Geo Local Road Map

Weather #2 in Latest ComScore Data

2011-11-28T13:14:00.000-08:00

Great presentation from ComScore captures the rise of the tablet. It also shows weather #2 most consumed content on mobile. Weather consistently appears in the top three each year.

QR Codes NOT Going Mainstream

2011-09-12T11:26:00.000-07:00

Reposting this excerpt from StoreFrontBalkTalk...

I often thought QR codes were just for geeks. Then I started seeing them all over America, not just in The Bay area, Mountain View and New York City. So, I thought they were going mainstream. Maybe not.

Survey: 83 Percent Of Young Shoppers Can’t Handle QR Codes
Written by Evan Schuman

August 17th, 2011

Given the current retail fascination with QR codes—with recent trials at Tesco on subway walls, Macy’s on products, American Express on beer cans and eBay on practically everything—it stands to reason those little boxed lines are doing rather well.

A recent credible survey, however, found that not only are most younger consumers oblivious to what QR codes are, but the many who do know what they are can’t get them to function. In short, 83 percent of the 1,300 14- to 24-year-olds surveyed couldn’t access a QR code regardless of how good the offer was. Looks like some people skipped an important step in product rollout.

That news is pretty bad, given the strong mobile interest—or general high-tech and experimentation comfort level—of that demographic. If they’re confused or apathetic, the numbers won’t likely get better as surveys examine consumers in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond. This particular survey was conducted between May 20 and May 30 by Youth Pulse (a.k.a., YPulse), which tracks marketing trends among the 14- to-24-year-old segment.

The survey breakdowns also hold little optimism. Some 64 percent said they had no idea what a QR code was, even when shown a picture of it. That picture part negates the possibility that they knew what QR codes were and had to use them but simply didn’t recognize the name.

Outside.in and DataSphere Revisited, Briefly

2011-02-07T19:29:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted anything for a long time. I have been far to busy in my new job, however, I spotted this video from Borrell and Associates in preparation for their conference in New York and had to post it. In it, Mark Josephson, CEO of outside.in, discusses the company's local media strategy. A year ago, DataSphere made a big splash at Borrell's Local Online Advertising conference. This year, Outside.in is poised to get a lot of that attention. And their pitch sounds kinda familiar --

"The local advertising universe is incredibly fragmented. And our core competency since day one has been organizing fragmented sources of content and information by location. So, we spent the first part of our life doing that around content..... And we build hyper-local and neighborhood focused sections for lots of publishers across the country and we are now starting to do the same thing for local advertisers by bringing all of the disparate channels together in a way that makes conversion and success happen for those advertisers. "

The local space has gotten VERY crowded in that just the past year but that hasn't stopped Outside.in or DataSphere from continuing to forge ahead encroaching on the same space from slightly different directions.

Headed to WDT Inc.

2010-05-06T12:40:00.001-07:00

I am thrilled to announce I am joining the team at WDT Inc. to focus on mobile and location based services. WDT has been an innovator in the Internet space introducing disruptive technology and I hope to continue that tradition.

Placecast Awarded Best Use Of Location

2010-05-05T07:57:00.000-07:00

Another deserved award for PlaceCast...

Placecast’s ShopAlerts Becomes Official Honoree Of 2010 Webby Awards For Best Use Of GPS Or Location : Mobile Marketing Watch - The Pulse Of The Mobile Marketing Community: "Placecast, who’s been piling up the awards for its innovative use of digital marketing to drive consumers to physical environments, has been named a Webby Award Official Honoree for 2010 in the “Best Use of GPS or Location Technology” category."

LR Says Engagement is Key, But Misses on Strategy

2010-04-30T15:01:00.000-07:00

In a recent post, Lost Remote tells local media that social success, "comes, not from pushing people to the site and then converting them into viewers (damn near impossible) but from their engagement with individual stories." In other words, get social and measure success based on engagement.

This is a great post and local media should be engaged in social for the reasons LR states. There are, however, additional goals that should be part of a more comprehensive FB and social strategy. Local media should be looking for ways to track, convert and monetize those users. Simple examples include, embedding tracking pixels in links from FB posts to measure ROI; when driving users to pages make sure to include opportunities for sign up for e-mails and newsletters, which creates new opportunities for advertising; and include advertising on your FB page/tabs. Most media companies are just posting news and watching the friends/likes climb, but they need to be taking a more active role in measurement, conversion and monetization.

AP Wants to Drive Mobile Deals For Members

2010-04-29T16:32:00.000-07:00

Paid Content reports AP wants to strike mobile deals for members. This just sounds like an organization trying to find relevancy while in decline. I certainly hope local media doesn't rely on AP to negotiate deals for them. Media needs to move quickly and aggressively into mobile and AP is not known for either of those traits.

PaidContent: [AP] authorized management to negotiate business models and develop platforms with content distributors, search engines, device manufacturers and others on behalf of members and the news industry. That mandate does not include pricing."

Location-Based Ads More Effective

2010-04-29T15:27:00.000-07:00

This research reinforces what PlaceCast found with their GeoFencing tests .. LBA is very effective ---

U.S. Consumers Significantly More Likely To Respond To Location-Based Mobile Ads Than Other Mobile Ad Types | Wireless Week: "The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) (www.mmaglobal.com) and its official research partner, Luth Research (www.luthresearch.com), today released the latest Mobile Consumer Briefing, a monthly survey of U.S. adult consumers about their mobile marketing behaviors and opinions. Available exclusively to MMA members, the new survey shows that nearly one in four U.S. adult consumers uses mobile location services, with usage highest among Apple iPhone owners."

Borrell: Coupons First Big Mobile Opportunity

2010-04-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

Borrell and Associates released an updated Local Mobile Advertising and Promotion forecast. Their analysis points to coupons as the most immediate opportunity -- not a surprise.

"There’s something dramatic going on," said Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates. “The fastest-growing and most obvious application is also the easiest to implement: text-based coupons,” Borrell said redemption rates for mobile coupons are 10x that of mail- or newspaper-distributed coupons.

Coupons are not a big surprise for the following reasons.

1. The economic downturn has resulted in the the coupon redemption increasing for the first time in 14 years, according to Kathryn Koegel, President of Primary Impact Research.
2. Mobile usage in general is exploding at a much faster rate than many people are aware.

Local media should make note of this and mobile in general. Mobile is moving very fast and media needs to act VERY quickly and aggressively. 3G, 4G and smartphones provide for a truly mobile, always on, always available service. As a result, mobile Internet use is ramping faster than desktop Internet did. Many analysts predict that more users will connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within 5 years.

The Borrell report says mobile marketing reached $2.7 billion last year and is expected to grow 84 percent annually, hitting $57 billion by 2014. A subcategory – mobile advertising – is already in the billions. Local mobile advertising, according to the report, hit $285 million in 2009 and is expected to double this year to $586 million, then spike upward to $4.7 billion by 2014.

Nokia Buys Geo Search Co. MetaCarta

2010-04-09T11:37:00.000-07:00

Nokia announced it acquired MetaCarta. I've mentioned MetaCarta here before. They specialize in location-aware services and provide a geo-tagging engine and other products/services. Nokia is most obviously interested in leveraging MetaCarta's tools for Nokia phones.

The press release states "MetaCarta’s technology will be used in the area of local search in Location and other services." A not so insightful or revealing comment.

This acquisition comes after Nokia acquired Novarra -- a mobile browser and platform.

Here's more coverage:

The folks over at Directions Magazine offer some good commentary. I agree with them that a major publisher probably missed the boat in not acquiring MetaCarta. This is exactly the technology you need to help automate a hyper-local strategy which will be even more important as location-aware mobile devices proliferate.

Fwix Brings Hyperlocal News Feed To The iPad

2010-04-04T12:22:00.000-07:00

Fwix Brings Hyperlocal News Feed To The iPad: "The app aims to simulate reading your local newspaper. Fwix’s app allows you to view news stories in a map format, showing you the exact geographic location of news. You can access news by your location and then filter stories by subject (i.e. sports, arts, politics, crime). And you can share all content on Facebook, Twitter or via email."

Why Where 2.0 Trumps SXSW

2010-04-02T00:13:00.000-07:00

Where 2.0 just ended in Northern California, just weeks after SXSW in Austin, Texas. The conference did not get as much mass media coverage. It's always been under the radar. This year it was really overshadowed because Gowalla and FourSquare sucked up so much mobile and location-specific press at SXSW. Where 2.0 typically is more developer focused. As such, the announcements tend to be less obvious in their benefits to the geo-neophyte. This year, Where 2.0 was partisan to announcements from SimpleGeo launching a SaaS platform and location-based data marketplace, PlaceCast launching a its Match API, and more. These are not consumer-facing solutions and as such are less sexy to most people, but they are potentially more critical because they help empower the the development of LBS going forward.For that reason, I would say Where 2.0 trumps SXSW and deserves some much needed contemplation.

Here are some resources to get caught up:

Where 2.0 Keynotes on YouTube
Where 2.0 Big Panel Takeaways
Coverage from Greg Sterling at Screenwerk
Where 2.0 Day 1 Summary - All Points Blog
Where 2.0 Day 2 Summary - All Points Blog

KOMO Adds Hyper-Local Prompt, Topics Pages on Home

2010-03-30T12:23:00.000-07:00

KomoNews.com rolled out some changes to their home page layout recently. One of the changes may signal some discomfort on their part with regard to traffic going to the hyper-local pages.

When I first visited the site this week I was prompted with an overlay that suggested I check out the local communities section. Obviously, they are looking to drive traffic into those hyperlocal community pages. The div is apparently frequency capped, so I only got it once. Could this suggest a little angst on their part with regard to traffic to those pages?

Also, they have added topics pages adjacent to content buckets/modules on the home page. This is typically a d strategy to drive users to longer-tail content and drive SEO. DataSphere powers topics pages and is most assuredly powering the new topics feature.

