Posts Tagged ‘value proposition’

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The startling drop in audited circulation

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

According to AudienceDevelopment.com, audited circulation levels are declining at historic rates.

This actually points to two trends — one economics related, and one customer-induced.

The first is that publishers are cutting circulation in order to reduce cost. AD states that “183 publications decreased circ 5 percent or more compared to 142 a year ago and 101 the year previous. Conversely only 41 publications increased circ five percent or more compared to 76 the year previous.”

OK, so publishers are cutting circulation to reduce printing and postage costs. It happens in every recession, and it won’t  come back much, if at all, following this recession because advertisers won’t accept rate hikes in exchange for a larger rate base. There’s simply no money in sending more publications to more people.

But the second trend is bigger and more meaningful to advertisers and publishers – and it could put the auditors out of business. That is that publishers are dropping their audits altogether because the audit process provides decreasing ROI.

AD states: “Departing titles far exceed newly audited titles. A record 69 titles were discontinued or ceased being audited and only 23 titles were added to the audited ranks. The total number of audited “consumer magazines” fell from 545 a year ago to 499.”

More and more advertisers are changing their perspective from wanting to reach a verified audience to wanting to achieve a measurable response from whoever they reach – a painfully fundamental change that I’ve previously addressed, and which most publishers – especially in the glamorous consumer world – are still trying to tiptoe around.
A hundred valid responses from an unaudited audience is worth 10x more than 10 valid responses from an audited audience.
From a publisher’s perspective, if you can deliver the responses, the audit becomes irrelevant.

Based on this, the audit bureaus ought to be frightened.

And while abandoning your audit is still a bold step in the magazine business, I assume that most publishers who do so are reinvesting in products that deliver the kind of results their customers really want.

The parties I’m most concerned about are the publishers who haven’t talked about leaving the audit behind. Because if it hasn’t occurred to you, then you clearly haven’t been listening to what your customers want. And this is one of those watershed times when the only security is to be so close to your customers that you can feel them breathe.

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All the news that’s fit to buy

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

The New York Times, according to one of its own, is close to deciding whether to try charging for online content. If you assume that the best way to bolster the future of news is to figure out how to get people to pay for it online, then this is important – and a good thing if The Times does, in fact, try charging for content.

The only way to get people to start paying for content is for a few leaders to simply take the leap and start charging. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. is implementing a plan to do so. Having The Times follow would only be good for the movement.

Can it work? That’s the big debate in media. Many think content wants to be free. Others, like myself, think consumers want it to be free primarily because they’ve been trained that content comes cheap. What nobody knows is how much people will actually pay, or whom they would pay, for real journalism.

If the news is to find its footing again – that is, if anyone is ever going to figure out a 21st Century business model by which journalism can flourish – the starting point is knowledge of the true value that journalism has to its end users. This is something that’s been obscured for the past 150 years.

Will consumers place enough value on it that they are willing to pay the full, unsubsidized cost of sending  investigative reporters to do what they do (and defending against the inevitable lawsuits that are a byproduct of their work)? It would be nice. It would simplify the quandary of media executives, who are now gathering in solemn charrettes in search of a bew design for profitable media.

But the truth is that nobody knows. We don’t know what a newspaper would actually cost if paid for fully by readers? Or how its mission, staffing levels, range of focus and intensity of reporting might be adjusted over time to reflect the market-based measure of its value. How would it be distributed? How often would it be published? Who would its readers be?

None of these questions can be answered until enough media simply jump in and try to find out. Until now, few (the Wall Street Journal being the only one of any critical mass that I can come up with) have taken that risk. If The New York Times is getting ready to give it a try, desperation in the business may be reaching some kind of tipping point.

I’m fully confident that real journalism has a significant societal value. The problem is that it’s always been paid for indirectly. Once that value is untethered from the indirect means by which media have always monetized it (that is, advertising), then the real work can begin to right-size the industry and focus efforts where they deliver the most value.

There is real risk that the result would be even more “circular media,” in which celebrities are first manufactured and then covered by the same media organizations as if they were of real consequence  (Jon & Kate and Lindsay Lohan represent two train wrecks in which the front of the train has crashed into its own caboose).

