Healthy Blog Reviews

As the definition of a journalist gets stretched to the outer limits due to the proliferation of content farms and $10 per ‘article’ writers, it’s understandable that there is some concern in the ranks. It’s not there won’t be outlets for their work but it’s more about the state of the traditional outlets where most have made their living. Mashable reports on a recent survey which reveal these concerns In a survey conducted over May and June this year, PR network Oriella asked media moguls how the Internet was affecting their business, their publishing formats and even the quality of the content issuing forth from their newsrooms. In a survey of 770 journalists across 15 countries, the company determined that, while media creators are slightly more optimistic than they were last year about maintaining revenues vis-a-vis the rise of online ad budgets, many are still worried about whether traditional media formats can succeed in the long run. “Concerns about the viability of journalists’ traditional media channels (print, radio or television) have intensified,” the report reads. Of course, loss of advertising dollars leads the way for concern about viability of traditional media offerings. Since more and more people are moving online for their news, there will be fewer dollars available from advertisers who can support the kind of staffs that these outlets traditionally require. Since most people can see the chain reaction of these concerns the next obvious worry is if their traditional offline mediums will survive or just go away (if that hasn’t happened already). In the end, there may be no stopping these sweeping changes. Many act as if it’s the fault of the traditional media themselves but it’s really just people changing and moving to where they are more comfortable. Online is that place and not’s because the traditional media was bad. Where the trouble has come is the slow pace of adaption by traditional media of the online space. In essence, they have created their own troubles by waiting too long and having to react to this paradigm shift rather than help mold it. Traditional media, for the most part, missed a golden opportunity. Why did they miss it? I think it was because they were getting fat and happy by being unchallenged at the top of the media heap for too long. At that point you can lose your edge. They have simply lost their edge. With businesses being run by human beings this will happen. Most people want to go into cruise control when things are going well but they unfortunately lose focus at that point and are vulnerable to being replaced. Since I am part of the ‘new media’ side of the coin it’s easy to lob criticism at the traditional side of the media. The trouble with that is that I then become no better and could very well suffer the same consequences. For new media to really thrive we have to stay on top of the issues that face our industry as well. The primary one that I see is maintaining a high level of quality. With content farms churning out content that is more of a crapshoot with regards to quality this can end up being trouble. If enough readers and content consumers get burned they will look elsewhere for information. Delivery methods may change but quality never goes out of style. Right now, the online publishing world needs to be very vigilant regarding the state of the quality of content. There’s plenty of talk but little action and as the content farm mentality gains momentum the window of opportunity to take this problem by the horns is closing very rapidly. Could the online space suffer a similar fate to the offline space? Could the proliferation of lower quality content create enough discontent amongst content consumers that they will look elsewhere? Of course, where are they going to look, back to the offline space? Not necessarily but they may have less patience thus making it hard for even online entities to keep advertisers interested. So what’s your take?

Tags: content, definition, news, Offline, online, proliferation, quality, state, traditional, work
Posted July 24, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

It looks like the mid-year re-evaluations and updates to the “start of year” predictions for the future of advertising are rolling in at a rapid pace. Today’s entry comes from one of the largest advertising firms in the world, Interpublic and its Magna Global unit. The news is good for advertising overall and particularly for the online segment as it is set to move into the number 2 slot behind TV in the race to be the largest advertising medium in the world. MediaPost reports The agency, long respected as Madison Avenue’s definitive source for the global ad economy, projected worldwide online ad spending would surpass the $100 billion mark, totaling $103 billion in 2015, due largely to an expansion of online advertising inventory. The prediction comes as Magna dramatically upgrades its overall ad spending estimate, predicting that global ad spending now is on base to expand 4.2% in 2010, nearly double the 2.4% rate of growth the agency estimated in its last published estimate at the end of 2009. So it looks like the predictions are coming in that we may have finally hit bottom in this massive retreat over the past two years. At least that’s what is being forecast by advertising crystal balls throughout the industry. One interesting point covered by the forecast is that newspaper advertising will continue to grow modestly – up 1.8% in constant currency terms over the next five years – despite sustained declines in many markets This is a very different picture than what is usually painted regarding the newspaper industry. There are several factors at play in this with the main one being these numbers are worldwide in scope. There are still many places on earth where the online culture is not as ingrained as in the US. It’s an interesting caution when talking about newspapers as a whole because it is likely that further declines will take place in online centric cultures. So TV will still dominate but even its impact is being diminished as the lines blur and create some confusion as to what TV really is. With the traditional broadcast delivery being supplemented and often replaced by online options the fragmentation of this medium will make for some interesting decisions moving forward. Likely to benefit will be the online advertising world as more ads are served in relation to video content being used for both broadcast and online delivery. So things are looking up to some degree. My hope is that when things finally do start to really turn around that we can keep our wits about ourselves and not get caught up in hype for hype’s sake. If anything has been proven in the past few years is that that mindset never gets great results. Agree or disagree?

