ATTN: MediaPace moves to WordPress!

ABM's blog, MediaPace, has moved to WordPress!

To visit our new blog site, click here. This website will not be updated.

Dealing with disaster: A contingency plan

Hurricane Sandy walloped the media world last week, striking at the height of event season and forcing office shutdowns and many trade shows to cancel or postpone (such as Folio:’s rebranded MediaNext show). Many offices closed for much of the week.

The ability to work remotely prevented Sandy from causing a complete shutdown, with edit, sales, operations, etc. able to connect with customers and co-workers thanks to cloud-based systems and mobile devices (SourceMedia, headquartered below Wall Street in lower Manhattan, continues to operate remotely).

Many media organizations were able to provide live coverage of the storm, as well as their usual beats, through social media and alternate channels.  eMedia Vitals notes that Hurricane Sandy may have validated Instagram, with users posting more than 10 pictures per second at the height of the storm, and major media brands such as Time  curating an Instagram slideshow from photographers witnessing the storm. The Wall Street Journal created a live stream of Sandy coverage, including compilations of tweets, photos, slideshows, blogs and wire and staff reports. 

Could paywalls work for b-to-b?

One of the biggest publishing topics of the week was the surprising news that paywalls do work -- for newspapers at least. Gannett reported that digital revenues at its local domestic publishing operations increased 76 percent due to its content subscription model. The New York Times reported 12 percent increase in paying digital subscribers.

The idea behind the paywall is that with everyone now being a publisher (brands, bloggers, social media fanatics), newspapers and other publications bring something different to the table: we have trained journalists (with a J-school background), and our quality of work is better. We are established and credible, and according to a recent study by Knowledge Networks, more Americans turn to established media to get the in-depth story on breaking news. So why shouldn't readers pay?

With this thought, many other newspapers are following suit, including the Chicago Tribune and The Globe and Mail. So, could this apply to b-to-b? We have trained journalists. We value high-quality journalism. Our readers want our work. The short answer? Perhaps, but not the Gannett way. The long answer? Give away the news and charge for commentary and community.

While it is a noble point of view --  a view that believes good, quality journalism should be able to sustain a business; that content is not only king, but a dictator; that if readers want it, they will pay -- it's not the way publishing works these days. In fact, one of the first decisions Penske Media made after its Variety acquisition, was to drop the paywall (reports say employees cheered).

Grading b-to-b newsletter performance: Many fall short on enterprise, link usage, end-user input

by Howard Rauch
President
Editorial Solutions Inc.

Most b-to-b e-news articles easily earn passing grades when evaluated on the basis of addressing high-impact topics, but once past that high point, delivery slides downhill. The biggest snag is absence of enterprise.  And when it comes to basic execution, link usage and end-user input appear to be elusive qualities. 

These observations continue to be confirmed in e-news studies conducted by Editorial Solutions Inc. The initial project, launched two years ago, examined collective delivery of 446 articles by 50 b-to-b sites.  Phase II -- another 50- site review covering 580 articles -- was completed early last year. Phase III is just past the review mid-point with 26 sites having been examined.  Even at this stage, need for improvement is clearly reflected. 

Project methodology calls for examining at least 10 e-news articles posted on the review date -- usually tied to publication of a weekly or daily newsletter. Scoring considers execution of eight factors: (1) impact; (2) evidence of enterprise; (3) direct quote presence; (4) fast-paced intro; (5) Fog Index grade level; (6) average sentence length; (7) word count; and (8) embedded link usage.

So far in Phase III, of the 260 articles posted by 26 sites, 139, that is 51.2 percent, miss the boat on enterprise.  “Evidence” reflects the desire of article authors to go beyond routine announcements. In their articles, writers point out that information was obtained during a telephone interview or e-mail exchange. Of the 1,026 articles collectively assessed during Phase I and Phase II reviews, 66 percent reflected no enterprise.  Especially bothersome were those articles where editors took bylines on obvious press release rewrites.

Platforms are irrelevant. What do customers really want?