But I’m more optimistic than that. I have enough faith left that if news businesses got serious about charging for the news, they would eventually achieve market balance – knowing how much to spend, and optimizing that for the best impact, as defined by consumers.

I’m hoping the Gray Lady of New York is ready to give it a try.

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Rocky Mountain News closes for the 3rd time

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

The Rocky Mountain Independent has closed just two months after it started. The Independent was formed from the ashes of InDenverTimes.com – which actually still exists as a free information site, but not with any of the well-intentioned people who started it five months before the Independent.

Both of these were created by jobless journalists jilted by the February closing of the 150-year-old Rocky Mountain News.

The closing is sad, but predictable. The online-only effort at covering news in Denver was started for the wrong reasons (early-onset nostalgia), it had an implausible business model (premium priced news content), and it was run by the wrong people (journalists).

For the ultimate review on the subject, check out Alan Mutter’s Newsosaur blog. Everything he writes about this episode is spot-on and couldn’t be said any better.

But I will emphasize one point: Once upon a time, the news business might have been about the quality of reporting. And I know that some very strong journalism schools are still teaching that it still is. What else should they teach: mediocrity?

But it’s dead wrong. With the exception of some notable niches, content today is judged on a strictly pass-fail basis. It is either not good enough, or it is good enough.

For most media today, there is no ROI in anything that aspires to be better than good enough.

I’m not saying that great journalism doesn’t have a redeeming social value. Of course it does. It’s the bedrock of democracy; it’s the record of humanity.

There’s just no money in it.

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Trouble with democracy: It doesn’t pay well

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

If there’s anything I write about or comment on that is sure to draw a hot and negative response, it’s the insistence that journalists start to get in tune with their true market value. It’s not that I don’t see a huge social value to the work they do. I credit journalists with keeping our democracy alive. But they’ve never been paid by democracy; they get paid by a business model.

My point is twofold:

  1. Journalists have always been part of someone else’s business model. But it’s generally only in times like this, when the business models are under fire, that journalists are compelled to recognize it.
  2. While traditional media models are under siege, journalists themselves are becoming part of the solution — developing new models and new approaches to paying the true cost for news. (For example, check out Spot.us and MedCityNews.)

Today’s e-mail brought an item from one of my favorite blogs, Seth Godin’s Blog. He usually has something insightful to say about the way the world works. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen his blog address the media world directly.

His message (you should read it yourself; it’s short) is simply this: Journalists can be measured for the interest their stories generate — as evidenced by a Washington Post columnist who was let go because his blog posts didn’t generate enough traffic. In every other industry, people’s performance is measured against specific objectives.

It’s happening now with journalists — bringing them into intimate business contact for whatever business model employs them.

Coming face to face with reality can be a painful experience, but in the working world there is really nothing more important.

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Even low-cost social media campaigns need to be measured

Monday, September 21st, 2009

There is an entire industry of consultants that didn’t exist three years ago, telling people how to collect thousands of followers on Twitter; how to gain friends and fans on Facebook; and how to leverage large networks on LinkedIn. These consultants are writing books, conducting web-seminars and selling services.

The thing that gets too little attention is what all this is worth? Sure, you can grab a small nation’s worth of Twitter followers, but will it make you any money if they aren’t paying attention to your Tweets?

So it was refreshing to stumble across a new series or articles in Computerworld on How to measure the ROI of social media.

It would be nice if there were a few key metrics and some nice neat formulas you could follow, but social media is evolving too quickly and the measurements aren’t that simple.

In the end, if you want to know whether your time with social media is well spent, you need to do the following:

Set a meaningful goal. Is the purpose of your social media outreach simply to gain followers? Then you’ll have an easy time measuring, and a hard time proving that the effort was worthwhile. Instead, set a more specific goal, like this: To generate sales of $XXX (or X number of sales transactions) from members of our social media network.

That way, you’ll not only have a pass/fail measurement, you’ll learn something important along the way: i.e., how many new connections it takes to achieve a sale.

Assign specific tasks. If more than one person is going to be involved in the social media effort, make sure that each person knows his or her specific role. For instance, one person might conduct the outbound communications while another works to convert inbound communications into leads, and still another works to close sales.

