I love to compete in business. I’ve been fortunate throughout my career to be with good companies and good teams, and most of the time I face quality competitors. I love to watch competitors outside of business. Love the Lakers, love the superstars that come to town and try to knock them off. Now lately I see some business competition that is decidedly gloves off. My concern is that the consumer doesn’t lose. Here’s what I’m talking about. During the fourth quarter of last year and into this year you saw DirecTV and the Dish Network go toe-to-toe. But here’s the problem. Sateliite programming needs work, it is getting work, and it is a limiting factor in customer satisfaction. So regardless of who gained marketshare, who won?
The key to marketing brawls is in the foundation of excellence. If you’re going to have it out in the marketplace make sure the consumer wins as a result. When Coke and Pepsi come back to their occasional taste test strategy everyone wins. Everyone drinks more cola because the product is appealing and solid at the base. The few hundredths of a percentage points gained in marketshare don’t matter as much as the fact that everyone is talking cola.
Now get ready for a really big brawl. The Wall Street Journal is coming after The New York Times. And the Times will come after The Journal. There’s a lot at stake here. The Times is getting ready to set up online pay walls while WSJ.com is based on subscriptions. The Journal is going to be a part of the Fox Business channel and it has an opportunity to damage the fortunes of Bloomberg’s brand. This will be fun to watch. Everybody has a good game so the strategy is sound. Hopefully the end result is people consuming more business news. It’s kind of like the Final Four of business news. But no “maybe next year” for the loser.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
ABC -- Easy As... One, Two, Three
I like what the Audit Bureau of Circulations did this week. In fact, I like it a lot. As a mainly print entity the ABC was on the verge of irrelevance. Anyone in print publishing would either look forward to or rue the day when ABC quarterly statements showed up. It showed whether people were at least requesting your content, and at best, whether they were paying for it. I mean, what advertiser would advertise in a magazine that lacked a quality circulation?
As you can see that question has become a bit hollow in the digital world. As an industry we’ve come up with a lot of different ways of measuring readership and performance. Some of those methods are great, such as those driven by targeting technology. Some are not so great, like reach and frequency. But the ABC kind of back-to-basics measurements are needed right now. They’re needed because content sites that focus on one main property, like most newspapers and magazines, need to compete on fair grounds. The ABC has been working on some kind of audience subscription and measurement for about a year. It could have come back with something vague, which would have been organizational suicide. But it didn’t.
What it did was modify its definition of a digital magazine. Specifically: “a replica digital edition must include a print edition's full editorial content and advertising, but it no longer needs to be presented in a layout identical to the print version. Replica digital editions will continue to be included in a magazine's circulation guarantee, or rate base.”
The board encouraged publishers planning new e-reader editions or mobile apps to seek ABC evaluation if they would like clarification on qualification and reporting of their digital editions. It also gave initial approval to create new U.S. reports that better reflect a newspaper's total audience across a range of products. So newspapers and magazines can add e-reader distribution, mobile app purchases, total paid and verified circulation from multiple newspaper products, including branded print editions associated with the flagship newspaper. These circulations will be detailed in the report and totaled with all circulation.
So digital content entities can show who’s paying, on what platform and who’s not paying. It’s up to the advertiser to decide the value attached. That sounds to me like a level playing field and one where the strongest content will win. As print publishing moves online, individuality will become more important. The New York Times will not survive on line as part of a network buy. Neither will WSJ.com, SI.com, or GQ.com. The ABC just did them, and themsleves, a big service.
As you can see that question has become a bit hollow in the digital world. As an industry we’ve come up with a lot of different ways of measuring readership and performance. Some of those methods are great, such as those driven by targeting technology. Some are not so great, like reach and frequency. But the ABC kind of back-to-basics measurements are needed right now. They’re needed because content sites that focus on one main property, like most newspapers and magazines, need to compete on fair grounds. The ABC has been working on some kind of audience subscription and measurement for about a year. It could have come back with something vague, which would have been organizational suicide. But it didn’t.
What it did was modify its definition of a digital magazine. Specifically: “a replica digital edition must include a print edition's full editorial content and advertising, but it no longer needs to be presented in a layout identical to the print version. Replica digital editions will continue to be included in a magazine's circulation guarantee, or rate base.”
The board encouraged publishers planning new e-reader editions or mobile apps to seek ABC evaluation if they would like clarification on qualification and reporting of their digital editions. It also gave initial approval to create new U.S. reports that better reflect a newspaper's total audience across a range of products. So newspapers and magazines can add e-reader distribution, mobile app purchases, total paid and verified circulation from multiple newspaper products, including branded print editions associated with the flagship newspaper. These circulations will be detailed in the report and totaled with all circulation.