Today in media, it’s all about the audience. Audience data leads to audience understanding which leads to audience relationships, which ultimately leads to profits (ABM’s Spring Conference focused on “The Customer-Driven Future,” and in his five points on how b-to-b companies can discover their “why,” ABM CEO Clark Pettit said, “All roads lead to data—any interaction with customers should be about getting further information about what that customer wants and needs”).  

B-to-B (and most media, really) has historically been guilty of building a product, then trying to find an audience to sell that product to. Unlike many of the magic bullets that all media has embraced as the next quick-fix (digital advertising, user-generated content, marketing services, etc.), the “audience” phenomenon is important because it isn’t a product or a platform—it’s the path to real solutions. Just because your product is sold over iTunes rather than the corner newsstand doesn’t automatically make it more valuable. What does your app offer—the same old content in a new package or actionable solutions when customers need it? 

Selling audience over product: How Advanstar solved the database riddle to drive new revenue

by Ronda Hughes
Director of Audience Data
Advanstar Communications Inc.

Close to a year ago, our leadership team gathered to try to understand how to become more efficient and effective internal marketers and how to obtain more revenue from our audience databases.  It was with great excitement (and fear) that we realized we had two issues on our hands: 1) We needed to figure out how to consolidate our disparate databases into a single consensus file, and 2) Once we had a single consensus file, we had to actually use all the data to grow internal leads and at the same time grow revenue!

It didn’t take long before we discovered that our audience databases were all over the place. We had six separate databases housing our publication, conference, e-newsletter, webinar, website and whitepaper customers. From a data management perspective, we didn’t have the internal technical resources available to pull this all together. On the sales side, our message was very “product-centric” as opposed to being “audience- or brand-centric,” so there was a learning curve we needed to climb if we wanted to grow a new revenue stream once this system was up and running. After a review of third-party solutions, we chose to partner with Knowledge Marketing and leverage their Audience Management System to tackle our database problems head on.

Challenge #1: Consolidate our disparate databases into a single useful system

Our vision was that the consensus database would integrate all of our audience members’ demographic, contextual and behavioral information into a single record that would be updated in real time according to individual member interactions. The database would contain unlimited details of individual member dimensions, and incorporate the millions of touch points across all channels of engagement where data is available (such as print, website, digital, e-products, events, social media and email). Equally as important, the database needed to be structured in a way that would allow for real time, detailed segmentation, delivering “merge/purge on the fly,” in collaboration between sales and select clients. It needed to be very user friendly with a clean user interface, NOT an application built for programmers and analysts only. Additionally, I must add that time was of the essence as I was only given 90 days to have this database up and operational.

Result: Fully operational in two months!

The size of the technology industry in b-to-b media

An ABM member recently asked me for some data on the size of the technology vertical in b-to-b media. Getting a handle on the size of the industry is a part of the ABM mission for metrics. We’ve worked on that through our Business Information Network (BIN) Report for years. Using that data, here is a look at how the tech industry breaks out.

Print Data

ABM’s partner for print b-to-b ad spending is IMS, and the data they give is divided into 22 categories. Historical data for five tech-related areas is given below. Over the last five years, all of these categories have declined in size: science publications, the smallest category, declined 16 percent over five years; computing and telecom, the largest, declined 65 percent. That’s using data as it was originally released, unrevised, and also not adjusted for inflation. With inflation added in, the drops would have been somewhat more dramatic.

Although the historical trend is interesting, the goal is to get a sense of the size of the tech b-to-b market as it stands now. Here are the last two years of data used to create the graph above, in table form, in millions of dollars:

	2012	2011
Science, Research & Development	$132.9	$133.3
Aviation, Aerospace & Military	$140.6	$156.4
Electronic Engineering	$171.7	$179.3
Building, Engineering, Construction	$384.5	$411.6
Computing, Software, Telecomm	$279.0	$358.8
Total Tech	$1,108.7	$1,239.3

Note that the 2012 data is a forecast created by ABM based on first half data. The forecast does not come from IMS.

