Would you pay for this? Murdoch hack redefines lazy …

Ok a few things upfront (stay with me here) …

1/ There’s a lot of debate around paid content, and Rupert Murdoch believes that people should be paying for news content online

2/ The definition of news is so blurry who knows what it is anymore

3/ Murdoch has called aggregators and sharing sites ‘content kleptomaniacs’ … and has warned they will have to pay the price of co-opting News Ltd content

4/ Murdoch is even pushing pay TV operators to pay a broadcast fee for retransmitting his FTA channels in the US

5/ I believe Newscorp is responsible for some of the worlds best TV, movie and written content and find Rupert Murdoch a fascinating character. I’m not a blah blah Murdoch basher – if anything the guy intrigues me.

So we have that straight. Still with me.

Here’s what News Ltd’s Adelaide Now believe is news

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,1,26229884-5006301,00.html

It’s titled ‘Drunkest man ever tries to buy booze’.

Hilarious! BTW – I’m not sure this guy is drunk … I think another substance is causing the stumbling and general trouble he is in. Whatever trouble he is in, it would be unfair to not feature this as a news piece that is important to the lives of Adelaide’s citizens.

The video was posted on Break.com … then embedded by the Adelaide Now writer/editor (what do they call themselves now – curator??). The incident didn’t happen in Adelaide. It has no connection at all to Adelaide.

Is this what Murdoch means when he talks about his engaging, original content? A sad, drug addled man walking helplessly around a bottle shop … videoed on CC … ripped from break.com and disguised as news?

Maybe it is and I’m the idiot.

Trouble is. News didn’t create this. They didn’t source it. They’re not hosting it. They haven’t paid for its creation or distribution.

However, they are charging advertisers to advertise around it and making revenue as a result. They are profiting from someone else’s work and investment. Personally I think the video is complete sh*t and scraping the very bottom of the barrel, but that’s my opinion … the bigger issue is the hypocrisy.

Now I’m not stupid enough to think Murdoch wrote this story, but I think sometimes when he and his execs are grandstanding that maybe they’re not paying attention to what their own staff are doing. So whilst Rupert is in China crying about the evil Internet making things tough, his journo’s are doing everything he is rallying against.

It’s important to note that News Ltd and its digital properties LOVE embedding YouTube videos in their news articles. Check the hot, but sadly completely irrelevant fake lesbian video action in this must read article about Khloe Kardashian’s (who?) pre-nup with Lakers player Lamar Odom – http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/khloe-kardashians-pre-nuptial-demands-from-nba-star-lamar-odom-finalise-marriage-deal/story-e6frewyr-1225788545014

I might be a cynic but I’m not sure this video has been posted to improve the story – I would guess it is to improve page dwell time.

Anyway, YouTube and embedded videos across news.com.au, the punch, perthnow, herald sun etc are nothing new and commonly used.

However isn’t this the same YouTube that is a tapeworm and vampire, part of the group which is robbing News Ltd of what is rightfully there’s by reusing their content!! I really hope Rupert and his gang are sending their cheques to the likes of YouTube, Break and their content partners each day for using their content to sell ads against.

Adelaide Now’s sales pitch on the News Digital Media media centre is debateable …

“AdelaideNow is a portal to everything Adelaide – from the latest breaking news and photos to sport, entertainment, gossip and social pics.”

Really? Really? How is this related to Adelaide? I noticed they’ve left off ’sad, exploitative videos of drug addicts’ in the description.

And the interesting thing (and sad too) is, this was the biggest story for the day on Adelaide Now … closely followed by pictures of Ricki-Lee’s Ralph dominatrix photo shoot at number 2 (another piece of content they didn’t have to pay for – Ralph is owned by ACP). Third is an article that is based on a radio interview on ESPN with Charles Barkley. (ESPN is owned by Disney)

Must be tough creating all this original content online.

Alan Kohler is a smart guy – here’s proof

Regular readers will know I have a bit of a bromance for Alan Kohler.

Business Spectator is great and he is easily the best Business presenter on TV, for my tastes anyway. However, the main reason I think the guy is great is because he writes really bloody good articles.

This one is exceptional and timely considering recent events – http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/The-internet-doesnt-exist-pd20091020-WYRBY?opendocument&src=rss

The internet is merely a delivery mechanism for bits of data. It’s equivalent to the paper on which newspapers are printed or the air through which TV and radio signals are transmitted.

