Google has again recruited from BBC staff as part of attempts to encourage online publishers to make more of the media giant’s news platform, this time hiring the broadcaster’s head of development and rights Madhav Chinnappa.

According to a report by paidContent:UK, the position is likely to centre on improving relations between Google News and newspaper publishers as many continue to question the value of the site to them – as demonstrated in a debate at the Frontline Club last week, attended by another former BBC recruit Peter Barron, who previously edited Newsnight but now heads up Google’s communications and PR department.

It’s a new post, and a sign Google is increasingly keen to dampen increasing scepticism, from some newspaper publishers, regarding its attitude to content, and instead come to amicable arrangements.

See the full post here…

• Podcast: Google meets online news publishers at the Frontline Club
• BBC College of Journalism blog: Google not to blame for journalism’s woes
• #tjcardiff: Follow Cardiff University’s Tomorrow’s Journalists conference
• ‘Good for advertisers, bad for media companies’: Google has a sit-down with news publishers
• French publishers vs Google: ‘You are becoming our worst enemy’

Online display advertising activity in the UK has increased year-on-year despite the current economic climates, figures from Nielsen Online for the first quarter of 2009 are suggesting.

The number of display advertisers, the number of individual campaigns and the number of ad creatives used all rose by 21 per cent compared with stats for the same period last year.

Over 5,900 advertisers ran online display ad campaigns in Q1 2009 with a monthly average of 11,000 campaigns.

“Whilst other media have suffered in the amount of advertising they attract, online continues to thrive. Although advertisers are probably getting more bang for their buck through falling online advertising rates, the strong increase in the level of display advertising activity is reason enough for online publishers and media owners to be optimistic about the year ahead – particularly if the retail and finance sectors continue their heavy activity,” said Alex Burmaster, communications director, online, in the report.

In the news and information sector, OMNIsport was the most active advertiser in online display advertising.

• Ernst & Young: Online search will help reverse fortunes of display and classified ads
• Google attempting to woo publishers with advertising plans
• Yahoo! announces details of targeted advertising service Amp!
• FT results: FT.com paid-for subscriptions up 9%
• FT.com: Publishers diversify to beat plateau in online advertising revenues

Milijoenhuizen.nl, a Dutch network of user-edited news portals, has reportedly been successfully sued by car dealing firm Zwartepoorte for a Google-generated page summary (via 24Oranges blog).

A judge ruled that the ‘snippet’, which occured in the results of a search for ‘Zwartepoorte’ and ‘bankrupt’, may or may not give the false impression that the car dealer has gone bankrupt.

“To create the snippet, Google algorithms pulled both the ‘Zwartepoorte’ bit and the ‘bankrupt’ bit from the Miljoenhuizen.nl page. But they weren’t side-by-side on the page – as the ellipses indicate. That’s often how Google does things. If you Google two separate words, it shows you that each search result contains both of them,” explains the Register.

The site has reportedly removed the page.

Crucially, as the Register points out, the car dealer chose to sue the website not Google. (Interestingly now when you search for the same terms on Google blogs and news sites reporting the case appear in the results with the same snippet).

It’s a worrying precedent for online publishers – are there ways to prevent Google from summarising pages in this form?

Full post at this link…

• RSS feeds for search results at The Sun
• Google launches What Do You Love search
• How to get the most from Google News feeds
• Mumbrella: Murdoch to remove sites from Google’s index?
• Google search looks to bloggers

So here’s the story, from a range of open-to-all sources:

[as told by the AFP]: “Three veteran US media executives teamed up and launched a company designed to help ailing US newspapers and other publications make money on the web by charging readers for news.”

[as told by the AP]: “Three media veterans plan to bundle the internet content of newspaper and magazine publishers into a subscription package that will test web surfers’ willingness to pay for material that has been given away for years.”

[as told by Jeff Jarvis]: “…[F]ormer online publisher Steven Brill, former Wall Street Journal online exec Gordon Crovitz, and former cable exec Leo Hindery had teamed up to to create a company to enable news companies to huddle behind a wall and charge for their content.”

[as told by its founders]: “Citing ‘the urgent need’ for a comprehensive, immediate plan to address the downward spiral in the business of publishing original, quality journalism, experienced journalism and media industry executives Steven Brill, Gordon Crovitz, and Leo Hindery today announced the formation of Journalism Online, a company that will quickly facilitate the ability of newspaper, magazine and online publishers to realize revenue from the digital distribution of the original journalism they produce.”

[as told by Gawker]: “Now he’s [Steven Brill] launched Journalism Online Inc, whose goal is to make it easy for technologically-challenged newspaper companies to sell online subscriptions and individual stories.”