Bing Calls on Broadcasters

2010-03-19T20:32:00.001-07:00

Bing called on broadcasters to innovate using their product. Of course, they love the free exposure. The blog writes:

"A couple months ago we changed the Bing Maps Terms of Use in a post called Bing Maps Terms of Use Changes; Benefit Educators, Not-for-Profits and Developers. Well, we’ve gone a done it again. This time all you TV anchors are going to look so much hotter with a Bing Map playing behind your talking head. Oh, the ideas you can come up with for using anything in Bing Maps for free on your broadcast. King 5 in Seattle just happens to be a bit ahead of the game - Using Bird’s Eye on Broadcast. Or, check out the idea of using Streetside to broadcast your reporters location and playback the video with a GPS breadcrumb like I’ve seen with Inca X’s Geocasting.

Seems like a smart move on the part of MS/Bing as they battle Google.

Report: Media in Free Fall; Niche Not Picking up Slack

2010-03-15T11:13:00.000-07:00

The State of the News Media 2010 shows a pretty dismal story for the health and status of local media. Rather than repeat it all, check out Greg Sterling's post which highlights some key charts that show the decline, primarily in newspapers. There is also a pretty shocking chart showing the impact of the recession and disruption combined on traditional media revenue in 2009.

“Audiences continue to fall for newscasts across all time slots. Revenue, too, was in a free fall. Looking ahead, most market analysts project revenues to grow only slightly, but that is hardly taken as good news given that it is a year that will include both the off-year elections and winter Olympic Games,” the Pew report said.

Compounding the problem, Pew found that media doesn't know how to monetize their content -- "It remains as unclear in 2010 as ever how to monetize the growing audience."

The results fuel a fire led by folks like Jeff Jarvis, Michael Rosenblum, and more recently Marc Andreesen that recommend media "burn the place to the ground" and start over.

It's a dense report (summary) and with so many people doing summaries I focused on the Citizen Journalism part of the report. The findings in that part of the report are certain to anger hyper-local and citizen journalism advocates. The reports finds that both HL and CJ are wanting in terms of quantity of content, resources and overall ability to compete with traditional media. The conclusion appears to be that CJ and HL are not in a position to fill the shoes of traditional media.

The framing of the evaluation and results seem odd at times and suggest a bias against the emerging ecosystem. The report looked at with 363 journalism Web sites across 46 randomly sampled markets. The result: "The citizen news sites offered less news, fewer updates and were less open to interaction with readers than traditional news websites."

One criticism that the report focused on was a lack of transparency in mission. For instance the report found "citizenwausau.com did not have easy-to-find mission statement or contact information." While I understand and respect how journalists evaluate the journalistic integrity of these sites, I believe they overlook the fact that the audience may not care that blogs, HL sites and CJ sites are missing mission statements.

The report throws out a half-hearted comment of hope at the end of the section.

"Despite the gaps between legacy news coverage and citizen news, highly promising citizen and alternative sites are emerging daily."

Despite this hopeful comment, the report seems to conclude 'traditional media is in sharp decline and don't expect citizen journalism to pick up where traditional media is falling.'

The report falls short of suggesting where one might seek out the future of journalism. A quote from Jane Stevens, the director of media strategies for the Kansas-based World Company may allude to what the authors think:

"You have to integrate community conversation with ‘traditional’ journalism.... That means providing the same tools to the community, including businesses, as journalists have, and focusing content on how to solve problems and improve the community."

DataSphere Must Change or Risk Failure

2010-03-12T12:43:00.000-08:00

Datasphere has been getting a lot of press for their hyper-local solution for media. So, I looked into it further. Their solution is a combination of sales and technology offered at no cost to local affiliates. As they explain it, they want to help local media establish a hyper-local footprint that they can build on over time. At the face of it, the solution presents an inviting opportunity to media. There is little risk to stations and good potential for upside because the cost for the platform is covered in a rev-share and DataSphere is bringing new SMB clients/revenue to the table that the stations are not willing or able to pursue.

With all of this said, I believe there are some serious flaws in their approach that will burn them later on.

They are not actively using LAT/LON in their content. Everything is based on topics. Topics allows for efficient work-flow, SEO, and the ability to do natural language search. However, very soon they will need to build LAT/LON into everything. Without geo-tagging, the experience can't get micro-local and so monetization strategies are limited significantly especially in the mobile world. Without geo-tagging advertising can't be delivered based on very granular location information, such as where the consumer is located when doing the search/consumption and where that is in relation to an advertiser that may want to reach them at that moment.
They are not doing any real aggregation.Without aggregation it is difficult to scale hyper-local. This where Outside.in has the advantage. Essentially, the local media cannot produce enough content, even with hired guns, to fill all the hyper-local slots with robust content. Aggregation is required to fill in the holes.
The quality of content will suffer if editors are spread too thin. Editors covering too many communities won't be embedded in the community and so they will miss the gestalt of life in those communities.The user experience will suffer and so will traffic.

I have concerns with their revenue model as well, but will cover those in a separate post.

Roundup: Twitter Geo Live, FourSquare to Offer Biz Tools, Layar Relaunches, Hubbard Does DataSphere

2010-03-09T23:13:00.000-08:00

Interest in Geo is accelerating. There was too much geo news to cover in individual posts, so here's a brief list:

Technology Review covers challenges of determining physical location accurately and turning coordinates into meaningful information, and protecting users' privacy.
ReadWriteWeb notes that Layar re-released its augmented reality iPhone app this time with Foursquare integration.
The NY Times reports Foursquare, plans to "distribute a free analytics tool and dashboard in the coming weeks that will give business owners access to a range of information and statistics about visitors to their establishments."
Twitter just turned on its geolocation today, according to TechCrunch. TC notes, "While Twitter’s geolocation feature has been live through its API since last November, there was no sign of integration into the main twitter.com site until now."
CNET reports Google Maps is "set to provide a new option for getting around town: biking directions" during the National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C.
DataSphere is back in the news, this time launching hyper-local sites with Hubbard Broadcasting.
Everyone is reporting that Facebook location sharing is coming soon.

Sysomos Puts FourSquare on the Map

2010-03-09T22:58:00.000-08:00

Users of FourSqare may love this. Sysomos just launched FourWhere, "a new and free location-based social search service from Sysomos that mashes-up locations and comments from Foursquare with the Google Maps API."

That's a cool idea, because there needs to be a way to intuitively find comments from FourSquare users, similar to reviews or tips. It makes sense to translate the data into a mashup, since it is location-based data.

The company fashions itself as providing sentiment analysis as competitive analysis. There's a huge opportunity for media to take this "data" and use it for real-time feedback before, during and after events they cover, not unlike what CNN.com did with Crimson Hexagon.

WHERE Claims Ads Lift CTR 3X

2010-03-09T10:27:00.000-08:00

According to Fierce Wireless , uLocate launched Where Ads a service to offer hyper-local mobile ads. Of note, uLocate claims, "the click through rates on WHERE Ads exceeded other mobile ads by as much as three times.

This reinforces the findings of eMarkerter and others -- location adds relevancy and with relevancy
consumers are more apt to click.

Coverage also at Gigaom.com, Internet2go, etc.

Outside.in and Datasphere on Collision Course

2010-03-08T21:33:00.000-08:00

Outside.in and Datasphere are on a collision course. Outside.in just announced a new business model for partners where they actually sell the ads on the hyperlocal pages they provide to publisher sites. This was the last piece that needed to fall in place for Outside.in to provide a complete end-to-end hyper-local solution. DataSphere has rev-share model and they sell the ad inventory. Outside.in has free or license models and now they'll sell your inventory as well.

Of course, the two companies are different in their their approaches. DataSphere provides a platform for media to build local (semi-hyper-local) sites, while Outside.in is primarily an aggregator. However, there are ways in both solutions to do what the other offers.

In both cases, the hyper-local solution required the vendor to provide monetization services because local media doesn't know how to get it done on their own.

"We are starting to realize that a lot of publishers are struggling to generate healthy online revenues on their hyperlocal and local pages. So what we will do is power the entire local pages for the publisher, all within their brands.," head of business development Camilla Cho told Citizen Publishing.

Folks at DataSphere told me the same thing. They said KOMO had 70% remnant before they brought their solution to Seattle.

Mobile Users Like Geo-Targeted Ads

2010-03-08T20:40:00.000-08:00

Not only do mobile users want personalized services, they like geo-targeted ads, according to a recent survey by eMarketer.

The recap of the study makes a point of highlighting “Geo-fencing” by 1020 PlaceCast, which provides personalized marketing messages to shoppers based on their location.

The responses to the 1020 Placecast ShopAlerts program were as follows:

* 60% said the location-triggered messages were “cool” and “innovative.”
* 79% claimed to be more likely to visit a store.
* 65% made a purchase.
* 73% were likely to use the service again.

While the cool and innovative comments may wane as this type of advertising become more common, you have to be excited to hear nearly 80% of the recipients would be more likely to visit a store due to the ads.

Outside.in Not Threatened by Patch

2010-03-05T18:19:00.000-08:00

"Mark Josephson, CEO of hyper-local news aggregator Outside.in, doesn’t seem all that concerned about AOL’s plans to pour $50 million into its own hyper-local news operation, Patch.com," or so he told gigaom.com in an interview.

I have to agree with Mark. They're approaching hyperlocal from two different ends of the spectrum. I would actually argue they need each other. The more robust the hyperlocal ecosystem the better for everyone, especially when it comes time to monetize.

Waze Partners with Intermap

2010-03-04T16:19:00.000-08:00

Waze.com is a crowd-sourced traffic information provider.They just formed a partnership with Intermap Technologies: "Through ongoing analysis, Intermap can supplement its existing road change detection process, noting when new roads appear or existing roads change. Combining the Waze data with satellite imagery analysis, the Company will enhance its change detection capability and be enabled to pinpoint where additional technologies can be utilized to capture new and altered roads." Crowd-sourced traffic data could present a great opportunity for local media to offer surface street traffic data.

The Copying Begins - Raycom Does DataSphere

2010-03-03T22:36:00.000-08:00

DataSphere is on a roll. They announced today that they did a deal with Raycom. For those of you that don't know, TV stations rarely have a truly new idea. They typically admit that fact. They are prone to watch cautiously and copy people (because they don't want to be the one that took the risk and blew it) who have a winning formula. Right now, Fischer Communications has the winning formula in the eyes of many local media looking to experiment in hyperlocal. >> Read the press release

DIY Foursquare - Maybe Good Idea for Local Media

2010-03-02T21:02:00.000-08:00

This may make sense for some local media companies looking to experiment in LBS or implement a solution for a niche site.

