Ryanair to Target Advertising on Boarding Passes

February 21, 2011

Time: 1 hour 20 minutes
Wall Street Journal

By DANIEL MICHAELS

In a move to boost revenue from sources other than ticket sales, Irish budget airline Ryanair Holdings PLC is teaming up with a travel-media company to sell targeted advertising aimed at passengers booking and checking in online.

Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary gestured during a press conference in Marignane near Marseille-Provence airport, southern France, on Feb. 1.

London-based Ink, the world's largest producer of in-flight magazines, is working with Ryanair to offer ads that can be customized according to a traveler's route and demographic data. The ads will appear online and on home-printed boarding passes.

Many airlines do similar things, but the Ink's approach aims to tailor pitches much more precisely to an individual traveler to generate higher ad rates. Ink Chief Executive Jeffrey O'Rourke said initial contracts with advertisers are being priced at several times the rates for similar Web ads.

A Ryanair spokesman said the ad revenue will help it keep airfares low. "Passengers must reference their boarding card on a number of occasions during a trip, providing repeat exposure for advertisers," the spokesman said. Dublin-based Ryanair requires passengers to print their own boarding passes before arriving at the airport or potentially pay a fee of €40, or about $55.

Ryanair's business model is based on offering inexpensive tickets to generate traffic and then selling other products and services, known as ancillary revenue. Ryanair also strikes deals with airports to pay the airline fees based on the volume of passenger traffic.

Ink's deal with Ryanair comes as carriers world-wide are working to boost ancillary revenue from sources such as access to airport lounges or hotel rooms booked through an airline's website.

Airlines generated more than $22 billion in ancillary revenue last year, according to a study published by travel-technology group Amadeus and IdeaWorks, a consulting firm specializing in ancillary revenue. That figure represents less than 5% of airlines' operating revenue, the report said, although the figure is much higher for some carriers.

Ryanair, a pioneer in generating ancillary sales, derives more than 20% of its revenue from such sources.

So far, most ancillary revenue has come from airlines charging for services once included in a ticket, such as baggage and seat reservations. A recent report from Forrester Consulting predicted that airlines' ancillary revenue from other sources, such as hotel bookings, will rise 30% over the next five years. "This is significant when compared with overall travel industry growth of 3% per year," the report said.

The Ryanair-Ink venture will focus in part on advertising tied to departure airports, where travelers are a captive market and data about them is valuable to retailers, Mr. O'Rourke said. Much current advertising on boarding passes is tied to destinations. But passengers rarely shop after landing, and airlines rarely know where customers go once they leave the arrival airport, so it is difficult to target advertising. In contrast, carriers can assume that most passengers will have time to shop at the departure airport.

"This is a way to stimulate demand and encourage people to shop," Mr. O'Rourke said. "Departure is much more targeted than arrival."

Airport retailing today generates more than $20 billion in revenue world-wide and is set to rise to $44 billion in 2015, according to consulting firm Datamonitor.

Retailing represents a significant and growing portion of airport revenue, but most airports have little data about their customers. Airlines typically haven't cooperated much with airports.

Ink, which publishes in-flight magazines for more than 30 airlines, is developing targeted advertising offerings with airlines beyond Ryanair. Ink aims to profit by linking airline data with airport retailers.

But while airlines collect extensive information about their passengers, many carriers are unable to capitalize on it. Older information systems don't allow easy parsing of customer data for advertising purposes. Ryanair, like most budget airlines, has grown over the past decade, so its data systems are more flexible.

"Using passenger data sounds like low-hanging fruit, but for many airlines it means an expensive overhaul" of computer systems, said Dermot Davitt, deputy publisher of the Moodie Report, a travel-retail newsletter.

This article was very interesting to me because I have taken RyanAir myself and I know several of my friends have because it is so affordable especially for traveling college students. I think putting advertisments on tickets is very clever because when waiting in line to board it seems like I reread my boarding pass about 50 times. If there was an advertisement on there I would no doubt have it memorized by the time I boarded.

Antiabortion Billboard in SoHo Is Removed

February 25, 2011

Time: 50 minutes
Wall Street Journal


By Michael Howard Saul

The controversial billboard in SoHo that linked an anti-abortion message with an image of a young black girl has been taken down, the company that owns the advertising space confirmed Thursday.

The antiabortion billboard above Watts Street and Sixth Avenue read: ‘The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb.’

