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A few quick links to some of the media-tech stories from the last 24 hours…
- AP: Google stock hits new high after SalesForce.com deal
- FT.com: Former Cisco exec Mike Volpi named to Joost CEO
- PaidContent: Dan Hart promoted to SVP/GM of MTV Digital
- Broadcasting & Cable: COO Bill Nelson tapped as new HBO CEO
- Press release: Blip.tv lands funding round from Skype founders
1 comment June 5th, 2007
The latest Borrell Associates report is out (earlier preview here), and it predicts local online advertising will reach $7.5 billion, a 31.6 percent jump over 2006. There’s a key paragraph from the executive summary:
“Amid the mad scramble (to drive revenue online), the greatest friction is within media companies themselves. While web managers pursue faster growth by pulling away from their parent organization and by tackling online-only sales, existing print and broadcast sales managers are clamoring to pull them back — online programs provide the sizzle that they hope will re-engage fleeing advertisers. But ‘convergence,’ once the buzzword around which many new media efforts swirled, is beginning to slow online sales as the pool of prospects among existing print or broadcasting advertisers is drained. Pursuing non-traditional advertisers is becoming the route to growth.”
While online media — both in sales and content — has an overlap point with broadcasting, web managers should not be restricted by broadcast thinking. The more I talk with smart web managers in broadcast companies, the more I realize they’re becoming stifled to the point of endangering those companies’ success online. Yes, TV sales and news departments should become “platform agnostic,” yet in the meantime, we can’t let this slow, painful cultural process hold back our growth demands online. Most of the growth opportunity online has nothing to do with TV news or TV sales, and TV websites only hold a 7.7 percent share of local online ad dollars, according to Borrell. As I’ve said time and time again, hire smart web people, empower them, hold them responsible for results and get out of the way. Or they’ll end up leaving broadcasting for pure plays that will devour your revenue.
Adds Jason in comments: “I think that the Borrell report is tainted. We are having a blockbuster year with combined online and convergence sales up 62% over last year. This is with a multi million dollar base. Everyone has seen the reports that the combination of TV and online has more impact for advertisers then pure online. Stations need to look at what they are selling and how they are selling. If you target niche market opportunities as we have seen in Cory’s most recent listing of special products you will have significant success. The trap that we fall into is to play the pure play game. The best approach is to look locally and to develop a plan that fits the profile of the station and can deliver to the needs of the advertiser.”
Adds Cory: Good points. I think there’s a balance — “convergence” packages are still important — but right now the balance in the industry leans heavily towards a broadcasting-package sales approach. As advertisers become more sophisticated, they’ll demand results online in the same ballpark as our pure play competition. There are tremendous opportunities in paid placement/local search, video classifieds, advertorial, lead generation and self-service, yet these have little to do with broadcasting other than the promotional power to get new initiatives noticed.
5 comments June 5th, 2007
CompUSA says it is sending Terry Heaton a $300 gift certificate after his misadventures buying an empty box there. I would have hoped for an actual camera, but Terry seems cool with going to a CompUSA store buying one again. (You can bet he’ll look in the box.) The story caught fire on the web, and CompUSA noticed. Terry writes:
This is a lesson in the power of community — the very people CompUSA needs to court as customers spread the word and reacted angrily to what most viewed as a rip-off. I did nothing to manipulate “coverage” — I only wanted to share a slice of my life. The community took over from there.
Right. There were some people who suggested Terry was trying to game the system somehow by blogging about what happened. Nonsense. Bloggers blog. If the community had decided the story wasn’t a big deal, the community wouldn’t have reacted to the story. As for the volume of people who blamed the victim?
I’ve been taken aback by the number of people, especially on Digg, who were adamant that I was some sort of con artist trying to steal a camera from CompUSA and get away with it. People, really. Another group of people sided with the belief that I should’ve opened the friggin’ box at the store. These well-intentioned onlookers weren’t there as I bought 12 items for $3,339.99. Was I supposed to open each?
There were some good folks who pointed out to the people who said “Buyer beware!” and “All sales are final!” that no transaction took place - selling someone an empty box means Terry was not a “buyer” at all, but rather a victim of fraud. As for Terry’s master criminal plan? He’s a terrible thief, if you ask me. Who buys $3,500 woth of goods with the intention of then screwing a company out of 7%? I mean - you can do that online by avoiding sales tax.
So good for CompUSA for ultimately doing mostly the right thing. One last note: I have been accused in many posts of being biased in this report. I want to make this absolutely clear, so there is no confusion: I am biased.
34 comments June 5th, 2007
Instead of the old “which did you like better, the book or the movie” line, Farkers can now ask about the book or the Web site. Drew Curtis, creator and host of the iconic mediabashing site Fark.com has written a book called It’s Not News, It’s Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News. Not curiously, I haven’t bumped into any reviews in the mainstream, but Slashdot has something on it. If you are in NYC tonight (Tuesday), Drew is doing a book signing and there is a Fark meetup afterwards. My copy is on order, but if you’ve read it or seen a review, please drop a note in the comments.
And on a personal note to Cory and Saf: Since we were already dugg, why not try for the trifecta and get slashdotted and farked?
Safran notes: We’ve been Farked! (Talk about link love!) And the sheer volume of people who continue to blame Terry on the CompUSA debacle astounds me.
Cory adds: I just finished reading Drew’s book. It utilizes some of Fark’s craziest stories as examples of how the news media doesn’t always, well, cover the news. As CNN producer Chez Pazienza explains on the back cover, “I find it hilarious and sadly disturbing that I’ve spent fifteen years of my life in a goddammed newsroom, and yet Drew Curtis has learned enough about what we do — because are methods are so transparent and simplistic — that he can write a book about media trends and pretty much nail it.”
4 comments June 5th, 2007
UPDATE: CompUSA has sent a $300 gift certificate to Terry. Read more.
A couple days ago, Steve Safran posted Terry Heaton’s horror story of buying an empty box at CompUSA only to learn the company refused to refund him his money. As of this writing, the story is on Digg’s home page and BoingBoing’s home page, among other places, and it’s generating astronomical traffic here on Lost Remote. It’s fascinating to watch how quickly this story is becoming a de facto publicity nightmare for CompUSA among a techie audience — customers they should be most concerned about keeping. (And meanwhile, let’s see if Lost Remote can survive a full-on Digg onslaught.)
UPDATE: CNET.com picks up on the story in “The Queue” (1:12 into the video.)
10 comments June 5th, 2007
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