Advertising Age mentions a company called Socialight which has turned its Community Platform from B2C to B2B. Last week they launched a white label solution to help brands create their own Foursquare/Loopt/LBS Solution. Advertising Age describes it as "Ning for LBS." On the face of it, it makes no sense to recreate the wheel, but it may be a good option for unique contests and niche sites create by local media companies that don't want to go into strategic talks.

AOL's Patch launches in Manhattan Beach

2010-03-02T21:00:00.000-08:00

There's been a lot of buzz about Aol's Patch strategy -- good and bad. Now, AOL launched Patch in Manhattan Beach according to LA Observed

"The Patch approach of hyper-local news hubs debuted today on the West Coast with the unveiling of a site devoted to Manhattan Beach. Another is planned soon for Hermosa Beach."

OurTown.com Re-Design Under Way

2010-02-27T21:09:00.000-08:00

OurTown.com Re-Design Under Way "OurTown.com announced a complete redesign and relaunch scheduled for May, 2010. According to the press release, "This relaunch will help to build the brand and will ease the work of the Local Editors facilitating the expansion of the OurTown network."

Placecast's ShopAlerts to Deliver on Mobile Promise

2010-02-25T21:17:00.000-08:00

Greg Sterling posted an interesting announcement from Placecast. If you haven't heard of Placecast and you are interested in monetizing LBS or hyperlocal initiatives you should get to know what they do.I met them a year ago at Where 2.0 and discovered they could close the gap between my geovision and implementation.

Placecast's ShopAlerts allows retailers to create automated SMS alerts that are sent to consumers when they are near a retail outlet with which they have opted-in. Then as the consumer goes about their daily life they are automatically alerted when they are near a retail location of any specials. A key to ShopAlerts is that it does not require a smartphone. Someday this will not be a competitive advantage but for now it is because most people don't use smartphones. According to Screenwerk, four retailers are on board at launch: SONIC, American Eagle Outfitters, and REI.

This is the second announcement this week where a company is delivering on the early promise of mobile and LBS. Loopt made an announcement for a pay per action solution coming soon.

Update 2/27: It looks like North Face is also experimenting with Placecasts approach. According to Media Buyer Planner North Face has a campaign where Placecast "created 1,000 fenced areas in and around the cities where the North Face has many stores. The North Face also chose locations where there is a lot of snow and rain, so it could tailor its messages to the weather."

Patent Links Location to Access Permissions

2010-02-23T00:40:00.000-08:00

Google filed for and was awarded a patent for restricting access to documents based on -- in part -- the users location. The patent reads:

United States Patent: 7664751: "Users may be presented with different viewing interfaces for a document based on a combination of factors relating to display rights possessed for the document and user specific information. In one implementation, the user's location is used to determine portions of the document that can be displayed to the user. More particularly, access privileges to a document for a user are determined based on geographical location information of the user and based on access rights possessed for the document. Portions of the document may then be formatted for display to the user based on the determined access privileges."

I'm not sure what Google is thinking. Maybe they are anticipating that publishers will want to restrict access based on DMA, similar to broadcast companies and sports clubs. Or, maybe they want to restrict access to documents based on proximity to a building such as a library or the pentagon.

API Streamlines Surfacing of Relevant Geo-Info

2010-02-20T07:07:00.000-08:00

I'm going deep into the 'GeoGeek' here, but think this is an interesting application announcement.

Geolenz announced the creation of an API that streamlines the surfacing of relevant data based on someone's location. From my interpretation of the press release, Geolenz created geo-"domains" which are a combination of geographically defined boundaries (possibly a neighborhood, village, city, street route) and search against those boundaries. The result is the ability in input a LAT/LON, filter against the concept of the domain, and return geographically relevant information from many different sources based on that domain.

"Each application developer can then enhance with functionality by specifying their own context of rules and terminology for communicating location information about the domain to and from end users." according to Geolenz.

At the face of it, I see this as a way to streamline the delivery of contextual data in location based services, mashups, etc. As a use case, a user may zoom in a weather mashup into their neighborhood. As a result, the map would call this API to return relevant data for the domain in which the map is focused. That data could be business listings, current weather conditions, tweets from users, etc. Much of this is done now by developers/business owners that hand pick partners and feeds to return specific data. This API would allow for a developer to build the map and choose the data based on what the API returns.

If I am a data provider I would want to know how I can be included in Geolenz' API. If I am Geolenz I'd want to know if this is patent-able.

Innovative Idea -- Automated Weather Tweets

2010-02-19T22:32:00.000-08:00

I've already noted that I believe hyperlocal content extends past news. Some of you also know I have a touch of weather geek in me. So, this post on TechCrunch caught my eye.

"A young man by the name of Dave Osborne built an interesting project called SWASAlert, a super-speedy weather severe alert service that supplies super fast weather alerts via Twitter and SMS," wrote TC.

This is an interesting use of Twitter and if the alerts are GeoTagged, they could be plotted on a watch and warning mashup, which would be pretty cool too.

Loopt Seeks Advertising 'Holy Grail'

2010-02-18T23:42:00.000-08:00

Awash in all the announcements at the Mobile World Congress was the announcement by Loopt that they would offer a new performance-based hyper-local advertising solution.

Mobile Marketing Watch writes, "Loopt could essentially allow a company to keep track of ads shown and whether people actually visited a location later using GPS or voluntary location-sharing," such as check-ins. This, "allows for a cost-per-action pricing model in lieu of more traditional and out-dated cost-per-impression or CPC models."

Many call this the 'Holy Grail' of performance marketing or advertising because it offers real accountability. The advertiser pays for actual visits to their store, not impressions, or clicks. The opportunity is obviously unique to mobile devices and points to why so many people are deeply interested in hyperlocal and location based services as of late.

"The company’s CEO said there would a self-serve way of buying these ads. Much farther down the line, one could imagine a bidding model where businesses set the value of a potential store visit from a new customer, for example, akin to Google’s advertising bidding system for clicks," wrote Mobile Marketing Watch.

Hyperlocal Isn't Just News

2010-02-16T20:57:00.000-08:00

Victor Wong posted an opinion on PaidContent.org that raises an important point about what is hyperlocal content. The media in particular are too focused on news as information and miss the fact that people who want hyperlocal information sometime just want events, or jobs, crime stats or even pet photos. Better yet, what about coupons from the following...

Living Social
Yipit
Groopswoop
SocialBuy
TownHog

As Victor mentions, Everyblock is a great example of this. The creator calls it "data journalism." There appears to be two sides to this coin -- those that just focus on "news" and information and those that just focus on "ads." To me the secret sauce is a combination of both.

MediaWeek Scratches Hyperlocal Surface

2010-02-14T23:10:00.000-08:00

MediaWeek did an underwhelming job explaining why hyperlocal is hot right now, and the percieved value and pitfalls of hyperlocal. It suggests there may be opportunity for media if the hyperlocal ad/sales code can be cracked.The article rightly states that the current big winners in the space are Yodel, ReachLocal and Local.com.

"These companies, which have exhibited the largest ad growth in the space, do the dirty digital work that many small businesses aren’t equipped to do like creating banners and videos, and navigating search marketing," the article said.

It fails to mention local media success stories, such as Fischer Broadcasting's work in Seattle, and McClatchy Newspapers' efforts which were recently featured at the Borrell Conference. While those companies have NOT seen an explosion of ad revenue from hyperlocal they have had success with hyperlocal business models.

Lastly, there are some interesting quotes from players in the space, such as the CEO of Topix.net. I would love to hear or read the full interviews. They would most certainly prove more insightful than the article itself.

Newspapers Try Outside.in for Hyperlocal

2010-02-14T21:38:00.000-08:00

Outside.in announced that McClatchy, Dow Jones, Lee Enterprises & Tribune are partnering with Outside.in for hyperlocal tools -- http://bit.ly/akSpU. NBC already has Outside.in on its sites. Does this commoditize Outside.in's offering? I think yes, unless each property uses them differently and potentially augments the data or interfaces adding unique value.

Google Ads SMB Enhancements to Maps

2010-02-13T23:12:00.000-08:00

Greg Sterling points out Google is introducing a new local business ad (”enhanced listings“) on maps. It is only available in San Jose and Houston. It costs $25 per month to get the following enhancements on your listing:

photos
videos
Web site
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According to Sterling, "During the course of the month enhancements can be changed or rotated without paying again. The $25 is a flat recurring monthly fee independent of how many changes are made."

He add some some screens as well.

Borrell 2010: Q&A Reveals Most Interesting Details

2010-02-08T17:56:00.000-08:00

I made it to the Borrell Conference in NY this week. The opening panel was very good. Jeff Jarvis opened with his Hyper Local business model followed by a panel with ...

Keynote - , Director, Interactive Journalism Program, City University of New York
Panel - , Vice President of Interactive Media, The McClatchy Company
Panel - , President, U.S. Local News Network
Panel - , VP of News and General Manager, Fischer Interactive
Panel - , CEO and Co-Founder, GrowthSpur.com

A lot of the information was a repeat from blog posts and tweets about each initiative but the Q&A section revealed some interesting insights.Here are some notes I captured. I was most interested in the discussion around sales and what strategies are successful in supporting the HL strategies --

Fischer Interactive
Launched or partnered with 109 hyper local Web sites. Generated 400k uniques in seattle a month. They have 1,000 paying advertisers, most of which have never advertised on TV. Fischer claims their HL initiative is profitable. The use a company called DataSphere to power the hyper local sites (widely published partnership) and they have a tele-sales team (40 people) that sells the smaller packages to smaller SMBs. The use of a tele-sales team for going after SMBs was something I pitched to Gannett 5 years ago and was shot down. Fischer claims its very cost efficient and successful because it allows the traditional sales team to focus on the blue chip companies that capture higher revenue per package. One side note that I found interesting and should present a possible gold mine of story ideas for any newsroom -- Fischer claims that they find a lot of story ideas come from user comments.

