Media buyers and planners hoping to take advantage of Campaign 2012, take note: cable news leads the pack among sources, with local TV in second place, but on the decline. A surprising second-to-last, the Internet. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press’ 2012 campaign news survey discovered the trends in a January survey of 1,507 adults nationwide.
Pew reports that fewer Americans are closely following the campaign than four years ago, which has caused long-term and sharpening declines in the number of people tuning into local TV and network news.
Cable tops the sources in 2012, at 36%, but is only treading water. That despite the fact that cable nets have hosted most of the Republican debates, which are among a campaign year’s strongest draws. Almost half of Republicans (47%) watched a Republican debate during this campaign, up from 32% during the 2008 campaign.Still, cable news “reaches a substantial number across age and partisan lines,” reports Pew. Republicans tune into Fox News, Democrats into CNN and MSNBC.
Only 20% of Americans “regularly learn something” about the campaign or its candidates from local daily papers, a plummet from 31% in 2008. Local TV is down as well.
It is easy to blame it all on the Internet, but not so fast: the Internet as a source has gained only 1% since the 2008 campaign. The Internet had jumped from 13 to 24%, from campaign 2004 (Bush/Kerry) to campaign 2008 (McCain/Obama). Pew speculates that the Internet is the key source for a younger demographic, who are less likely to be Republican. Just 20% of those younger than 30 followed the campaign closely, down from 31% in 2008.
Facebook Ads: NYT Questions “Active Visitor” Figures
The New York Times read between the lines of Facebook’s IPO prospectus. As chief mergers and acquisitions reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin figures like 845 million monthly active users “should have an asterisk next to them.” Facebook counts among those 845 million monthly active users, and daily active users of 483 million, anyone who visits it’s Web or mobile site; but also, anyone who uses a Facebook “Like” or “Recommend” button in third-party sites, to share activity with Facebook friends.
How significant is that? Practically all significant online properties, including CNN.com, MSNBC.com, TheSmokingGun.com (pictured below) and ESPN.GO.com, include a “Like” or “Recommend” button alongside stories. So an “active user” may never leave the ESPN or CNN sites; theoretically, an active user may never visit Facebook, or see its featured ads.
Also counted among those active users: those click on the Facebook logo within a “Follow Us” bar, which typically includes an RSS feed logo, Twitter, Digg and email logos, among others.
The numbers climb. If the third-party site uses a Facebook ID for log-in (HuffingtonPost.com is one such site, and the feature is called “Facebook Connect”), and the user leaves a comment on a story in that site, he or she is counted as actively using Facebook. So, opined the CEO for equity research of Fusion IQ, those visitors “cannot be marketed to, they do not see advertising,” they simply used the extensive Facebook infrastructure.
However optimistic the unique-visitor figures, they are considerable anyway; and Facebook ads offer considerable cost-per-click savings of up to 45%, by some estimates. And a publicly-traded Facebook, with plans to become a news outlet as well, will necessarily become meticulously transparent in its traffic figures.
TV Leads as Political News Source, Newspapers Lag
When asked where Americans get their political news, fully 44% of Americans responded “Television,” reports Poll Position. Only one segment—adults 30-44—responded “From the Internet.” In that 30-44 segment, 35% chose the Internet, 32% said television was their source for most political news, 18% said somewhere else (e.g., radio, magazines), and 14% picked newspapers.
The overall results are grim for newspapers, at only 16% among all surveyed. 2011 was a tough year for newspapers, with ad revenues a mere $24 billion in comparison to the record high of $49.4 billion in 2005.
Poll Position surveyed 1,113 registered voters nationwide, and claims a margin of error of ±3%.
Sony Halts Production on Google TV Models: Low-Cost Ad Reach Still Elusive
Sony has halted production on its Internet TV with built-in Google TV platform. Frost & Sullivan Principal Analyst Dan Rayburn broke the story late yesterday on his streamingmedia.com blog. While Sony has made no such announcement, Rayburn reached out to Sony stores and Sony’s sales numbers. He did so after observing the Sony models disappearing from online sales channels like Amazon.com, where only 13 of the TVs were available and from third-party resellers—not from Sony.
Google introduced the platform in May of 2010, at its annual Google I/O developer conference, with the tagline “TV MEETS WEB. WEB MEETS TV.” As TechCrunch described, “The implications are pretty clear what Google is going for. That is, the 4 billion TV users worldwide. Or rather, advertising to the 4 billion TV users worldwide.” A commentator on the TechCrunch site grumbled “Hopefully ad agencies will start to realize that Google is just waiting to flip the switch and cut them out. But somehow I doubt it.” Google CEO Larry Page boldly predicted that before the summer of 2012, the majority of production televisions would have the Google TV platform embedded. But thusfar, and aside from Sony’s models, competitors LG, Samsung and Vizio have announced only five such models.
Sony has not abandoned the Google TV platform; it just released a Blu-ray Disc player with Google TV embedded, and at a modest $199. And the models that LG, Samsung and Vizio have announced are all 47-inch or more. Rayburn observes that competition from those makers is likely keeping Google TV down—they are competing with their own connected TV platforms, “And it’s clear they see the Google TV platform as a threat.”
At the time of Google TV’s release, Bloomberg BusinessWeek observed advertisers giving it a “warm reception.” As BusinessWeek did the math, an online video ad through the platform would cost $30 per $1,000 viewings and enjoy precise viewing analytics and have interactive capability; a TV viewer could “click to phone” or place an order then and there, without leaving the TV screen.
But, with competitive platforms from TV makers, Apple, and cable companies including Comcast, interactive TV is still feeling its way, and Google TV is showing no signs of becoming the standard the company predicted it would be.
