ACGMedia Hub

Tallahassee Newspaper Jonesing for Positive Spin on Downward Trend

Posted February 10, 2012 by Mark Hanzlik, ACGMedia    

When Editor & Publisher posted Case Study: Newspaper Thriving in Tallahassee, I knew a lot of eyeballs would reading the piece, looking for some good news about the daily newspaper industry. I'll admit I was intrigued at first but at this stage, I'm a little skeptical of what lies behind the story of this kind.   Don't get me wrong, I believe any media should be free to present their best case in a sales presentation or media kit but when it's served up as the TOP STORY for E&P, one begins to wonder about the editorial integrity of the publishing source.

If you read the E&P case study, you’ll learn that the Tallahassee Democrat, a very healthy daily newspaper by its’ own standards has a story to tell, and on the surface it sounds awfully good. The parent company, Gannett conducted an internal readership study recently (a year-long research period ended in Sept 2011) and compared the results with five-year-old similar research figures from 2006. The good news for the Democrat is they’ve effectively added additional readers over this period (roughly 12,000 more on Sundays) which gives us the “Thriving” headline in E&P.

The research may be similar in methodology and provides the readership metrics which are important to the overall consumption of the legacy product, but what’s missing is any reference to population growth during this same 5-year period, and the serious circulation declines recorded by the Democrat. According to (ABC) Audit Bureau Circulation, the Democrat’s total weekday circulation decreased 33%, and Sunday circulation decreased 27% over the same five year period. At the same time, new households have been added in the Tallahassee market at a rate of 10-12% which may account for some of the new readers and/or younger readers joining the readership base of the Democrat.

The Democrat has for many decades maintained a healthy market share and reach of consumers in their marketplace, and the surprising readership results within the 18-34 year-old age group seem to go against trends in other major cities.  Before you take this case study as a sign that newspapers are growing and print readership is on the rise again, think about how many people are now getting news from small electronic devices and how well the Democrat is doing with its' own website, Tallahassee.com, the largest news site in the market.   That's the newspaper story they should be telling.

Online Advertising to Surpass Print in 2012, Finally!

Posted January 20, 2012 by Mark Hanzlik, ACGMedia    

We've been hearing this story for some time and now it's finally arrived according to a study just released by eMarketer.   Bloggers are going wild with this one, mostly because it puts PRINT in its place in the new world order, an increasingly digital world where print advertising in newspapers and magazines continues to diminish at a rapid rate.

Read more about it and view various charts that visually illustrate the state of advertising from this point forward (2012-2016 projections) via eMarketer.  

US Print vs. Online Ad Spending is shown here.    

It bodes well for those pushing digital to the forefront and even television industry will continue it's positive growth in the coming years, but the once-distended print industry will continue to drop weight like a chemo patient, though apparently not as rapidly as the late aught years.   Not much of a consolation.

The lead of the eMarketer story opened simply, "For the first time in U.S. history..."   as though this was a bit of surprise, or maybe in 2013 the'll herald the second time in U.S. history Online Ad Spending outpaces Print.   I guess it's a big deal, regardless of the build-up over the past few years.

News & Blog Favorites from 2011

Posted December 31, 2011 by Mark Hanzlik, ACGMedia    

Since this is the time of year when just about everyone who has a blog or web site publishes a top-10 or best-of list instead of covering real news or offering their usual opinions, I thought it would be a good time to do that same. I say that admitting that I’m as guilty as the next guy and therefore offer some of my favorites from 2011 with a few caveats:

1) The following are not necessarily the best, or biggest of the year but topics that caught my attention.

2) I’m usually biased toward the unusual stories that fly below the radar but often-covered stories can be also interesting if the approach is different or view

3) Opinion pieces seldom hold up and while there is a place for those kinds of stories, I’m taking a pass on those without solid research here.

DIGITAL TECH:   Facebook and Spotify were among the year’s hottest digital media companies, covered by AdWeek in their "Top 10 Tech Stories of 2011" in early December.   This one is a no-brainer, Facebook has eclipsed everyone and Spotify was the sleeper that burst into the big-time this year as well.   We often blogged about the Web Radio’s audience growth and ad revenue growth online in 2011, and surely Pandora and Spotify are part of that big story.

