Advertising Saturation Point?

Have we reached advertising saturation point? I think so. I turn on the t.v. and I’m watching two minutes of advertising for about every ten minutes of programming. During those two minutes I’m seeing at least 10 different ads. I go to watch a video on YouTube (I’m a big fan of rail videos.) and I’m forced to watch five seconds of advertising (up from three seconds). I turn on the radio there’s advertising. I go to a newspaper web site and there’s advertising. I look at a bus and see advertising inside and out. I watch sports there’s advertising. I’m being advertised to death.

It`s so bad that I`ve long since tuned out advertising. When I watch t.v. during commercial breaks I turn down the sound and pick up a book or magazine to read. The only time I leave the sound on is when I go out of the room to do something else. On YouTube I`m waiting to click the skip ad function and turn down the sound on the ones I`m forced to watch. I never click advertising on newspaper and magazine web sites. Most advertising that comes to the door gets immediately put in the recycle box.

Don`t get me wrong, I`m not against advertising, as it pays the bills and can inform the public about a product, service or sale. I`m against being bombarded with advertising day in day out. I`m also against advertising that holds absolutely no interest for me.

I find that most of the advertising is totally meaningless to me. For example I don`t drive a motor vehicle. In fact I don`t have a driver`s license. Therefore ads for cars, trucks, motorcycles and their products don`t interest me. Ads for mortgages don`t interest me. I own my house outright and have zero debt. I`m not a woman and so products geared for women don`t interest me. Finally I don`t gamble and so ads for casinos and lottery tickets don`t interest. Of the advertising that does interest me I`ve been so bombarded with advertising that I usually also tune it out as well.

I`d like to see less advertising, one third to one half less advertising. I`d also like to get to pick at least some of the advertising I see. For example newspapers could have three classes of readers: limited free access, subscription and free access that requires a person to look at so many ads, but allows you to choose the types of ads you`d like to see.

With t.v. shows, why not return to the early days of single sponsor shows or at least in place of the ten or so different ads now seen during commercial breaks, show no more than five. Fewer ads would allow for longer individual commercials, which in turn would allow for more information to be placed in each one. I`m sure there are other ideas that would cut down on audience tune-out.

Newspapers Again

What do such papers as the New York Times and Hamilton Spectator have in common? They’ve both decided to limit the number of free views to 10 stories each 30 day period. Both were formally totally free and then limited the number of free views to between 25 and 35. Now the Globe & Mail is thinking of limiting the number of free views too.

Frankly I have mixed feelings about it. I understand and am sympathetic towards newspapers seeking to improve their revenue. It has been eroding since the Internet came on the scene. Advertising income is down and so are subscriptions. Staff have been laid off and papers closed or reduced. Just this past week Postmedia announced it was cutting jobs and eliminating the Sunday editions of papers in Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa and the National Post will cut Monday editions during the summer. Obviously something has to be done to stop the bleeding.

However, newspapers, once friendly towards freelancers, have turned hostile, demanding all rights, while not increasing pay rates and not negotiating contracts. A few newspaper unions have been hostile towards freelancers too. As a result of all this the freelance community is not too sympathetic to newspapers.

Then there is the question of are they cutting their nose to spite their face? That is by limiting too much the number of free views are they destroying their audience? I no longer read anything from the New York Times or Hamilton Spectator due to their restrictive policies. Basically I can’t afford to subscribe to the online editions of the 15 or so papers I have regularly looked at.

Newspapers have tried ads, but they always seem to put the wrong kinds of ads up for me. For example one newspaper chain forced me to endure popup ads for brides. I got news for them – I’m not a bride. I’m not even female. (Some people say I’m not human, but that’s another story.)

Here’s something I don’t think has been tried – online papers offering viewers a selection of no more than three or four ads to view per visit no more than 10 seconds each. If a viewer is interested they’ll spend more than that looking. Have viewers select the types of ads they want to see. I’d really be interested in seeing grocery store ads, which I have yet to see advertised on a newspaper site.

In the meantime I think the newspaper industry needs to come up with a better model or perhaps a variety of models, one that is fair to freelancers, as well as staff, the owners and the readers. The restrictive model being tried I don’t think is the answer.