“It’s in the best interest to take it down,” said Peter Costanza, general manager of Lamar Advertising in New York. “I don’t want any violence to happen.”

The ad, located at Watts Avenue and Sixth Avenue in Lower Manhattan, reads, “The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb.” That message is above a picture of a black girl wearing a sleeveless sundress.

Costanza said he received a report that critics of the sign harassed people at a nearby restaurant. He said he’s not taking a stand on the content of the ad but was concerned about plans for a protest.

Life Always, the antiabortion group that placed the ad, said it “strongly disagrees” with its removal because the “message holds true, and truth has a place in the public square.” The ad, which was to be up for a month, cost $20,000; the group is not expected to be charged.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said the girl’s mother, Tricia Frasier, did not know her daughter’s image would be used for this type of political message. “I spoke with Tricia Frasier, who is pleased that her daughter’s image will no longer be seen on 6th Avenue”

Quinn said Frasier is pleased her daughter’s image will no longer be seen “in this offensive and inflammatory billboard that enraged so many of my constituents.”

The speaker is slated to meet with Frasier and some council members on Friday to discuss ways to protect the girl’s image in the future. “In the name of common decency, I call on all anti-abortion groups to pledge never to use this image again,” Ms. Quinn said.

Hal Kilshaw, a spokesman for Lamar, said the company is concerned about setting a precedent that controversial signs will be removed at the first whiff of protest. But he said the company needed to weigh the sign’s backers’ first-amendment rights versus “concerns about fairness to tenants in the area.”

I couldn't believe that an advertisement like this was actually approved. It does seem incredibly controversial to me. I know that everyone will have varying opinions on the advertisement depending on their personal opinion, but I feel that regardless of one being pro choice or pro life, a line was crossed when the ad was put up.

Outbursts Trumped Big Ratings in 'Men' Call

FEBRUARY 26, 2011

Time: 2 hours
Wall Street Journal

By SAM SCHECHNER and LAUREN A.E. SCHUKER

By halting production on the eighth season of "Two and a Half Men," CBS Corp. and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. are turning away from a proven hit with both viewers and advertisers.

Charlie Sheen's antics led to the cancellation of the season.

Outbursts from star Charlie Sheen led the media companies to cut off production of TV's most-watched comedy, potentially ending a program that helped lead a revival in TV sitcoms.

New episodes of "Men" on CBS average 14.7 million viewers. Reruns on CBS rake in nearly three quarters of the audience, and it is also popular in nightly syndication on local TV stations.

It's now unclear whether new episodes will ever be made, however, according to people familiar with the matter.

CBS' and Warner Bros.' decision Thursday came less than six hours after Mr. Sheen went on an erratic rant in a radio interview against topics as varied as Alcoholics Anonymous, Thomas Jefferson, and "Men" co-creator Chuck Lorre.

"I've spent, I think, I don't know, the last decade effortlessly and magically converting your tin cans into gold," he said, in an apparent reference to Mr. Lorre's scripts.

CBS Corp. CEO Leslie Moonves learned of the radio rant while at a party the company was hosting for investors in midtown Manhattan, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Mr. Moonves spoke by telephone with Bruce Rosenblum, president of Warner Bros. Television Group, the person said. Together, the two men decided to pull the plug.

"Based on the totality of Charlie Sheen's statements, conduct and condition, CBS and Warner Bros. Television have decided to discontinue production of 'Two and a Half Men' for the remainder of the season," the companies said.

Mr. Sheen has said in various public statements that he is sober and is ready to work. Mr. Sheen's base salary is roughly $1.2 million per episode, according to people familiar with the matter.

Representatives for Mr. Sheen and Mr. Lorre didn't return requests for comment.

For CBS, the shutdown will likely result in lower viewing levels and therefore lower advertising revenue. The show brought in roughly $162 million in ad revenue for the network in 2009, according to Kantar Media estimates.

But the network said late Friday that "any ratings declines will be more than offset by the reduced programming costs for the time period." CBS pays Warner Bros. approximately $4 million per episode, according to a person briefed on the matter.

Jon Friedman discusses the business implications of CBS' decision to shut down production of its hit show 'Two and a Half Men' for the rest of the season in the wake of star Charlie Sheen's rant against the show's producer.

After ad sales, CBS turns a "small profit" on that, another person said.

Longer term, CBS could suffer from losing its Monday anchor, a show that helped launch Mr. Lorre's "The Big Bang Theory" and "Mike and Molly."
Earlier


Warner Bros, which produces the show, will miss out on eight episodes for a show it sells not only to CBS, but also to local television stations and to cable network FX.