USLNN
Building a network of HL sites. Started in San Diego and adding Orange County -- SDNN.com. The focus on blue chip advertisers in the local market. CPM is about $10. They focus on under-served suburbs. They really try to incentivize their AEs in the following way -- Relatively low base with 15% commision, 20% if you make quota, 25% if you go 15% over quota. Again, this approach is something I pitched to previous employers as a way to get young, inexpensive and aggressive sales people to sell Web-only. I believe the traditional media companies militate against this because (1) it means complicating something they have done the same way for many years increasing the work they must do for hiring and oversight, (2) it could create conflict with other AEs in the organization with different compensation structures, (3) ego. USLNN noted that a segment of advertisers want to have blogs on the core site (A kind of advertorial content) in order to deepen the relationship with their existing customers.

McClatchy Papers
Their hyper local strategy is pro-am strategy, a mix of both professionals and amateurs. Twelve sites are digging into it, including Charlotte and Miami and Raleigh. Raleigh is a success story. McClatchy is against outsourcing sales like Fischer did. Hendricks argued that it somehow undermined the brand having these other people sell. I've actually heard that before. McGuire vehemently disagreed. He said most of the advertisers don't care who is selling, they care about leads and results.Hendricks noted that not all bloggers update as often as a publisher might like. He suggested that they needed to be incented to help them get past the grind of repeated regular publishing which can tire them. They plan to pay blog partners and or share revenue, but they don't yet.

Why Foursquare, Location Apps Need 'Old' Media

2010-02-02T23:16:00.000-08:00

A new Business Week article finds that location applications like Gowalla, Foursquare and Yelp have limited appeal. For instance, for all the hype around Foursquare, it only has 300,000 registered users. Despite this disappointing adoption rate, I think there is a huge opportunity for media. Blogger Robert Scoble, a managing director at Rackspace Hosting explains the simple value created by location --

"Any time you have a database of people and you know their location, that's valuable to a lot of businesses," Scoble told Business Week.

So, the obvious opportunity is the ability to collect data about users, and the ability to target users based on their favorite haunts, or nearby haunts, etc. The problem -- They lack scale because people don't want to share location or don't see the benefit. So, who better to drive adoption than the 800 lb gorilla -- TV.

Yes, Bravo is working with Foursquare, but isn't local media looking at this? If a local TV station, embedded a service like Foursquare into the fabric of their local programming, they could drive adoption of these LBS, collect valuable data for mining and use that to build new relationships with SMBs in their markets.

Journalism Online Launches Pay Walls

2010-02-02T16:16:00.000-08:00

Journalism Online announced their pay-wall solution is now in public Beta. The solution is actually more like 'metering' where users hit a threshold and then they need to pay. The solution launched with The Intelligencer Journal-Lancaster New Era.

'Bravo' Bravo

2010-02-01T22:14:00.001-08:00

Bravo announced it would team up with Foursquare. Bravo will integrate Foursquare into its TV shows. This is a great experiment that brings both the relevancy of the geoweb and commercial presence.

CNN Experiment Points to Local Opportunity

2010-01-30T11:43:00.000-08:00

Traditional media is struggling to figure how to integrate and leverage social media. They want to use Facebook and Twitter because they see how they are growing forces in how people discover, consume and communicate news and information. This past week CNN's experiment with Twitter for the State of the Union Address created a giant road-sign for other media to follow as to one way to use social media and geo-tagging to create relevant content and context.

As far as I know, the Huffington Post was the only media outlet to spot and report on this experiment. CNN partnered with a company called Crimson Hexagon to "analyze almost 150,000 Twitter responses to President Obama's speech." The responses were geo-coded allowing them to provided a sentiment heat map of sorts for the entire United States. Similar to the interactive electoral map CNN used during the general election, John King touched on a state on the interactive map of the U.S. which zoomed the map onto the state and revealed tweet sentiment in that state. An executive with Crimson Hexagon alluded to the future potential in her statements about the product roadmap.

"In major events like the State of the Union, we actually want to get to real-time analysis," she said. "We also want to get, if we can, more granular with location, based on cities and zip codes rather than just states," Melyssa Plunkett-Gomez, an executive with Crimson Hexagon, told the Huff post.

There in lies one of the glaring opportunities for local media. As the algorithms improve for filtering the content and the volume of content grows, there will be an opportunity to repeat the same coverage at a hyper-local level. A TV station could drill down on a county, a zip code or even a city block to offer real-time "sentiment." The technology and know-how is available to do this online and on-air now through companies like Google, Crimson Hexagon, Twitter and Facebook, Outside.in, MetaCarta, WDT Inc., Layar, etc.

Looking beyond CNN's specific use of Twitter, the same technologies could be used to bubble up user generated photos and videos in real-time around a breaking news or developing stories. The value of this should be even more obvious to journalists. Crowdsourcing allows you to go from one or two reporters on the scene sending back reports , to "N" number of eyewitnesses sending you eyewitness reports in real-time. As I mentioned, this can be done now. What appears to be missing is a vision or will to try it.

'Traffic' Opportunity for Local Media

2010-01-24T08:03:00.000-08:00

If you are in local media, you may want to talk to the folks at Waze.com. They need you and you could use them. They are developing their own maps from older census maps. They are verifying/updating their map by rewarding people for driving on roads. As people drive a road waze gets (1) validation the road exists, (2) gets traffic flow data (3) gets incident reports.

They need a media partner to help increase adoption. Media could benefit from working with them because they can drive engagement in the traffic product/section and create revenue opportunities.

Regarding engagement, viewers could be encouraged to participate in the reporting of incidents and the ability to ask other users (via an instant msg interface) what traffic to expect ahead. Media could reward some viewers by making them "traffic reporters/spotters" who's
updates auto post to the maps via apps and Wap decks.

As revenue goes, they can place advertisers such as Domino's pizza locations on maps. They can ads including the ability to reward people who visit a Domino's (verified via GPS) with a coupon.

Keep in mind, their data is crowd sourced and not very deep, yet. That's why they need help. So, the best use of their data would be as a supplement, or overlay one "professional data" on a mash up, such as Google traffic data.

3D Not the Real Story of CES

2010-01-11T12:13:00.000-08:00

3D TVs probably received the most media coverage at CES in 2010, but there is another trend probably far more important to local publishers -- Internet connected TVs and other devices.

The convergence of Internet and TV, via TVs directly or other devices (Blu-ray players, gaming devices, etc.), is well underway. Some TVs are already available in stores and more are expected in 2010. By mid-2010 TVs will have more sophisticated hardware and processing power further positioning the TV as the entertainment hub of the household.

The emergence of these TVs is obviously going to benefit Netflix, YouTube, Yahoo! and Amazon most immediately. The Yahoo! widget platform is poised to benefit from this trend. The company announced deals with Hisense, ViewSonic and other technology companies. Yahoo! previously announced distribution partnerships with Vizio, Sony, LG Electronics and Samsung. The platform could be in as many as 5 million Internet-enabled television sets by the end of June.

Internet connected TVs are ultimately about IPTV. It will likely take several years for IPTV to become a mass-market service, but its rise is inevitable. When it does make it to the mass market, it will likely have the same disruptive impact on TV business models as the Internet did on newspapers.

Augmented Reality in 2010, 3D View of News

2010-01-08T11:39:00.001-08:00

I have been reading a lot about augmented reality this year. I first learned about it through the Layar app for Android and later found a great article in Wired explaining some of the pitfalls and benefits of the technology players. This is life-changing technology if done correctly.

Potentially, someone who is standing in any city or even a block can use the application to gain information about that area. For instance, the user could hold their Android or iPhone up and on screen would appear floating tags giving information about the direction and distance to public transportation, or a restaurant, or user-generated photos of the area, or real estate for sales, or any data that is available via EveryBlock or similar services.

There are any number of tactical and practical uses for this technology. However, I found the vision of Metaio to be extremely provocative. Metaio allows users to also place animated avatars on maps.

According to one Wired interview, one possible use is for "game developers to use Metaio’s and Earthmine’s technology to create realistic, non-gimmicky games that take place in real-world cities starting in 2010. An ad-supported model for AR gaming is easy to envision: local businesses could pay to have the game send players past their storefronts."

This short comment opens the door for an endless number of uses for the augmented reality for commercial purposes. For instance, maybe a local store could place special messaging in the augmented reality, such as an animated avatar outside their business that includes the announcement of a discount or coupon or sale.

In a breaking news event, users could see avatars of each other giving perspective and location to their views of the event. Near real-time reports and photos could be shared in the 3D environment allowing users to experience an event from many perspectives.

Jarvis: Bankruptcy May Be Best Bet for Old Media

2010-01-06T14:52:00.001-08:00

Thanks to Steve over at LR for pointing me to this interview with Jeff Jarvis. Jeff argues that old media must reduce their cost structure to survive and suggests that there may be no way to really do this outside of bankruptcy. Jarvis, is speaking from the same hymnal as Michael Rosenblum. I previous touched on Rosenblum's comments. He recommended burning TV to the ground and restarting. In both cases the point is well made -- the old media is burdened with incredible costs structures that prevent it from remaining profitable in the long term.

While Jarvis and Rosenblum both recommend starting from scratch after shutting down the legacy business, I would argue that old media can start the new businesses in parallel, shielded from the management of the old media businesses. Yes, the new businesses will be parasite for a period of time. The key arguement for approaching change in this manner is the time it takes to cultivate a new media business -- it is a process, not an event.

Jim Thompson was good enough to point this out in a recent post. Local TV stations are excellent at covering events and often not very good at process. What needs to happen with online and mobile businesses is cultivating audience and product over a period of time. Web entrepeneurship is a process of iteration -- concieve, implement test, start over -- where you perfect over time. The later is what is required when building a New Media business. Not every business can be Google or YouTube or MySpace or Facebook. If it was easy to create those 'jackpots' every time, every one would do it.

"Push" Technology Gets It's Due

2009-12-20T20:41:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about push technology lately. It was a buzz term in the late 90's. I was outspoken for years that it would not work. Suddenly, I realized (sorry if I am slow) some very compelling "push" technologies (not called push) are emerging with the proliferation of smart mobile devices.

I was doing my usual reading around hyper local, GeoWeb, etc., when I came across this post on TechCrunch about ambient streams. If you look at the Venn diagram it closely aligns with my own thoughts in this blog.

