Meeja–The Times They Are A-Changin’

Apologies for being a bit slow on the blogging front recently. I just got out of the habit. However, I’ve been busy squirreling away lots of articles and links to follow up on with blog posts should the moment come to blog.

As many of you already know, I do consulting work with media owners of all types and sizes, helping their senior teams get their heads around what’s happening in mobile and social and how it is impacting their business and what they might do about it. I recently did a talk to a group of Nordic media owners who were pretty horrified that I rarely went directly to an online or mobile newspaper to read it but followed random links from people I followed on a variety of social networks and as such, wouldn’t necessarily know which publication or which journalist I was reading.

Don’t get my wrong, by all accounts, media consumption of all types is in rude health when it comes to mobile and online. What isn’t so healthy are the business models to pay for that as well as the fact that many outlets are still focused on print as the main product despite declining revenues. And that’s the challenge that media owners face. The existing business models are in (fast) decline and the news ones are not (yet) replacing those revenues often coupled with a reluctance to change or move with the times.

If you’re interested in where mobile meets media, the future of advertising, the future of journalism and the like, the following links will probably be of interest.

Why tablet magazines are a failure by Jon Lund. Jon’s key point is to encourage media owners to build for the web rather than tablet app only. But while he’s telling us that, there are some really interesting case studies quoted and some rather useful numbers if you need to persuade your boss to move with the times.

The Financial Times to move to single global print edition. This is a very interesting move by the FT. They’re changing their workflow and product focus to reshape the paper for the digital age. Although the printed paper is still part of their multi-platform operation, the shift in how they’re managing it all shows a keen eye on the future and they’re changing before their hand is forced. Smart move, I say.

Ken Doctor highlights what’s coming for media owners in 2014. It’s not news to those of us who’ve been working in mobile and media for a while, but I suspect, the pointers are a bit scary for a lot of media owners who haven’t yet started the change process or haven’t invested in preparing themselves for the future.

Josh Marshall doesn’t believe in Flipboard’s model for media owners and he tells us why, even as far as calling Flipboard a scam. I understand where he’s coming from, but what he doesn’t talk about is who and where his audience is and what their needs and wants are, what their reading habits are and how that matches with TPM’s offering. It’s still early days for Flipboard and its ilk, but I don’t think services like them are going away any time soon.

Canada’s Globe And Mail’s CEO tells media owners ‘we have to think more precisely about what it is that will make people pay’. There are some useful pointers in this article explaining some of the things G&M are doing to get readers to pay for content.

How much are you willing to pay for digital news? There’s still no definitive answer to this, but this article (and the links within it) highlight some of the key issues faced by media owners (yes, it’s getting a bit repetitive isn’t it – the need to innovate, the acceptance that the print decline is real and not stopping, that the digital ad sales aren’t replacing print ad sales etc.).

Attention v. Relationship Economy – this article explores they way that media owners could or should be thinking about how to monetise. And I think I agree with the author, Jeff Jarvis, that it’s about the relationships newspapers have with their community of readers, advertisers and more.

Long story short…

• digital media consumption is high
• mobile set to overtake desktop very quickly
• tablet magazines probably won’t save your business
• media companies need to restructure
• we need some new ways to advertise (I still don’t understand why we’re shoe-horning old ways into new media)
• we need to create and try more new business models
• no-one has the definitive answer
• And as Bob Dylan sang many years ago, ‘The Times they are a changin’’.

New York Times–a look at their business model

Many of you know that I work with media owners as a consultant to help them navigate their way around the new mobile and social environment. As such, I like to keep up to date with key insights and information which is why I enjoy reading the Monday Note. Today’s Monday Note article about the New York Times was particularly pertinent and reiterated to me a few key points.

• Advertising revenues are dropping. It’s a case of ever-diminishing returns – whether that’s print or digital. For the NY Times, ad revenues are down –9% across the board, print is down –11% and digital ad revenue is down by –2.2% (for the second quarter in a row).
• Costs are not decreasing. Increased people costs coupled with increased cost of printing
• Circulation is up - hurrah – by 7% on last year. This is mainly due to the rise in digital subscribers – double hurrah! This sounds like good news, doesn’t it? Well, unfortunately not. Circulation figures do not offset the the loss in advertising revenues. Jim Follo, CFO, says on their business model ‘When advertising revenue goes down, 90% of the decrease translates into a margin loss, but circulation revenue gains generate additional costs’. Oh dear.

