Link: Growing ad revenue

Ken Doctor offers one advertising exec’s ”Nine Imperatives for New Growth.” Something to share with the revenue side of your organization?

If you’re online, you’re TV

Jeffrey Cole has seen the future of newspapers and he thinks it’s television. Cole runs the Center for the Digital Future at USC, which is conducting a multi-year study of media usage.

His comments:

“I think video is a central part of your new identity.”

“You can be as live as television. On the Web, you become like television.”

Cole says that with the rise of the Internet, television and video will grow dramatically in importance.

“On the web newspapers and magazines become like television and compete like never before.”

Good news: the Web puts newspapers back in the breaking news business and offers lower production costs. Bad news: Global warming and concerns about newsprint and print production’s effect on the environment.

Cole believes figuring out advertising that users will accept online and on mobile devices and in social networks is a critical challenge because people are unlikely to pay for additional subscriptions or information services. His center found a household on average spends $260 per month on services such as telephones, - mobile phones, television cable or satellite, broadband, satellite radio.

“People are saying ‘I don’t want ot psned another $30-40 a month on digital feeds and subscriptions.”

Cole closed with headlines from his research on young people and media:

Life of a 12-24-year-old
- Will never read a newspaper but attracted some magainzes
- Will never own a land-line phone (and may never wear a watch)
- Will not watch television on someone else’s schedule much longer
- Trust unknown peers more than experts
- For the first time (2005) wiling to pay for digital content
- Little interest in the source of information and most information aggregated
- Community at the center of Internet experience
- Think not interested in advertising or affected by brand, but wrong
- Everything will move to mobile
- Television dominates less than any generation before (important but not the only thing that’s important to them)
- Want to move content freely from platform to platform with no restrictions
- Want to be heard (user generated)
- Use IM. Communicate through Facebook. Think e-mail is for their parents

Update: Steve Smith, the editor at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane who is attending the conference, posts about Cole’s presentation here.

NAA: The march to video

The Newspaper Association of America‘s new survey of newspaper Web site’s production of local video provides one of the best snapshot’s I’ve seen lately of newsrooms in transition, and the transition may be significant. A year ago, many of the newsroom leaders at Knight Digital Media Center’s annual Leadership Conference saw aggressive pursuit of local video as a priority for 2007. Like many of their peers, they saw the value of video in enriching news coverage, increasing traffic and possibly creating a new advertising revenue stream. They were searching for tools and strategies.
The new NAA report suggests many traditional news organizations have leapt into video—or at least have a toe in the water. It also suggests there is more work to be done.

Here are a few highlights of the NAA survey, entitled “Newspapers’ Online Video:”
- News (breaking), features sports and entertainment dominate online local video content. Interestingly, the report notes, while people frequently go to a news site for weather information, only about a third of the sites surveyed feature weather or traffic video.
- Most site visitors watch video in the morning (32 percent from 6 to 10 a.m.) or in the middle of the day (27 percent 10 am. to 2 p.m.). Nearly a third of those responding didn’t know the most popular times for visiting their Web sites. (It’s also important to keep in mind, as Rick Hirsch at the Miami Herald and others have noted, that readers of different topics may be hitting the site at different times.)
- Photographers are most often shooting video (86 percent) but reporters are not far behind (74 percent).
- Most newsrooms provide video training (58 to 80 percent provide it, depending on size).
- Pre-roll is the dominant format for online video advertising. About half of the newspapers surveyed feature pre-roll. At smaller newspapers, 43 percent reported selling pre-roll advertising. At larger newspapers, 78 percent feature pre-roll advertising. Banner adds and sponsorships also are popular. Fewer than 10 percent feature post-roll advertising or ads that run across the bottom of the screen.

The NAA survey is based on 213 responses out of 1,117 solicitations that went to newspapers. That’s a decent response rate (19 percent) and newspapers of all sizes are represented. But NAA notes that “it is possible the conclusions may not fully represent the entire U.S. newspaper industry.” My own guess is that those who were more engaged with video were more likely to respond, so the survey may be a snapshot of early adopters rather than the industry as a whole. Still it’s encouraging.

How does your news organization compare with organizations in the NAA study? What tips can you offer other editors seeking to improve their online video offerings?