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HP vs. Dell: Showdown at the Windows 7 upgrade corral
Here's a tale of two PC titans: HP and Dell. One executes well every quarter. The other doesn't. Both see big PC upgrade cycles ahead. Both are looking to ride... Continued »
Category: Advertising
November 23rd, 2009
Google to beef up display ads with acquisition of Teracent
Google, in an effort to bring more value to its display advertising business, has announced plans to acquire Teracent. In a blog post, Google explained its interest in Teracent:
Teracent’s technology can pick and choose from literally thousands of creative elements of a display ad in real-time — tweaking images, products, messages or colors. These elements can be optimized depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads. This technology can help advertisers get better results from their display ad campaigns. In turn, this enables publishers to make more money from their ad space and delivers web users better ads and more ad-funded web content.
To explain the idea, the company uses an image of two similar display ads, a template altered for a create a new look, add a custom message and provide more information about specific products. This all goes along with Google’s recent efforts to improve display advertising, including measurement tools and the Double-Click Ad Exchange.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
November 6th, 2009
Google classic homepage sports Motorola Droid ad
Notice anything different about Google’s classic homepage? You know, the one that’s patented?
Yep — Google’s using the most recognizable website on the planet to push the Motorola Droid smartphone, which runs on the corporate giant’s Android operating system.
October 5th, 2009
U.S. Internet ad revenue: Down 5.3 percent; Search rules
U.S. Internet advertising revenue checked in at $10.9 billion for the first six months of 2009, down 5.3 percent from a year ago, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
As usual, search and display advertising dominated the standings. Search advertising totaled $5.1 billion for the first six months of the year, up slightly. Display ads were $3.8 billion for the first half, down 1.1 percent from a year ago. Video ads surged 38 percent in the first half from a small base.
The IAB seemed to count the slight decline as a win given the economy (statement, full report).
Let’s roll the charts…
October 1st, 2009
Percentage of Internet users clicking on display ads halved in two years
The percentage of U.S. Internet users who click on display ads has fallen 50 percent in the last two years, according to a study by comScore, Starcom and Tacoda.
The findings (Techmeme), an update to research conducted in 2007, found that 16 percent of Internet users in March 2009 clicked on display ads, down from 32 percent a year ago. In addition, only 8 percent of the Internet user base accounts for 85 percent of all ad clicks.
ComScore, Starcom and Tacoda lumped these ad clickers into heavy, moderate and light. Here’s the scorecard:
The big takeaway from researchers is that display ads should be measured by something other than click-through. Shelby Bonnie, former CEO of CNET, agrees and laid out a few ideas on TechCrunch.
September 22nd, 2009
Redefining Yahoo: Will $100 million in marketing do the trick?
On the surface, Yahoo’s new “It’s You” campaign is supposed to be focused on customizing the experiences of users and advertisers to make them more relevant to each other.
But don’t be fooled, though. This campaign is less about you and more about Yahoo and its attempt to redefine itself.
CEO Carol Bartz brought an entourage of execs from Silicon Valley to New York City for a big-city press conference at the Nasdaq headquarters in Times Square to announce the $100 million multi-channel marketing and product campaign. (Techmeme) They laid out the campaign, talked about strategy, fielded some questions and, in typical Bartz fashion, even managed to get a bit feisty with the reporters who questioned the company’s moves - and motives.
“The focus of the company is really to engage and personalize Yahoo for customers,” Bartz said, highlighting its 581 million users and emphasizing that 76 percent of Internet users in the U.S. use Yahoo in some way. “We’re ready to deliver on this.”
The global campaign - a first for Yahoo - is anchored by a recently refreshed Yahoo homepage, which gives users the freedom to embed favorite sites from across the Web, even non-Yahoo sites. Beginning as a marketing effort that will gradually shift over 15 months toward a focus on the company’s products, the campaign will launch in 10 countries — Brazil, Canada, France, India, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Taiwan, the U.S. and the U.K. — and aims to engage users with tighter integration of internal and external sites and a more useful, relevant experience.
Also see: A Yahoo face-lift: New look and feel for Mobile, Mail, Messenger and Search
A B2B campaign rounds out the marketing and product push.
“This is a highly-evolved concept,” Bartz said, stressing coordination and integration across Yahoo sites. “How can you organize your life and have it your way?”
