Cynopsis: DIGITAL

03/02/10

Good morning, it’s Tuesday, March 2, 2010, and this is your first early morning digital briefing.

Following a drop over 25% in ad revenue from print magazines last year, a group of prominent magazine publishers including Time Inc., Hearst, Conde Nast, Meredith and Wenner Media are launching a jointly-funded $90 million dollar ad campaign to help convince readers, advertisers and shareholders of the “power of print.”  The 7-month campaign, developed with Y&R New York, is expected to roll out with lush color spreads in the May issues of nearly 100 print magazines and web sites with taglines such as “We Surf the Internet. We Swim in Magazines” and “Will the Internet Kill Magazines? Did Instant Coffee Kill Coffee?”
 

 
Figuring to keep eggs in both baskets, Conde Nast is moving along with plans to create iPad native version of several of its popular titles including Wired, GQ, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Glamour, according to the NYTimes. The publisher will sell editions and subscriptions through iTunes and encourage readers to register their personal info to better track consumer data.
 
Boosted by the search for updates on the tragic earthquake in Haiti, CNN Digital delivered 66 million total video streams in the two weeks following the quake, a 96% increase over the previous two weeks. CNN.com finished Jan. serving 135.5 million streams globally and attracting 40.6 million uniques, its 3rd highest monthly total ever.
 
The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has named 13 nominees in 3 categories for its new Digital Program category covering Children & Young People, Fiction and Non-Fiction digital programs. Easy To Assemble creator Illeana Douglas will take a break from munching Swedish meatballs to present the first time awards on Monday, April 12 at MIPTV in Cannes.
 
Look for upgrades to the NCAA March Madness on Demand video player on CBSSports.com this year, including statistical overlays, a new “boss button” and the ability to watch picture-in-picture highlights of other games while watching a live stream. CBSSports.com will once again distribute NCAA March Madness on Demand across 3rd party sites with its Developer Platform, allowing sites to link directly into the MMOD video player.
 

 
Congrats to the aforementioned “Easy To Assemble” – it has been named in several categories in the 2010 Streamy Award nominees announced yesterday, including Best Comedy Web Series, Best Female Actor in a Comedy (2 noms) and Best Product Integration in a Web Series. Nominees were picked by visitors to the Streamy Awards site. The 2nd annual Streamys, to be presented by the International Academy of Web Television on April 11, will recognize 35 categories this year in made-for-broadband programming.
 
Atlanta-based Virtue has added a new option to its social media platform that allows advertisers to insert mini apps into fans’ news feeds, with the goal of boosting interaction on a brand’s Facebook page or other Web properties. Virtue’s new Wall Apps offered through the company’s SRM solution includes customizable coupons, polls and quizzes, slide shows, email and events-related applications.
 
ManiaTV founder Drew Massey, who bought back the failed online video producer from a group of venture capitalists last year, is looking into rescuing bankrupt online video site Veoh.com, per Mediaweek.
 

Mobile video ad network Rhythm NewMedia is introducing a developers kit (SDK) to allow media partners monetize their own iPhone apps by adding integrated ad units into their video. The launch includes a brand new “Application Launch” ad unit that provides brand messaging via a full screen video ad presented to the user during those few seconds while a new app loads. Rhythm CEO Ujjal Kohli expects CPM rates for app launch ads to top the $35-$40 averages of recent video campaigns logged by the company. Rhythm has been attracting major brand advertisers by improving on the standard pre-roll with interactive features including click-to-call and links to mobile sites. Two of the platform’s strengths are that it is focuses exclusively on professionally produced video and allows users to browse the ads without leaving the app, notes Mr. Kohli.
 
Out of home digital advertising firm Netpulse is launching its new interactive media platform targeting fitness clubs, offering users on-demand music and video, access to social media and personalized news feeds. The Netpulse system features an HDTV video screen, tracks personalized workout data and allows users to pug in their iPhone or iPod into the interface to access their own content. Netpulse struck a deal with TSI (owner of NYSC) to implement screens across the network’s New York, Boston, Philadelphia Washington-based Sports Clubs.
 

 
While earnings at Vivendi’s Universal Music Group fell by 6.2% y/y thanks to a continuing freefall of CD sales, the company noted that digital sales grew 8.4% with very strong growth in online sales. The company named Spotify’s premium iPhone service and the MusicStation’s launch on the Android platform as future innovations. UMG is also a principal in VEVO, which has already claimed the top spot among music themed entertainment sites attracting 35 million uniques.
 
Google has acquired online image-editing tool Picnik for an undisclosed amount. Picnik enables users to import images from their desktops or third party sites such as Flickr and Facebook then edit them by cropping the image or adding visual effects.
 