A sample of what else is available outside the wall on the launch:

• The first part of an interview with paidContent – Staci D. Kramer reports: “The biggest surprise so far? Brill says that every publisher they’ve met with has asked about picking up an equity stake.”

• Mark Potts’ blog post titled ‘Herding Cats’: “I think the whole online subscription idea is harebrained and doomed to failure, and I’ve ranted about that more than enough,” he writes.
  

• Media Release: News Corp invests in newspaper paywall business Journalism Online
• Journalism Online paid content venture to take 20 per cent commission
• Journalism Online paid content system gets first user with obits paywall
• paidContent 2010 conference livestream
• AP: Journalism Online says 10 per cent will pay for news

In an attempt to ‘redefine’ the ‘often testy’ relationship between online publishers and search engines, Microsoft plans to work with European media owners to protect and profit from copyrighted material online, IHT reports.

• FT.com: ‘Web pact’ for Microsoft and News Corp?
• ACAP answers its critics
• Publishers’ vertical search can rival Google, says AOP forum
• FT.com: Microsoft unlikely to pay users to leave Google
• Google due in Spanish court to appeal data protection restrictions

The software engineering company behind Sky News’ recent online revamp, Daylife, has launched a new product aimed at online news publishers.

Sky used Daylife’s products to create topic pages of related multimedia content called ‘in depth’ pages.

The new Daylife Enterprise API will similarly let publishers re-purpose blog posts, text, data and audio-visual content in new ways online.

How does it do this? The service will collect this content and then create feeds which the publisher can put to use a variety of ways – as per their request.

For example – the Enterprise API was trialled by the Washington Post to create picture galleries from the Beijing Olympics – searchable by sport and country – and to accompany its US presidential campaign coverage.

Daylife took all the incoming photos from Post photographers around these subjects and made them available to the paper as an API, ready for use to create new pages on its website.

Utilising existing content in this way can be a success in terms of web traffic – making sites a more attractive prospect for advertisers, says Daylife CEO Upendra Shardanand.

As part of the product, publishers can make these content feeds open to the public and third-party developers – a feature which Shardanand hopes will lead to more collaboration on news content between publishers and users.

“In terms of e-commerce and advertising there’s been so much innovation in the last 10 years online, in comparison there’s not been so much in news,” he told Journalism.co.uk.

“How do you innovate if you don’t do software? I don’t know what the next best concept is but a service like ours can be shared.”

Publishers should not dismiss outsourcing this work, says Shardanand, after all it’s not their job and with the amount of content they have available would be extremely time consuming – the company has over 200 machines running to process the content. It’s not for free, but licences are decided on a customer-by-customer basis.

Instead, he told us, the aim is to get the most value out of the content that publishers are already producing for both online and other editions – such as the photos taken by WaPo staff – by doing the backend work for them.

Crucial to the success of the project will be the say that publishers have over what is done with their content – something which Shardanand is keenly aware of.

“These have to be content portals that are still customised and match your brand and voice,” he says.

“It wouldn’t work if the editors couldn’t do exactly what they want. Advertisers wouldn’t value it either.”

• Upendra Shardanand: Hand-crafted content online needs new tools
• The New York Observer: Daylife, an aggregator newspapers like
• paidContent.org: Daylife working with digital publications
• Editor’s Weblog: Daylife – a solution to the ‘conundrum of profit vs content’?
• #ds10: Ultraknowledge – search and visualising the news

e-Player, a new ‘multi-channel video player delivering sports highlights and video clips’, is to be used by a raft of UK media organisations, Sinead Scanlon writes for Journalism.co.uk.

ITV Sport, Telegraph Media Group, the Daily Mail, News International, Trinity Mirror, Evening Standard, Metro and Bauer are all set to deploy the player, which has been developed by Virgin Media and sports and entertainment company Perform, a press release on the launch said.

The player will be free for the media groups and will provide sports highlights and updates from UK football and European leagues, as well golf, tennis and rugby clips. Advertising revenue will be shared between Virgin and Perform and the media sites, based on the amount of traffic generated to the videos.

“We have secured distribution with many of the highest traffic, most respected online publishers in the UK, making e-Player the most exciting online video advertising proposition in the market,” said Oliver Slipper, joint-CEO of Perform.

• Video is just start of online for Sport, says MD
• ESPN in video content deal with AOL.com
• Sports section revamp for Northcliffe – building a sporting community
• New York Times expands video online
• News sites can remove YouTube logo for embedded video

Online advertising is going to overtake radio in the advertising market, MediaGuardian reported today.

Richard Wray’s article stated that while Carat – part of the Aegis marketing empire – had reduced its forecasts for the global advertising markets for 2008/9, it also said online advertising will continue to grow, overtaking radio as the third most popular advertising medium after TV and newspapers and magazines.

MediaGuardian’s report is interesting to look at in the light of statistics made available last week by the Online Publishers Association (OPA).

