It's not traditional media anymore

I've been struggling with the term "Traditional Media" recently.

I'm not sure why... maybe it doesn't sound right, perhaps the term just doesn't cut it in a fragmented communications world or possibly I've lost a lot of my nostalgic view of newspapers, radio and even television.

Some traditions are great and are quite rightly upheld. Traditions not only show us where we came from, but also serve as a reference point to remind us what was good at a given point in time. 

But now we live in a new world.  An always-connected one where media is streamed, stored, consumed on demand and mashed together across multiple channels and devices.  The consumer of media is now in control and there's really no going back. My 4 year old daughter thinks it 'silly' that the TV doesn't show all the programs YouTube does (perhaps only because I've not bought an Apple TV box yet) and she laughed when I tried to explain that we once only had a TV with 4 buttons for our television... and one of those was for the power supply.

But we now live with those old paradigms, albeit updated for a 21st Century life. YouTube still has 'channels' and streamed digital radio is still referred to as 'stations'. 

So maybe we should change to term from 'traditional media' to something more fitting for a hangover from a bygone age? Perhaps we need a new way of referring to the old ways of media consumption?

Perhaps we should now call them 'legacy' media instead?

Learning the art of learning

I have learnt a lot more in the last 15 to 20 years than I ever intended. It wasn't intentional... the aim was that I left school and university (actually, it was a Polytechnic until the last year I was there) then went & got a job.

I thought I was done with learning. I'd never really enjoyed studying whilst in the education system. I'd coasted through on the minimum of effort, didn't try to learn any more than I needed to and got distracted by cars, girls, TV & computer games along the way.

But something has happened since then:

1. I now enjoy learning

2. I've learned to learn

3. I now learn so I can can tell others

Nobody told me how to learn, instead I had to work hard at it. This meant spending a lot of time reading, re-reading and focusing on truly understanding a subject.. enough to be confident that I could put it into my own words for others to comprehend it too. However, it has now got to the point that when I'm half-way through browsing through an article or online blog posting I suddenly think "oh, that makes sense... I need to blog about that".

Perhaps now I understand the Oscar Wilde phrase:

"It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it"

Multi-channel digital attribution – what's next?

If you had read the recent eConsultancy report called‘Making Sense of Marketing Attribution’, you would know that the majority of websites are either not carry out any form of attribution or are still apply a last click approach. In this report the client-side marketers responding said that only26% were doing marketing attribution beyond last click … where the last channel used gains all the credit for the acquisition.

The online sector has been gradually moving towards digital multi-channel attribution, although it is still early days. The aim of these efforts is to understand the different online channels or touch points used by customers in their online paths to conversion on eCommerce sites, but:

• There is still little maturity of the attribution market, meaning there are several bespoke offerings and no real common standards between suppliers

•  The current attribution methods used are basic in their mathematical modelling

•  They are online-only, with no consideration for other non-digital channels (e.g. TV or outdoor)

In my experience, there is very little being done to look at the bigger picture that appropriately considers not just the journey and interactions across the disparate online channels, but also the offline ones…and it is here I think there is an opportunity.

I really think that businesses and their agencies need to move away from single channels of data (e.g. website analytics. TV viewing figures, etc.) and also beyond the basic online only attribution models. They need to understand the entire user journey that leads not just to a transaction, but to a longer-term relationship. Only then can business truly understand the influence that different devices, channels, proportional activity and other factors (such a peer recommendations) have on purchasing and subsequent behaviour.

Online advertising spend overtakes TV

It had to happen (but even I'm suprised by how quickly this has occurred) online advertising spending in the UK has overtaken television.

According to a study by the IAB , PWC & World Advertising Research Centre, online advertising now has a 23.5% market share, now making it the biggest ad media.

Unsuprisingly mainstream media is sticking its head in the sand on this one. Lindsey Clay from the TV marketing body Thinkbox says:

it’s interesting but meaningless to sweep all the money spent on every aspect of
online marketing into one big figure and celebrate it.