 
After fifteen years there is still no consistent, agreed upon approach to putting print magazines online, and in the fast-paced world of the web, editorial standards often suffer, according to a new report from the Columbia Journalism Review that looks at a staggering 665 publications.
Among its findings:

• For all the talk about paywalls, 68% of the respondents said advertising is the primary revenue source, with the number climbing to 83% when speaking only of profitable sites
• 52% said they provide all of their print content free online; 31% provide some free and 10% provide a mix of free and pay. Only 4% charge for all content
• 49% of the online magazines that don’t make a profit provide significant content from the print edition free; 65% that do make a profit offer their content for free
• 59% of those surveyed said that either there was no copy editing whatsoever online (11%) or that copy editing is less rigorous than in the print edition
• 40% said that when web editors, as opposed to print editors, are in charge of content decisions, fact-checking is less rigorous; 17% said there was no fact-checking online when web editors made the content decisions

 
Facebook has not begun to fight in terms of generating revenue for its partners and investors, according to a new report from Track.com, which pegs the 400 million member social networking giant’s current value at $50 billion. Much of that value comes from the massive web traffic the site is generating; Facebook is expected to surpass Google in total page views during the first half of 2010, according to Alexa.com and Compete.com estimates. “If Facebook successfully leverages its new relationship with Microsoft’s Bing, implements more social search tools, grows its fan pages, and enables the continued natural growth of “friendcasting”, it should surpass Google as the largest driver of traffic globally later this year,” writes Track.com’s Lou Kerner. The company is projected to earn $14.4 billion in global ad revenue by FY 2015, amounting to 15% of the world’s total.
 
Facebook is particularly adept at driving traffic to broadcast media sites, according to a new analysis from Hitwise. A larger proportion of Facebook’s News and Media traffic is directed toward Broadcast Media websites compared with Google News. WSJ.com last week received 10.37% of its US visits from Google News compared to only 1.41% from Facebook. NYTimes.com similarly received more traffic from Google News than from Facebook (5.21% compared to 2.96% of upstream visits). Yet Fox News and CNN received more traffic from Facebook than Google News, receiving 5.50% and 5.92% respectively from Facebook vs. 1.18% and 1.77% from Google News.
 

 
Comcast‘s iPhone/iPod Touch DVR settings app has added a new update enabling users to search for, schedule and cancel recording remotely.
 
CBS Mobile’s GameSpot has launched a new free iPhone app that aggregates video game reviews, profiles, user ratings and information.
 
CNBC‘s Call the Close game, available online or via CBNC Mobile, lets users guess what the closing Dow Jones Industrial Average will close at each day.
 

 
NBC Universal’s Women at NBCU sales marketing and research initiative has added five new members to its advisory board: Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, MediaVest’s Donna Speciale, The Meredith Whitney Advisory Group’s Meredith Whitney, fashion designer Tory Burch and 85% Niche CEO and author Miriam Muley.
 
Christian Stoppler, CEO of DSB&K and JWT Engage, and Ole L. Wegner, Director of Perry & Knorr Communications GmbH, have joined the supervisory board of mobile marketing specialist conVISUAL.
 
Former Kidrobot marketer Rob Felton has been named VP/Marketing for SwagDog, an online retailer and manufacturer offering custom apparel.
 

 
Social media tools leveraging Facebook and Twitter conversations have officially surpassed the gimmick stage for TV networks – they’re boosting ratings. Encouraged by the positive effect it had on linear ratings of Bad Girls Club, Oxygen Media announced that its OxygenLive social networking platform will go live 52-weeks a year for all its original shows. When Oxygen first launched the online dashboard (which aggregates comments, tweets and Facebook postings during live broadcasts) last Dec., it saw ratings spike 89% in East Coast markets. Not sure how much of the boost was due to “Oxy Live” vs. other factors, VP/Digital and New Media Jen Kavanagh decided to implement it on the West Coast then watch the results. Sure enough West Coast ratings increased, y/y by 73% among adults 18-49 during the first 5 episodes. “The majority of activity happens via the Facebook Connect module and Twitter apps,” said Ms. Kavanagh. We receive 80,000-100,000 tweets during a telecast, plus comments via the live app. The goal has been to get influencers to join us for this experience to help penetrate the message through social graphs.” The application will next be implemented during the premiers of Bad Girls spin off “Love Games” on Mar. 16 then during the new season of “Tori and Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood” where a live online video component is also in the works.
 
Clarification: The new Advocate-branded news show appearing on Here! is not the magazine’s first TV show. A quarterly one-hour Advocate news program hosted by Richard Hake first appeared in Dec. 2005 on MTVN’s Logo, James Fraenkel reminds us. (Jim Exec. Produced the show for Logo.)

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

Later – Wayne
Wayne Karrfalt for Cynopsis: Digital
[email protected]
03.02.10

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