In turn, Yahoo plans to use its large scale to offer what Bartz called “micro-insights” about consumers to advertisers, to help them offer more relevant, and thus effective, advertisements to users.
Through surveys, the company has discovered that consumers actively seek out relevant advertisements. “We’re really delivering an enterprise system to our ad partners so they can get their jobs done,” Bartz said. “Consumers want good advertisers. It’s a marriage made in heaven.”
Still, the presentation was clearly about repositioning the Yahoo brand.
Bartz discussed how Yahoo’s search will be integrated with the campaign, exchanging “worthless tons of results” for a “different experience.” Unprompted, Bartz declared, “It’s not Bing, it’s Yahoo search.”
But reporters had questions - specifically, whether the company was obsessed with pointing out how it’s different from Google or Microsoft. Almost on cue, Bartz lashed out at the New York and Silicon Valley press for its skepticism about the company’s moves.
“When you get out of New York City and Silicon Valley, people love Yahoo,” Bartz said. “Why are you cynical about us? Get cynical about frickin’ Google. Just leave us alone.”
Also see: Bartz to Yahoo shareholders: Change is coming; We’re not Google
Yahoo’s search strategy: We’re not fighting “the megawatt war”
Google comparisons dogged Bartz, though, prompting her to acknowledge that the company had “put a cloud over its head” in the past.
Yahoo and Google are different companies that are in different businesses, she said. “They aren’t us and we aren’t them… Google is maniacal about running an algorithm. We’re maniacal about being relevant and personal.”
So, if not Google, which companies would Bartz place on Yahoo’s competitive landscape? The closest one, she said, is really AOL. “Managing the Web from one place is really the core of our product focus,” Bartz said. “In reality, we are our own comparison.”
Through still advertisements and videos, the company plans to reinforce a message that’s happy and joyous, colorful and creative, fun and familiar. Expect to see real people, too - no makeup, no actors. And expect to hear some of these slogans, too:
- The Internet is under new management. Yours.
- Now the Internet has a personality. Yours.
- There’s a new master of the digital universe. You.
- This time it’s personal
- Totally you.
“Our campaign is multichannel…but it’s absolutely grounded in the digital discipline,” said Executive VP and Chief Marketing Officer Elissa Steele.
Bartz also played coy on rumors that Yahoo was shopping around Zimbra, an open source e-mail company whose technology powers Yahoo Mail.
“Things that might have been a good idea years ago we’re revisiting,” Bartz said. “Where it makes sense to sell, we will.”
S
till, Steele said the success of the campaign will depend on whether it can draw new customers and keep them on Yahoo properties longer. In some regions, that means protecting its franchise; in others, that means using pageviews or unique users as a yardstick.
“This is not a campaign of a short-term nature,” Steele said, noting that it’s a company-wide initiative. “If this was just a marketing campaign, we would have [already] failed.”
Leading the charge with a healthy dose of spunk is Bartz, who continues in her attempt to earn trust and credibility in the post Jerry Yang once occupied.
“The nice thing about being an old broad?” Bartz asked, rhetorically. “I’m tough.”
September 1st, 2009
Google seeks OEMs for Chrome browser; Sony signs on
Google has partnered with Sony to promote its sleek but little-used Chrome browser, according to the Financial Times.
The company is also in talks with other computer manufacturers, according to the report.
The move marks increased effort on Google’s part to expand the reach of the Chrome browser a year after it was first launched, and is one pawn in the epic chess match between it and rival Microsoft.
August 31st, 2009
Microsoft Bing cashback: 'splendid commercial bribery'
Microsoft Bing’s “decision engine” might aspire to higher things than a simple search, but if you buy a product using its search engine — such as a digital camera or a running shoe — the company says you’ll get some of that money back.
CNET Technically Incorrect blogger Chris Matyszczyk calls it a move that’s “splendidly commercial bribery.”
I’d call it taking Google’s monetization strategy, fusing it with that of a rewards credit card, and upping the marketing budget by about four times.
Here’s the ad:
August 17th, 2009
Lauren's back - and HP says she's still a PC
Lauren - the not-cool-enough-for-a-Mac gal in Microsoft’s Laptop Hunters commercial - is back.
