Industry News

Even as we rush headlong towards 2013, the speed-of-light changes in our industry demand we all become visionaries, able to look past what I like to call “The Great Disruption” – the immediate and ever-evolving commotion in the media landscape – to the horizon: 2017.
That’s exactly what I’ll be talking about when representatives from 2,000 local newspapers and their digital products gather in Atlanta from September 11th to the 14th for the 2012 Local Media Fall Publishers’ & Advertising Directors’ Conference.

A new Google study identifies two primary ways people use multi-screens: 1) Sequential – moving from one device to another to complete a single goal 2) Simultaneous – using multiple devices at the same time. These types of usage modes offer key insights to marketers. For example, the study found that nine out of ten people use multiple screens sequentially and smartphones are by far the most common starting point for completing a task (e.g. booking an online flight).

The digital space has changed considerably over the last 10 years bringing tremendous opportunity. Mashable recently published an infograph highlighting the staggering growth, including internet users, usage, web sites, social networks, and more. We’ve come a long way. What can we expect in the next 3-5 years? How will the digital industry change?

A viewable impression is the latest metric up for discussion in online advertising. Comscore recently published a whitepaper titled, The Economics of Online Advertising, which provides an in-depth overview of viewable impressions and their impact on the digital industry. What are your thoughts? Is this metric valuable to the industry?

Traditional media meets digital media to improve online ad targeting and relevancy, according to a recent AdAge article. A new product released by Datalogix, a data company, aims to let digital ad buyers target ads to people online based on the shows they watch on TV. It matches TV viewing data along with demographic and purchase-behavior data based on TV households, and then matches it up with online cookies. Is this a step forward in integrating traditional and digital media efforts?

According to eMarketer, one in three online consumers will have a tablet by 2014. With tablet penetration growing, new opportunities to capitalize on consumer behaviors arise. With 41% of U.S. adults listing “shopping” as a reason to purchase an iPad, and mobile internet accounting for nearly 10% of all online shopping sessions, consumers are becoming increasingly comfortable using tablets as a product research and purchasing tool.

We’ve been waiting for July 27, 2012 since the closing ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics and it’s finally here. However, today NBC has been met with a certain amount of backlash. In the digital age the expectation for instant satisfaction is prevalent in terms of media, news, and entertainment consumption, and NBC isn’t delivering.

This week, Crain’s Chicago Business published an article titled, “Line between traditional ad agencies, digital upstarts blurs. It highlights the increasing need and demand for digital media. Today, marketers are no longer having one-way conversations with consumers via traditional channels. Instead, marketers and consumers are engaging in two-way conversations, where consumers are becoming active participants and secondary marketers via multiple digital screens. This is the future.

During American Idol’s widely popular Phillip Phillips’ season, Media Post published an article surrounding the success of a social Twitter campaign Flock to Unlock. This prime example of a healthy media mix leveraged traditional television to blow up the Twittersphere and create an earned trending topic around advertiser products. The combination of media channels created a well-rounded experience for engaged viewers, allowing them to easily connect with advertisers.