Tags: comes-as-magna, factors-at-play, fragmentation, industry, largest, Madison Avenue, magna-global, Online Advertising, past, places-on-earth, predictions, race, traditional, world-as-more
Posted June 16, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

We all know that Google is on a buying / investing spree of sorts. Google Ventures was announced last year and Andy Beal took a look at the fine print for us . Now a year later, the Google Ventures team is moving right along with plans to invest $100 million this year. Yesterday Google invited reports to the Internet’s equivalent of a high holy place, the Googleplex, for more information. Venturebeat tells us : Reporters asked company chief executive Eric Schmidt and Google Ventures partners about the kinds of startups the firm is interested in, but they refused to be pinned down to a specific industry, trend, or stage of investment. It’s better to lead the firm into new areas than to jump on a bandwagon like mobile applications, Schmidt said. If anything, Google is more interested in investing in smart people. “Eventually, venture returns are all correlated with the people you invest in,” he said. The one distinction that Schimdt drew was that Google Ventures is a venture firm, not a private equity firm. So it wants to invest in risky, big-opportunity startups with disruptive technologies, not just anyone. And where Google often aims to be disruptive itself when it enters a new industry, Schmidt said the company doesn’t plan to rewrite the traditional venture capital model, which he called “a phenomenal achievement of America.” The financial structure on deals is pretty similar to other firms. Schmidt pointed out that by getting involved with Google venture targets can benefit from the 20,000 Google employees and their wonderful minds. This is a distinct advantage that Google holds over any other venture firm. Schmidt and managing partner Bill Maris also pointed out. Google isn’t approaching the venture firm as a stealth pipeline for its acquisitions. While the two divisions communicate, they’re run separately, and there’s no requirement that a Google Ventures company can’t sell to a competitor like Microsoft or Apple. Trying to explain how Google Ventures operates in relation to the larger company, Maris said: “Google is like the sun, and we’re like one of the planets that orbit the sun. That gravity has a lot of influence.” Wow. Google as the sun. Well, we all know that the world revolves around Google. I wonder what kind of deal the sun struck with Google and if it got the “short end of the stick”? The official Google blog puts the final touches on the ethos of Google Ventures (which also rolled out a new web site as well). Google Ventures is an expression of our optimism in the future and the belief that looking for, supporting and fostering innovation is worthwhile. We don’t know where the next great idea will come from, but with the help of many Googlers, great co-investors and a growing team, we’re going to keep looking while working to help entrepreneurs succeed. I don’t know about you but I’m getting misty reading this. Thanks Google for making the world a better place .

Tags: firm, google-ventures, googleplex, googlers, internet, Microsoft, people, planets, traditional, venture, world
Posted May 4, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

A new study from market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies shows that social media might actually pay off —in real dollars in addition to the traditional branding and influence lift. The survey of over 1500 consumers showed that they were more likely to buy from and recommend brands they follow on Twitter and Facebook. 51% of those surveyed said they were more likely to buy from a brand after following them on Facebook; 67% said they were more likely to buy after following on Twitter. Brands also got a boost in recommendations: 60% of Facebook fans and 79% of Twitter followers were more likely to recommend a brand to their friends. This is only natural, says eConsultancy : The most popular reason people follow brands in social media is to receive discounts. But there were also many people who responded that they follow as a customer of the brand and to show their support of it. On Twitter, that reason was less popular. Only 2% of respondents followed a brand to show their support. More often, they are looking for discounts, new information and exclusive content. That makes a lot of sense, as Facebook’s fan ability is more geared toward letting users express their appreciation for something. And here’s our grain of salt: this is a survey. This only shows what people think they’re doing. It may be that people don’t want to admit they’re only following Nike to look cool. However, with questions like these, I’d assume there’s at least a little boost for the brands in terms of dollars and recommendations. What do you think? Are these people accurately reporting their spending and recommendations?

Tags: appreciation, chadwick-martin, facebook, followers-were, new-information, Research, Social Media, support, the-traditional, their-spending, toward-letting, traditional, twitter-brands
Posted March 17, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

There are certain things that anyone can hear and automatically say “I don’t think that’ll work very well” without doing any real research. You hear something and you have a visceral reaction that just makes you go with your gut because it makes sense. Even in those kind of no-brainer situations it helps when your “gut” is validated by a reputable source who actually did a little research. The latest case of this occurrence comes from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. As reported over at ars technica the prestigious group has done the research to help us all say that our collective gut is right on the money when it comes to paywalls for news: the idea pretty well sucks. Advertising remains the primary means of support for online news outlets, and there’s a long uphill battle facing anyone trying to forge new business models, at least according to a report produced by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The extensive report on the State of the Media examines numerous aspects of the media world, but emphasizes that, when it comes to online news, getting people to pay for content they otherwise value is “like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons.” Ouch. Last I heard, butterflies never go back into their cocoons. Boy it would be just like some mean old news guy like Rupert Murdoch to force a butterfly to do something so unnatural. Some of the numbers that support this claim are that 81 percent of Internet users say they are fine with online ads of it keeps the content free. A surprising number of people click on these ads as well with 21 percent saying they do and the numbers going up to 39 percent when the level of someone’s Internet usage is high. On the downside, however, is the admission by these folks that they actually like ads because they “find them easy to ignore”. Ouch again. The combined effect of lower ad impact and revenue has led many news sites to look for new ways to make some money, but the Pew report is not very optimistic on the prospects for other business models. Only seven percent of Americans said they would consider paying for news content and most said they would simply look for content elsewhere if their favorite site put up a pay wall. The likelihood of hybrid offerings is increasing because the first company of any relevance that fails while trying a paywall only approach rather than the traditional free approach will get beat up pretty bad. Although the pressure for revenue is severe the downside of actually acting on all this paywall talk could be keeping folks away from it. With only 7% of Americans saying that they would pay for content is seems hard to believe that there is any room for this model moving forward. What’s your take? Please be sure to comment in our new “pay per comment” section. You’d pay for that opportunity wouldn’t you?

Tags: Business, cocoons, downside, internet, media, money, numbers, prestigious, project, Research, research-center, Rupert Murdoch, traditional
Posted March 15, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media