An HP commercial that had been running on Hulu but appeared on broadcast television over the weekend features Lauren (or someone who’s supposed to be Lauren) holding her HP laptop, which is showing the original Lauren commercial on the screen. We never actually see the person’s face in the HP commercial, going along with that company’s other “HP: The Computer is Personal Again” commercials.
(I couldn’t find a video clip of the new commercial anywhere online but here’s a screen grab from a MacObserver post. I saw it on TV Sunday evening.)
It’s interesting how Lauren - who’s supposed to be a real person in the commercial but is widely believed to be an actress - and her commercial became a bit of a YouTube sensation after the original aired. And those were mostly parodies and other video responses, including one that breaks down the original commercial to show that Lauren never really entered the Apple store.
It just goes to show that Microsoft isn’t the only one out there having to push value as a way to get people to buy Windows. The problems with Vista - as well as the anticipation of Windows 7 - is surely taking its toll on the bottom line of companies like HP and Dell, which likely aren’t seeing many buyers for Windows PCs these days.
In a post last week, I shared my reasons for finding more value in - and buying - a used iMac over a new Windows machines. If Windows 7 had been out in time for Back to School, then maybe I would have given Windows another shot.
But it wasn’t. So I didn’t.
August 4th, 2009
Palm's creepy Pre ads: will they actually make you buy the phone?
In case you’ve been living under a rock lately, Palm has been running television advertisements for its Pre smartphone, available on Sprint.
In the ads, actress Tamara Hope does her best “Luna Lovegood all grown up” impression by looking directly into the camera and reciting poetic verses in a CG field that’s unnaturally green and under a CG sky that’s unnaturally blue.
But will they make you buy a Palm Pre?
July 20th, 2009
Yahoo's new home page: Spending more time in your world
Be on the lookout for a new Yahoo tomorrow - a re-designed home page that that will offer the best of “My World” and “The World” on a single page.
Yahoo has been looking to up its game as a Web property by increasing the number of people on the site and the amount of time they spend on the site - a key to a strong advertising business, right? To do so, they have to give users a reason to hang out on the page and not click away. With the re-design of the left-column of the page - re-named My Favorites - Yahoo is heading in that direction.
The cool thing about this column is that it’s less about Yahoo’s other properties - the way it is today - and more about an individual user’s Web hangouts. Need to check your Gmail inbox? You can do that from My Favorites. Want to see what’s happening in your Facebook world? There it is. Looking for headlines from your favorite blog or news site? They can be added to that column, too.
That customizable column is basically using RSS technology to customize but, as the company pointed out, everyday users don’t want to deal with subscribing to RSS feeds. Adding an app to a home page for a quick peek is more appealing - even if it’s basically the same thing.
It’s here on the home page where a user’s two worlds - My World and The World - meet. Users are interested in different things - from sports headlines and financial news to events happening overseas or even in our own neighborhoods. By blending all of those access points into one location, the need to go elsewhere for that information diminishes.
Of course, if you don’t see what you’re looking for, there’s a search box on the page to help query the Web for it. And, if you’re really looking for something specific, watch out for a relevant ad to help steer your decision. There appears to be opportunities throughout the page - particularly within the apps in the My Favorites column - for some targeted advertising.
The company plans to also roll out the mobile edition this week, offering synchronization with the web-based version so that users don’t have to do double the work to customize the page.
Still, as bullish as Yahoo has been about the new home page, it was less than enthusiastic about sharing details during a pre-briefing this week on how this new page will contribute to the company’s financial performance, specifically the impact on revenue growth. After all, the new look of the home page has been one of the improvements highlighted by CEO Carol Bartz as being part of the new Yahoo, the one she’s been running since January.
Google has said repeatedly, in defending its launch of non-revenue generating apps, that it’s good for Google when people spend more time on the Web - meaning they’re exposed to advertising longer. The same could be said about Yahoo’s new push to bring everything that’s important to you - from your inbox messages to your tweets to your headlines - to a single page.
The new page will be rolled out to users in the U.S. starting tomorrow afternoon and to users in the U.K. India and France by the end of the week. Users in Mexico and other European countries will see a rollout next month and those in Asia will see the new page next year.
Separately, the company said it will begin testing a revamped search page next month but offered few details beyond that, which was to be expected given the blog buzz about a widely-expected search deal between Yahoo and Microsoft and the fact that both companies report quarterly earnings this week.
