Is there life left in local, broadsheet "shopper" publications that highlight home and trade businesses and things for sale? Not according to OpenGate, a $3 Billion LBO firm that abruptly laid off workers for Pennysaver USA, the industry's largest company,…
Automotive will drive $15.13 billion in local advertising in 2015. That's according to BIA/Kelsey's 2015 Insights into Local Advertising report released today. The Automotive industry, which has returned to strong growth on improved economic conditions, low fuel prices and the…
Professional Services SMBs* use social and digital channels the most for advertising. Professional Services SMBs most popular social media channel is LinkedIn, according to Wave 18 of our Local Commerce Monitor? survey of small and medium-sized businesses. They are the…
Today's announcement that UT San Diego and its eight regional publications will be acquired by Tribune Publishing's Los Angeles Times for a slightly better-than-fire sale price of $85 million (plus $100 million in pension liabilities) points to several things. 1.…
NCTA’s rebranded INTX: Internet & Television Expo (aka The Cable Show) finishes up today in Chicago. This show, like its sponsoring organization is having a bit of an identity crisis. Indeed, the name change may go beyond the show to its sponsoring organization.
Fourteen years ago, “NCTA” used to be an acronym for the “National Cable Television Association.” But on May 1, 2001 the Association changed its name to “National Cable & Telecommunications Association” in order to better reflect, “cable’s transformation from a one-way video supplier to a competitive supplier of advanced, two-way services including digital video, high-speed Internet, cable telephony and interactive TV.” To further reflect its evolutionary journey in self-identity, the NCTA’s iconic annual “The Cable Show” was rebranded as “INTX – Internet and Television Expo” to again reflect the industry’s transformation as it learns how to better focus on the digital media and entertainment economy. Now, there is some chatter that NCTA will once again change the name of the association, perhaps to NCTA: The Internet & Television Association: and just drop “cable” altogether.
What brave new world has cable entered? As FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler put it in his keynote address, “You deserve straight talk about what it means now that you are cable companies, video providers and network builders.” He then continued on to discuss his controversial stands on his “Open Internet Order” (i.e., net neutrality) and the Comcast/Time Warner acquisition he helped doom. Wheeler’s “straight talk” didn’t go over so well with the crowd. Liberty Global’s CEO Michael Fries drew robust applause in the panel following Wheeler’s keynote by saying, “I am baffled by the chairman’s remarks. There is a presumption of guilt for success I’ve never seen before.”
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts also had his moment during his otherwise business-like presentation about Comcast’s recent successes, including transitioning to a company serving more Internet than cable customers.
Roberts was showing off Comcast’s new Xfinity X1 remote control and user interface that responds to voice commands to bring up various viewing and other choices. “Show me the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger,” Roberts commanded. In response, we see on the big screen Van Diesel sprinting from a house that violently explodes just behind him in a scene from Furious 7. “That pretty much sums it up,” Roberts dead panned.
Beyond the rebranding, politics, and merger break-ups, it was clear from the various panels that industry leadership clearly is focusing on developing and executing on a new business order defined by ever more capable and integrated technology platforms, innovations in content and how users want to interact with this content, and interesting new ways to monetize an emerging set of services.
Local ad spending reached $137.9 billion in 2014, and will see a slight boost to $139.4 billion in 2015. We talked with BIA/Kelsey Chief Economist and SVP Mark Fratrik about the new research (interview below). Every year, BIA/Kelsey issues a…
This is the first post in our new series, Vantage Points. On a semi-weekly basis, it will tap the perspectives of various lookout points from around the local media and tech sectors. Though the format, frequency and distribution will develop, please contact mbolandATbiakelsey if you have insights to share. The views expressed within do not necessarily reflect those of BIA/Kelsey.
In Broadcast Media, Legacy Doesn’t Have to Carry a Curse
By Maribeth Papuga
“We didn’t reinvent the circus: we packaged it in a much more modern way, but basically we took an art form which is known,with a lot of dust on it, where people had basically forgot that it could be something else than what they knew about, and we basically organized for ourselves a creative platform.” — Cirque de Soleil founder Guy Laliberté, 2011
Challenged by an industry that is rewriting the rules while the ecosystem expands, local legacy media must repackage itself in a more modern way. Like other industries, traditional processes and procedures prevail for lack of any viable and collective alternative. Local market broadcast stations have the further burden of regulatory and content restrictions that create complacency and aversion to alter predictable models.
These stations have faced fiscal and competitive entertainment challenges for decades with focused response on improving structural attractiveness through mergers and acquisitions; but long term growth models are dependent on a structure and culture of vertical integrations, hierarchical decision making and risk aversion. Real and substantial opportunities will not prevail unless broader entrepreneurial thought leadership, an open and inclusive business environment and a willingness to shift direction is adopted by all.
Rather than react to headlines or seek answers in a homogenized national marketplace, local broadcasters should concentrate on disrupters in their own markets and their impact on local consumers. These startups create new products and services by thinking unconventionally and expanding their ability to solve problems. With better access to locally sourced data, economic development and demographic shifts taking place in local markets it is unfathomable that the solutions would not come from these centers versus a national aggregator. And yet, this is precisely a direction that many leaders are headed by following nationally driven initiatives.
Its time legacy media concentrate on challenging traditional models, expanding collaborative partnerships and using academia as a key lever for innovation and talent.