We never called newspaper journalism “paper content” or TV journalism “spectrum content” and the fact that it’s now online is, it seems to me, quite irrelevant.

In fact it is a colossal miscalculation to think that consumers distinguish between stuff they read on paper and the stuff they read on a website, and that they have somehow decided they will pay for one and not the other.

Have a read. It’s a great piece of writing and content, dare I say it, worth paying for.

IAB Board Seat nominations are in, voting underway

Voting closes for IAB members for the rotating IAB Board Seat on October 26.

The opening was created when Tim Johnson, formerly of MCN, resigned from MCN to head to Telstra Media.

5 people have nominated.

Wendy Hogan – MD of CBS Interactive
Robert Leach – Head of MCN Connect
Alex Littlejohn – MD of Adconion
Robert Wong – CEO of Catalog Central
Mark Halstead – MD of 3D Interactive

All the bio info on candidates as well as voting requirements etc are here – http://www.aimia.com.au/enews/IAB/Voting%20Process%20&%20Ballot%20Form%202009-2010.pdf

Two candidates really stand out for me.

Rob Leach is definitely one of the best digital thinkers in the industry and his knowledge of interactive TV is second to none within Australia. Speaking to him about the future convergence of Internet and TV and the connected household is exciting. I think he’d be great and would bring another dimension to the board.

Wendy Hogan would be a great candidate as well. CBS Interactive is a great business with premium products and commercially is very smart and nimble. Wendy is an active contributor within the digital industry in terms of supporting events and discussion around key issues related to not only media, but also technology and media convergence - and has been for years – and this is something that could add a lot to the IAB and bring new perspectives to the table that the foundation members may not bring.

Looking forward to seeing who gets the nod as there’s some great candidates. Personally I would love to see Wendy or Rob on that board.

Measuring the frequency of web visits

One question I always have around website traffic is ‘how many of the users’ are regular.

ie – how many can’t live without the content, visit regularly and often, and for how long.

Currently, there’s no audited way to work this out. The closest thing is looking at average visits and page views per user and average time spent per user.

Problem with this is it’s an average figure … it doesn’t take into consideration heavy users, light users or anyone in between.

For digital this is a question we need answering. The consumption of digital media can be incredibly quick … in/out within a minute or less.

Why? Well – search plays a large role for one due to how much traffic it is responsible for across almost websites. Users head to Google with a problem, Google directs them to the page with the info it deems most relevant … and the users generally reads this page and then exits.

Another reason is around the multi-tasking nature of online. Users looking at multiple windows, whilst using tools like Messenger or a Twitter client at the same time.

Lastly, social channels are responsible for increasing amounts of traffic … and like search it’s generally consumed quickly and then the user departs.

One of my views is you can judge the quality of a media brand by the loyalty of its users.

The problem now is EVERYONE claims a loyal userbase. I’ve heard a biz dev pitch for a website that has an average time spent per user of under 2 minutes, which claims it has a highly engaged audience. C’mon …

Now I’m not sure what Nielsen is doing about this. And I don’t know whether Comscore covers it (if anyone from Comscore wants to come in and explain, great) … but Quantcast in the US is doing something cool.

They have a data set that is around ‘Site Frequency’ and they break users into Addicts, Regulars and Passers By.

You can see what % of the total users fit into these 3 groups, and what % of total visits they represent. See below for the info around Hulu.com

As you can see, 50% of the sites users are Passers By … accounting for 8% of visits. 5% addicts account for 57% of visits … and regulars (45%) account for 34% of visits.

As a media person this is interesting data. It helps with planning and it provides some much needed depth to numbers that are generally too big to comprehend (ie 50m users, 5b pageviews etc)

Great info. Really like the look of this Quantcast product.

Why Gawker Media is getting it right

2009 has seen many fumbling around looking to try and nail this online advertising caper.

A lot of talk has been around charging for content. Other talk has been around more impactful ad units. Even more talk has been around video content.

Gawker this year has increased revenue by following its gut instinct and doing what it does well – strong, unique content and interesting and appealing ad units.

http://advertising.gawker.com/

For me, Gawker is a modern magazine business … the kind most magazine businesses wish they were in todays climate. One step ahead, great writers, excellent commercial sense and faster than the competition.

