Post Source: Is That a Local Radio Station EPG in Your iPhone or iPod Nano? from Digital Strategies for Broadcasting, BIA/Kelsey

The post Is That a Local Radio Station EPG in Your iPhone or iPod Nano? appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Today marks the last day that AOL will have a corporate connection to Time Warner, as the two companies officially separate on Dec. 10 and a new AOL emerges on the New York Stock Exchange as a separate company.

Over the past several weeks, AOL has been aggressively moving to put the merger with Time Warner behind it. To accomplish this AOL has partnered with Wolff Olins, a brand management consulting firm, to give the company a more creative image — one with expression. Though the official transfer of AOL’s logo occurs tomorrow, the new imagery was unveiled last month (click here to see AOL’s new brand identity video), and demonstrates that the company is setting out on a course to redefine itself as more of a unique media and global Web services company.

As part of this process, AOL has announced layoffs of roughly 2,500 employees across all its divisions, and began hiring more journalists and media professionals to help build staff for its new content management platform and media properties.

One such hire occurred yesterday as Saul Hansell, a technology reporter and editor for The New York Times, joined AOL’s Seed. Hansell will be the programming director of the site and work to leverage Seed’s content throughout AOL’s media platforms. Seed, which is a platform for freelance journalists, photographers and videographers, is designed to give AOL’s media properties more of an edge in displaying fresh and dynamic content — as opposed to relying on just internal staff to cover content production for all its units. Seed has a few thousand freelancers and determines payment terms and edits content.

More information about AOL’s coming independence is expected over the coming days. Many industry observers will be watching Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong, who is speaking this afternoon at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference at 12 p.m. Eastern.  AOL is providing an audio webcast online at http://ir.aol.com. According to AOL, to listen to the live webcast, go to: http://ir.aol.com and click on the “UBS Global Media and Communications Conference” link under “Events and Presentations.”  AOL urges people to visit the site 15 minutes prior to ensure you can register and download any applicable software prior to Armstrong’s remarks.

The post AOL Set to Stand on Own and Unveil New Identity appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Blyk is a free mobile operator targeting young people (ages 16 to 24) and funded by advertising. Brands pay Blyk to help them reach their target audiences while users get interesting messages, cool stuff, free texts and voice minutes. Users receive six SMS/MMS per day in exchange for 217 texts and 43 minutes of voice calls each month.  Accounts can be topped up once the free usage runs out with standard mobile usage fees.

The company was founded in 2006 by former president of Nokia phones Pekka Ala-Pietilä and award-winning film producer Antti Öhrling. Blyk entered the U.K. in mid-2007 and by April 2008 had already reached more than 100,000 members. The company plans to go pan-European in 2009 potentially reaching 40 million young consumers.

A couple of presentations touched on some interesting case studies that gave national marketers some compelling reasons to look twice at this emerging mobile platform.  Executions ranging from straight promotion to previews on ads before they air on TV and books before they’re released show the broad utility of this type of opt-in platform. The level of engagement gained through the transparent relationship between Blyk and its users creates a number of opportunities for advertisers to gain valuable insight into the elusive 16- to 24-year-old market.

From an affinity and subcategory targeting standpoint, the model is unique in its depth and breadth. New members go through a lengthy registration process that includes a detailed questionnaire. The objective is to create highly relevant matches with potential advertisers to create an optimal user experience. The transparency of the interaction is what drives the users to share more personal data than even social networks are able to get a grip on.

One presentation showed some interesting McKinsey research that indicated a 26 percent lift in mobile advertising acceptance among consumers if there was a reward attached to it. For cash-strapped 16- to 24-year-olds, it’s known that a phone registers highly in the reward category. In a case study presented by Janet Kestin, co-chief creative officer at Ogilvy & Mather, a community of Blyk users were asked if they were OK with the advertising in exchange for phone usage. Seventy-one percent of those users responded that they were “cool” with it as long as it was relevant to their lives.

Big national brands like Boots, Penguin Publishing and L’Oreal that have experimented with the platform have seen tremendous results with average clickthrough rates of 29 percent (ranges between 12 percent and 43 percent). Not bad, since the mobile advertising average clickthrough rate hovers around 3 percent to 6 percent.

Blyk is a great example of a phone company that is thinking like a media company. Check this link for some innovative campaigns that have already been executed on Blyk’s network. Some of them clearly demonstrate how this platform could turn up serious volume and innovation on mobile marketing.