This way, the entire job will get done — not just the fun part of blogging and tweeting. Further, when things don’t go perfectly (they won’t), you’ll have a team of experts who can figure out what adjustments to make.

Track everything. Time is money. So while social media programs are astonishingly inexpensive in terms of hard cost, you’ll want to know how much of each day your team members are spending on social media vs. their other responsibilities.

If you do these three things, then measuring gets easy. If you have goals, an organized work effort and good data, determining whether your resources are well-spent will be easy.  Just like the example of Reality Digital, also from Computerworld.

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Not-for-profit news is no panacea

Monday, September 14th, 2009

In the effort to save newspapers, one idea that’s been passed around is that of the newspaper as a not-for-profit institution. The argument is that its role is so central to the public good that it can be protected as a non-taxed, not-for-profit entity.

While the argument may be compelling, I don’t think you can call it mainstream. Well-known newspaper analyst Lauren Rich Fine says for-profit newspapers haven’t done all they can to adapt to new market realities. I agree; Newspapers in the United States have been for-profit ventures for their entire existence, and just because their business model is being challenged today doesn’t mean their industry is obsolete.

But that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with a news organization that does figure out how to succeed as a non-profit.

An increasing number of non-profit news organizations exist, such as MinnPost and the hyperlocal, hypermodest Heights Observer, for which I’m an active volunteer — and which is part of a growing list of other loosely affiliated Observer projects in and around Greater Cleveland. (Not all of them are not-for-profit; they have in common technology platform – Ninth Estate Software — and a singular evangelist, Jim O’Bryan, founder of the for-profit Lakewood Observer).

A not-for-profit trial balloon has been floated (and seems to be losting altitude) for the troubled Boston Globe.

Now, one of the existing not-for-profits is going the other way; Geoff Dougherty, editor of the 4-year-old Chi-Town Daily News (Chicago)  writes in his blog that the non-profit experiment is over. He says the online citizen journalism news organization needs $1-2 million a year in donations to fulfill its mission. With grants running out and grant-sources ready to move on to other projects, Dougherty indicates private donations peaked at only $300,000 — and even that amount is doubtful this year.

“We are talking with local nonprofits that have expressed an interest in acquiring the [Chi-Town Daily News] website and neighborhood reporting program,” Dougherty writes.

“Ultimately,” he continued, “we believe we will be able to fulfill the same mission we set out to accomplish with the Daily News, though with a new name, a new company, and a different business structure.”

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With all our communication channels, face-to-face is still king

Friday, August 28th, 2009

BtoBOnline.com reports on a study from Forbes Insights that executives still strongly prefer in-person meetings over web-meetings or other virtual get-togethers.

I couldn’t find the study myself  and no link was provided, so I’m taking everything that BtoB reports on it as my only source and at face value.

According to the the study out of 760 business executives surveyed in June:

  • 84% prefer in-person contact to virtual;
  • 85% said it helps them build stronger relationships;
  • 77% said it provides a greater opportunity to read another person;
  • Still, 58% said they travel less for business now than in January 2008.

All of which strikes me as obvious.

Face-to-face contact will always be the highest form of human interaction, and nothing replaces it.
The question is NEVER whether it would be better to have a face-to-face meeting. The question is always whether the circumstances justify the cost/inconvenience.

At any given time, a video chat or Webex presentation might accomplish the immediate goal, but don’t ever confuse that with being just as good as a personal meeting.

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BPA Worldwide freezes rates, remains arrogant and irrelevant

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

BPA Worldwide, a leader in providing third-party circulation audits, has announced that it’s freezing membership dues and audit rates at their July 2008 levels — good through June 2010.

If you’re in the business, you know that BPA is especially strong among magazines with controlled circulation. If you’re not in the business, you need to know that third-party circulation audits are how publications validate their readership claims to advertisers.

BPA is facing obsolescence at an astonishing rate. If BPA is a dinosaur, then the killer meteor has already hit the Earth and the toxic cloud of extinction is on its way. Holding rates will make as much difference to the organization’s future as putting on a sweater.