I found this quote from Nick Denton, Gawker owner, from an interview conducted 5 years ago.

“Most good media come out of somebody saying, This should exist, this is something I want to read.”

Sure, it sounds obvious. But it’s a good reality check when you’re looking to push content out either as editorial or branded content. I think for Gawker the above quote also references that Denton and his team know what their audience wants – probably before their audience does.

Locally, Allure Media has some of the Gawker titles and operates a similar model (personally I think at times the Allure titles lack the venom/wit that makes the Gawker titles so addictive) and they are seeing good results in a reasonably tough ad market. Its interesting to note that the major investor in Allure is Netus – which is backed by News Ltd.

So what are 5 things I think Gawker is doing right that we could take note of here

1/ Interesting Advertising Options. The Gawker titles have a flexible platform which means interesting ad options and takeovers aren’t difficult. They are done in a way that is impactful but not overstated. To me they feel like great magazine executions. Commercially they are smart and fast … whilst most were talking about more impactful ad units and debating which sizes and formats would work … Gawker went and did it. Took it to market fast and saw the benefits. Like good magazines http://advertising.gawker.com/capabilities/

2/ Their content is unique. You can’t get the Gawker content and editorial style elsewhere. Unlike many blogs it doesn’t just rip other media’s stories and add some snark … you read the titles because they have a point of view and content you can’t get elsewhere. Like good magazines

3/ Their writers know their subjects and their audience intimately. When reading a Gawker or a Defamer or a Valleywag you know the person writing it is knowledgable, connected and has an opinion. They don’t fall into the trap of employing ‘producers’ as editorial directors … they employ great writers who know how to curate interesting content. Like good magazines.

4/ The company and its titles have a personality. You know what you’re getting and they don’t treat their audience like idiots. It’s not dumbed down … reading it makes you feel like you’re reading something in the know. Like good magazines.

5/ It sets the agenda and doesn’t follow. The beauty of Denton is he doesn’t really give a hoot what others think … that doesn’t mean the titles come across as some sort of arrogant rant collection … far from it … but they are very good at covering topical issues but in a way different to everyone else.

Gawker now has 20m users in the US across 8 titles. They cover gaming, technology, cars, science fiction, sport, womens lifestyle and even porn. Categories that are generally high yield and generally live and die by their credibility.

And their basic sales deck is absolutely kick ass. Awesome.

Last Tix launches

I first heard about this concept about 12 months ago when I met with MyTickets CEO Christopher Plowman and as an idea it grabbed me immediately.

Over the last year Tony Faure has updated me about the idea and where it’s going, and it’s great to see it has launched.

I always liked My Tickets and as an advertising space it worked well for clients of mine. Commercially they were fantastic to deal with and some of their ad products were (and still are) great and different.

I still wondered how it made money because it was more a directory/listings site than a vendor … and the assumption was you needed to be the company who did the financial transaction to really generate revenue.

With Last Tix they answer that question … and they’re also filling a hole in the market with something that can solve a problem for promoters and also punters.

The group did some media with the SMH and the following quote really stood out

Fifty-seven per cent of tickets to theatre shows, concerts and sporting events go unsold. Just 7 per cent of such events sell out

Right now there’s no facility (that I know of) that allows consumers to buy discount tickets online to shows. What this does is offer that in a centralised way.

The key now for the group is to generate distribution. They have signed a distro deal with Yahoo!7 which is a start. It’s also important these deals are done with minimal upfront cost … ie a shared risk scenario.

They also need promoters on board. Right now the site is slick but the product is minimal. I think an obvious first partnership with with inthemix/fasterlouder/sound alliance – who have great connections with club/music promoters and a real need for a product like this.

The site looks great. The nav is good. It’s simple and easy. Two things that don’t generally align with buying tickets.

Definitely one to watch – really look forward to seeing what the guys can do.

Unique audience – who has one?

The word ‘unique’ is used a lot around digital. Specifically unique browsers … a term that I am sure was invented to confuse clients.

It’s also used to describe sales opportunities and responses – ‘this is a unique opportunity’.

Both are confusing to be honest.