Yahoo reports earnings tomorrow afternoon. Microsoft reports on Thursday.
July 9th, 2009
In an economic downturn, prepaid mobile is big business
Why pay $100 or more each month for a two-year cell phone contract when you can pay $50 and keep yourself off the hook?
At least that’s the thinking behind the latest ad campaign by Boost Mobile, a prepaid, or “no-contract,” mobile service provider whose parent company is none other than Sprint Nextel.
In an economic downturn, consumers are reevaluating the privilege of paying mobile service providers — including Sprint — $50 to $150 (or more) per month for their cell phone. And according to Boost Mobile president Matt Carter, that’s a revolutionary idea worth calling someone about.
ZDNet: How much have sales of prepaid phones increased since the beginning of the economic downturn?
July 7th, 2009
Facebook no longer smells like teen spirit; students down 20%, 55+ up 514%
If you think Facebook is just a site that’s all the rage with kids today — “those kids and their Faceplace” — you’re dead wrong.
College and high school users have declined in absolute number by 20 percent and 15 percent, respectively, in the last six months, according to estimates Facebook provides to advertisers via ReadWriteWeb.
At the same time, Facebook users aged 55 and over have skyrocketed from less than a million to almost six million (that’s more than 500 percent) in the same time period — meaning that there are now more Facebook users over 55 years old than there are high school students on the site.
In other words, there are actually fewer high school and college users on Facebook today than there were six months ago.
Here’s iStrategyLabs on the numbers:
June 25th, 2009
Bartz to Yahoo shareholders: Change is coming; We're not Google
Yahoo’s Carol Bartz took the stage at her first annual shareholder’s meeting as CEO this morning. The first half of the meeting was business as usual, specifically votes on the re-election of board members and other official business facing the board. It wasn’t until about halfway through the meeting that the main event - Bartz’ presentation and Q&A - started.
Before questions, Bartz addressed the one big question that continues to surface: a deal with Microsoft on the search business. The official Bartz-esque answer: “If we ever have a deal with Microsoft, it will be announced publicly. Until we do, there’s nothing to say.”
Interestingly enough, Bartz was congratulated by a shareholder who stood before the microphone for finally diverting the attention away from a deal with Microsoft, which dominated headlines in recent months. He said the coverage was “embarrassing for the company, highly embarrassing… so thank you very much.”
She also tackled a question about Yahoo’s competitive position against Google. Bottom line, she said: Google and Yahoo are different companies with different models. Google, she said, is “basically a pure search company… We’re selling the complete view.”
Yahoo, she said, “is the largest online media company, powered by fantastic technology.” Yahoo is the place where people come for the valuable information in their lives - mail, messaging, search, sports news, financial news, entertainment news. In fact, she said, 12 percent of online time in the U.S. is spent on a Yahoo property.
“We are not Google,” she said. “We only have part of our business that does what they do.” To directly compare the two is “not fair for Yahoo and frankly not relevant.”
Next question, please.
Bartz was also grilled about China, specifically censorship and human rights violations there, a long-running point of controversy following Yahoo’s years-ago role in providing identifiable information about Pro-democracy writers in China who were later jailed. While Bartz said she and the company are very committed to doing what’s right in terms of protecting human rights, she was also quick to note - quite frankly - that “it is not our job to fix the Chinese government. It’s that simple.”
“We respect human rights. We do what’s right but we are not going to take on every government in the world as our mandate. That’s not the mandate that shareholders have given us,” she said.
Finally, Bartz - who earlier in the discussion had a friendly exchange with a shareholder over the overload of entertainment news on Yahoo pages - was asked whether this was the right time for Yahoo to buy or invest in newspapers, potentially as a means of bringing in more news-like content.
The short answer is no. It’s not necessary to buy newspapers. Newspapers, like many other industries, need to rethink their business models. For now, Yahoo is happy to partner with them on advertising and content-sharing.
As for what’s ahead, Bartz said they are looking at everything - from a modernization of Mail to a re-design and customization of the home page to shutting down, repairing or outsourcing other Yahoo properties that may have fallen by the wayside over the years and could leave the visitor with a bad taste for the overall property.
There’s a lot of work left to do. Bartz said the company knows its vision but has had a problem with execution. She recognizes it, she said. And they’re working on it.