The author, Edo Segal, says, "The Holy Grail is a filter which only serves up information which is relevant based on who you are, your social graph, what you or your friends are doing now, what you or friends have done before, and in context of other information you are consuming."

That's where the similarities end. Segal goes on to hypothesize that this combination of Realtime Web, Published Information, Geolocation Data, and Social Communications via an intelligent filter will change how we experience reality.

"A very useful metaphor is that humanity is constructing its own synthetic sixth sense. An ambient sense that perceives the context of your activity and augments your reality with related information and experiences. Increasingly, we will be sensing the world with this sixth sense and that will change the way we collectively experience the world, "Segal wrote.

I'm not one to predict the future. I'm pretty grounded and practical. So, I'll just say that I think he is on to something. This augmented reality is coming, or is here in some forms already. To me, it is essentially a push technology that will change the way we view the world in a very literal sense and possibly in a philosophical sense.

Finally, push is getting its due.

Yext - Why Doesn't Local Media Think of This?

2009-12-07T16:36:00.000-08:00

Here's another example of a monetization solution local media could have thought of and didn't and now should consider experimenting with -- Yext Inc. It a is a point solution that could be part of a sales/service package for an SMB and could also be extended to media's local directories pages for lead generation revenue.

Yext places ads all over the the Internet for local businesses . Yext analyzes calls (via speech-to-text) generated by those ads and only transfers calls to businesses that could result in sales. Yext shares its revenue from advertisers with the publishers. The company plans to use the new funding to help it reach a greater variety of advertisers.

Rosenblum: Local TV is Like GM

2009-11-30T19:37:00.000-08:00

Michael Rosenblum is cited on Lost Remote with another insightful commentary on local TV. Rosenblum, in an interview, compares local TV to GM, but there will be no bailout.

"They know how to do things in the 1950's. They still do it that way. They cannot bring themselves to change. The change that is required for them to survive, is essentially to have to burn the place to the ground," Rosenblum said in an interview with Mark Joyella.

Ignoring the amusing hyperbole around "death, and GM and burning," Rosenblum is right. Old media needs to be more efficient, in an extreme way. The top line and thus the margins won't be there to support the infrastructure and headcount in the future. They need to revamp their cost structures and start by asking, "is that WSI (or other expensive hardware) system worth it? Is this building worth it? Do I need this chopper or five live trucks?"

Rosenblum says they must burn the station to the ground because the stations are full of absurdly expensive gear and people and the institutions can't help but perpetuate themselves because it is all they know. It is their livelihood. Local TV (and media for that matter) is competing more and more with organizations and individuals with much cheaper gear such as streaming servers, pro-sumer cameras, etc. They don't have to pay for expensive engineers, broadcast towers, million Watt radars, etc.

"When Google does Google News in New York with video. It ain't gonna start in the CBS building with a chopper," Rosenblum said.

Rosenblum is correct, but how does TV evolve? They still have existing costs that must be supported by existing customers and clients.

I would start by committing to build a separate news and information Web site (or networks of sites) with a dedicated P&L and staff. I would incubate that interactive initiative and let it function unencumbered from the biases of the legacy organization. The station management would limited in their ability to drive or influence the organization. Most stations have abandoned the newsroom within a newsroom approach in favor of cross training the TV staff on interactive. This is proving a a painful strategy that is strangling the interactive initiatives.

In all of this, the one media type that may have the best chance to succeed in this change is the newspaper. The newspaper organizations have already been cut to the bone. Their reporters are free of the vestiges of traditional TV production values and their buildings are free of the expensive TV equipment. They are already slashing print production costs or are shutting down the print portions of their businesses.

You Can Make Money from Free

2009-08-15T06:19:00.000-07:00

“You can make money from free,” writes Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine and author of “The Long Tail.” “People will pay to save time. People will pay to lower risk. People will pay for things they love. People will pay for status... Free opens doors, reaching new consumers. It doesn’t mean you can’t charge some of them.”

Anderson’s latest book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” discusses how the increase in efficiency as a result of technology results in deflation of prices and salaries.

LR Tweeted About Media Companies Going Local in Seattle

2009-08-05T21:43:00.001-07:00

Lost Remote reports two Seattle media companies created neighborhood news sites to build hyperlocal communities -- The Hearst-owned SeattlePI.com, launched InQueenAnne.com and KOMO TV, the Fisher-owned ABC affiliate, launched neighborhood sites.
Read More...

Why Niche Matters, And Subscriptions May Not Work

2009-08-05T21:32:00.000-07:00

Steve Outing's latest post draws on some harsh opinions, such as, "newspaper leaders continue to flounder in the classic death spiral without making the necessary harsh adjustments to pull out before hitting the ground."

The most interesting conclusion in the post is that newspapers are wrong to think charging subscriptions will save the industry. Instead, he quotes B.J. Fogg of Stanford University as saying they need to target "high-value online niche content" that cane be monetized because of the enthusiasm of the consumer. We used to call these "pockets of passion" in some old circles of mine.

Initiative Hopes to 'Spur Growth' in HyperLocal

2009-08-03T21:54:00.000-07:00

Greg Sterling made note of a new hyperlocal play -- GrowthSpur. It's a venture started by Mark Potts, co-founder of Backfence. GrowthSpur offers monetization, tools and training for hyper local initiatives. Interesting idea.

Google Reaches Out to Local Business

2009-07-15T09:51:00.000-07:00

Google is reaching out to small businesses in San Francisco. While it is positioned as an opportunity to learn for businesses, it is more likely a chance for Google to learn -- basically, a focus group. It is hard to believe Google would conduct these sessions all across the country. Traditionally, they have monetized the long tail through better technology and automation.

The article in Local Search News states, "Google is providing a very valuable service here, but business owners need better communication and support from Google."

Google needs to understand local business better and understand where their are getting tripped up by Google services in order to drive adoption.

This is again a shot across the bow of local media.

Borrell: Local 'Up,' Dedicated Staff Key

2009-07-01T03:58:00.000-07:00

Spotted this on Gordon Borrell's blog tonight:

"....earlier this year when we projected that local online advertising would grow 8% in 2009. At the end of the first quarter, the increase looked closer to 11%. When we finish collecting our second-quarter data in the next few weeks, I’m certain the number will be quite a bit higher. "

Gordon says "dedicated" sales staff are driving the successes.

The dedicated vs converged sales force debate still rages on in local media companies. From someone who has seen both strategies on numerous occasions, take it from me, dedicated is necessary, but they may not be mutually exclusive from converged. In other words, you must have a dedicated staff, while converged selling should also be supported to a lesser degree.

Freemium Strategies, The Key is the Mix?

2009-07-01T03:33:00.001-07:00

I've been meaning to write a post about the push to save newspapers via paid subscriptions.

In April, Steven Brill announced the creation of Journalism Online and invited (Read: challenged) publishers. Brill said that he had the formula to save their businesses. Generally speaking, the formula is a mixture of free and premium content known as "freemium."

This week, JO announced a partnership with ITZ Publishing. Together they would track usage of small- and medium-sized newspapers and optimize the freemium strategy for each publication based on usage.

I find this strategy interesting for many reasons, including the similarities to research by inStat. inStat recommended a mix of fee, paid subscriptions, and micropayments targeting the core users of a site. An important element of the strategy is targeting the core user with engagement strategies and subscriptions. The idea is that the core user will will pay because they are devoted users, and their engagement will draw in the moderate users, who will be monetized through display ads and occassionl sampling of premium (fee-based) content. The strategy was echoed in what JO has been proposing.

Of note, inStat believes the freefall in newspaper advertising will stabilize in 2010, providign a glimmer of hope for papers that restructure their businesses.

MJ, Farrah, The Spectacle

2009-06-25T21:28:00.000-07:00

The media coverage of people gathering at UCLA, and the Apollo Theater to "honor" MJ reminded me of some old reading of mine. It is interesting how people feel compelled to gather together to hold vigil for a celebrity. It is also interesting to watch the video pour through the TV on multiple channels streaming image after image. By watching, I can see how it almost feels like participating. It reminded me of a book called The Society of the Spectacle.

The spectacle is not a stream of images, rather it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images. - Guy Debord

Update: I realized this should be updated to say "tweets" as well. :-)

'10 Things' from MediaShift

2009-06-13T14:54:00.000-07:00

I believe the following has a lot of truth for local TV as well. Republished from PaidContent.org.

Ten Things Local Newspapers Need To Do

By David Kaplan - Fri 12 Jun 2009 07:22 AM PST

Forget the swirling debates over building paywalls or shaking down Google (NSDQ: GOOG), MediaShift’s Mark Glaser has some different suggestions for newspapers. Glaser’s list is a good addition to the newspaper-survival guide he put out back in December, which included aggregating content from outside sources, creating classified ad networks, and focusing on hyperlocal advertising.

1. Smaller print runs: Targeting isn’t just an online thing; newspapers can target specific neighborhoods and do a smaller, custom print run tailored to certain coverage areas.

2. All local, all the time: Newspapers have been shedding plenty of jobs, but newspapers can bring in the work of local bloggers who are already doing the work for free. They might appreciate the higher profile and even the chance to share some ad revenue.

3. Out with circ staff, in with SEO: This one will be hard for newspapers to follow, but Glaser says to cut the circulation, printing, print production side and supplant them with more tech, SEO, community managers. Your readers are online and it’s time to cultivate that readership. More after the jump

4. Get a “real focus group”: If you want to find out what your readers want, don’t hire a focus group. Just go out and talk to your community and ask them what they’re looking for.

5. Marry user-gen and professional: The twain can meet; encourage user-gen content and then put a professionally edited sheen over it.

6. Find a better reason for multimedia: Just because anyone can use a video camera, doesn’t mean you should run clips for the hell of it. Find a good reason to use video or audio—and if you don’t have one, don’t use it.

7. Mixed revenues: There’s no either or when it comes to subscription paywalls or ad support. Find a way to bring as many revenue streams into the mix, including seeking donations and selling directory listings.

8. Readers like database projects: It’s all about getting local; readers want anything that focuses on their particular world. Mapping and database initiatives are pretty novel ways of attracting readers.

9. You’re in the directory business: Newspapers missed out early on by not broadening their advertiser mix to include plumbers and pizza places. Online directories snapped up those dollars when the space was still growing substantially. Still, better late than ever, a number of newspapers have been turning to local businesses they previously ignored. And given newspapers’ continued brand advantage, they can set up their own local directories and beat the interlopers at their own game.

