#Outlook2010: Lauren Rich Fine on media’s future – ‘Is there too much news?’

Last week Journalism.co.uk attended the INMA and Online Publishers Association (OPA) Europe’s annual conference Outlook 2010 – the event focused on innovation, transformation and making money for media businesses. Follow our coverage at this link.

Former ContentNext research director and media analyst Lauren Rich Fine opened her conference presentation with a potentially ‘heretical’ question: “Is it possible that there’s too much news?”

Fine’s overview of the state of the media industry (focusing on the US market) and her ideas for a more collaborative, cooperative future can be listened to in full below:

Here are some key quotes:

On content:

• “I would suggest to you that there might be too much content, that we need to see rampant consolidation, that it’s not just going to be in the newspaper industry (…) it has to be everywhere.”

On the newspaper industry:

• “The newspaper industry has been very bad at being optimistic about its future, the newspaper industry has been really bad at marketing itself (and TV and radio are even more off-base).”

On advertising:

• “Classified advertising is permanently exiting newspapers – and it should, it works better online.”
• “If classified advertising continues to fall by the wayside this could be an industry operating with no margin.”

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Trafigura dumped as art prize sponsor following ‘recent events’

As noted by Richard Wilson, author of Don’t Get Fooled Again, and one of the bloggers to first publish MP Paul Farrelly’s secret injunction question on his blog, Trafigura – the third largest independent oil trader in the world – has been dropped as a sponsor of what was formerly the Trafigura Art Prize.

Cynthia Corbett’s art prize will no longer be sponsored by Trafigura, and will instead be renamed the Young Masters Art Prize, a release from the gallery stated.

“Since the prize was conceived two years ago we approached various art foundations and corporate organizations to sponsor an art prize. We feel that the recent events involving Trafigura are detracting from the main purpose of the prize, which is to celebrate emerging and newly established artists,” said Corbett.

Sixteen international artists are currently exhibiting work at the Young Masters exhibition, which opened at The Old Truman Brewery last week (the day before Trafigura dropped its injunction against the Guardian) with over 1200 visitors. The prize will seek funding for the prize money from alternative sponsors in future years; this year the prize will be non-monetary, the release stated.

Richard Wilson is currently hosting the ‘Alternative Trafigura Art Prize’.

For the latest on the Guardian-Trafigura-Carter-Ruck injunction triangle, see Journalism.co.uk stories at this link.

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Mail Online confirms withdrawal of ads on Moir article; defends free speech

A statement from Mail Online received late on Friday night confirmed to Journalism.co.uk that the title had indeed pulled advertising from a heavily criticised column by Jan Moir on the death of Boyzone singer Stephen Gately.

“Following the publication of advertisers’ telephone numbers by the heavily orchestrated campaign attacking Jan Moir’s column, Mail Online – of its own volition – withdrew the ads alongside her article,” the statement said.

“As Jan Moir, who has gone on record supporting civil partnerships, says in her statement, this intensely choreographed campaign mischievously misrepresents her carefully argued article.

“In the interest of free speech  Mail Online is carrying  comments both for and against her column, but regrets the heavy-handed tactics by the campaign which is clearly being fanned by many people who haven’t even read Jan’s views.”

However, in a week where the once ‘old’ and ‘new’ worlds of media joined forces to overturn threats to freedom of the press by contesting legal firm Carter-Ruck’s attempt to gag the Guardian, the Mail’s argument that Moir has been the victim of an ‘intensely choreographed campaign’ does not ring true.

As Guardian digital director Emily Bell comments today:

“Moir, or her editors, or both, misjudged the speed and breadth of the real-time web and social media in their power to highlight and pressurise at speed and with force. To see the Daily Mail taught a lesson about public outrage in the electronic age would no doubt have raised a weak, battered smile at the BBC.”

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Ad Week: Digg to expand advertising network

Social bookmarking site Digg is expanding its advertising programme starting with publishers that receive large amounts of traffic from the site, Ad Week reports.

The site will add to its existing trial of users voting for ads they want to see by allowing advertisers to aggregate feeds of user-submitted stories on a particular subject and pull these stories together around their advertisement.