The US-based figures suggest that ‘consumers on all three types of local media sites – newspapers, television stations and magazines – are more likely to take action after viewing a local advert than visitors on all other local content sites’.

As part of the OPA study, JupiterResearch surveyed 2,069 US online consumers ‘who qualified as Local Online Content Users, by currently using online yellow pages, newspaper, TV, magazine, city guides, user review sites, portals or classifieds for local information.’

Here’s the breakdown:

Per cent of consumers taking action after viewing local adverts

• Local Newspaper Site: 46%
• Local Television Site: 44%
• Local Magazine Site: 42%
• User Review Site: 39%
• Portal: 37%

Click here to view the full report and follow this link for the press release.

• JEEcamp: online revenue models – the Waghorn way
• Forty-four per cent of Google News users don’t click through to source, suggests survey
• AP unveils tool to allow affiliates to upload news to its online video network
• FIPP 09: Lévy’s forecast gloomy but print magazines still important for luxury brands, says Gucci Group media director
• More US publishers sign up for Briggs’ Newsgarden

Google’s recently launched online encyclopedia Knol is causing concern among other online publishers, who fear the company’s business as a search engine could come into conflict with its new ‘content publishing’ venture. Google maintains that it is not creating content – posts to Knol are signed and edited by individual users – but acting as a ‘conduit’ on the web.

• Google links to HuffPo UK go to US before launch
• Google to go glossy with magazine patent?
• French newspapers in cahoots over pay system to rival Google
• paidContent:UK: Subscription service SubHub secures new funding
• Advertising: Newspapers sign up with Zillow.com and Politico; UK radio station launches motor ads site

Journalism.co.uk talks to reporters across the globe working at the collision of journalism and social media about how they see it changing their industry. This week, Matthew Buckland from Mail & Guardian, South Africa.

1) Who are you and what do you do?
I am Matthew Buckland, the GM of Mail & Guardian Online.

As head of the online division I am responsible for the overall online and mobile strategy, with an overview of editorial, production, technical and online sales.

I am also involved quite heavily in our social media strategies and sites.

2) Which web or mobile-based social media tools do you use on a daily basis and why?
I use Twitter, both web and mobile. I blog on my own blog about online media, web 2.0 and technology, thoughtleader.co.za and sometimes on Poynter’s new media titbits.

I use Mybloglog on my blog quite a bit. I use Facebook web and mobile… but less and less these days. At the end of last year I began using Slideshare to share my presentations and see others. I Digg every now and again, and use a local version, Muti.co.za.

I also keep half an eyeball on Linkedin – but don’t really do it justice. I am an occasional Del.ici.ous user. I use both Flickr and Picasa as online photo albums/photo sharing.

For video sharing I use Youtube, obviously. I’m also a wikipediaholic.

I used SecondLife for about a week, but realised it would be best for my health to shut it down and never look at it again

Generally I find these social media tools are a good way of networking, sharing ideas and content, and building relationships with people. They also waste a lot of time and create noise in my life.

3) Of the thousands of social media tools available could you single one out as having the most potential for news either as a publishing or newsgathering tool?
I think of all the hyped up social media tools we’ve seen, blogging has shown that it is more than just a fad, but here to stay.

We’ve seen how mainstream online publishers have embraced blogs both as new publishing formats and newsgathering tool with considerable success.

4) And the most overrated in your opinion?
I’m beginning to think Facebook is overrated. The novelty is wearing off and people are getting bored, very quickly.

• Social Media Journalist: ‘USG is the most overrated social media ‘news’ craze’ Jack Lail, Knoxville News Sentinel
• Social Media Journalist: “BBC journalists are increasingly using Del.icio.us to collaborate and turn research into content” Robin Hamman, BBC Senior Broadcast Journalist
• Social Media Journalist: “I’ve never met anyone who isn’t a media type who’s ever heard of Del.icio.us.,” Robert Hardie, Northcliffe Media
• Social Media Journalist: ‘social search seems like a solution in search of a problem’ Howard Owens, Gatehouse Media, US
• Social media bar for WordPress acquired by sharing tool Buffer

Digital publishers in the UK saw a 52 per cent growth in total digital revenues last year, according to the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) annual census of its members.

The figures show the industry to be in ‘a bullish mood’ despite holding concerns over the economy’s impact on the industry, said Ruth Brownlee, director of the AOP, in a press release.

With regards to the future of the industry, members said high speed broadband provided the greatest opportunity for their businesses, while competition from non-traditional outlets is perceived as the biggest threat.

When questioned on content distribution 64 per cent of respondents said publishers should make their content available on third party websites, as well as a range of other platforms.

The figures suggest support for this distribution model with increased investment in IPTV (up 30%), mobile (20%), vodcasting (22%), podcasting (17%) and RSS feeds (9%).