June 25th, 2009
TV's future: the partnerships are forming now
In just the last few days, there were a few news announcements that, separately, were kind of ho-hum. But together, it appears that the stars are suddenly starting to align for the next generation of television, one that’s more of an on-demand Internet-based experience, instead of a schedule-driven feed from broadcasters.
- First, Bloomberg published a report on Monday about TiVo that said that the DVR pioneer - armed with a major victory in a patent infringement lawsuit against Dish Network Corp. - was gearing up for a major expansion “onto every U.S. pay-television system.”
- On Tuesday, TiVo announced a partnership with Quantcast, a company that provides online audience analytics, to offer a “cross-platform audience analysis solution” that will allows advertisers to measure the web activity generated by a television commercial and vice-versa.
- The same day, Vizio announced more partners in its Via Connected HDTV feature, notably eBay, Twitter and Facebook. The feature, which will be found in specific sets later this year, is powered by Yahoo TV Widgets engine and brings Web apps and on-demand video directly to the set via WIFi (802.11n) or Ethernet connections.
- Finally, on Wednesday, there was news of a partnership between Comcast and Time Warner to offer “cable television” programming on the Internet - but only on behind the wall of a authentication system that would require that viewers be subscribers of a cable or satellite service.
Suddenly, we’ve got Comcast and Time Warner looking for ways to put more content online without losing their revenue stream, Vizio gearing up to launch Web-enabled TV sets and TiVo working on an advanced analytics system that will allow for a flow of advertising dollars in this new form of “television.”
When I first saw Yahoo TV Widgets Engine demonstrated at the Intel Developer’s Forum last summer, I was impressed. I couldn’t wait to get that technology into my own living room - but figured it would be some time before we’d see it in play. A year later, it’s becoming reality - and I’m still excited.
(Suddenly, I envision a Showtime App on my screen that allows me to pay for a season of Dexter or a month’s worth of access so I can watch all of the other programming, as well. This, of course, is just my wishlist. No announcements that I know of.)
It wasn’t that long ago that people looked at me with a confused look in their eyes while I explained TiVo to them. (We were early adopters. My kids have only known life with a DVR.) It was a foreign concept and changed the way they would watch television. The idea of Web-enabled TV and interactive advertising are new - but the idea of some programming being free and other programming costing extra (over-the-air broadcast vs. cable/satellite) is not so crazy.
This is the future of television. Are we ready?
June 24th, 2009
Want To See (And Talk About) What Your Friends Are Buying? Zappos Set To Introduce 'Social Shopping'
Zappos, the online retailer of shoes and clothing, is about to become a social networking site, borrowing aspects of Twitter and Facebook and applying them to their customers’ particular passion: buying stuff.
CEO Tony Hsieh Wednesday confirmed to Between The Lines that it is working on an internal project that will “soft launch” in the next two weeks that will enable what he calls “social shopping’’ at Zappos.
Here’s how social networking for a purpose (shopping) will take place:
• Profiles. Akin to Facebook, Zappos’ customers will be encouraged to create personal profiles. On their profiles, customers will describe the types of shoes, clothing, accessories and other products they like and broadly speaking are interested in.
• Followers. Akin to Twitter, other Zappos customers can register to follow any other customer. They won’t have to ask the other customer’s permission.
• Closets. Unlike either Twitter or Facebook, customers will place products they are looking at in personal closets, housed online at Zappos.
• Socializing. Then, akin to both Facebook and Twitter, the customer can ask all friends and followers to comment on the footwear or jewelry or housewares they put in their closets and are thinking about buying. This will allow them to get responses from their “social shopping” network on what’s good or bad about each product or the maker of same, while they are making up their minds.
When customers who take part in the social shopping log on to Zappos they will see a constant feed of what’s been put in the closet of other people they’re following or the comments that have been generated by other customers. This will be similar to Facebook’s update stream, but Hsieh calls it an “activity stream.”
Read the rest of this entry »
June 23rd, 2009
The Real Case in Social Media: Zappos CEO Not All Atwitter About Twitter
When reporting first began on ZDNet’s look at Zappos’ use of social media to build its online retailing business, its CEO, Tony Hsieh, had just crossed 600,000 followers on Twitter.
This past week, he passed 800,000. No, the reporting didn’t take that long. It just shows how fast you can gather followers, once you have momentum and critical mass.