Media Measurement an Illusion, Says Ad Research Foundation CEO
“What does it mean that Coke has 36 million Facebook followers?” blogged Advertising Research Foundation CEO Bob Barocci on the AdAge site. Barocci described the oft-heard complaint that digital metrics are hard to quantify; but he called the simpler days of ad metrics a myth. Twenty years ago, “a brand looked bigger to the consumer if you were in two media.” A company then might enjoy a good score on 24-hour aided recall, but even then, major advertisers were reluctant to trace market share gains to that recall. “No cause and effect then…as now.”
Now the CMO is tasked with dividing ad spend among far more numerous platforms, and dealing with their complexities. The global research director of Kraft Foods described the dilemma to brand advertisers as this: which five of 100 or more touch points that influence consumers should he buy? Mobile phones promise more exposures, but are also driving discounting; should a CMO thus avoid the burgeoning platform? In social media, is recall more or less valuable than likability? “With all the data we have these days, I think we should be finding answers to some of these questions,” wrote Barocci, “But we're not.”
Barocci credits Google with putting significant resources toward analytics, with initiatives like its Advertising Format Impact project to measure the impact of multiple video formats on multiple platforms. Barocci described the Foundation’s multisponsor Arrowhead Project, with a mission to answer the question “What ideas do people get from digital/social media when making a purchase?” The project focuses upon three test categories which vary in length of the consumer purchase process; consumer packaged goods, which are short-term; smart phones, being mid-term; and automobiles, a long-term decision. ARF will present its findings at its March Re:think conference.
Research: Social Media No Substitute for Offline Ads
Offline channels still hold the reins in brand and product awareness, reports eMarketer, despite the talk of “viral marketing” and social media “influencers. eMarketer was quoting market research by AYTM, which found that 57.8% of US Facebook users had not any brand in a status updates as of October 2011. Similarly, 61.3% of Twitter users had never “tweeted” about a brand. Of those consumers who claimed to hear frequently about new brands, only 6.5% did so frequently, and 26% reported they never heard of new brands through social media.
Where they did hear about new brands, products and services: TV, radio, and offline print outlets. Sixteen percent did so “most frequently,” 34.9% did so often, 31.8% sometimes, 13% rarely, 4.2% never.
The Bachelor Maintains Sex Appeal On ABC, Just Barely
ABC’s The Bachelor “continues to slip” says The Hollywood Reporter, barely edging out repeats on CBS. Still, ABC led the night among adults 18-49, and with 8 million viewers, took a 2.2 rating. Hollywood Reporter has described bachelor contestant Ben Flajnik as a “Sensitive Sonoma winemaker,” while the ‘Net is abuzz with complaints that he is bland. (Flajnik was a losing contestant on the 2011 season of The Bachelorette.)
Still, ABC appears to have selected a cast of female contestants based largely on their ability to generate buzz, among them, a germophobe named Emily, a perpetual weeper named Jenna, and the reality-TV-standard overconfident “I can’t lose” contestant, named Courtney. Still, the shenanigans are barely working for ABC. CBS took second place with a repeat of 2 Broke Girls pulling in Monday’s highest score among adults 18-49 with a 2.4 rating; and CBS averaged a 2.1 rating in that demographic, and a total of 7 million viewers. Elsewhere, Who’s Still Standing on NBC took a 1.6 rating in the 18-49 demo, and House repeats took 1.1 with 3.2 million viewers.
MediaPost Urges Caution in Online Ad Inventory
MediaPost has found some “eyeopeners” regarding online advertising, after a survey of .5 million unique domains. Among their findings:
- About 10% of domains selling ad impressions in scale-buying environments (networks, SSPs and exchanges) are non-English language sites. There is always chaff among the wheat in scale buying (e.g., porn sites, sites with hate speech), but non-English sites topped that chaff by percentage.
- About 21% of the sites MediaPost surveyed in late 2010 no longer exist, but, are still on whitelists; media buyers are paying for exposure on non-existent venues.
- “There’s a serious quality issue out there, folks,” MediaPost’s Andrew Lerner observed, which is a challenge to brands and marketers. About 58% available in real-time bidding (RTB) and large networks are what Lerner called “sub-standard environments for advertisers,” which use sub-standard publishing or editorial principles. Thus, nearly six of 10 domains are ones an ad buyer might actually choose to avoid.
Despite those findings, MediaPost observes that the higher-quality sites are more likely to deliver click-throughs, CPA and brand metrics. And while MediaPost did not reveal the names of any of the hate speech or substandard properties, a quick check of several “White Pride” sites (including kkk.com) revealed no advertisements.
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Nickelodeon Upfront: 400 New Animations, TV Movie, and More | NFL Shutdown Playbook
- At its upfront presentation held at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, Nickelodeon unveiled plans for brand-new content, more of its top-rated hits, and big events that span its entire kids and family portfolio. Nickelodeon announced an unprecedented roster of more than 400 new episodes of animation, live-action and preschool programming, including: four new animated series as part of the network's big animation order, and a new look and feel to the network's winning Saturday-morning animation block. Moving up the age group spectrum, Nickelodeon detailed an original primetime TV movie event that will unite the casts of “iCarly” and “Victorious”; the addition of hit comedy series “Friends” and “Yes, Dear” to Nick at Nite, as well as its participation in this year's annual Worldwide Day of Play, in Washington, D.C. and the launch of "The '90s Are All That!," a block of Nick's iconic '90s series, to air on TeenNick. For first quarter 2011 to date, Nickelodeon is expected to close the quarter as basic cable's number-one network in total day with kids 2-11, kids 6-11 and total viewers as well as post its best quarter ever with total viewers, according to a company statement.