Full story at this link…

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Jo Wadsworth: Where is advertising moving online?

(One of Jon Bernstein’s 15 news men and women to follow on Twitter) Jo Wadsworth rounds up a busy week in advertising, starting with last week’s news that online advertising has become the biggest advertising medium, according to an Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) report.

But rising forms of advertising (paid search and social media for example) aren’t what news sites might currently benefit from, she adds.

“Of course advertisers have always found ways to avoid shelling out for adverts (…) But the difference here is that social media allows brands to bypass mass media entirely. And it’s not just commercial brands – it’s also local authorities, celebrities, politicians, lots of the people who previously relied on the papers to get their message out there,” she writes.

Full post at this link…

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Lost Remote: Google’s new simplified ads for local businesses

Local advertising: Google has introduced new simplified ads for local businesses in the US, reports Lost Remote. Full story at this link…

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#aop3c: Think duration, not page views for online video says MSN’s Peter Bale

In a session discussing the future of video at the the AOP Publishing Summit 2009 (also featuring BBC Worldwide, ITN On, CBS Interactive, InSkin Media) Peter Bale, executive producer for Microsoft UK said that in the next 18 months to two years we will see a shift in the way video is measured for advertising purposes.

Duration spent watching, or ‘dwell-time’ will become a much more important measure than page views, and the format of advertising itself will change – with more connection between television advertisements and online campaigns, Bale predicted.

Listen to Bale talking to Journalism.co.uk here:

“Page views at the moment are used – rightly or wrongly – as a proxy for ad impression delivery,” said Bale.

“For example, we deliver something like 10 billion page views on MSN in UK, a couple of years ago it was only five billion – and there is a vague approximation between that and ad impression – it’s become a necessary currency for us for advertisers and it does give you a sense of scale, but what it doesn’t give you is a good measure of engagement.

“It is not information that works tremendously well with a video intense site or this environment where people are trying to make more money off the web.

“Average revenue per user and dwell time are going to become much more important. It’s about time online, as opposed to pages moved through and consumed.”

It will require new advertising formats, he said. “It will become more engaging, it is going to become more easy to click on an ad in a video environment.”

In addition, television advertising will become more interactive and connected to the online offering:

“I despair at the moment at the lack of real connection to a major brand’s web campaign – it rarely gets promoted effectively on television,” said Bale. “It’s as though people are working in two completely different environments.”

• Summit coverage at this link.

• This teetstream featured choice 140-character updates from digital journalists and publishers at the event

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Motors.co.uk expands regional newspaper deals

Three regional newspaper groups have signed deals with automative website motors.co.uk, a press release for the site has confirmed.

Iliffe Media, Berkshire Media Group and Baylis Media will now use motors.co.uk used car search on their regional sites, which cover more than 40 titles and 25 websites.

The deal will increase the Associated Northcliffe Digital (AND) owned motors.co.uk coverage in local UK newspapers to 19 per cent, the company said.

The site, which promotes itself as an online alternative to Autotrader, already has agreements national titles Mail Online, owned by AND’s parent company, and the Independent.

According to the company, the motors.co.uk network now attracts 3.3 million car buyers a month.

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Beet TV: NYT digital chief says About.com has ‘unbelievable margins’ from Google AdSense

Beet TV reports:

“About.com, the online network of special interest communities, enjoys ‘unbelievable margins’ from Google AdSense, said Martin Nisenholtz, who heads digital operations at The New York Times Company, which owns About.com.”

“He says that companies who create low cost, highly verticalized and contextualized content will get ‘very rich’ from AdSense. He adds that AdSense does not perform well for New York Times news coverage.”

Nisenholtz makes the comments in the video below (reference to AdSense at 2:45 in the clip):

Full post at this link…

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TimesOnline: Daily Mail halves its advertising decline rate

“Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) said yesterday that it had halved the rate of decline in advertising revenue at its flagship national newspaper in September, a fillip that suggests the industry could start to recover in the new year,” reports the Times.

Full post at this link…

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