Take the Lead
This is the first post in our new series, Vantage Points. On a semi-weekly basis, it will tap the perspectives of various lookout points from around the local media and tech sectors. Though the format, frequency and distribution will develop, please contact mbolandATbiakelsey if you have insights to share. The views expressed within do not necessarily reflect those of BIA/Kelsey.
In Broadcast Media, Legacy Doesn’t Have to Carry a Curse
By Maribeth Papuga
“We didn’t reinvent the circus: we packaged it in a much more modern way, but basically we took an art form which is known,with a lot of dust on it, where people had basically forgot that it could be something else than what they knew about, and we basically organized for ourselves a creative platform.” — Cirque de Soleil founder Guy Laliberté, 2011
Challenged by an industry that is rewriting the rules while the ecosystem expands, local legacy media must repackage itself in a more modern way. Like other industries, traditional processes and procedures prevail for lack of any viable and collective alternative. Local market broadcast stations have the further burden of regulatory and content restrictions that create complacency and aversion to alter predictable models.
These stations have faced fiscal and competitive entertainment challenges for decades with focused response on improving structural attractiveness through mergers and acquisitions; but long term growth models are dependent on a structure and culture of vertical integrations, hierarchical decision making and risk aversion. Real and substantial opportunities will not prevail unless broader entrepreneurial thought leadership, an open and inclusive business environment and a willingness to shift direction is adopted by all.
Rather than react to headlines or seek answers in a homogenized national marketplace, local broadcasters should concentrate on disrupters in their own markets and their impact on local consumers. These startups create new products and services by thinking unconventionally and expanding their ability to solve problems. With better access to locally sourced data, economic development and demographic shifts taking place in local markets it is unfathomable that the solutions would not come from these centers versus a national aggregator. And yet, this is precisely a direction that many leaders are headed by following nationally driven initiatives.
Its time legacy media concentrate on challenging traditional models, expanding collaborative partnerships and using academia as a key lever for innovation and talent.
Take the Lead
Brand advertisers find that striking a balance between traditional and digital media advertising is key to their success at the local level.
During a panel at BIA/Kelsey NATIONAL in Dallas today, brand marketers from across different business categories described on how they manage their localized marketing and advertising activities. The conversation focused on the unique challenges that emerge when blending efforts to gain new customers with promoting brand awareness. In Short: customer acquisition is a common theme for service-oriented businesses, brand awareness is a secondary concern.
Driving more customers to local businesses is the most important goal, said Dave Moody, Director of Field Marketing at Service Experts Heating & Air Conditioning. Online marketing is only as useful as the actual revenue it drives back to local service branches, he said. “A click doesn’t mean much to me. The end goal for us is to get into a customer’s home, and we’ve worked on our SEO and search marketing efforts to drive more calls and requests for appointments.”
Service Experts has shifted their online strategy from search marketing (SEM) spending to direct-response offerings.
“We’re not paying for a lot of ads, we’re more invested in a pay-per-call advertising, including yellow pages and direct mail,” Moody said. That sentiment was echoed by Keith Dailey, Director of Internet Marketing for UniGroup, the parent company of United Van Lines. He added that in addition to creating a channel for driving more leads to local locations, an objective that guides marketing strategy for UniGroup is ensuring that location listings are consistently maintained and always accurate.
Local media organizations facing incredible competition have to understand the media spending trends and behaviors of advertisers within key vertical industries. One particular area is the health care vertical. BIA/Kelsey estimates that for 2015 the total advertising spending in local…
Last month we examined the marketing and advertising trends of newly formed SMBs as part of a series of reports drilling down in our Local Commerce Monitor™, Wave 18 survey of small and medium businesses. Today we are looking at…
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll notice that several of our recent research reports are covering SMBs of specific size brackets. We started with a report on SMBs with a single employee, then covered SMBs with 2-9…
Traditional media companies struggle to find the right formula for digital sales. The challenge isn't really about deciding whether to go with a pure digital only approach v. relying completely on existing legacy sales resources. The decision matrix is much…
As a group, SMBs with 2-9 employees have a distinctive profile that in many respects lies between the profiles of VSBs (Very Small Businesses - those with only one employee) and medium-size and larger-size SMBs. In some ways, SMBs in…
Radio stations looking for a new source of digital revenue and new ways to deepen local listener engagement may be interested to learn more about a technology now in development. Sheridan Broadcasting Corporation's general counsel and radio division president Ron…
The most popular advertising channels for SMBs in the Home and Trade Services vertical, according to BIA/Kelsey's Local Commerce Monitor™, Wave 18,survey of small-and-medium businesses, are a mix of paid and free media. Media Ad View Plus (MAV), BIA/Kelsey's forecast…
Many traditional media companies struggle with how to build their digital sales organizations. Should they recruit a digital only sales force -- and if so, what are the pitfalls and best practices? If an organization chooses an integrated model --…
Local radio and television stations are trying to understand their roles in the new digital media marketplace. Last week at the Texas Association of Broadcasters annual conference, we presented BIA/Kelsey's latest information on the local media market and drilled into…
National Multi-location business are getting better recognition in the local media world we occupy. Despite local's connotations to SMB, there's a sizable opportunity to capture, manage and optimize ad dollars from national brands who compete for business at the local…
As the effect of political advertising starts to take hold in several hot primary states, we are reminded of the roller coaster impact politics has on local television station revenues. To normalize this up and down challenge of the local…