Which Hsieh does. And the magnitude of his following generates a lot of media interest. It’s partly responsible for getting the ZDNet case study off the ground. But tweeting is bite-sized and fun, as captured in this recent Zappos video on same.
But, if you’re a competitor to Zappos and you think somehow that twittering and blogging are somehow the secret to its success as the Web’s most successful seller of shoes, you’re missing the point. Or, points, really.
Read the rest of this entry »
June 17th, 2009
'Quality Scores' For Web Content: How Numbers Will Create A 'Beautiful Cycle of Greatness for Us All'
Patrick Keane spent four years at Google, before becoming chief marketing officer at CBS Interactive (which owns CNet and ZDNet).
Now he’s in his third month as chief executive officer at Associated Content, the “people’s media” company.
And the former head of advertising sales strategy at the world’s dominant search service is ready to apply the numeric ranking techniques of Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s digital steamroller to the stuff that has long been regarded as the most intangible of products: quality content.
Writers, authors, video producers and the like may cringe at the idea that every piece of work they do will be graded on a 1 to 10 or 1 to 100 scale, kind of like a taste score by Robert Parker or The Wine Spectator, for a fermented grape beverage.
But it’s coming and Keane wants his outfit to be the one that cracks the code. Literally.
Keane is at work on figuring out what will constitute a Quality Score, for every article, podcast, Webcast or other piece of output generated by an Associated Content contributor. If his 21st Century content production and distribution network can figure out how to put a useful rank on what it puts out on the Web then it can raise it up, notch by notch.
This scoring comes right back to the Page Rank process that is at the heart of Google’s success as a search engine.
“The great thing about Page Rank in Google ‘ s algorithm is … seeing the Web as a big popularity contest,’’ said Keane, in Associated Content’s offices on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan.
The idea, of course, is this: The more sites that link to a particular piece of content, the more votes there are that this piece of content is useful. That is to say, that the content is good. That it has higher quality than other pieces of content of similar sort on the Web.
So the Quality Score that is in the conceptual stage at Associated Content will attempt to provide a similar benchmark that not just the popularity of a piece of content, but its usefulness. In the Associated Content world, usefulness is a key component of quality.
Says Keane:
“The reality of the Web is: Quality needs a redefinition and retooling in my opinion.
Quality is a subjective term. Does quality equal Tom Friedman and Paul Krugman writing for the New York Times with Princeton and Columbia-trained brains and all the journalism chops you could ever have? They create a certain valuable content that a certain user gravitates toward.
But, there could be a guy blogging in his underpants in Chicago about video games, that might not be a professionally trained journalist and may not be the world’s best writer, but if someone is looking for cheat codes, is looking for information and is looking for strategic tools and advice on how to play games and that guy is creating great content, is that quality? Is that useful for the user?
I think quality needs to veer a little more closely to useful as opposed to Pulitzer-Peabody winning kind of professionalism. I think there is a place for both.’’
June 17th, 2009
AP, Meet AC. And, BTW, News is Not Really 'Monetizable,' on the Web.
The Associated Press was created in 1846 as a news cooperative. The idea was to allow member newspapers (and later, radio and TV stations) to combine costs in covering, reporting on and distributing news of import to its members.
Its 21st Century counterpart, Associated Content, goes it one better. It pays anyone to create content. The contributor does not have to be a professional . And the person only gets paid if the content gets read. Oh, and by the way, news is not something that really registers at Associated Content.
You can find lots of Father’s Day articles, from AC. But don’t expect a lot of coverage of the L.A. Lakers’ recent championship in basketball.
“Yeah, you can do a search on Associated Content and find news content,’’ says AC chief executive Patrick Keane, formerly of CBS Interactive (owners of ZDNet, BNET and CNet) and Google. “But we typically don’t pay upfront for that. It’s not something we would encourage over time because news content, while, it generates a lot of traffic and user interest, it is very difficult to monetize.”
How’s that?
“There are not a lot of advertisers that want to associate with swine flu and floods in Iowa, even though there are a lot of people who are talking about it and reading about it and understanding it,’’ Keane (at right) told Between The Lines Wednesday. “It ‘s just hard to sell ads against that stuff.”
What works on the Web is what Wired editor Chris Anderson gave a sexy name to: Long tail content.
