Cory Bergman
Google says that media companies, when faced with a decision whether to pull a YouTube clip with their copyrighted material or monetize the ads surrounding it, choose to take the ad money about 90 percent of the time. “This has led directly to a similarly significant increase in monetizable partner inventory, as our Video ID partners are seeing claimed content more than double their number of views, against which we can run ads,” explains the official Google Blog. Surprised?
Related: Court sides with Veoh in porn video lawsuit
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August 27th, 2008
Cory Bergman
CNET has left the green and yellow design behind for a new look.
Among the new features: high-def video on CNET TV, faster serving, better search and aggregated reviews. On the advertising front, explains the WSJ (free version): “The new CNET.com includes a ‘brand showcase’ feature, allowing advertisers to pay for pages where they can promote products with links to CNET reviews, a service for which CBS can charge higher rates, according to Joe Gillespie, who oversees CNET.com.”
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August 27th, 2008
Cory Bergman
After months of beta testing, Google has launched AdManager, a full-service ad serving and management tool. And it’s completely free. You can integrate third-party ad tags and then compare CPMs with Adsense on the fly, selecting the ad with the highest return. Or you can turn off Adsense altogether. There’s back-end reporting. Full permission settings. And you can use AdManager to power your own ad network across multiple sites. Very, very cool.
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August 27th, 2008
Cory Bergman
ESPNrise.com has launched, joining the fray of high school sports sites battling for attention. Unlike many local high school sports efforts, ESPNrise.com takes a broader approach, focusing on states and regions instead of drilling down on individual high schools and all the rich data that comes with it. But it comes with all the usual community functionality, from discussion to user blogs, and soon you’ll be able to upload video, too.
Meanwhile, many local high school sports efforts are entering their second full football season: HSGameTime.com (Belo), HighSchoolPlaybook.com (Hearst), FoxHiLites (Fox) and High School Football (Cox). Gannett is entering its first full season with HighSchoolSports.net, and it’s been a year and half since CBS bought MaxPreps. Certainly a very crowded, competitive space.
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August 27th, 2008
Cory Bergman
A new report from Forrester Research says that the future of television, something it calls “personal TV,” will be delivered on-demand in a web-like experience with targeted advertising based on location and behavior. This isn’t surprising at all, of course, but the question is how the networks, studios, local TV stations, cable & satellite providers, agencies, syndicators and technology companies are going to get there. And why is it taking so long? “Forrester spreads the blame across the TV landscape,” explains AdWeek. “Cable companies didn’t build-out video on-demand as an ad-supported platform, networks protected the lucrative status quo and agencies didn’t push for innovation.” Forrester pegs the transition date to “personal TV” sometime between 2012 and 2018. This ought to be interesting…
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August 27th, 2008
Cory Bergman
Gib Olander works for Localeze, which helps local businesses excel in search engines. He wrote a column for MediaPost that does a great job outlining the challenges and semantics of local search. For example, people don’t just search for “Oakland plumber” but “Oakland leaky faucet.” Or a golfer may search for “PING putter Elmhurst, IL” instead of “golf store Elmhurst, IL.” Local search now represents 25 percent of all searches, and nearly 90 percent of people will research online and buy offline, according to Comscore. There’s even an acronym for it. “ROBO is changing consumers’ definition of ‘window-shopping,’” Olander writes. “Now the Internet is becoming the vantage point through which consumers gauge the retail landscape, and if a business is identifiable in local search engines through only its name or category, it is not going to be found by the things that make it truly unique.”
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August 27th, 2008
Cory Bergman
Believe it or not, the humor site The Onion is getting into the local game with Decider, a local city guide that will take on the likes of CitySearch, Yelp and MetroMix. Decider is starting in Chicago (coincidentally just like Huffington Post) with restaurant and music reviews, events and feature stories. The design is clean and straightforward, and the content looks a little thin to start. But TechCrunch points out, “Decider isn’t serving as a standalone business, and will do just fine as an extension to The Onion’s newspaper.”
Adds Jesse in comments: “I’d say it’s more a matter of The AV Club, The Onion’s non-fiction editorial publication, getting into the game. They have really superb content overall, and they’re in a lot of cities.”