Am I being a little harsh here? Perhaps. But set aside the fact that for the previous 20 years of my career BPA was one of the most sluggish, obstinate, arrogant and regressive entities I had to deal with. Set aside the fact that — even though it was owned by its customers — it always, without exception, acted as though its role was to prevent me from innovating in my job. Set aside that I don’t know anyone in publishing (though I’m sure there are a few) who doesn’t take some quiet pleasure at seeing BPA suffer.

What BPA faces aside from all that is the fact that its member magazines must find ways to radically reduce distribution costs. That’s required to offset declines in two key performance indicators: advertising pages sold, and cost-per-thousand (CPM) paid for an average page of advertising.

In other words, advertisers are reaching readers less often, and every reader they reach is worth less to them today than it used to be. The only thing advertisers care about is how many people take a measurable action as a result of seeing an ad.

And what is BPA’s ultimate value to publishers? Proof of readers reached. There is nothing that it does, or wants to do, to measure the responsiveness of those readers.

In my last year running business-to-business magazines, I withdrew two of them from membership in BPA. Not because I was so frustrated with the deplorable service BPA provided; but because my advertisers no longer cared about BPA audits. They told me they wanted to know how my audience would respond to their advertising; if I could provide better response per thousand readers than my competitors, nobody cared to see the expensive and painstakingly designed BPA audit statement. (To be fair, advertisers had been telling me that with increasing urgency for about eight years; it just reached a watershed last year — probably brought on by the recession.)

Since that time, I’ve heard of about two-dozen magazines that have terminated their BPA membership — something that used to be as acceptable in media circles as, say, passing gas in an elevator. Entire divisions of media companies have simply walked away from BPA because the organization’s work has ceased to be of value.

I suppose that freezing rates is a reasonable first response. But I don’t give BPA enough credit to understand how inadequate that step will prove to be as its irrelevance grows like a toxic cloud.

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A new tipping point in favor of paid content

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

PaidContent.com reports that the annual media study by media investment banker VSS (Veronis Suhler Stevenson) showed a tipping occurred in 2008: It was the first time people spent more time with media they paid for — such as books and cable TV — than they did with media that is primarily ad-supported. That report raises a few points:

1. Cable TV is not predominantly ad supported? I must be watching the wrong cable stations.

2. It should come as good news to all the ad-supported media that are feverishly looking for ways to monetize their audience. It means people are willing to pay for content if there is enough value in it, and if they are trained over a long-enough period of time that the stuff just won’t come free.

3. By the time that happens, nobody knows how many traditional media will fail — their markets taken over by an upstart that “gets it.” My short answer: plenty.

4. Even those that are succeeding and profiting from paid content will have some struggles. Competition for the audience dollar is only starting to heat up, and over the next few years will become intense and insane. If you, as a consumer, are paying the full cost of content for books, movies, music, etc. and all of sudden you start hearing from newspapers and magazines that you need to pay more for their content too, and what point do you start making hard decisions about which content you really want and need? It’s not safe to assume that everything you’re paying full-ride for right now is necessarily going to be the winner in that evaluation.

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The new phone books have arrived and been duly discarded

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

Two large, orange bags just appeared on my front porch the other day. Each contained several pounds of phone books. There was the Yellow Pages, the White Pages, the Business-to-Business Yellow Pages and the Yellow Pages Supplement. Two complete sets of them.

Without taking them out of the bag, I put them on the curb for recycling.

“Hello, AT&T? It’s Alexander Graham Bell calling and he wants his business model back.”

Seriously, this is just one of at least three sets of phone directories I’ll receive this year. Two other companies produce similar volumes of phone books and surreptitiously drop them at my front door at various times during the year.

It’s been about five years since I’ve even opened a phone book.

In every industry I know, printed directories are disappearing faster than money from the cash-for-clunkers program. For the companies that produce them, printed phone books are like crack; they’re addicted to the revenue, but it’s not doing anyone any good. The effort to keep phone books alive is distracting their publishers from the need to find a more useful business. And you don’t have to be a tree-hugger to cringe at the tremendous waste in resources these unwanted products represent.

OK, I confess that having a residential phone book is a small comfort (though I still don’t remember the last time I used one). But if you’re running a business I wouldn’t spend much on Yellow Pages advertising. No matter how small or local the business might be, your resources would be better spent building an affordable little website and making sure it’s listed on every free online directory you can find.

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