With the addition of coupons and GPS targeting, a whole new opt-in local media channel targeting 16- to 24-year-olds emerges.

The post Blyk’s Deep Opt-In Mobile Model appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

A recurring theme over the past two days of the conference was the effectiveness of reaching small-business owners during times of major disruption. Two examples of those disruptive hot spots were times of significant growth and, conversely, times of declined cash flow profitability.

During economic downturns, small-business owners are focused on the following:

1. Increased productivity
2. Tools to more effectively market their business

The 2008 Warrillow survey revealed that the top trusted sources of pre-purchase information for small-business owners break down as follows:

As a result of the strength in word of mouth (48 percent), there was a lot of content around the use of social networking and the importance of finding influencers and brand advocates. Visa’s partnership with Facebook (new small-business card acquisitions were rewarded with $100 credit toward advertising with Facebook) and their development of a small-business community residing on the Facebook platform was highlighted as a great example of how to monetize the SMB social graph.

Another deep area of focus was ratings and reviews. With 35 percent of SMBs placing their trust in this source of information, it makes a lot of sense to capitalize on positive reviews when they’re generated. An emerging trend is the use of reviews as content for search engine marketing campaigns. Buying keywords and developing ad messages around positive reviews is one way to leverage this growing spring of trusted content.

Finally, there was an emphasis on the time-crunched nature of the SMB owners and the importance of communicating effectively — for example, limiting BlackBerry e-mails to 90 characters as this represents one screen, and using terms that resonate with them and their business problems as opposed to using industry jargon.

Two days of laser focus on the needs of the SMB market made it clear there are tremendous opportunities emerging to reach this elusive target. The combined effect of the proliferation of diverse media vehicles available through Web 2.0 and today’s disruptive economic environment brings this segment closer into reach than ever.

The post Reaching the Canadian SMB Market During Economic Instability appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Partnerships include CBS, MTV Networks, ESPN, the BBC, Channel Four, ITN, Yahoo! and BSkyB, as well as emerging media companies like Music Nation, Next New Networks, Crackle, Ustream, Last.fm and JibJab.

The launch of OpenMedia allows users to create libraries of their favorite content. Users can then rate, post and forward it to friends.

As audiences have started to demand higher quality programming online, this move will satisfy the crowds while providing partners with an opportunity to reclaim their fragmented audiences.

With regard to advertising, many brands look to align themselves with premium content especially when trying to reach the elusive teen (Bebo attracts the 13- to 24-year-old target audience). This move will make it easier for major national brands to make the leap toward advertising on the social network.

Interestingly, the partners will not be charged for access to the platform and are able to distribute their content using their own video players, which can carry their own advertising and allow them to retain 100 percent of the related ad revenues.

The post Bebo Provides Mainstream Content — Attracts Big Brands appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Globeandmail.com launched its “Comments on Every Article” feature in September 2005. Frame explained that the motivation behind allowing readers to leave comments on all articles was to leverage its unique audience, which skews to readers with higher education and income.

The biggest challenge was managing the volume of comments that were submitted on an hourly basis. As the volume of comments increased steadily, the quality of the comments started to deteriorate. Frame pointed out that it was critical to monitor the comments to ensure that the site’s brand was not compromised by poor content from its own readers. Eventually a tiered approach was implemented whereby articles were separated into three buckets — closed (no comments), semi-moderated and fully moderated. This approach has made marked improvements but Frame said “comments are becoming standard across all newspapers and now we are focusing on developing a higher level of sophistication.”

In terms of sophistication, Frame alluded to the focus on building relationships between journalists and readers and readers and readers. Adding persona pages for users who comment and the ability to rate comments were two enhancements that were definitely in the mix.

Some fun stats:

• In the first month of launching the comments platform (September 2005), 5,146 comments were submitted.
• Last month more than 100,000 were submitted and generated 1.6 million page views.

The post Globeandmail.com Comments on Comments appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Major Canadian national brands that target the 2.3 million small businesses in Canada plan on increasing their online media budgets in 2008.

E-mail had a planned increase of 54 percent, paid and organic search was up 47 percent, and spend toward banners was raised by 39 percent. The big losers of this survey were television and national newspapers, which saw decreases of 7 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

Because small-business owners are primarily consumers, social networks already blur the lines between personal and professional lives. It’s a question of whether these environments will provide the appropriate resources for small businesses to find vendors within the same walls that they post nutty pictures or play scrabble in.