Digital Data

The digital component of the BIN Report is primarily derived by ABM from data released in IAB’s  Internet Ad Revenue Report, which divides the b-to-b marketplace into 10 categories, two of them tech related: Computing Products and Telecommunications. The IAB report lumps consumer and b-to-b revenue together, and adds in large search engines such as Google, that, in my opinion, operate on a very different business model than the b-to-b model. Using IMS data on print consumer vs b-to-b spending, I broke out the portion of IAB’s reported tech spend that covers b-to-b,m excluding consumer and search engine revenue.

For 2011, I estimate that the two segments generated b-to-b media income of $288.6 million for Computing and $431.1 million for Telecom.

Print and Digital

The digital total includes a lot more than just display-related advertising; it covers Classifieds and Directories, Lead Generation, Email and Mobile as well. I used the ratios reported by IAB for all digital spending and applied them to just the two telecom segments. Putting Computing and Telecom together lets me compare the data with the Telecom, Computing and Software category from IMS. For 2011, the result looks like this:

		B-to-B Tech* Media Industry
		2011 Revenue ($mil)	% of total
Print	Print Advertising	$179.27	19.9%
Digital	Classifieds and Directories	$109.44	12.2%
	Lead Generation	$64.56	7.2%
	E-mail	$9.04	1.0%
	Mobile	$67.70	7.5%
	Digital Video Commercials	$76.74	8.5%
	Ad banners / display ads	$288.92	32.1%
	Sponsorships	$47.55	5.3%
	Rich media	$55.78	6.2%
	Total Tech Market	$899.01	100.0%

*”Tech” here refers to Computing, Software, and Telecom.

Here’s a visual look at this data:

Note that this data is several estimates away from its source. It is based on an estimate of the part of the industry that is b-to-b vs consumer. It assumes that the breakdown of digital revenue in tech is the same as the breakdown more generally across all categories.

Conferences, Trade Shows, Events

I also have no idea how big the tech event business is, but the good folks at CEIR sure do. They have a report on the subject that looks comprehensive, called “The CEIR Index Report: An Analysis of the 2011 Exhibition Industry – Communications and Information Technology Sector (IT).” But the data is unfortunately locked away behind a paywall.

By Michael Moran Alterio

What metrics can tell you about your readers

The publishing industry is struggling to measure social media ROI. There are a wealth of metric tools  -- from simple services that measure click rates to more advanced listening platforms that monitor brand mentions -- but just what should you measure? Is it followers? Click rates? Shares? The starting point is pinpointing your goal.

According to a recent study conducted by social marketing company Awareness, 78 percent of U.S. social media marketers use social media to increase customer engagement (which is often called a "soft metric"). To evaluate their effectiveness, 96 percent of respondents said they count fans and followers, 89 percent said they monitor socially-referred site traffic and 84 percent measure social mentions across platforms.

But, how do you know that a reader is truly engaged with you content? Josh Gordon’s research suggests social media is great for reaching existing customers but not new ones.  Additionally, a large following doesn't necessarily mean a large readership, and a post's high click rate isn't proof of reader satisfaction.

A successful social media strategy is dependent on refining and defining company or brand goals. By taking a look at your current metrics, you can unravel the missing keys to your social media plan. Here are some common social media actions, what they tell you about your readers and how you can capitalize:

Number of followers/fans/subscribers: A high number can indicated high brand awareness or expertise. You may be well-known in your industry, or your topic or choice may be appealing. A high following increases the chance of having a high readership.

Status likes: Take this as a virtual applause. Readers are indicating they like the topic or message.
A high number of "thumbs ups" may be a chance to explore the topic further.

Comments and replies: Your post is spurring a discussion. The chatter may not be all positive, but you're creating a buzz. Survey the comments and see what readers are saying -- this could be key to creating your reader profile.

Retweets, shares and repins: You are posting unique content relevant to that person and his or her network. Take at look at the most shared posts and any associated comments.