FUTURE OF RETAIL:  The best story I read this year about the retail biz also came near the end of the year.  “The Future of Retail? Look to Its Past” arrived via Harvard Business Review in what can only be described as HBR’s Blog Forum.   It’s a compelling piece about those in retail embracing technology yet retaining the human aspects of the transaction (i.e. face-to-face interactions, etc.)

DIGITAL TRENDS:  AdWeek nailed this one back in October;  offering the six most transformative trends in digital marketing.    We blogged about this important digital story here on our own site on Oct 31^st.  The merging of mobile and desktop, and the value of specialized content on the web will resonate the most and will no doubt be important topics in 2012.

HYPER-LOCAL:  Coverage of everything Hyper-Local was overwhelming in 2011. Not only was it a buzzword for digital news coverage, geo-targeted advertising and new kind of journalism, it served as the launch pad for the success and failure of AOL’s Patch investment which ended the year on a down note.   We first covered the hyper-local subject in September.

FUTURE OF NEWSPAPERS:   This one wasn't too hard to sort out because every story about newspapers (mobile development, daily deals, Sunday insert conversion to the web, etc.) all pointed to the same future. I’ll go with recent release by USC Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism Study which will be fully issued in January titled “Is America at a Digital Turning Point?”   Numerous magazines, alternative publications, radio and television stations all jumped on this story and declared death will come quickly "Newspapers Dead Within Five Years."

Don’t be confused by our blog post earlier in the year,  “Newspaper Report Findings “Print is Not Dead”

We're ready for another year of changes in media, advertising and digital, tracking all the pluses and minuses.  I hope all the positive changes in 2011 bode well for the year to come.

Sunday Inserts Now Batting Cleanup... for Daily Newspapers

Posted December 28, 2011 by Mark Hanzlik, ACGMedia    

With every new research report that reveals the latest consumer behavior in daily newspaper readership, we seem to get a step closer to the new reality for print products.    

In December, The Media Audit released a new study that confirmed the popularity Sunday ad inserts have with readers.  According to the national study (across 80 measured markets), Sunday inserts are the second most read section of a daily newspaper, behind the front page section, naturally.   I'm not sure what The Media Audit's findings were a dozen years ago or more but I'm guessing Sunday ad inserts were farther down the list in terms of active readership.  

These findings do provide positive feedback for advertisers looking for a strong ad delivery environment to place their pre-printed inserts.  In fact, the study indicates 29.6% of all U.S. consumers regularly read the Sunday ad inserts which is good news for all those advertisers already investing heavily in this area.   But, the findings also provide a mixed roadmap for ad buyers.  On the positive side,  the regular readers of the Sunday ad inserts are more affluent, but they are also much older which doesn't provide a long-term solution.    All things being equal, the attraction to the Sunday ad insert package may be due also the large increase in consumption of coupons which are prevalent in that "pile of paper."

Add to this equation large declines in circulation and "daily deal" mentality that has captured the attention of most publishers, and consumers begin to get something quite different from their daily newspaper.   That's not a bad, change is vital to survival at this point, but the bottom line for many is simply the fact that daily newspapers are not being consumed in the same fashion, and reports like this one only confirm what we all seem to have accepted. 

Online Metrics On the Move in 2012 – Slowly at Best

Posted December 14, 2011 by Mark Hanzlk, ACGMedia    

From NetNewsCheck this week there’s an update on the progress of an industrywide initiative to improve and standardize online metrics. We blogged about this SMS (Making Measurement Make Sense) initiative earlier in the year.   

As an agency and advertiser, we applaud the work being done to standardize measurement but as they point out in this piece, it’s not an easy process. These changes will have to be implemented not just for a single organization or company but across an entire industry. It should also be noted that two of largest vendors in this area comScore and Nielsen are not a part of this group, though it appears they have some connection (not clearly defined).

3MS announced pilot tests will begin in the first quarter of 2012, but let’s see if they can stay on track. Six months which is a long time in the developing digital world.