Anyway – there was an article last week running on Fairfax’s websites that focused on charging users for news/content online and contained analysis from Nielsen.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/publishers-warned-charge-and-be-damned-20091016-h137.html

Drawing on a panel of 7000 online users in Australia, Nielsen argued yesterday that in contrast to newspaper readers, consumers on the internet did not show enough loyalty to any particular news provider to subscribe to a provider’s coverage. More than 70 per cent of visitors to Fairfax Media’s websites also read those of its main rival, News Ltd, it said.

While in the past people would buy the same newspaper every day, internet users were seeking news coverage from multiple sources, Mark Higginson, Nielsen’s director of analytics, said. ”No one really does own the news consumer any more.”

Would it be fair to say online, no one really owns ANY consumer anymore?

The duplication across sites is staggering and it happens across all categories.

So much that you could basically not spend with 2-3 of the large 5 publishers and it would make NO difference in an audience reach sense.

Now, I’m not recommending doing this … but it must be a concern to a large scale internet play with significant investment and/or debt that really doesn’t have anything unique to offer the market.

Luckily for most, it’s something that plagues everyone and is rarely discussed.

With newspapers generally you either read a News Ltd title or a Fairfax title. With the news on TV the same thing. It’s difficult to watch 2 different TV shows across an hour bracket, let alone 10 or 20.

No other media has the same duplication issues … with online a user could look at 5-10 news/sport/entertainment/business etc sites EVERY day. They could be reading 3 titles at once. And at the same time be on Facebook and Messenger.

As an advertiser which one do you use? And how?

It’s looking more and more likely that spreading digital investment across as many suppliers as many of us are just isn’t feasible. Especially when many are doing the same thing as their competitors.

Right now if you look at large scale AU digital businesses in a consumer facing sense – most are clones. They have the same categories covered. Focus on the same news. Have minimal unique material and rely on the same things to drive their traffic volume.

Does this mean there will be more effort into building a unique audience, or will operators continue to just do what everyone else is doing and chase the same dream?

How much care is taken with stats in digital?

How many times have you been in a presentation with a digital guru and heard a whole lot of stats that on the surface sound too good to be true.

“xyz.com is growing at 15,000% per minute. It already has half the worlds population using it” or “if zzz.com was a country it’d be really big and bigger than many medium sized countries.”

Ugh.

You very rarely here a stat that isn’t one known in the biz as a “power stat” … the only figures we want to quote are ones that show massive growth, or lots of zeroes or big impactful statements around ‘the future’. I worked at one place and they had a collection of these on a folder on the network. “xxxx.com’s monthly users could fill the Telstra Dome 17 times” … erm, what does that even mean?

So I saw this article slapped across the front page of the SMH.com.au yesterday and it caught my attention as it had a big dramatic headline that grabbed me.

“Myspace loses market share as social networks soar”

“New figures released by Nielsen this week revealed that Australians spent 1.6 million hours on social media sites in June this year, up from 800,000 hours a year earlier.

“The two major beneficiaries of the social media rush have been Facebook and Twitter, which, according to Nielsen, now have 8 million and 1.5 million unique Australian users, respectively.”

1.6m hours. Sounds like a really long time.

Article is here – http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/myspace-tanks-as-social-networks-soar-20091014-gwxj.html

Then you have a closer look. Facebook has 7.9m users. Divide 1,600,000 by 7,900,000 and it works out at just over 12 minutes per person. Hardly earth shattering and not really front page news.

Unfortunately, the data is wrong. Very wrong. Actually ‘very wrong’ is an understatement And what makes it worse is ‘research experts’ are quoted in the article.

Here’s the issue. Facebook has 7.9m users … each user on average spends 374 minutes per month on the site.

7.9m multiplied by 374 equals 2,954,600,000 minutes … or 2.95 billion minutes. Work this back to an hourly figure and it’s 49.2m hours.

I’m quoting Nielsen numbers here too. Now this data is from August and the article refers to June data – but the increase between June and August isn’t enough to account for what is a massive difference.

49.2m hours per month for Facebook versus 1.6m hours per month quoted by the SMH for the entire ’social media category’. That’s a pretty remarkable difference.

Now, I don’t think this is any more than a lazy journo looking for an easy story and not checking them against a source … but it does show as an industry we perhaps have a pretty lax attitude to how robust the data we claim as valid is.

How could this have slipped through? 1.6m hours across 8m+ people over a month is hardly news, is it? Or is it?