Reach/amplification: This is your fans' network and easy leads for new prospective readers. If you impress fans and earn shares, you reach could potentially become your own network.

Mentions, hits and 'talking about this': A buzz about your brand is being created. This could indicate a popular story or news announcement that has the potential to go viral.

Socially referred traffic: Fans are intrigued by a post enough to want to know more. Many metric tools can measure traffic numbers of not only your own social media posts, but other websites and social profiles.

By Elizabeth A. Reid

Pulling back the curtain on ABM's BIN Report

In March, ABM reported that total media industry revenue from digital advertising was $6,352 million in 2011. A few days ago, ABM reported that the digital total for 2011 was actually $3,557 million. A 44 percent drop is quite a revision! Why did ABM change its reporting for digital ad revenue so drastically?

Well, first off, it’s me, Mike Alterio, who made the revisions, and it seems a little funny to speak of myself as “ABM” in the third person. So for this blog post, do let’s ignore the “great and powerful” title of Research and Content Director and instead pay attention to the little guy behind the curtain (me), and especially to the the levers and switches I usually play with out of view.

When I joined ABM at the start of the year, I learned that the data from three of the four revenue components of the BIN Report came directly from our partners at CEIR (for events), IMS (for print advertising) and Outsell (for data). The digital advertising numbers, I was told, use publicly available data from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB). However, IAB reports TOTAL digital ad revenue, and does not break out a business-to-business component. I learned that our methodology was to multiply the IAB total by 20 percent to calculate the amount spent on b-to-b advertising.

“20 percent?” I asked. “Why 20 percent?” Due to some staff turnover (a familiar result of the Great Recession), no one currently at ABM had an answer. The 20 percent figure seemed kind of arbitrary to me, to be frank. But for the year-end 2011 report, I went with it, as reported in March. Since then, I’ve taken a deeper dive.

IAB puts out a richly detailed Advertising Revenue Report, compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers. That’s where we’ve been finding our data on digital revenue. This report breaks the digital stream into a number of sub-components, which IAB refers to as “advertising formats”: display advertising, sponsorship, email, search, lead generation, classifieds and auctions, rich media, digital video and mobile advertising. For more on these formats, check out the appendix on page 22 of this PDF. IAB breaks out separate revenue figures for each of these advertising formats.

There’s a case to be made that b-to-b media companies are using all of these formats – except one. In my opinion, the “search” category is not a significant driver of revenue in b-to-b. Take a closer look at IAB’s definition for search:

Fees advertisers pay internet companies to list and/or link their company site domain name to a specific search word or phrase (includes paid search revenues). Search categories include:

• Paid listings—text links appear at the top or side of search results for specific keywords. The more a marketer pays, the higher the position it gets. Marketers only pay when a user clicks on the text link.

• Contextual search—text links appear in an article based on the context of the content, instead of a user-submitted keyword. Payment only occurs when the link is clicked.

• Paid inclusion—guarantees that a marketer’s URL is indexed by a search engine. The listing is determined by the engine's search algorithms.

• Site optimization—modifies a site to make it easier for search engines to automatically index the site and hopefully result in better placement in results.

Pretty clearly, this category applies to the Googles of the world. We’re talking about big search engines, programs like Google’s AdWords, and so on. I just do not see this being a significant source of revenue in the b-to-b media advertising landscape. I took the IAB totals and subtracted out the search advertising format.

However, search is a huge part of the IAB calculations. According to the IAB, search is actually the largest advertising format! Since the first quarter of 2010, for example, search has made up no less than 43 percent of ALL digital advertising, and has ranged as high as 48 percent. The next biggest category, ad banners and display ads, has never gotten higher than 24 percent of the total.

So removing search makes the remaining total for all digital advertising much smaller. And from that pool, only a fraction goes to b-to-b media advertising. But what fraction? For some reason, I was told to go with 20 percent. Well, I was not satisfied with that, so I looked for more authoritative numbers.