10. Get everyone’s ideas: If war is too important to leave to generals, saving the newspaper business is too important to be left to the publishing side. Encourage every part of the business to figure out their own top 10 suggestions to save the paper and reward the good ones.

New iPhone, New GeOpportunity

2009-06-05T17:50:00.000-07:00

File this one under "why geo matters."

An E&P article on the new iPhone reads, "the newspaper can send relevant content and, more important, relevant targeted advertising within 2 blocks on a person's location. "This makes local advertising on mobile highly potent with high CPMS," said Art Howe, CEO of Verve Wireless.

Adsense on Maps Makes Sense

2009-06-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to post this for days. It should probably be filed under, "what took so long."

Google is finally giving geo map developers a new option to earn revenue by releasing Maps Ad Unit, which is AdSense for Maps.

Developers overlay AdSense on a Google Map which they have embedded on their sites. Developers and users should link their Maps API implementation to an AdSense account to earch from this new online ad revenue scheme.

The theory -- as with most geo-ads -- AdSense Publishers will generate revenue because users would find those ad units more relevant do their location.

TWC Blackberry APP Costs $12.99, Really?

2009-05-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

Terry Heaton notes that The Weather Channel has a new Blackberry weather application for $12.99. Terry is absolutely right in criticizing TWC. TWC has a history of offering subscription products that do poorly. Check out their Notify! product. It has never broken even. They sunk development and promotional costs but could never gain traction. As Terry notes, it is a tactical error, that they keep repeating. That is good for local media, because it leaves the door open for a competitive product for free.

Local Based Advertising

2009-05-21T09:39:00.000-07:00

Check out this company. It is the first company I have seen that has really figured out how to deliver location-based advertising. They blow away companies like LAT49. The later focuses on delivering ads on maps. The implementation is simple and unsophisticated. Placecast processes multiple types of location, demographic and other information and then adjusts the ad delivery based on what is relevant in terms of location. They have a robust network of advertisers. They have sophisticated engines that drive the ad delivery and they can plug and play with major players such as DoubleClick/Google.

MySpace Partners with Citysearch

2009-05-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

MySpace announced the Web site is partnering with CitySearch. It will be interesting to see where this local initiative goes. See how it looks now.

Senate Hearing Excerpt

2009-05-14T23:10:00.000-07:00

I'm a little late posting this, but life is getting in the way of blogging. I found this to be one of the most interesting items to come out of the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology's hearing on the future of journalism.

After Arianna Huffington waxed on about new media, a former Baltimore Sun crime reporter said the following:

"The day I run into a Huffington Post reporter at a Baltimore Zoning Board hearing is the day that I will be confident that we've actually reached some sort of equilibrium."

I thought that was exactly what was starting to happen.

No. 7. Chaos ensues

2009-05-05T14:56:00.000-07:00

I was pondering the news that more newspapers are in trouble, laying off employees, or forcing furloughs. Local TV stations seem close behind. I realized we may be at a new stage in the disruption cycle. We moved from stage 6 to stage 7, possibly stage 8 in the local media industry, according to Andy Kessler's scale.

I am speaking of a venture capitalist Andy Kessler's description of how disruptive technology and organizations force incumbents to change. Michael Lewis memorialized Kessler's thesis in his book "Next." I keep a copy of Kessler's thesis on the wall of my office because it is amusing and truthful.

From Page 160, Kessler's thesis reads:
1. Rules are established to create order and maintain profits for incumbents. Examples of rules are: social mores, professional licenses, government regulation, locked-up distribution channels.
2. Cheaper technology suddenly allows for the bypassing of the rules.
3. Incumbents are fat and dumb and happy with current monopolistic profits and their general situation, so they bad-mouth any new stuff which threatens their incumbency or profits, or both.
4. Fringe players emerge to use this ever cheaper technology to simply ignore the rules.
5. Fringe companies attract venture capital since there are great profits to be made by underselling the incumbents.
6. Incumbents are in denial until their profits are really threatened and/or market share begins to erode meaningfully.
7. Chaos ensues; fringe players are threatened with lawsuits, government regulation, public shaming, etc.
8. Growth at the fringe accelerates, as it is the right way to do business using new technology.
9. Incumbents co-opt the fringe, or fringe players become the new incumbents and seek to establish new rules.
10. Go to 1.

Part of the joy of this thesis is the obvious irreverent tone. I typically find myself laughing when I read it.

Typically, when you talk to passionate and "extreme" Internet professionals, they predict the demise of old media. They tell the neophytes and curmudgeons that the Internet will kill Newspaper and TV. Some rally behind the declarations and others become indignant. For years, I felt there was truth in this, but that the argument was overstated. I tried to soften my line realizing that TV and newspapers won't go away completely, but change. Lewis speaks to this as well in his book.

He writes, the "Internet's gift to the fringe was to expose a lot of commercial and social rules as dated an inefficient...The relentless pressure from the fringe did not mean that the center would collapse. But to survive it would be forced to remake itself."

I thought newspapers and TV stations were transforming, already feeling the pain. We all know margins have been increasingly squeezed for the past 5-10 years. But, with the credit crisis the disruption and transformation accelerated. Then came the news of layoffs and shut-downs. Now, there is news of newspapers "re-opening " as Web-only shops, and news of journalist 'on the beach' starting their own Web sites. I interpret this as stage 7 in Andy's timeline, though it is probably impossible to pinpoint a single stage.

Why does this matter? I previously thought we were all the way through the cycle. As it turns out, I had no idea what the acceleration of deterioration of traditional media would look like. To be frank, it is more severe than I imagined and approaching what some of those "extreme" Internet professionals argued. That is a revelation for me. I still don't see "TV" or newspapers going away, but now see a much more swift and violent transformation. Even if the economy improves, things have changed forever in journalism and media.

MS Takes a Leap into Hyper Local

2009-05-02T08:49:00.001-07:00

A friend recently told me about a big geo-based initiative at Microsoft. TechCrunch broke the story at around the same time.

Microsoft is launching Microsft Vine Beta. It uses a GeoSearch platform to provide GeoTagged news and local articles that are represented in Vine. It is focused on communication between people during crisis.

This speaks to the core of why I created this blog. Media companies need to create vehicles for people to communicate and find the information (news, jobs, businesses) they want. Geography is a key part of that strategy, as I explained in earlier posts.

Vine will gather local news (you tell it where you live or are at the moment). News items are gathered from 20,000 local and national news sources, plus public safety announcements from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The tool shows you news items on a local map. You can choose to filter out certain types of news (sports, entertainment, etc.).

It's a cool idea. It will be VERY interesting to see where this one goes. My question: Why isn't traditional media doing this? Traditional media typically own the crisis and alerting space.

Darwin, An Analogy for Internet Success?

2009-04-29T06:14:00.000-07:00

I recently heard a "speech" in which the speaker quoted Charles Darwin and applied an analogy to the Internet. That is not in itself very interesting or suprising. What was interesting is that the speaker gave what he thought was a verbatim quote. It was not. As it turns out, the speaker may have had it wrong, twice, with the quote and the truth.

The speaker told an audience of young Internet professionals that Darwin did not say the 'strongest survive,' but those 'able to adapt' survive. He quoted, "It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change." His correction was also in error. This is not an actual quote but a summary or paraphrase of Darwin. Some scholars consider this common paraphrase a misreprestation. According to an article in Cosmos Magazine:

"These sentences do not appear anywhere in Darwin's work," said Patrick Tort, a Darwin expert at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris who said he has spent the last decade "combating the endless distortions of Darwin's ideas."

The analogy was meant to suggest that the Internet company in question can survive and thrive as long as it can adapt. This probably has truth, but maybe that is not the whole story.

The Cosmos article goes on to say that, "It is not the species that are most responsive to change that are likely to survive... 'It is the ones that are lucky, or already have the right features that can be passed on to the next generation.'"

If we accept this interpretation of Darwin's theory and apply it to this struggling Internet company it is far less uplifting, for sure. If we extend the analogy and view the organization as organism, it suggests there is (1) luck, and (2) attributes, possibly equivalent to institutional structure/knowledge/culture, at play. The people and the institutions both carry knowledge, biases and culture with them. I am suggesting these are the "features" or "genes" of an organization. These attributes may manifest in how the company makes key decisions, innovates, and conducts daily business.

This new analysis significantly strips away the ability to WILL success through pure adaptation. Much of the success is left to chance and the ability to transform an institution at its very deepest roots. In comparison, it is simple to change or "adapt" the strategy of an institution, but far more difficult to transform an institutions structure, knowledge and culture, unless that is part of the culture.

Through this new looking glass one would suggest that the Internet company in question will survive by the the benefit of (1) luck and (2) the already established institutional structure, knowledge and culture that led to its early success. Luck may manifest as an upturn in Internet ad-spend in 2010. If adaption is required, and that is part of that culture of the organization, then the company may have an additional fighting chance.

This new looking glass is most interesting when examining traditional media companies such as newspapers and TV. Do they have the right institutional structure, knowledge and culture to pass on to the next generation of journalists and succeed in a digital world? Do they have cultures that are comfortable with adaptation and change? Is luck on their side?

RTNDA vs ONA

2009-04-27T20:52:00.001-07:00

I attended RTNDA/NAB again this year. The most interesting session I attended was run by Amy Webb. Amy is on the board of directors for ONA, the Online News Association. Her session was about the top 10 tech trends journalists need to know about. She was smart, funny and informative, capturing a LOT of detail in a very digestible delivery. I was entertained and informed.

It shoudl be noted that RTNDA attendance looked devestated by the economy. The exhibitors area was nearly empty. Typically, there are dozens of exhibitors and this year there was what looked like less than a dozen. The majority of the attendees appeared to be students. I saw many professionals, but the sessions were full of students.

Two things crossed my mind while listening to Amy:

(1) Why is the best session at RTNDA actually run by someone associated with ONA? What does that and the attendance say about the future of RTNDA, or ONA? A lot of my younger journalist friends have essentially given up on RTNDA and are looking to ONA for thought leadership.