So digital content entities can show who’s paying, on what platform and who’s not paying. It’s up to the advertiser to decide the value attached. That sounds to me like a level playing field and one where the strongest content will win. As print publishing moves online, individuality will become more important. The New York Times will not survive on line as part of a network buy. Neither will WSJ.com, SI.com, or GQ.com. The ABC just did them, and themsleves, a big service.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
"Drowning In Data?" I Don't Think So!
Shoe leather and a nice tie. That’s what media sales used to be all about. You worked real hard, traveled, presented yourself nicely, talked a nice line. That’s what sold print contracts or even some other media before sales and marketing made it a fact-based process. Now that fact-based approach is starting to show some interesting signs of reconsideration. I don’t think Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was bemoaning that her company was “drowning in data” a couple of weeks ago, but she did use that phrase. Now I see even the medical profession is having a bit of a problem with the amount of data it has gathered. According to The New York Times on March 8, “statistical tools simply haven’t kept up with the massive amounts of data researchers now have access to. In medical (and economic) research, scientists claim a “statistically significant” finding if there’s a less than 5% chance that an observed pattern (between coffee and liver disease, for example) occurred at random. In the new age of data, that rule causes problems.”
Wow. Do we have too much data for our own good?
The short answer is no. I can identify with Carol Bartz, who was actually referring to a WalMart promotion that generated millions of responses. We’ve hosted and executed several such campaigns, and I still maintain that there’s no bad data, only bad analysis. Let me use the following example to illustrate.
Let’s say a CPG company runs a banner campaign promoting a sweepstakes on 10 different websites. The campaign has a reach of 20 million unique users. Now let’s say one million of those unique users completes a registration form to enter the sweepstakes, complete with permission for the CPG company to contact them with future marketing messages and offers. The number can seem to be overwhelming in some ways because now your sweepstakes is harder to administrate. But this huge amount of data does three things for the relationship between content provider and client. They are:
1. Strengthens client relationship. When we execute a successful customer data based campaign, I can’t wait to see that client again. There are so many innovative things a sales team can do to follow up with a client that has found that the Internet is still a customer and targeting based gold mine.
2. Takes focus off CPM and CPA. When a content company and agency or brand discuss customer data, less relevant metrics like last click attribution and “who gets the lowest CPM” find their proper perspective.
3. Updates targeting capabilities. When a client sees its database grow, the content company has to point out that it just gained a new ability to target the customers it finds truly valuable.
Let’s go back to the CPG sweepstakes. The CPG company doesn’t have to follow up with the entire one million new data points – it can slice and dice. If its next promotion is aimed at large households, it can target women, head of household, more than six people. One CMO told me, at the IAB Annual last month in San Diego, that his CPG company now has five different mom targets because of the diversity in his product mix. Bottom line, when it comes to generating data, it’s all good. It certainly makes being a sales professional a lot easier.
Wow. Do we have too much data for our own good?
The short answer is no. I can identify with Carol Bartz, who was actually referring to a WalMart promotion that generated millions of responses. We’ve hosted and executed several such campaigns, and I still maintain that there’s no bad data, only bad analysis. Let me use the following example to illustrate.
Let’s say a CPG company runs a banner campaign promoting a sweepstakes on 10 different websites. The campaign has a reach of 20 million unique users. Now let’s say one million of those unique users completes a registration form to enter the sweepstakes, complete with permission for the CPG company to contact them with future marketing messages and offers. The number can seem to be overwhelming in some ways because now your sweepstakes is harder to administrate. But this huge amount of data does three things for the relationship between content provider and client. They are:
1. Strengthens client relationship. When we execute a successful customer data based campaign, I can’t wait to see that client again. There are so many innovative things a sales team can do to follow up with a client that has found that the Internet is still a customer and targeting based gold mine.
2. Takes focus off CPM and CPA. When a content company and agency or brand discuss customer data, less relevant metrics like last click attribution and “who gets the lowest CPM” find their proper perspective.
3. Updates targeting capabilities. When a client sees its database grow, the content company has to point out that it just gained a new ability to target the customers it finds truly valuable.
Let’s go back to the CPG sweepstakes. The CPG company doesn’t have to follow up with the entire one million new data points – it can slice and dice. If its next promotion is aimed at large households, it can target women, head of household, more than six people. One CMO told me, at the IAB Annual last month in San Diego, that his CPG company now has five different mom targets because of the diversity in his product mix. Bottom line, when it comes to generating data, it’s all good. It certainly makes being a sales professional a lot easier.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Digital Marketers Need To Listen to Beyonce
Last month when I blogged I was inspired to connect the transformative powers of Pink at the Grammy Awards to the transformation happening in the living room between the laptop and the TV. I’d like to revisit that general neighborhood. This time my guest for all you digital marketers is Beyonce. To paraphrase the princess: “I need to upgrade ya.”