How big is big? A lesson in keeping perspective – Guest Post by John Grono

Recently I’ve had a few guest authors contribute posts to the blog and I think it’s created some fantastic content and debate.

One of my favourite readers and commentator is John Grono. John runs GAP Research and works alongside organisations such as the MFA to make sure measurement initiatives are sound and robust. He has played a big role in evolving online measurement and is a leading authority on research methods and also output.

Plus his writing style is bloody interesting, as is the content.

I had emailed John asking if he wanted to make a guest post around some of the data used by those attempting to sell online services – be it ad space or strategy or whatever else. You know, those pieces of data that don’t make that much sense but are latched onto because they’re big numbers.

And thankfully, he accepted. So here is John’s guest post

————-

First, thank you to Ben for asking me to do a guest post.   We had a natter and decided that rather than discuss any of the mechanics of audience research, to discuss the issue of “big numbers” in the online world.

What better place to look than that phenomenon that seems to be driving social media, Facebook?

I was struck back in the New Year when Facebook announced that over 3 billion minutes a day were spent on Facebook every day!   Yes, that says 3 billion, not 3 million.   What’s more, the latest data on the Facebook website now pegs it at over 6 billion minutes a day!   Wow, a massive audience and massive growth – a media strategist’s nirvana!

This got me thinking … how big is 6 billion and how can it be growing so quickly?

To provide some perspective I thought I’d look at Australian television as a point of comparison.   Using the 2008 OzTAM and RegTAM data I was able to calculate that the average Australian spends 193 minutes per day watching television.   The ABS population clock just ticked over to 22 million people.   Putting these two facts together we can see that on the average day Aussies spend 4.25 billion minutes a day watching the telly!   Yes, 4.25 billion.

Let’s consider that the Facebook usage figure is global, and that Australia is only 0.34% of the world’s population (and 2% of the Facebook active users).   Is it just me that finds it amazing that little old Australia, down at the arse-end of the world as Paul Keating infamously put it, can rack up 70% of the global Facebook time watching TV each day?

But I was still knocked out by that incredible growth in total minutes in such a short period of time.   I thought – fancy that, people are spending twice as long on Facebook as they were at the start of the year!   I’ve just got to get me some of that!

Again, I paused for thought.   I wondered what the growth in active users was over the same period.   Lo and behold, it had grown from 150 million to 300 million (Facebook website).  Double the users meant double the minutes, which made perfect sense.   It also meant that the average time each active user spends on Facebook a day has remained static at 20 minutes, or around one-tenth of Australian television usage.   Faced with this, I had to temper my initial enthusiasm on what I originally perceived as massive growth in ‘user engagement’.   Mind you, I am still gob-smacked by the massive and rapid increase in users – which is probably the most spectacular growth in media history, so hats off to Facebook!

I’m in no way having a go at Facebook here.   I have simply used their data because (i) it is freely available, and (ii) it is the biggest success story in terms of penetration, usage and growth going around, so was most worth looking at.

So what are the lessons I’d like you to take from this:

• Don’t be seduced by large numbers, always look at them with some other perspective, benchmark, or point of comparison

• Always look for reasons for spectacular growth and try and convert that growth into growth in usage for the average user, not absolute growth

Full disclosure: I don’t have a Facebook account.   Or a MySpace account, nor Twitter … but I do have others in the social sphere – it’s purely a personal choice.

Torrents still big in AU

Ran some numbers for a client I am working on today around the local success of bit torrent.

What I found was that 1.56m Australian’s used one of the 3 major Bit Torrent providers in August – Bit Torrent, Mininova and The Pirate Bay

Bit Torrent is the biggest – with 1.03m users in August. The Pirate Bay has 609,000 users, Mininova 745,000. Deduplicated the figure is 1.56m people.

Bit Torrent users are using the service 17 times per month.

To put this in perspective … The Age has 1.8m users according to Netview (the same source of the above data) – and they visit The Age website only 8.9 times a month.

I would expect torrent use to increase significantly towards the back of the year as the new US programming airs in the States.

Right now new Family Guy, Simpsons, Curb Your Enthusiasm etc are all airing in the US … shows we won’t see new episodes of for at least another 6-8 months or more.

Plus the American winter is a key period for big movie releases, which will see local users on torrents looking to download cam or DVD rips. They’ll also be looking for the freshest TV programming, given the last 3 or so months has been pretty barren.