Comcast announced that more than one billion programs have been viewed on the company’s On Demand service to date this year. Well ahead of expectations that it would hit that mark by the end of 2005.
That news follows recent reports that some networks could launch prime-time entertainment shows to VOD platforms as early as next summer and almost certainly by the start of the 2006-07 season.
Paragon Media Strategies has released a study of the Spring Arbitron results for Jack-formatted FM stations and estimates that, for adults 25-54, the format delivers an average quarter-hour share of 4.2 (Mon-Sun, 6 a.m.-12 midnight) and has an average time spent listening of six hours, Billboard Radio Monitor reports.
Martha Stewart Living has suddenly emerged as the hot title within a languishing magazine advertising marketplace, MediaPost reports. While the title was a virtual untouchable among advertisers while Ms. Stewart was serving time in Federal prison, it’s now a must-buy while most other big magazine titles see their ad pages erode. Living’s ad pages jumped 43.6 percent in September versus September 2004. Ad pages for all PIB-measured magazines fell 1.3 percent in September. Through the first nine months of 2005, Living’s pages are up 11.5 percent, while the PIB total is up just 1.0 percent.
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Online marketing guru Seth Godin will this month launch Squidoo, a company that will play host to web pages - he terms them lenses - created by experts on various topics and highlighting their views on those topics, with the hope that the distilled information they provide becomes the starting point for further researc, reports ClickZ (via MarketingVox). The perfect “lens” would provide the “big picture” and provide annotated links to the most relevant sites on the topic - as a librarian might.
More than 94 million people in the U.S. - 56 percent of the domestic internet population - viewed a streaming video online in June 2005, according to comScore Media Metrix’s Online Video Ratings. Over the three months ending in June, the average consumer viewed 73 minutes of streaming video content per month.
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J.L. Halsey Corporation announced yesterday that it had acquired email-marketing hosted software and services provider Uptilt, Inc., dba EmailLabs; having earlier this year acquired Lyris Technologies, Halsey claims it is now the largest publicly held company focused solely on email marketing, MarketingVOX reports. Halsey will pay the owners of Uptilt approximately $19.5 million in cash at closing (of which approximately $2.8 million will be funded through Uptilt’s available cash); it will also pay two annual installments totaling up to $3.5 million if EmailLabs achieves specified revenue targets
ABC, CBS and NBC have all seen the median age of their primetime viewers go up this television season, the New York Post reports. Even the youth-obsessed WB, whose programming revolves around teen angst, has matured dramatically. Fox is the only network to see its median age fall slightly, to 40.7 years.
Nielsen Outdoor has delivered its first outdoor ratings, tracked using a GPS-based ratings service, to its Global Outdoor Advisory Committee (GOAC) - a group of advertisers, agencies, and media owners who helped design and evaluate the service, Mediaweek reports. To measure exposure, Nielsen recruited 750 consumers to carry cell-phone sized GPS devices while they traveled on foot or in cars in the Chicago area. The travel log data was linked with the daily effective circulation figures from the Traffic Audit Bureau to give estimates for consumer exposure to about 13,000 outdoor faces in the Chicago market.
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As part of a larger survey about media sales people, Media Life asked readers to tell the most outrageous antics and blunders of reps they’d met through the years. Here are a few highlights:
One reader recalled a group presentation where the sales rep was trying to make an emphatic point and took off his shoe to bang on the desk. “Unfortunately, he had stepped in some dog excrement before entering. Let’s just say the shit was really flying that day.”
One sales rep quite generously congratulated a media planner on the upcoming birth of her child during a sales call. “I was not pregnant,” recalls the planner, “just wearing a full skirt.”
Another rep, for reasons entirely unclear to this day, chose to do his entire presentation with his back to the group. The rep held the visuals over his left shoulder.
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The New York Times is introducing advertising-supported branded watermarks that will be superimposed over a Tuesday to Saturday page of its public company stock listings in the Business Day section of the newspaper. The new ad format will appear on a periodic basis. The announcement came less than a week after Tribune Media Net - the national advertising sales organization for Tribune Co., publisher of the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, and Newsday, among others - touted its own ability to run watermarked logos, cascading stairs, and other unusual ad options.
Unilever has awarded global strategic and creative duties for its Omo detergent to Publicis Groupe-backed Bartle Bogle Hegarty following a review, Adweek reports. Billings are estimated at $250 million. BBH competed for Omo against WPP Group’s JWT and Interpublic Group’s Lowe. Previously, the Omo business was split between Lowe and JWT, with the former handling roughly two-thirds to the latter’s one-third.
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While revenue for Advo Inc.’s full fiscal year 2005 is expected to be up 11 percent over the previous year, the direct mailer has revised downward its expected earnings, Editor & Publisher reports. The lowered expectations are due to “product mix shifts towards lower margin products and lighter weight preprint circulars, increased bad debt expense, and to a lesser extent losses related to hurricanes Katrina and Rita.”
The direct mailer is a fierce competitor with newspapers in some markets, and a partner in others.
Apple and Walt Disney have inked a deal to provide next-day downloads of popular shows - such as Desperate Housewives and Lost - to the new video iPod via iTunes for $1.99, Adrants reports. The mobile, pay-per-view programming may make sense for the networks in these days of dwindling ad revenue, but for marketers, the commercial-free aspect of the programming could mean that an ad medium has been pulled from under their feet.
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As expected, ratings for Fox’s coverage of the American League Championship Series slipped without the Red Sox or the Yankees anchoring the games, Media Life reports. Last night’s game one of the ALCS between the Chicago White Sox and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim averaged a 3.6 final rating among viewers 18-49, down 36 percent from last year’s game one between the Yankees and the Red Sox. That meant a fourth-place finish for the night among 18-49s, while last year’s game one propelled Fox to a first-place finish for the night.
Game two takes place Thursday in St. Louis.
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Google and Comcast have joined forces and are in talks with Time Warner to buy a piece of America Online in what is likely a move to head off Microsoft according to several people in the know, reports the New York Times (via MarketingVox). Microsoft is seeking a stake in AOL and was reported last month to have entered into talks with Time Warner, which was immediately thereafter approached by Comcast and Google.
The maneuverings seem to be the latest manifestation of that old political adage, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” with AOL’s two big rivals in instant-messaging, Microsoft and Yahoo, having announced yesterday that they would make their instant-messaging services interoperable.