And apparently the World is still flat as well..... See the larger article in New Media Age

Adverts now target YouTube audience

TV is getting more and more aware that Internet advertising is eating its lunch (Online Marketing spend is now second behind TV and now ahead of Newspaper, Radio and other main-stream media).

But you can't help but feel that recent TV adverts such as those done by T-Mobile or Cadbury's (see below) have been done as-much for their online viral capacity as for their immediate viewing impact.

Barclaycard have now gone one step further and set up a competiton for people to create their own advert, based upon the very popular (and memorable) 'waterslide' campaign.

Rather than YouTube being a Parasite, could it be that TV adverts developed for an online / multi-channel audience are the saviour of the commercial TV networks?

Is TV worried by YouTube?

Surely there is nothing better to arouse suspicions like a senior company executive adamantly denying something? Especially when it’s the executive chairman of the UK’s largest commercial TV company denying that YouTube is a threat.

But imagine he went one step further and started to throw insults about?
What if he claimed YouTube is a “parasite”, living off of TV shows produced by ITV?

You’d then have to believe he was worried, especially when he’d seen its share price drop considerably in the last 6 months (Note: before anyone starts saying that its price has recently rallied, I’ll point out that this increase in price is only fuelled by speculation that its due for a takeover).


Its a shame, especially as ITV recently claimed it needed to extend from 2010 to 2012 the date it would reach it online revenue target of £150m.

Media Fragmentation

The 'Nichefication' of media has not been an instant thing, created by the arrival of a few online services, its been here for a while.

From magazines for everything, exemplified by the wierd guest publications quoted in the TV programme 'Have I Got New for You', through to the insane TV auction channels that I couldn't help but watch when I was sick and home-ridden recently.

As Bob Liodice, chief executive of the US Association of National Advertisers said in 2004:
“The mass media don’t exist any more”.

This presentation from Peter Hirshberg on the rivalry, inter-dependance and evolution of TV & Web, has got me thinking recently:



Hopefully the future of both combines the richness of TV and the interaction of the web. But one things for sure.. its won't just be one single channel of consumption ever again.

Old and new media... what's the difference?

In a previous post, I'd asked what the difference was between old and new media. Although this post was based around the effects of blogging on the USA political system, the "citizen as a journalist" effect is having an impact that is being felt across a wider media playing field than just the American Presidential Race.

However, although there is no doubt that media has changed (and should continue to do so), I would like to consider if 'New Media' and 'Old Media' (in reality the social web) are really that different...

The case for (AKA "yes, of course there's a difference)
1. Anyone can be a blogger or make a comment, you don't need a degree in journalism (or a daddy that owns the newspaper) to write your own column these days. The barriers to publishing are minimal and the rewards are not necessarily financial (see my previous posting on Brand Evangelists)
2. Direction is set by the writer, not the editor, owner, shareholders, etc.


The case against (AKA "no, they're all the same now really")
As pointed out recently by Jeremiah Owyang, There is now a significant blurring of the lines between blogs and journalism. Old Media such as TV and Radio have had to change to be part of the dialogue that is happening out there. Newspapers have evolved so that their online versions are broader in content or material that the restrictive printed page and in some cases these online versions are more popular!


My take on this:
The media landscape has changed significantly in the last few years and potentially forever. The citizen as a journalist has grown from a small seed to a large and powerful movement & industry, including online video. To therefore compare Old Media and New Media is to compare the Old Media before the arrival of the Internet and Social Web. To that effect.... of course there are differences, just as there was a huge difference between the theatre of William Shakespeare and the Hey-day of TV in the 1950's & 60's.

But as all media now evolves at a faster pace, converging and fragmenting along every single axis... surely the challenge will not be to compare them but to understand how each is of benefit in this new media world we live in?

Adoption rates for technology

The evolution of media on the Internet is following the path of traditional media, only at a much faster pace. In fact it is possible to chart the progress of most technology over the recent decades . This graph is available from:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/02/10/opinion/10chart.large.gif

It shows:
Radio @ 50% adoption by 1930
Colour TV @ 50% adoption by 1970

However I feel the uptake rates of these technologies is more important:
Radio - 50% in 10 years
Colour TV - 50% in 10 years

What's even more impressive is the the uptake of the Internet to 50% in just 6 or 7 years (and the VCR in even less). I now can't help wondering what's likely to have a faster uptake rate in the future. Will it be a new device (less likely) or will it just be a device-agnostic service (more likely)?