I don’t know if at some point those figures change and the circulation model does eventually offset the advertising losses. The article suggests that the paywall strategy is a work in progress and that growth abroad, particularly in China, may yield results.

I wonder if we’re not being brave enough in our thinking. I wonder if it’s time to reinvent advertising altogether. Mobile advertising is huge and growing. Yes, we know that, but since there is limited screen real estate. That means there’s a limit to how many ads can be served and the old metrics just don’t wash and actually, the formats and metrics feel a bit tired. And I have seen nothing around measuring the serendipity of advertising – i.e. the ad that wasn’t targeted for you but was relevant in that moment as you needed to buy someone a gift or had a very specific, unexpected need that wouldn’t fit your big data profile.

Equally, I’m hearing anecdotally, that young people are tuning ads out and actively ignoring them. This begs the question of how are they going to find out about new brands (for the young in the UK are hugely brand savvy), new trends, new music, new whatever if they’re limited to their social streams? And what does that mean for marketing in general? Does advertising still work anyway? And in a perfect world, what would advertising and marketing look like in say, 2030? We are lucky to be living in an age that can invent its own future. So why isn’t advertising being reinvented?

Will it be down to context, location and big data? AR, QR, rich media formats, is that enough? Can you even remember an advert you saw in the last day, week, month? Will discovery of new stuff be reliant on a few key trendsetters in our circles being given ‘perks’ and freebies via the likes of PeerIndex, Klout and its ilk and then they talk about those things in their social stream (admittedly early days for these services but you can see where they’re going)? Are innovations like kiip, qriously and LoopMe enough? If we are questioning the future of newspapers and media in general, shouldn’t we also be questioning the future of advertising too?

References and resources:

The Monday Note: The New York Times Shifting Model http://www.mondaynote.com/2012/10/28/the-new-york-times-shifting-model

LoopMe Launch http://mobhappy.com/blog1/2012/10/29/loopme-unveils/

Mobile Marketing Magazine Issue 11. Off Deck (last page): Helen Keegan calls for mobile advertising to reinvent itself http://issuu.com/davidmurphy/docs/mm_issue_11

Newspaper Extinction Timeline (PDF). This shows the death of newspapers in their current format by country. It’s a sobering infographic http://futureexploration.net/Newspaper_Extinction_Timeline.pdf

Newspaper Death Watch blog http://newspaperdeathwatch.com/

Monday musings

I’m still not quite sure what day it is after my lovely holiday at Glastonbury Festival. But while I get myself together again and back into the swing of mobile things, I thought I’d share a few things that have caught my attention recently.

Mobile Developer Economics – a comprehensive free report from Vision Mobile and Telefonica. Check it out if you’re making decisions on which platform to develop for and would like to know how and why your peers made the decisions they did.

A round-up of what Windows Phone 7 will mean to the application developer landscape.

British mobile application designers share their top tips for creating a hit app.

Is youth marketing your thing? Are you aiming for a youth audience? If so, then these insights into media habits of 8 to 18 year olds is well worth a look.

UK newspaper circulation down by 25% and US newspaper circulation down by 30% since 2007. Article and link to full OECD report here. Meanwhile the Economist tells us that it’s not all over for print.

Really interesting reading here on MLearning from Dr Mimi Ito. This is live-blogged from the recent MLearnCon in San Diego. There are lessons to be learned here as well for marketing communications people too as it gives great insight into changing consumer habits.

InMobi sets up a $2m fund for mobile developers. This means that they’re offering 100% revenue share until the $2m is spent. Seems like a good idea to me if you’re using advertising to fund or part-fund your mobile site or application.

Fancy including travel tools ‘n stuff into your mobile app? Well you can, now that TFL has lifted all restrictions on the use of its data.

And now for something completely different.

If you like Opera and Horror, then why not apply to create the music for Werewolf in London from the ENO. It’s free to attend and they’re looking for musicians and singers to help create the soundtrack. It’s all happening on Sunday 25th July in London’s Docklands.