Here’s why. I’m starting to see a disconnect between what Internet content properties offer to brands and agencies and what those brands and agencies are valuing. This disconnect quite frankly is dangerous. It strikes at the heart of what we here at Fox and other content properties do well, and my concern is that advertisers are not appreciating audience, branding, and business model flexibility. Internet advertisers by and large want to buy a house in Malibu but they only want to spend 100 grand. And up until now, content owners have sold the real estate at a below market price. I believe that is about to change. Like Beyonce says: “I need to upgrade ya.”
Let’s look at three elements of that change. First and foremost, let’s look at the cost-per-click or cost-per-action deals that are happening all over the Internet. Let me pose a question to the top 500 brands in any vertical: Why are you letting online universities and questionable health tonics take your valuable real estate? If brands spend more on CPA deals, they win. The smaller brands, the ones that can drag down the overall image of a content property, and win out on network bidding are dominating Internet advertising. Right now, those maintain an even level with any other brand. Even a slight uptick in spending from the top 500 could turn that around tomorrow. I’d lose my lowest CPA deals in a heartbeat to get fewer but better profile advertisers.
Second: Maintaining the audience targeting technology is expensive. Just as a brand has to pay trade promotion, customer data services, and advertising to support sales, a content site has overhead. Yet, I don’t feel the love when it comes to that. Brands and agencies think a company like Fox can just “set and forget.” Not true. We constantly update and optimize our stuff, our content, our audience data. We provide a service that connects you directly to your best customers. Yet, I hear some short-term arguments that the ad payment models we provide are too expensive, or not generating short-term results. Believe me; I’ll put us up against a lot of different media. Give me 30 minutes. I’ll take that argument apart.
Finally, let’s look at the overall picture. With my sales team I keep coming back to the overall state of the market -- March 2010 -- customers are online: They watch video, they noodle around on social networks, they get news, they play games, and they do all this while they watch TV. Brands need to be online as much as they need to be on TV. They need to be there when the potential customer is. The real estate is just as valuable online, in my opinion, yet it is still not seen that way. Bad perception! I would not want to be the brand manager who gets called on the carpet for letting a competitor get to that understanding first.
Here’s why. I’m starting to see a disconnect between what Internet content properties offer to brands and agencies and what those brands and agencies are valuing. This disconnect quite frankly is dangerous. It strikes at the heart of what we here at Fox and other content properties do well, and my concern is that advertisers are not appreciating audience, branding, and business model flexibility. Internet advertisers by and large want to buy a house in Malibu but they only want to spend 100 grand. And up until now, content owners have sold the real estate at a below market price. I believe that is about to change. Like Beyonce says: “I need to upgrade ya.”
Let’s look at three elements of that change. First and foremost, let’s look at the cost-per-click or cost-per-action deals that are happening all over the Internet. Let me pose a question to the top 500 brands in any vertical: Why are you letting online universities and questionable health tonics take your valuable real estate? If brands spend more on CPA deals, they win. The smaller brands, the ones that can drag down the overall image of a content property, and win out on network bidding are dominating Internet advertising. Right now, those maintain an even level with any other brand. Even a slight uptick in spending from the top 500 could turn that around tomorrow. I’d lose my lowest CPA deals in a heartbeat to get fewer but better profile advertisers.
Second: Maintaining the audience targeting technology is expensive. Just as a brand has to pay trade promotion, customer data services, and advertising to support sales, a content site has overhead. Yet, I don’t feel the love when it comes to that. Brands and agencies think a company like Fox can just “set and forget.” Not true. We constantly update and optimize our stuff, our content, our audience data. We provide a service that connects you directly to your best customers. Yet, I hear some short-term arguments that the ad payment models we provide are too expensive, or not generating short-term results. Believe me; I’ll put us up against a lot of different media. Give me 30 minutes. I’ll take that argument apart.
Finally, let’s look at the overall picture. With my sales team I keep coming back to the overall state of the market -- March 2010 -- customers are online: They watch video, they noodle around on social networks, they get news, they play games, and they do all this while they watch TV. Brands need to be online as much as they need to be on TV. They need to be there when the potential customer is. The real estate is just as valuable online, in my opinion, yet it is still not seen that way. Bad perception! I would not want to be the brand manager who gets called on the carpet for letting a competitor get to that understanding first.
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