(2) Listening to Amy was refreshing and a huge improvement over listening to other consultants brow-beat late-adopters in the TV industry. Most notably, Steve Safran, has smart things to say, but the delivery has become tedious. The reception by traditional journalists is typically antagonism which seems counter-productive at this point.

Survey: Search Engines Take Lead in Local Biz Search

2009-03-02T21:47:00.000-08:00

This gets filed under beating a dead horse and running it over with a truck, again. Search engines are continuing to take market share from local media, including precious local business relationships.

According to a recent TMP Directional Marketing (TMPDM), comScore study, search engines are now the "first" resource used by consumers to find local business information.

First Resource
1. Search Engines (31%)
2. Print Yellow Pages or White Pages (30%)
3. Internet Yellow Pages Sites (19%)
4. Local Search Sites (11%)

A year earlier, yellow pages were the leading local information resource at 33%.

There are conflicting reports and debates about why there are conflicting reports. With that said, let's face it, when was the last time you used the Yellow pages? I use them once a year at my parents VERY rural home in New England. Why? Because my parents have dial-up.

TV Everywhere? For Free, Maybe

2009-02-25T09:47:00.000-08:00

The cable industry is looking to head off marginalization by extending their offerings to the Web. At first, I thought it would be another failed attempt similar to how the radio industry tried and failed at a walled garden strategy. Now, I am not so sure.

The Associated Press reported last week that, "The largest cable operators are in talks with media conglomerates to take back control. They would create a platform to release cable TV shows online, but exclusively for paying subscribers. Those involved include Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc., Cox Communications Inc., Cablevision Systems Corp., General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal, News Corp., Viacom Inc. and Time Warner Inc. "

This week Advertising Age followed up with an interview of Time Warner's Jeff Bewkes.
Bewkes suggests the content would be free for exisiting subscribers.

"For 85% of U.S. households, the added access would be, essentially, free. Mr. Bewkes said he anticipates there will be a Web-only option for those who don't have pay-TV service," according to the article. That strategy may have legs depending on the details.

I should also note that I spoke with someone in the industry last week who said the back office billing would be easy for the cable companies. They already have platforms that extend to the Web easily and provide the necessary DRM to restrict access to content based on subscription status.

Another Threat to Local Media

2009-02-23T23:46:00.000-08:00

Local Media is about to lose even more of its sacred ground. ESPN is launching a local initiative. Local media companies should see this for what it is, a direct assault on them. ESPN will be in a position to take local ad dollars from local media. Local media should either partner with ESPN or get in the game and compete for those dollars with microsites and local verticals.

As the Tribune story states: "Local and hyperlocal publishers are among the most important growth areas for interactive publishing companies and the interactive ad industry," said Randall Rothenberg, chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. "There's an innovation explosion already under way in this area."

I am waiting for CNN, MSNBC and others to make a similar move.

Industry Tries to Stop Boxee

2009-02-20T21:32:00.000-08:00

I spotted this post about Boxee on Silicon Valley Insider. I downloaded Boxee just before CES. Great app. I was looking for a cheap alternative to Apple TV. After CES, it moved above on the radar for some folks in 'the industry' and they are apparently pretty unhappy about it.

By John Murrell at Silicon Valley Insider writes, "this disruption is driving the entertainment overlords into defensive positions based on arbitrary distinctions, just look at the current contretemps between Hulu and Boxee...

Boxee is media center software that makes it easy to watch online content on your television via a connected computer or device like AppleTV. Essentially, as explained by board member and investor Fred Wilson, it’s a Web browser optimized for TVs the way a mobile browser is optimized for phones....

...I’d guess Hulu had a deal to show ‘content’ on computers, and the ‘content providers’ balked when those computers started talking to their precious televisions.”

I am not sure studios can maintain this position indefinitely. They may look to DRM to prevent free access to content off their annointed platforms, but DRM isn't going to stop it for ever.

Must See Internet TV

2009-02-16T21:24:00.000-08:00

Lately, I have come to realize that how I want to consume media and information has changed. I am no longer satisfied with my current experience. For the longest time, I have been happy to check my Blackberry for email, news, etc., during the day. I could also disappear into my office to catch up with the WSJ, Ny Times and industry Web sites. Some days, I actually watch TV news or read a printed version of magazine or newspaper. But, this post isn't about how I have chosen the Internet over traditional media as my primary vehicle for information. That changed happened a long time ago for me. This is about how my Internet experience needs to move into my life more seemlessly.

My Blackberry may have been the first agent of change in my life. I love it, and not in an unhealthy, addicted, "Crackberry," can't miss a single email kind of way. I love it because I can get movie times any place, any time. I love it because I can check the stock market (As painful as it is) whenever I want. I read the NY Times almost every day now that I can read it on my Blackberry. Beyond all this, I love that I can do research, get directions, check traffic conditions, catch-up on trends, etc. I love the personal media revolution. But, there is something missing. I have gotten so used to having what I want when I want it, that I am frustrated that I can't consume original content on the Web from my couch, the kitchen, the bedroom, etc., without the use of a laptop, or Blackberry. I want a more relaxing and high-fidelity experience. I want Internet programming on my TV. But, don't confuse this with IPTV. The key to my frustration is both the content and how I experience that content. I am not looking for only professionally created entertainment or news content from a traditional media source or two. I also want to consume original Web content and content that can only be found on the Web, all from my couch.

I realized allof this a month ago when I came home and sat on the couch. I flipped through hundreds of stations on DirecTV and found nothing to watch. I realized then that what I really wanted to watch was video from the Kelsey Group's most recent conference, and SMX. The only way I could do this was to open my laptop, or go in my office. According to a recent article from the Ny Times, executives think I am an anomale. Sony and Sharp Electronics execs said it was too soon.

"'I don’t think that consumers are yet ready to access all content on the Internet on the TV,' said Bob Scaglione, senior vice president for marketing at the Sharp Electronics Marketing Company of America," according to the article.

I have to disagree. It is too soon for most people to set up a Media Center that connects to the TV, or to spend thousands of dollars on A/V installs. I am of the opinion, the ability to surf on a TV needs to be as simple as turning on the TV for mass adoption to take place.

It looks like someone may have figured that out. According to NYT, Gordon Campbell started a company called Personal Web Systems which will soon sell a simple device that enables surfing via a TV. I could not agree more with Mr. Campbell's assessment that TV manufacturers are not being genuine when they say consumers do not want full Internet access.

"This generation doesn’t want their hands tied behind their backs. They want the same experience as with a PC, and widgets don’t do that.”

According to NYT, "Campbell ... believes that consumers will eventually buy set-top boxes that get the Internet, forcing TV makers to embed chips themselves or lose the business."
“The ultimate test will be when the technology hits the market and consumers decide,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to be on the widget side when that happens.”

Widgets are narrowcasting of limited channels of content via the TV. That is the approach most TV manufacturers have embarked upon. Of course, that walled garden will come tumbling down as soon as the user/consumer figures out the content can be obtained through other means. I can tell you that 'widgets' will not satiate my desire to consume Internet content via the TV.

As Campbell says, “I wouldn’t want to be on the widget side when that happens.”

Commerce as Information, Geography for Relevance

2009-02-12T22:55:00.001-08:00

I could not be more excited to see that Adrian Holovaty has added coupons on EveryBlock. He now shows ValPak coupons on the mashups in the listings. There is a subtle importance here.

Holovaty gets the value of hyper-local. He sees the value in providing people information about their immediate community and sees the value of providing that content in the context of geography/maps. Now, he has begun to draw the important connection with commerce as information and geography for relevance. The average person does most of their living and consuming within 20 miles of their home. So, advertisements increase in value based in part on their proximity to the consumer's home.

Newspapers, who have thrived on classified revenue for decades -- more than any other media -- should see this value, but somehow continue to overlook it. TV stations appear to be oblivious as well.

N2.0 Speaks to the Future of Local

2009-02-08T21:08:00.000-08:00

I have been re-reading "Newspaper Next 2.0" and highly recommend that anyone in Local Media read it as well. There is a paragraph in the summary of the document that speaks to what I have posted previously and recommended to others repeatedly in the past five years -- Local media needs to go after SMBs if local media is going to compete with Google and Yahoo/MS. The quote:

"Progress in developing ways to open the vast "low end" of the business market -- small and medium sized enterprises -- is agonizingly slow. Although this segment represents the largest growth opportunity in local markets, newspaper companies continue to use traditional ad offerings and sals structures in their attempts to reach them, with only moderate success. Better answers are needed."

While this statement speak to newspapers, TV stations have done little or nothing to go after SMBs in any meaningful way. Now, they are going to feel the pain more than ever since local TV stations have lost billions of dollars in auto-related ad revenue. Even though local ad spendings is slowing, local media can't expect big auto money to ever return to its past heights, and so needs a local ad strategy that includes SMBs.

Hyper-Local Mashups, Quick, Easy, w/ UGC

2009-02-02T20:53:00.000-08:00

Here is a very cool tool. Someone should buy this company and integrate what is probably a very simple app, or duplicate it. It allows anyone to create a mash-up quickly and easily and it allows users to submit content to the app for display on the mashup.

It eliminates the need for a developer and increases interactivity on the site. The uses are endless. It could be used to accept user-generated crime reports, car accidents, weather events/damage, or a publisher could plot parade route information, information, etc.

Not Starting Any Rumours, but Leo at Babies R' Us?

2009-02-01T15:23:00.000-08:00

There is nothing Internet-related in this post.

I'm not starting any rumours. Just telling the facts here. My wife and I went to Babies 'R Us this weekend to return an item. This should be good for my wallet, but it never turns out this way. As usual, we returned one item and bought two more. As we are headed to the check-out we notice a tall blond guy and I tell my wife, "I almost thought that guy was Leonardo DiCaprio." As we are checking out, I looked over at the guy at the counter next to ours and again think it looked a lot a like Leo. The customer was wearing cargo shorts, a T-shirt, a black baseball cap and sunglasses inside the store. The guy looked like a college frat boy, not a star. It couldn't be him.

Then, the cashier said something to the customer and he responds, "I know. And all this stuff isn't even for my baby." Likely story. Clearly, this guy was protesting too much :-) Either way, his response sealed it. It was defenitely Leo. The voice sounded like his, even with a slight east coast accent. I signaled to my wife and she confirmed she heard it too.