A Kodak Moment

Have you ever had a Kodak moment? I used to back in the 1980s and 1990s, but I don’t anymore. I’ve long since gone digital. However, it appears that too many publishers today still have Kodak moments. These are publishers who still have one method of publishing – the traditional method of printing so many copies and hoping for the best.

According to the Association Of American Publishers (E-Books Drive Revenue Growth Across Book Trade in January 2012), e-book sales accounted for 27% of all book sales and 31% of all adult trade sales in January. E-books accounted for $128.8 million in sales out of total sales out of a total of $503.5 million, up a whopping 76% from January of last year. They’re projecting that e-books will account for 20% of all book sales this year and 75% of all book sales by 2025.

David Begland of Radiax Press (in E-Books vs. Print Books to Stabilize at 50%?), said that for small publishing houses, like his, e-books already account for 60-70% of all sales.

What does this mean for publishers? According to John C. Dvorak, writing in PC Magazine, it will make book publishing more profitable. He claims that e-books will encourage sales of printed books that people really want in the same way that Napster encourage sales of music CDs.

Dvorak goes on to say that e-books give more creative control to producers and writers took books. They allow books to be tweaked chapter by chapter and filter out the really good books from the not so good ones. By cutting down on editing, copyediting, design, etc., they will boost the profit margins of publishing houses.

There is another potential source of revenue for publishers and writers - the sale of sections of a book, which isn’t practical with printed books, but is with e-books, especially for reference books and guidebooks.

So where does that leave traditional publishers who ignore e-books? – left behind in the trash heap of failed businesses.

I hope to deal more with this and role social media can play in publishing in future posts.

The Titanic's News Legacy

This is a special edition of my blog in memory of the enduring legacy of the Titanic and, in particular, why it continues to make news today 100 years after it sank. In essence it’s a partial answer to what is news.

Why does the Titanic live on in popular memory, while hundreds of other shipwrecks and disasters do not? The Titanic was not the worst shipwreck in history, the Wilhelm Gustloff was. It was torpedoed by a Russian sub off the coast of what is now Poland on January 30, 1945 with the loss of about 9,500 people. Nor was the Titanic the first ship to hit an iceberg and go down.

What makes the Titanic so special and why we continue to remember it today are a combination of things: its name – Titanic, the way it sank – bow first on an even keel, not enough life boats, filled with rich and prominent passengers, being labelled unsinkable by the popular press, striking an iceberg, being on its maiden voyage, being in the well-travelled North Atlantic, sinking in calm weather, a ship nearby that failed to come to the rescue and the length of time it took to sink leaving time for hundreds of mini-dramas to be carried out.

Every transportation disaster since then has been compared to the Titanic, like the recent wreck of the Costa Concordia and the space shuttle Columbia disaster. The finding of the wreck in 1985, Walter Lord’s book A Night To Remember and the movie Titanic has only added to the interest and to mystique.

No doubt in another 100 years we’ll still be talking about the Titanic.

I’m shocked. The local southern Ontario Sun Media
newspapers* have suddenly changed. They’re no longer plain, boring sites. They’ve actually become quite interesting.

For too many years their websites have consisted of a list of news articles, with the odd picture and the even odder video, with lots of ads. They didn’t seem to care. They didn’t seem to want business. Maybe that’s why the sudden change. They decided they actually wanted readers and that the only way to get them to spruce up their web sites.

The new sites are dominated by photos. Yes they are all from the same template; the head photo is of a local area, for example St. Paul Street in St. Catharines and the Main Street Bridge over the Old Welland Canal in Welland. The opening page still has ads, but they don’t dominate the way they did previously. You also get the current weather at the top now. For the most part it’s much easier to navigate. They’ve added community events, which is a nice touch.

The news section could stand to be improved by returning to the previous menu section that allowed you to go to local, national and international news from the opening page. Now it’s just news. You click news and then from the news page you get the subdivisions, which seems a bit awkward to me.

The recent VIA train derailment at Aldershot, Ontario, was reported in the same story shared by all the updated papers. However, local stories covering the local angles were also covered. There were photos and videos as well as stories. In past there would be only words with the odd picture.