As it turns out, ABM’s partners at IMS not only deliver b-to-b magazine advertising totals, they also calculate consumer advertising totals. They do this by subscribing to just about every magazine in America, counting the ad space in every issue, and calculating the dollar value of that advertising. Add up all those ad dollars and you get data on total revenue from print advertising – total overall, which is the sum of consumer and b-to-b.

I was able to compare the total revenue for all print magazines to the total for b-to-b. Here is what I found. In the first half of 2012, b-to-b advertising was 22.3 percent of the total. Going back over earlier six-month periods, the numbers were 20.5 percent, 21.5 percent, and 19.5 percent.

“Huh!” I said to myself. “That 20 percent number is not too far off after all.”

So I made a leap. If we assume the marketers of America are putting the same percent of their advertising dollars into b-to-b print ads as they are into b-to-b digital ads, then I can take that percentage, apply it to the non-search revenue figure from IAB, and create data for total b-to-b digital ad revenue for the industry.

Finally, the IAB has not released its figures for the full first half of 2012 – just the first quarter. So I had to make a projection to cover the gap, until the 2Q figures are released next month.

And that’s how I calculated my revised numbers: $12,490 for the industry total revenues in the first six months of this year, 15.6 percent of that, or $1,942, in digital Internet advertising. For more on the actual totals in the most recent BIN Report, click to read my news article on the topic.

By Michael Moran Alterio

Survey shows consumers are concerned with mobile app information use

Mark Sableman is ABM's information policy counsel.

As regulators in Washington focus on mobile device privacy, a recent study shows that mobile device users are surprisingly aware of mobile privacy concerns, and fairly proactive in protecting their own privacy.

The study, by the Pew Internet Project, titled “Mobile Privacy and Data Management,” released September 5, reported that among the 43 percent of cell phone users who download apps for their phones, more than half proactively take steps to prevent sharing of their personal information with app developers. Specifically, 54 percent of app users have decided not to install a cell phone app when they discovered how much personal information they would need to share in order to use it, and 30 percent of app users have uninstalled apps after learning how much personal information they collected. In total, 57 percent of app users either uninstalled or declined to install apps because of privacy concerns.

These practices applied pretty much across demographic lines. Although young users were more likely than older ones to use apps, “users of all ages are equally likely to remove (or to avoid downloading) an app based on privacy concerns,” the report noted. And practices were similar for iPhone and Android users as well.

Three different federal government agencies (the Federal Trade Commission, the Commerce Department and the Federal Communications Commission), as well as California’s Attorney General, have targeted mobile app privacy as one of their top concerns. The Commerce Department picked mobile app privacy as the start-off topic for its “multi-stakeholder process” for developing privacy guidelines, for example. (ABM has been participating in that process through its lobbyist, Tom Carpenter of Wexler & Walker.) 

Regulators have focused on two key concerns with mobile apps –- first, whether consumers really understand the sometimes lengthy and legalistic disclosures made about app developers’ information-collection practices, and second, whether collection of geo-location data (information about the user’s geographical location when he or she uses his device and its apps) violates privacy concerns. As the report noted, “Mobile devices store a wide array of personal (and potentially sensitive) data, from detailed search and browsing histories to up-to-the-minute information about one’s location or movements.”

At this point, it is unclear how the study findings might influence regulators. One could conclude that consumers are already well aware of privacy concerns, and making considered personal choices about sharing their personal and geo-location information with app developers -— thus suggesting that the marketplace is working. Alternatively regulators may argue that because the survey shows knowledgeable consumers cutting off information sharing, all consumers should be protected by requiring that data collection be turned off by default (i.e., an “opt-in” regime).

Mobile app privacy concerns arise in both b-to-c and b-to-b contexts. As the Pew report notes, “As nearly one-fifth of cell users (17 percent) use their cell phone for most of their online browsing, privacy and data management on mobile devices is increasingly emerging as a contested arena for policymakers, industry leaders and the public.” ABM’s Government Affairs Committee is actively examining mobile app privacy issues.

By Mark Sableman