Translate to 20th Century English and you’d call it stuff with a long shelf life.
How-to stories. Advice. Narrow, unique articles based on accomplishing tasks. Like making clothes you might wear once a year. But every year you do it.
“The problem with news content is its shelf-life is limited and user interest is sort of ephemeral to whatever that is, for a short period of time,’’ said Keane. “But if someone writes a great piece of content on home-made Halloween costumes, that could be written in 2005 and be as relevant this October as it was the day it was written.”
June 16th, 2009
The Cost of the Free Internet
The outpouring of interest in and passionate argument about IAC chairman Barry Diller’s declaration last week that the delivery of content over the Internet ‘absolutely’ will become a ‘paid system’ was instructive.
First, it shows the power of the “free” Internet, as it is currently constructed. A single article gets read 50,000 times. Hundreds of individuals weighed in with more than 350 talkback postings. And the message was clear: the Internet is not free now, never was.
But let’s peel this back a bit – and even look at who benefits from this “not free” content.
1. The Internet is not free.
To a great number of the participants, the Internet has never been free, because they pay for access to it. $15 a month or $50 a month, whatever the price, that is what they believe they pay for access. And the content that comes to them through that access.
But that’s not all:
Everyone pays for the Internet already. We pay for the speed of the connection. Some pay email providers. Some pay for online storage. Some pay by buying products online. Some pay for rare and valuable information or to receive specific publications. We also pay with the attention we give to advertisements on our favorite sites. We pay with the time we waste sorting through all the spam we get from advertisers.
Said BillDem on 06/10/09.
Of course, a few sites, most notably the Wall Street Journal, do charge a subscription fee for content. Research houses charge by the report or by subscription. But let’s recognize the obvious here: That’s the exception the vast majority of news and information sites make their content available free and try to cover the costs via ads and sponsorship.
2. TV is not free.
Interestingly, the days of video programming being free have largely passed into history. Indeed, June 12 was kind of a demarcation date of sorts, for that. That’s when all over-the-air broadcasting of TV signals went digital. That’s when consumers had to buy equipment (converters or new TVs) to keep getting TV “for free.” Or, at long last, sign up with a cable TV or satellite TV operator to keep getting programming.
June 10th, 2009
Barry Diller: The Internet 'Absolutely' Will Become a 'Paid System'. Time Projection: Within 5 Years
The days of the free Internet will draw to a close over the next five years, according to the chairman and chief executive of IAC, the interactive services company which operates a collection of more than 30 Internet sites which produce $1.5 billion a year in revenue.
The only missing link, according to Barry Diller, who cut his teeth building up over-the-air and cable TV networks: a good billing system, akin to Amazon’s “one-click” button or the Apple iPhone’s slick downloading of paid applications.
“I absolutely believe the Internet is passing from its free days into a paid system. Inevitably, I promise you, it will be paid,” Diller said in a keynote discussion opening up the Advertising 2.0 conference held at his company’s futuristic glass building alongside the Hudson River in Manhattan. “Not every single thing, but anything of value. “
The fact that content and services on the Internet so far have been largely supplied for no charge is “an accident of historical moment that will be corrected,” he said, in an era of “creative chaos” that will span the next three to five years.
So far, news, content and service suppliers were “afraid of not being dinosaurs and slapped everything up on the Internet for free,’’ he said, in an interchange with BusinessWeek media columnist Jon Fine.
But, that will be change. The New York Times, for instance, likely will have to go beyond the “pay wall” in order to cover the cost of its worldwide reporting corps, even if it means having 1, 2 or 3 million paid subscribers, instead of 20 million unique visitors a month. And people will pay – if it is quality they’re buying.
“People have paid for content,’’ he said. “They always have.”
IAC’s Match.com, a dating service, already charges subscription fees. IAC also operates Ask.com, the search service, UrbanSpoon, one of those iPhone apps, Citysearch, a local information service, and The Daily Beast, a content site headed by former New Yorker editor Tina Brown.
Inevitably, Diller said, the “base model” of the Internet will be paid, at the end of the chaos. The forms will include not just subscriptions and individual one-time purchases, but rapid-fire micropayments and other mechanisms.
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Tom Steinert-Threlkeld is editor-in-chief of Securities Industry News, as well as a long-time media, technology and business journalist. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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