in Journalism and Mass Communication
By Liana B. Baker and Yinka Adegoke on Reuters, June 12 –
DirecTV Group (DTV.O), the largest U.S. satellite TV operator, could deploy technology that would enable its millions of subscribers to automatically skip television advertising, its top executive said on Monday.
Mike White, chief executive of DirecTV, said his company bought rights to the technology from a company called Replay TV nearly five years ago but has not seen any need to make it available to customers.
The FCC is set to vote tomorrow on whether or not TV stations will have to post political ad information online. To get the word out about this, Bill Moyers asked journalism professors and students to visit local television stations and gather information on political ad funding. Moyers recently posted on his site:
“Two intrepid journalism students from Kent State — Megan Closser and Shanice Dunning — took me up on my challenge to visit their local TV stations and uncover data behind the political ads they run. Naturally, they took their cameras, but faced a surprising amount of resistance to using them.”
You can view the request Moyers made on his show below. You can also view the video Kent State students made about their trip to four local television station here: http://billmoyers.com/2012/04/24/ohio-journalism-students-answer-call-to-uncover-political-ad-data/
By Matt Creamer on AdAge, April 16 –
That I live in a city (New York) where 54% of residents are car-free means chances are good that I don’t own a vehicle. The odds increase with my address in Manhattan, a borough where by some counts about 75% go without wheels, and positively soar in my parking spot-desolate ZIP code.
The author sees lots of TV ads for cars — in Manhattan.
So it’s a safe bet that all the auto ads dominating commercial pods I see nightly aren’t safe bets at all. Despite being nowhere near a sales funnel that might eventually deposit me behind the wheel, I am besieged by car and car-related pitches. I see Lincoln pitchman John Slattery more often than I see my friends, and the Jay-Z flourish announcing that Chrysler 300 spot loops endlessly in my mind. Don’t even get me started on Progressive ‘s Flo and the Geico Gecko.
By Joe Mandese on MediaPost, March 14 –
“Advertising executives -– both marketers and their agency representatives -– continue to increase their optimism toward digital media options, and are beginning to swing toward it as more of a “branding” than a performance “option,” but there are some significant disconnects between the way they look at various digital media silos. While agency executives tend to be far more bullish on the overall use of digital media, marketers are much more optimistic about budgeting for social media.”
The Chaos Scenario: Amid the Ruins of Mass Media, the Choice for Business Is Stark: Listen or Perish. Bob Garfield. Nashville, TN: Stielstra Publishing, 2009. 306 pp.
One of the popular debates about the Internet and related digital technologies is whether they represent an evolutionary change or a revolutionary one. It is fairly easy to argue for the former position, since fundamentally all that the Internet does is to lower the cost of transmitting information. However, it is much more fun to argue for the latter view, and Bob Garfield is clearly in this second camp.
In The Chaos Scenario, Garfield uses a mix of colorful language and well-chosen examples to argue that the so-called digital revolution “isn’t just some news-magazine cover headline. It’s an actual revolution, yielding revolutionary changes, thousands or millions of victims and an entirely new way of life.” The principle implication of this shift is a fundamental undermining of most existing business models for media firms — Garfield envisions the end of traditional advertising agencies, newspapers and other traditional news organizations, and most network television programming.
Ken Doctor wrote this article about the economics of the newspaper industry and the discussion of what business model will work for the industry. He says that newspapers were covering a lot stories of their own demise until they realized that may not have been a smart move.
After speaking with some people in the industry, he found that although newspaper companies may not know what the next step is, they know that following the same path they’ve been on in the past is not the way to go. Venturing out into uncharted territories means trying things like paywall content, digital readers, etc.
“It has been 20 quarters since the U.S. newspaper industry experienced a quarter’s performance that was better than that same quarter a year earlier. It was way back in the second quarter of 2006 that the industry last experienced growth.”
Peter Barron, Google executive and former BBC journalist, said in a recent post that journalism’s woes were not due to Google and its news page. He says that the problems facing journalism would exist whether or not Google existed and says that Google isn’t stealing advertising away from journalism. You can read his blog post here.
From Sam Gustin at Wired on March 29 - Here’s a real shocker that I know you’ll find hard to believe: television is the most popular medium in the United States.
That’s why brand advertisers continue to pour more marketing dollars into TV ad campaigns than print, radio or the internet. According to eMarketer, TV ad spending grew a robust 9.7 percent in 2010 as the economy started to rebound from the recession. Read more
PaidContent has compiled a list of the 50 most successful digital companies in the United States. You can view the full list here. The list is based of off digital sales, and by admission of PaidContent, some intelligent guesswork when data wasn’t available. Their definition of a digital company was a company that makes money directly from sales of online content or online advertising.
Check out their list and let us know if you agree with it. Read More
This week the Institute for Advertising Ethics published their Principles and Practices for Advertising Ethics (available for download). The paper lays out eight main principles that advertisers should follow when presenting information to consumers. With all the changes to technology and media, the paper says that:
The one constant is transparency, and the need to conduct ourselves, our businesses, and our relationships with consumers in a fair, honest and forthright manner.
It goes on to say that the need for transparency is needed more than ever because consumer trust in advertising institutions is eroding. You can view the press release here or download the paper.