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August 26th, 2008
Cory Bergman
Up until now, mostly small papers here and there have been canceling their AP contracts. But now the Minneapolis-St. Paul daily, Star-Tribune, has given AP the required two-year notice for cancelation.
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August 26th, 2008
Cory Bergman
Even MTV is pushing into the local arena. Through a partnership with Zvents, mtvU has rolled out out 25 sites that are essentially city guides for local colleges. Called the Campus Daily Guide, they feature events, restaurant and bar reviews, local search and campus resources. They’ve also tapped into content from the College Media Network — the college newspaper network MTV recently acquired — as well as RatemyProfessor.com, another MTV property. The idea is to bring in both national and local advertisers. “Brands like a Domino’s Pizza might want to advertise in a context that is truly local,” said mtvU’s general manager Steven Friedman. There are 25 sites to start with plans to launch 25 more. Here’s University of Washington…
I think this is a terrific idea — in fact, the best idea I’ve seen from MTV in years — and it makes perfect sense given mtvU’s touchpoints with the college community. The site is well-designed, Zvents is a solid events source, mtvU has plenty of great promotion avenues (college papers and mtvU) and local campus representatives will help with the site at each college. And there are plenty of national and local businesses who want to advertise to college students in their natural habitat.
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August 26th, 2008
Cory Bergman
Another example of slow growth online for a newspaper company: the New York Times Company announced that online advertising revenue grew .9% in July for its news media group “as more moderate growth in display advertising was partially offset by continued weakness in online recruitment advertising.” But NYTCO says August is trending better.
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August 26th, 2008
Cory Bergman
Watching on TV? Online? What DNC coverage and technology ideas are worth taking to the RNC in Minneapolis? Which are a bust? Comment away…
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August 25th, 2008
Cory Bergman
Updated: Lots of links from Denver for your browsing pleasure. If you have any more you’d like to point out, please leave in comments.
- Lots of live online coverage from the DNC: msnbc.com, CNN.com, Democrats.org, CBSNews.com (simulcast plus online-only webcast, also on CNET), ABCNews.com, WaPost along with Newsweek, Ustream.tv (live from “The Big Tent”), C-SPAN via Qik, DemConvention.com (live “in HD”) and I’m sure there are many more I’m missing.
- CNN spends close to $100,000 for aerial camera setup
- As you might imagine, wiring the DNC is an engineering bear.
- The news media and bunches of bloggers are doing their thing from “The Big Tent,” aggregated here. (Photo from npimultimedia.) It’s a 8,000 square foot, two-story structure that features a Digg Stage as well as a Google Retreat with a YouTube kiosk where you can make your own YouTube videos. Oh, and free beer. Hundreds of bloggers + free alcohol = we’ll see…
- Speaking of Digg, it’s debuting Dialogg, a new feature that will let people submit and vote up questions for elected officials. The first session is with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi at the convention.
- Poynter has put together a fast-and-furious Twitter feed of the journalists covering the DNC. Maybe I’ll Twitter about it.
- “Obama Girl” goes mobile at DNC with entertainment-oriented coverage.
- Google sets up a mobile election website with lots of tools.
- MediaFLO bulks up news offerings for conventions.
- TVNewser in Denver to cover the coverage of the DNC.
- And as we wrote about earlier, C-SPAN has launched new convention sites with live coverage via Qik. And KLAS-TV along with UNLV is there, too, with live coverage via mobile phones.
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August 25th, 2008
Don Day
Poynter Online has a new look this morning - replacing the outdated site that’s been around for quite a while. The new site has a nice look and a bunch of new features (some of which have good application on general news sites…) Kick the tires and let us know what you think.
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August 23rd, 2008
Don Day
Valleywag has a hot piece sitting under the title “5 ways the newspapers botched the web.” The story looks at the long line of newspaper mis-fires, from RealCities New Century Networks and even Classified Ventures (cars.com et al). The central theory? Daily deadlines did in the newspaper industry because “they couldn’t look farther into the future than the next edition”
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August 23rd, 2008
Don Day
Despite big TV promotion, prominent placement on MSN and MSNBC.com, 211 affiliates cranking towards it and exclusive video, NBCOlympics.com isn’t the top Olympics news site - that crown goes to Yahoo.