Local sports and entertainment are now featured daily on each web site, along with bloggers, events and readers’ contributions. (In later blog I’ll discuss the citizen journalist and the ethics of contributing to media sites.

The big question is whether the changes have come too late to make a difference? I think they have, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

*I regularly look at the following papers: Brantford Expositor, Chatham Daily News, Niagara Falls Review, St. Catharines Standard and Welland Tribune, along with the Barrie Examiner, Kingston Whig-Standard and
Woodstock Sentinel-Review, which I occasionally look at as well. The Barrie Examiner, Chatham Daily News and Kingston Whig-Standard haven’t yet changed, but hopefully will soon.

A Dose Of Reality

I interrupt my regular journalism blog with a dose of reality, my reality. Life has a habit of doing things like this as I'm sure you know. The reality is I've had a heart attack. The scary thing is I don't know when I had it.

Between 40 and 60 per cent of all heart attacks are silent, like mine. They're silent because the symptoms, such as shortness of breath and nausea, are either ignored or attributed to something else, like indigestion or stress. They're also twice as deadly as non-silent heart attacks and the risk factors are the same, such as lack of exercise, high blood pressure and smoking.

My heart attack was found while being checked out by a specialist for an irregular heartbeat, which, it turns out, I don't have. I was having an echocardiogram done when scar tissue was discovered. The good news is that my heart attack was small and the scar is at the back of the heart not the front where it would be cause for concern. The other good news is that my heart is otherwise in great shape, meaning no blocked arteries and no evidence of heart disease.

The doctor also told me that my heart attack wasn't recent, which I took to mean not within the past month or so. My best guess is that it may have occurred sometime in 2008 when I was under titanic stress from caring for my father, who was alive and still at home with probable Alzheimer's. (He has since died.) However, it might have come last fall when I bought a load of earth and moved it around, something which I do at least once a year. It may have come at some other time.

Receiving the news has come as a shock to me. Now every twinge I wonder if it's another heart attack. Hopefully this hyper-alterness will soon die down. I am trying to change my diet and to lose a little weight. There are many other things I'm doing right and don't have, such as exercising regularly and not smoking. I'm also not diabetic and don't have high blood pressure.

I write this as a warning to others to pay attention to your body. Journalists are often guiltier than others of poor habits. Whether it's poor earting, not exercising, smoking or some other bad habit, make time to change. Remember the life you save might be your own. And as I've learned, it can happen to you.

Sponsored Editorial Part II

In the part I of my blog on sponsored editorial I looked at the history and negative aspects of it. Here I will examine the whys and hows of sponsored editorial.

The most obvious reason for doing it is to bring in additional revenue. This can be especially important to a small publication, radio station, t.v. station or Internet publication. However any size media will appreciate additional revenue.

The Guardian News & Media of Great Britain says, "These [sponsored] supplements are a valued source of revenue and allows us to explore in depth than editorial budgets would otherwise allow..."

So what are some general guidelines for dealing with sponsored editorial? Radio and t.v. stations should not do voice overs. Using sponsored content without attribution undermines the creditability of the station doing this. Opponents call this "fake news".

Related to this is what Australia's Nursing Review has this to say about the handling of sponsored editorial, "The layout, design and text of advertorials must be distinctly different from those of the publication." Some, like ModernHealthcare.com, say that no member of the editorial staff may be involved in putting together sponsored editorial.

Single or limited sponsorship can limit the media's ability to cover a story and can dictate directly or indirectly what stories may or may not be covered and how a story is covered. Probably the best way to handle this is to go for the clearly sponsored program or section. The airline industry has done this for years. Some companies also sponsor a magazine or t.v. show. Two examples of this are Westjet's Up Magazine and Costco's The Costco Connection, both of whom I've written for.

There's a lot more that could be said about the does and don'ts of sponsored journalism, but that will have to wait for another time.

On a sad note, I just learned that one of my favorite magazines, which I have occassionally written for, Harrowsmith, ceased publication July 25th after 35 years. The magazine treated writers reasonably well and provided a unique Canadian voice to country life. It will be solely missed and I wish the staff well in finding new jobs.