Note:

It also reminds me that I need to re-read the 'Waves of Power' book written by David Moschella back in 1997, where he predicted the growth of the network economy and gave future growth rates for information-based sevices.

http://www.amazon.com/Waves-Power-Technology-Leadership-1964-2010/dp/0814403794

Video, its all about YouTube

There are a number of video websites out there and there is a lot of viewing going on. In fact online video is being blamed for the demise of traditional USA TV watching.

In a recent survey by Universal McCann on Social Media, to the question "Thinking about using the internet, which of the following have you ever done?", the number of people who have watched video clips online is:
Daily: 22%
Weekly: 37%
Monthly: 16%

That makes a total of 75% of the 'Active Internet Universe' (their term, not mine) who watch clips relatively frequently.

However if you're considering where to put your video company assets online are only two rules you really need to know:

1. It’s all about YouTube
2. It’s all about YouTube

Following its now somewhat distant acquisition by Google in October 2006, YouTube has continued to rule the online video landscape. Today in the United States, YouTube dominates online video more than Google dominates search.

But brands are making big waves using online video, either is an entirely positive way or otherwise. For example, this clip of disney videos is corrupted in a powerful and wonderful AvenueQ-type way. In no way is this part of the original Disney philosphy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GGGAJ_2TvQ

However, if you are new to online video and want to know how you can still produce cost-effective clips at reasonable quality, then this guide by Duncan Riley may well help.

What does Press2.0 really mean?

I've been asked by some readers of this blog to explain a little more why I have called this collection of articles Press2.0 ....

Recently I have tended to focus on the subject of corporate & influencer dialogue and I continue to think that there is a big issue concerning the way companies communicate with their consumers, shareholders, etc. But it is also obvious that there has been a shift in how companies communicate with individuals in recent times. They are engaging in a more collaborative conversation and facilitating 2-way dialogue to create positive influence.

However the media has probably shifted the most...

In the past company communications were usually done via 'The Press', which in general meant the media who would cover this sort of information (evolving through: print, radio, tv, internet news sites, etc.)

I thinkthat the media is now so broad (encompassing social media) that 'The Press' (although originally referring to those that had a printing press for making newspapers) now really means anyone with access to publishing technology... in other words, anyone with connectivity to the Internet.


I'll make my case with the following points:

1. The old journalist model is dying
If you don't believe me, take a look aroud the web.
e.g. Your Report enables the user to become the journalist.
http://www.youreporttv.com/

Bill Thompson at the BBC, put its nicley:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7338238.stm

"They [newspapers] also seem to have realised that anyone who wants to break into professional journalism needs to have some sort of online presence beyond a Facebook profile

Indeed for several years now newspapers and TV now look to bloggers as the source for news stories: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/4696668.stm and there are almost daily articles about how newspapers are dying: http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/30/1828252

According to Bill Keller of The Times:

Newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some
cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable
just four years ago.

Perhaps this is not just because the internet is now so many people's primary news source, but that people just don't trust media companies anymore?

2. The power of publishing is no longer in the hands of the few
With free blogging tools and the ability to reach anyone out on the web, you no longer need to own a newspaper or synicated TV programme to reach across the globe and gain an audience.
Perhaps the naming of one of the most popualr blogging tools http://www.wordpress.com/ is the most obvious giveaway....


3. The commodity of the mainstream press is no longer content, its attention for eyeballs.. yours
Your attention is a commodity every major media want, as this brings with it the advertising revenue. Media owners will apparently publish anything they like if they think they can sell potential customer attention as inventory to a product owner.

Blogs and other social media don't necessarily crave that attention or revenue. They are created out of passion and need, or often just as a way of diarising or commenting on what happens...

.... as I have just done