The key findings from the census include:

• members forecast an 8 per cent total business growth with digital expected to grow by 31 per cent;
• 80 per cent of members expect to increase the number of digital staff hired this year with 62 per cent saying cross-media skills will be significant in the future;
• revenue from online advertising increased by 33 per cent last year and 80 per cent of those questioned said the current online advertising model was ‘a sustainable revenue stream’;
• high speed broadband (92%) and behavioural targeting (84%) are viewed as the biggest opportunities for business – other possibilities included content streaming (70%), mobile (74%) and user-generated content (84%).

Just over half of those questioned were in favour of a standard online measurement system – which would be a focus of the AOP’s working groups, Brownlee said.

• NYT second-quarter operating profit more than twice 2009 figure
• Digital revenue helping magazine publisher Future get back on track
• Future reports substantial progress online
• InPublishing survey: ‘Behind the turnover figures, the industry is essentially still in profit’
• Future: Digital ads going from strength-to-strength

Yahoo! has released more details of its forthcoming online advertising system, which will make use of behavioural targeting.

The AMP! system – formerly known as Project Apex – aims to help online publishers in buying and selling advertising across search, display, local, mobile, and video platforms, and will offer partners tools to target ads according to the location, age and interests of consumers.

According to a press release from the company, the system will give publishers and advertisers access to Yahoo!’s own portfolio of websites in addition to more than 600 US newspapers, which are part of the Newspaper Consortium.
The first stage of Amp! will be rolled out to members of the Newspaper Consortium in the third quarter of this year, with plans to extend the service to additional publishers, advertisers, agencies, and ad networks into 2009.

• Yahoo! and CNET enter partnership to reach new audiences
• Innovations in Journalism – socially referred and aggregated news from Yahoo! Buzz
• Editor&Publisher: Yahoo’s new newspaper ad platform
• Increase in UK online display advertising activity, says Nielsen
• MTC09: Moritz Wuttke – Don’t rely on Google and develop your own AdSense

Google’s tool can help online publishers tweak their content to maximize traffic from search engine users, says OJR.

‘Google Trends allows you to select up to five words or phrases, then shows you how those search terms rate relative to one another in both the volume of search queries handled by Google, as well as news references tracked by the search engine. It’s an addictive site for a data geek, like me, and essential for any online publisher who wants to optimize his or her publication to attract more visitors from search engines, such as Google.’

• Three tools to analyse Google searches: Correlate, Trends and Insights
• New Google patent could spoil Demand Media’s party
• Nieman Journalism Lab: Gawker’s new traffic metric measures ‘reader affection’
• Reuters: Google+ gets 25m users in four weeks
• Google closes Print Ads scheme

To go with the series of features on online copyright on Journalism.co.uk, thought I’d share this ‘rant’ with you on the subject.

Writer Harlan Ellison sums up the issue of publishers using content without permission and/or thinking it should be free.

(The clip, posted to YouTube, is part of the trailer for film Dreams With Sharp Teeth)

I suspect what he says about Time Warner would be echoed by freelancers and agencies dealing with online publishers: “They want everything for nothing. They wouldn’t go for five seconds without being paid and they’ll bitch about how much they are being paid and want more.”

• Will Time Warner sell Time magazine?
• Reported legal action against CNN for lack of captions on online news video
• Telegraph: IPC Media considers selling off more titles
• Stinkyjournalism.org: Time Warner comes under fire for Greg Gumbel infomercials
• Round-up: Widgety Goodness 2007

Nearly three quarters of online publishers see the benefit of developing vertical search engines as a way to claw back online communities from Google, a study published last month has claimed.

E-consultancy – with Convera – conducted a survey of search behaviours with over 500 professional and business internet users.

(Vertical search report – register here to get sent it)

As part of the study it asked 116 online publishers what benefits vertical search would bring.

Nearly 75 per cent of respondents to the question suggested one advantage of offering vertical search across their websites would be to reclaim online communities from Google. Forty two per cent felt this would be a major benefit.

Nearly 94 per cent of publishers felt that vertical search would also benefit sites through improving authority and enhancing brand awareness.

Keeping users on site (87 per cent) and potential to monetise though advertising (83 per cent) also ranked highly as benefits.

The online publishers felt the major disadvantages of vertical search were the hassle of support and maintenance – 71 per cent of respondents saw it as a downside – and that it may point users toward competitors – 69 per cent.

• Publishers’ vertical search can rival Google, says AOP forum
• Online news as trustworthy as print for majority of readers, survey claims
• OJR: Using Google Trends to fine-tune your news website
• Study of French news sites: Facebook sends 13 times more referrals than Twitter
• Poynter: Google’s new +1 social search and news publishers