Warrillow highlighted some interesting localized guerrilla-style tactics being implemented by major national brands targeting the small-business sector in Canada. None of the case studies included local search.

Currently, searching Canadian B2B suppliers on the major search engines is like wading through peanut butter. When it comes to local search for this market, the field is wide open. Most B2B directories are internationally based with limited brand awareness in Canada. The current strength of the Canadian dollar makes purchasing B2B advertising from international vendors very attractive. What is lacking is the utility of these internationally based services and the organic and paid search efforts behind them.

While the tactical details were not quite grasped, the general sense from the speakers and the attendees this week was that given more B2B platforms, be they social or local search, there would be budgets allocated toward them.

The post B2B Local Search — Canada’s Weak Link appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Major Canadian national brands that target the 2.3 million small businesses in Canada plan on increasing their online media budgets in 2008.

E-mail had a planned increase of 54 percent, paid and organic search was up 47 percent, and spend toward banners was raised by 39 percent. The big losers of this survey were television and national newspapers, which saw decreases of 7 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

Because small-business owners are primarily consumers, social networks already blur the lines between personal and professional lives. It’s a question of whether these environments will provide the appropriate resources for small businesses to find vendors within the same walls that they post nutty pictures or play scrabble in.

Warrillow highlighted some interesting localized guerrilla-style tactics being implemented by major national brands targeting the small-business sector in Canada. None of the case studies included local search.

Currently, searching Canadian B2B suppliers on the major search engines is like wading through peanut butter. When it comes to local search for this market, the field is wide open. Most B2B directories are internationally based with limited brand awareness in Canada. The current strength of the Canadian dollar makes purchasing B2B advertising from international vendors very attractive. What is lacking is the utility of these internationally based services and the organic and paid search efforts behind them.

While the tactical details were not quite grasped, the general sense from the speakers and the attendees this week was that given more B2B platforms, be they social or local search, there would be budgets allocated toward them.

The post B2B Local Search — Canada's Weak Link appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

John Warrillow’s opening presentation referenced a recent survey indicating that small-business owners are using social networking sites.

The survey results indicated a clear leadership for Facebook at 29 percent, followed by MySpace at 11 percent and LinkedIn at 3 percent. While the respondents replied in the context of personal usage, earlier data from the presentation brought to light that small-business owners are in many cases primarily consumers.

Warrillow’s presentation highlighted ING’s successes in reaching the Canadian small-business sector by using clever consumer-targeted TV creative that effectively stimulates the mind of the small-business owner to drive purchase intent.

This morning’s underlying message was that Canadian small businesses have more choices across more verticals. The Internet has fueled a breed of challenger brands that have shaken this market and have created tight competition. The conference was aptly named “Stealing Share.” Some of the highlighted challenger brands included Costco, ING and TigerDirect.ca.

There was some representation from the local search media channel suggesting there may be some business-to-business platforms in the works. It’s all very mysterious, but I’ll follow up on this later.

The post Canadian Small Businesses Use Social Networks appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Coincidently, next week at the Directory Driven Commerce 2006 conference, The Kelsey Group will present data that show the same trend — e-mail marketing is increasing as an advertising vehicle for small businesses. We were pleasantly surprised that e-mail marketing continues its climb up the radar screen; while still small in comparison to other media, it is a medium to watch. Not only are more businesses trying e-mail marketing, but they are also spending more money on it. At the conference we will present the findings of the Local Commerce Monitor IX and will show what media businesses are using, where they are spending their dollars and what is most effective.

Borrell Associates indicates that the advertisers are attracted to local Web advertising because it is trackable and small businesses can get a handle on their return on investment. E-mail marketing is a substitute for direct mail and saves money. Plus, we believe it is easy to turn on and off and use as little or as much as needed — no long-term commitments required.

The article indicates that the businesses most likely to invest in local Web are real estate agents, car dealers and restaurants, in addition to several others. The Kelsey Group Consumer Omnibus Study, which will also be presented at DDC, will explain how consumers get information for real estate transactions and used car purchases. It is interesting that there is a gap in what buyers are using for their information and where sellers are advertising. In addition, there is a definite generation gap. The younger generation definitely uses different types of media than the older ones, which has implications for industries such as Yellow Pages and newspapers.

The post Surge in Local Web Advertising, E-Mail Marketing appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.