Silicon Alley Insider quotes Nielsen Online data for the sites - which shows from August 8 - August 18, Yahoo Olympics beat NBC Olympics for eight out of 11 days. In aggregate, Yahoo Olympics edged NBCO in average users by about 10%.
SAI published that report on August 20. Earlier that same day, an NBCU media relations person sent out a release touting NBCO’s big win over Yahoo. So what gives? The NBCU announcement only used NIELSEN data through 8/10/2008 - even though the release was sent 20 days later. It then mushed in some Hitwise data and swished it all around to paint a bright picture. NBC’s release is at best misleading - and as Wired notes, even Hitwise says Yahoo had more users to its site… something NBC left out of its news release.
Read the NBC release after the jump.
(Disclosure: I’ve been generating content for NBCO’s OZone program for KTVB & KTFT. We also have a content sharing agreement with MSNBC.com).
(more…)
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August 23rd, 2008
Don Day
Yesterday, a reporter with KMBC in Kansas City had a big scoop: Barack Obama would pick Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh to be his running mate. Except… that didn’t happen. Oops. The station broke into programming with the hot news based on a bumper sticker. Did they hedge? Not enough…
KMBC-9 News has every indication that Barack Obama is about to announce his running mate will be the Indiana senator Evan Bayh. This is based on sources very close to the situation and based also on this.
Turns out sources “close to the situation” were actually sources close to the bumper sticker makers. Ouch.
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August 23rd, 2008
Cory Bergman
As you know, Obama’s campaign sent out its much-anticipated text early this morning, announcing Biden as his VP choice. You’ll notice a few things from the timing: 1) most newspapers were unable to get it into their Saturday editions, which apparently was the campaign’s intent 2) it probably woke up a bunch of people and 3) some are saying it was timed as a subtle jab back at Hillary Clinton for the “3 a.m. red phone” ad. Meanwhile, many subscribers are saying they didn’t receive the text until several hours later. Sprint isn’t divulging details about that, but they did put out a press release and a graph illustrating the traffic on Obama’s short code:
By the way, you might find this quote from Sprint’s press release interesting: “Sprint customers depend on us for information that is important to them — including real-time breaking news.” While you might think Sprint is going a little overboard capitalizing on the publicity, if you think about it for a moment the wireless providers are indeed becoming one of the most popular distribution networks for news. And someday, they may be the most popular.
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August 23rd, 2008
Cory Bergman
The mad dash toward location awareness continues with Google’s “Gears Geolocation API.” Developers can use Google’s toolkit to develop location-based services for both mobile devices and on your PC. At its core, the API can “determine your location using nearby cell phone towers or GPS for your mobile device or your computer’s IP address for your laptop.” In other words, this will make it easier for developers to launch location-based applications on the fly. Google explains in this video.
Last week: Yahoo debuts Fire Eagle location tool
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August 22nd, 2008
Cory Bergman
NewTeeVee’s Liz Gannes just returned from casting her vote judging the fiction category of the Interactive Emmy Awards, and she breaks down the five entrants including HBO’s Voyeur, NBC’s Heroes and ABC’s Lost. But Gannes reserved the most praise for Showtime’s The L Word. “It has cultivated the biggest social network for lesbians, OurChart, out of a plot line from the show,” she writes. “OurChart is actually a separate company put together by the show’s creators, where characters are present but fan community is abundant.” This is a terrific example of thinking beyond the confines of traditional TV: leveraging the show’s niche audience to launch a new online product that will outlive the TV show itself. Smart.
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August 22nd, 2008
Cory Bergman
Updated: Gannett has inked a deal with Capitol Records and Brian Wilson, the former Beach Boy, to debut the singer’s new album online. You can visit any of Gannett’s newspaper and TV sites and listen to the entire album, “That Lucky Old Sun” (see it in action on KUSA’s site, 9News.com here.) If you’re in the mood to buy, you’ll be directed to Amazon.com where you can pre-order it. It’s a first for Gannett as well as the first time we’ve heard of an artist debuting an album on local media sites. Screen grab…
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August 22nd, 2008
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