At this point we chose to just let him leave the store without harassing him. In restrospect, I should have asked him to autograph my wife's baby bump. :-)

Another Step for Hyper-Local

2009-01-29T22:45:00.000-08:00

There's a lot of press about NBC Local teaming up with hyper-local platform Outside.in to offer geo-targeted content. While it allows NBC to offer geo-relevant content for its users, it appears to be a reactionary move to competitors and so limited in its implementation and vision. Even so, it signals an important shift in local media.

NBC uses a hosted widget from Outside.in. The widget delivers aggregated results provided by Outside.in. The use case is pretty limited. The user can select "neighborhoods" from a predetermined drop down and get back results. I suspect the partnership is a reaction to what is already built into a competitor's platform, and not as proactive as it may appear at first. In contrast, competitive sites such a WNYW-TV and WISH-TV on the FIM platform provides two use cases. First, the user can click on the "Map These" button on a headline list and be driven to a page where the stories are geo-tagged. From there, the user can actually pick and choose the center and zoom of the map, determining in a more democratic manner what they want to see as results. This is essentially local search via a map/geo interface. The results of the Outside.in solution is aggregated content. The results from the FIM solution are stories from the local station Web site.

Both solutions fall short in delivering some important features. FIM's solution needs to move towards aggregation of content and display of other types of content from within the host site (video, photos, UGC, etc). NBC's solution has aggregated content, but needs to also add video, photos, UGC, etc. The hyper-local strategy only works through aggregation because local TV sites do not generate enough local content professionally to make hyper-local searches return relevant and robust result sets.

Geo-advertising is also missing. This may be due to sensitivities around news. FIM offers geo-tagged advertising on the traffic maps of the host sites. This technology should be extended to the geo-tagged content. NBC is lacking geo-advertisements all together.

Ultimately, the strategy is more than just offering a *fancy* new method of navigation to the end user. This is about creating a new interface where users can get what they want, when they want it -- relevant information about their surrounding community. If one extends the metaphor to include advertising this is fertile ground. These tools give the host site the ability to connect hyper-local advertisers to hyper-local users. The users can be targeted by geography, which should command higher value. Why? Most shopping is conducted within a close proximity to home and work. It also means we know more about the user, because geography correlates with demographics. The greater the targeting the greater the value.

The fact that the NBC solution is not built into their platform could become an issue at a later stage because it will limit what they can do with the technology. For instance, if NBC wanted to add their own geo-tagged photos to weather maps, they are dependent of Outside.in and other vendors to work together. The FIM solution is part of the platform and so more pliable, lending itself to more uses across the site. Another example of a FIM implementation of geo-tagging can be found here. Weather.fox.com, the first social networking Weather site, offers a mash-up of User Generated Content.

Despite the shortcomings of both solutions, they are import steps in the right direction for local media. Local media should stop trying to compete with CNN.com and start realizing they need to defend their ground from Google. They should be focusing on local where they can differentiate themselves, engage the audience intimately, and go after local ad dollars. Local media can win locally because of the content, the relationships, and the brand loyalty.

Old Media Jumps to New Media

2009-01-23T14:12:00.000-08:00

With the economic downturn, significant layoffs in old media, and no signs of improvement, it shouldn't surprise me that I have now seen two TV News Directors make the jump to Web in the past three months. Given the economic climate and historically short careers of News Directors, they must feel like the lucky ones.

Both took Director positions with the New Media division of media companies. I won't name names, but it is interesting to finally see this happen. I know for sure that one of them had been thinking about this for more than a year. The other received a recommendation from their "agent" to make the jump.

I made the jump12 years ago after taking an "acting News Director" role at a TV station where the News Director left for a larger market. I had already taken interest in the Internet as a career. MSNBC had just launched online. I was pressing for the TV station to start publishing news online, and eventually won a small victory in this area. Local TV left me feeling empty. Except for a few people in a newsroom, I thought most of the journalism was shoddy, unimaginative, and counter-productive to informing the public in any meaningful way. Acting as News Director only drove this point home.

Six months prior to this, I bought my first personal computer from Best Buy for $1,500. I took it home, set it up on my dining table in my one-bedroom apartment. I bought a book on HTML (Creative HTML Design, by Lynda Weinman) and a book on Photoshop. Each night and each weekend, barring breaking news, I would crack a beer and sit down at that computer. The simplest of concepts, such as FTP, were difficult at first. It took me several weeks to successfully publish anything. Eventually, I took my thesis from college and published it as a multi-page Web site. It was after that I started sending out resumes.

I was ignored or turned down for job after job. After ~ 8 months, I finally got a call. A TV station in the midwest needed a content manager for a Web site startup. I jumped at the job. I would manage 4 editors and get paid $1,000 less a year than I was already making. While this was a far cry from managing 30 people in a newsroom, it was a lateral move. Everyone was under 30 years old except the graphic artist. I was one of the lucky ones.

For me, it was an easy decision. My career was young. I was young. The Internet was young. I was able to help shape something new, in an industry that had few if any well-defined roles, policies or precedures. In all of these respects, it was everything local TV was not.

If I were a seasoned News Director now, with 20+ years of local TV experience, I don't know how this move would feel. I suspect that in their own way, they feel like one of the lucky ones.

SpotMixer Should Shed Light on Lost Opportunity

2009-01-15T14:34:00.000-08:00

SpotMixer aquisition should connect the dots for local media. They should now see AdSense for content for what it is -- a Trojan horse.

Google has been positioned (first through adsense, then through radio advertising, now spot mixer, etc.) to own local ad spend. Meanwhile, TV and Newspapers have been helping Google (running adsense on their sites, sales partnerhsips) build relationships with local businesses. Every time a company signs up for adsense with a $50-$500 account, it is a new relationship for Google and a lost relationship for local media.

Local Media was focused on one or two $20MM deals with auto makers to support the core. They ignored the florist who has $500 to spend. They were winning a sprint but losing a marathon. In the end, it is a missed opportunity for local media, particularly newspapers.

Big Media Held Hostage by Stockholders/Stakeholders

2006-02-02T08:07:00.000-08:00

I recently responded to a post about how Google is stealing local advertisers out from under big media, and that big media is helping Google do it - via AdSense. Then it hit me, stockholders are holding big media hostage. Big media can't make the necessary changes to address the changing landscape, because they are constantly measured by standards set by stockholders.

Here's my train of thought -- Google's acquisition of dMarc Broadcasting will allow the company to replicate its AdSense model on radio, and if it works, I suspect they will later expand to TV. I also suspect the implementation for radio and eventually TV will resemble something similar to SpotRunner.com (but with peer-to-peer production). At issue, Google is going to establish more relationships with small local businesses, while broadcasters focus on big fish. Why? Because CEOs in these major media companies (except a few) are too consumed with issues in front of them (stockholders, margin, etc.) to understand, or react to this. It's like trying to turn the Titanic by committee. As CEO you may be captain, but you have to make sure everyone on board is OK with the move, or suffer the consequences. So, I bet big media (most, not all) will continue to let Google run AdSense ads on their sites (because it is free money), and will soon begin doing the same with their broadcast signals (because it is free money).

SpotRunner Worthy of Buzz - Harder Look

2006-02-02T07:33:00.000-08:00

There's been a huge buzz around Spotrunner in thr broadcast industry, but most people miss the mark on the opportunity. The SpotRunner model could open the door to millions of dollars in new revenue for TV stations. What’s more, the existing model could potentially be extended to actually improve the efficiency of the production model, increase profits, and take money away from Google, which is making forays into our local markets.

A brief market analysis shows that the TV industry is suffering from squeezed margins. Advertisers are moving money to new platforms, including the Internet. Meanwhile, Google is taking money out of the pocket of local TV stations and newspapers. Google Adsense allows very small businesses in the local markets to purchase advertising simply and cheaply. What is most egregious is that many TV and newspaper Web sites run the Google ads on their sites, which actually helps Google build relationships with local businesses and take money out of the market. As a result, Google took millions of dollars out of local markets in 2005. SpotRunner’s business and production model sheds light on how local TV stations might fight back, using Google’s strategy against Google.

Currently, SpotRunner allows anyone – including very small businesses -- to create and air a TV ad for a fraction of what it would cost to hire an advertising agency and production house. The business simply chooses generic ads from an online database and customizes it with a company logo, a new voiceover or some different images. As a result, businesses that normally could not afford to buy on-air schedules can now do so. Stations benefit by (1) getting revenue from local businesses that normally do not spend money on-air, and (2) developing personal relationships with new local businesses.

The model could be improved to (1) increase efficiency, (2) offer a differentiated product, (3) find new money in the market and (4) combat Google’s forays into local markets. Here’s how:
1. Open video production to peer networks. Similar to how Grab.com allows users to develop/create and share games, offer a solution or service that allows users to create generic spots (based on set standards) and offer them to other users. Producers of spots get a nominal royalty every time someone uses their generic spot.
2. Allow businesses to purchase on-air schedules as well as online schedules for their spots. Similar to Google ads, but it uses video, this allows small businesses to get an online and on-air presence and do so with moving video, the most compelling of formats.
3. If TV stations were to implement a similar technology and strategy, it would allow TV stations to recapture ad dollars from small local businesses currently going to Google and Yahoo and recapture relationships with those businesses.

StreamingMedia.com - Missing the Point

2006-02-02T07:04:00.000-08:00

Dan Rayburn with Streaming Media.com bashes Google’s new Video Store for having "clips from the NBA and CBS—right along with clips containing graphic sexual content and violence that appears to violate the company’s own video program policies. The end result? An embarrassment to the entire industry." Exploitation and criminal acts are no joke and should be dealt with by Google. With that said, these complaints sound more typical of an 'old media' player upset that Google is ignoring “the rules.” It sounds like Google wants the community to self-police as much as possible. This would be consistent with their strategies, and the successful strategies of Web sites such as MySpace (check their ‘content’ out sometime). What’s more, Dan is way off base about the potential for this product. Dan says "The real potential of the Video Store lies in offering mainstream content that people are actually willing to pay for." I’m certain Google has greater aspirations than to become an on-demand video jukebox for "mainstream" media. Think bigger Dan.