What will bring the money in for telcos?

Well, that’s what I was discussing yesterday at Telecom TV during a live panel session with Camille Mendler from Yankee Group, Edmond Osstyn from Alcatel-Lucent, Ian Scales and Robert Coren from Telecom TV with some extra questions and feedback from the live web audience. It was a lively session and lots of fun to do. We talked about the implications, issues and opportunities for mobile network operators with regards to mobile marketing, strategic partnerships and application stores; where and how would they make the money, what can be done, and what are the challenges they face. Anyway, if you’d like to take a look, you can see it here http://alu1.telecomtv.com/webinar/ondemand/?v=81

Technorati Tags: mobile network operators,mno,mobile,mobile marketing,mobile advertising,application stores,app store

Smaato Mobile Advertising Awards

Apologies for blog silence for the last few months. I’ve been busy twittering, but haven’t quite managed to write anything over 140 characters in length. Hopefully normal service will be resuming shortly.

Anyway, back to mobile business. My friends at Smaato have just announced their Mobile Advertising Awards and it looks pretty impressive to me. It’s the second year they’ve run it and entries are now open to find ‘the coolest ad-enabled mobile content on the planet.’

There are three categories – iPhone (inevitably), mobile website, and finally, mobile applications and games running on other platforms. It’s free to enter and there’s more info available on the Smaato website.

Smaato will invite the winners of each category to participate at next year’s Mobile World Congress, taking place in Barcelona, Spain in February 2010. In addition, they will also make a number of introductions for winners to VC's at partner level.
Additional prizes are: a booth at M-Days in Munich, Germany in January 2010, free tickets for Mobile World Congress, and many more.

The jury features a plethora of experienced mobilists and I’m quite sure they’ll have their work cut out for them with 100 or so entries for the first year’s awards. They’ll be looking at unique approach, traction in the marketplace, the idea itself, originality, company positioning and more.

The main prize of a presence at Mobile World Congress is not to be sniffed at so if you’re working in this area, I suggest you seriously think about entering. And if you do, good luck!

Technorati Tags: mobile,awards,mobile advertising,mobile web,iphone,mobile applications,mobile games,smaato,mobile world congress

Ringtones are the thing... or are they?

Well, it's pretty busy as usual at technokitten towers so just to keep my hand in with what's hot in mobile right now, here's some Friday linkage about ringtones 'n stuff.

Tele2 is running a user-generated ringtone competition in Sweden. Unfortunately, I don't speak Swedish so I can't tell you much about it! Perhaps a Swedish speaking reader could shed some light on this for me?

Cellfish.com introduced its Mobile Threat collection of hardcore punk, metal and indie rock ringtones, videos and image downloads for mobile this week. This means that the next time you ride public transport, you just might get an earful of GWAR, Shadows Fall, Everytime I Die, Chimaira and The Devil Wears Prada – consider this your early warning notice. Cellfish Media has partnered with the Sounds of the Underground summer music tour to bring the hard rocking genre of music fans a collection of mobile entertainment to suit their tastes... I think I'll stick to the theme tune from Fame as my ringtone for now ;)

But it seems that mobile games are the new black when it comes to revenue generation rather than ringtones. That comes as no big surprise to me as you can use mp3 files now for ringtones and it's not *that* difficult to make your own from your existing mp3 files.

So it's no surprise that free mobile content seems to be gaining popularity and some serious traction. Zedge.net now has over 5 million subscribers. I'm not sure how many of these are active, or what they're actually doing, nevertheless, it's impressive.

And since April 2006, I'm reliably informed that Cellufun, has delivered close to 4 million downloads to consumers in 160 countries. Cellufun offers free, ad-supported mobile products, predominantly free games ranging from Sudoku to casino to space battles and racing games. You can join the community by going to http://wap.cellufun.com from your web-enabled mobile phone.

And if you're a mobile addict, gaming or otherwise, you can now play with your phone safely in the bath as DoCoMo has just launched a waterproof mobile phone. Actually, joking apart, this would have been handy at Glastonbury this year, I know a few folks whose phones died after getting wet in the rain or being dropped in a puddle or the mud!