hitherto held up better than any other part of the marketing mix.

But it seems no longer as

marketing professionals are cutting search spending by about 5 per cent, the IPA says, making this the only category to see an increased rate of decline.

“an audience that has assets, not allowances"

For decades, older consumers were largely shunned by marketers because they were deemed less wealthy, less likely to try new products and less willing to change brands. Campaigns directed at them were described dismissively as made for the “Geritol generation.” As much as older consumers were to be shunned, young consumers — ages 18 to 34, or 18 to 49 — were desired for what were deemed their free-spending ways, eagerness to sample new products and brand-switching proclivities. The idea that they were starting in life with a proverbial blank slate of marketing wants and needs was catnip to product peddlers.

The New York Times reckons that the tide is changing and the reasons are two fold.

Firstly the recession as this age group simply has more spendng power and secondly simple demographics that this sector has the ascendancy in numbers.

This will have consequencies for media advertising.The so called boomers are “an audience that has assets, not allowances" according to Henry Schleiff, president and chief executive at Hallmark Channels,

This posting on You Tube is described as how

Small publishers from across the web share their stories about how interactive advertising is helping them achieve the American Dream.

It is worth a look.Entitled I am the Long Tail the film was made by the Interactive Advertising Bureau who say that

Analysts estimate there are as many as 1.2 million Web sites that support themselves by selling advertising, through their own sales forces or ad networks. Most of them constitute the vaunted "long tail" -- small sites serving the refined interests of niche audiences, whose existence is premised on the Internet's near-barrierless opportunity to create and distribute content. But the term "long tail," based as it is on such abstruse mathematical concepts as Pareto's law, can seem bloodless. It hardly does justice to the countless lives made better because of the ad-supported Internet.

Ht-Chris Anderson

A barrier to cross for online advertising

There is an interesting interview with Sarah Clegg,the MD of John Menzies Digital over on Paid content this morning.

Sarah tells the site that

publishers would rather invest to boost their headline ABC print circulation figures than in digital development

adding that

“To my knowledge, there has been no interest whatsoever from any ad team in any publisher in what is being sold in digital editions. It’s a chicken and egg situation because there’s not enough critical mass to sell. But we have to start somewhere.”

This is not the first time that I have heard this in the past few months.There have been a few speakers here at UCLAN who have alluded to the fact that ad salesman do not "get the web" being able to sell print content but not being able to translate that enthusiasm to online content.

Another vision of regional coverage

A rather worrying interviewe given to journalism.co.uk by former Northcliffe digital multimedia specialist Nick Hewitt who is pessimistic about the regional and local newspaper industry

Two quotes struck me.Firstly his vision of local publishing

It wouldn't surprise me if within the next three years at least 50 per cent of local titles are just printed in one large area, with an insert put into them that tries to make them as local as possible,"

and secondly on advertising

Newspaper advertising has never been particularly effective Gone are the days where we say we don't know what's happening with it and people will spend the money on it."

But he says

the effectiveness of online advertising is equally worrying: "We know now, because we can measure it digitally, and quite frankly, it's very very poor.

The problem in the online model is that advertising is given away

Paul Robinson takes a look at the perennial question of paid sites over at his innovation in software blog.

The problem, it seems, is a colossal error made by most newspapers in offering you all their content without asking for some money from you. Their reasoning is that this forced them into the route of monetising their websites through advertising. This has never been profitable from the day they first did it. Now, they argue, the time has come to change all this and you must pay.

The main revenue for the media is advertising he argues and for the online model,advertising is free

Phone any regional newspaper title in the country and speak to their ad sales team. The conversation will result in them offering you a rate card for the print edition. Sound sceptical about the costs and benefits. They will offer space online for free. Every time. I know, because I’ve spoken to quite a few ad sales teams in the last year.

It is the old argument about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.But again the problem comes back to the time when news organisations started putting their content online and didn't understand the web


Ht-Martin Stabe

Multiplying web pages mean diminishing returns

Another wake up call for the media industry in the Wall Street journal which asks the question

What does the Internet display-ad market have in common with Zimbabwe?

The answer?

Both are printing nearly-limitless amounts of their main currency, vastly diminishing its value and undermining their future.

A damning rebuff for the internet business model? Quite possibly.The piece argues that as the volume of web pages expand so does the need for carrying ads and more ads mean falling prices.

The cost per thousand views of display ads on big Web sites sold through ad networks -- rather than sales forces of individual sites, which usually handle premium inventory -- fell 54% in the fourth quarter compared with the year earlier, estimates PubMatic, which offers online services to publishers.

It is a worrying trend and is no doubt being magnified by the recession but it may be worth focusing on basic economics if the problem is to be fixed.