One person familiar with the company said those episodes would have represented $10 million to $12 million in net profit for the studio, after production costs, star salaries and "profit participants" including Mr. Sheen.

If "Men" does not return at all, Warner Bros. could miss out on those sales for as long as the show would have remained on the air. Warner Bros. and CBS in 2009 inked a new deal to extend the show through next season, ending in 2012.

"Men" has been on hiatus since January, after executives at both Warner Bros. and CBS pressed Mr. Sheen to enter rehab.

In its eight seasons on the air "Men" has soldiered gamely through a tough time for TV comedies. They ruled the airwaves in the 1980s and 1990s, but for much of the last decade new comedies lost steam.

But now TV networks are pushing a revival, in part because Mr. Lorre showed he could replicate his success.
—Nat Worden contributed to this article

It is amazing to me how one person can have such an affect on the media and so many components. Two and a Half Men is an incredibly successful show, and without it, the advertising will go down significantly in the time slot until they can build up another show with an equal amount of viewership.

New Airline, New Ads

FEBRUARY 28, 2011

Time: 30 minutes
Wall Street Journal

By SUSAN CAREY

Five months after United Airlines and Continental Airlines sealed their legal merger, the combined company said it will introduce an "interim" advertising campaign this week and begin changing the United website to comport with the new look, which melds the United name with the well-known globe that Continental used.

United's rebranding campaign will keep Continental's globe. Above, a flight departs San Francisco last week.

United Continental Holdings Inc.'s chief of brand marketing, Kevin McKenna, said the new ad campaign will debut Tuesday on billboards and in the carrier's Hemispheres magazine. Later in the month it will roll out in newspapers and magazines in the two airlines' hub markets, with special emphasis on the competitive New York-area market. Continental has a big hub in Newark, N.J.

In April, the carrier, known as United, will unveil new signage at the stadiums of the five Major League Baseball teams it sponsors, he said, and in May that signage will begin to appear in its large airports. Mr. McKenna said the new logo and look will immediately begin appearing in connection with the carrier's various other sponsorships, including the Professional Golfers Association and the Academy Awards' Oscars.

Already, United has repainted 155 regional aircraft flying on behalf of the company, along with 31 mainline United jetliners. Another 118 Continental mainline planes have been renamed. As reported, the combined company is keeping the Continental paint job and globe logo and merely changing the name on the Continental planes to United. The new United, based in Chicago, is the world's largest airline by traffic.

Continental's blue and gold globe logo, already featured in its stand-alone "Work Hard. Fly Right" ads, will be featured as the backdrop in the new ads, but now the name United is featured next to the globe in the company's logo. The new ads, which won't have a tagline, will highlight the combined airline's larger route network, new "outlook," low-fare guarantees and various product attributes, according to a review of six examples.

United said Continental's ad agency since 1998, New York-based Kaplan Thaler Group, will handle the new campaign. United's existing agency, Minneapolis-based Barrie D'Rozario Murphy, will continue to work on marketing projects.

Effective in March, the United website will undergo changes so the new logo appears at the top of the home page, and the site will begin using photographic images instead of United's quirky illustrations. This also represents the end of the road for United's "tulip" logo, the overlapping two letter Us that have been part of its look since the early 1970s.

"Lots of people are not too pleased about seeing the tulip retired," Mr. McKenna acknowledged. Fans of the old logo have a Facebook page dedicated to saving it and Internet chat rooms are rife with debate about the merits of the tulip vs. the globe.

But the combined company has chosen to retain United's theme song, George Gershwin's 1924 "Rhapsody in Blue," which has been in use since the mid-1970s, he said. It obviously wasn't a hard decision, given that Continental's globe is blue.

The globe, which Continental has been using since 1991, is an abstract of the 140- feet-tall Unisphere stainless steel sculpture that has been standing in Queens, N.Y., since the New York World's Fair of 1964-1965.

Mr. McKenna said the two carriers won't mesh their websites until 2012, and the rebranding effort at its airports and on its fleet won't be completed until 2013. Workers will get new uniforms in mid-2012. The interim ad campaign will give way to a new one in March 2012, after the two companies hope to be fully integrated. He declined to comment on the company's ad budget.

But in anticipation of a day this spring when airport employees and check-in kiosks from each side will be able to handle passenger transactions for both companies, Mr. McKenna said, airport agents and flight attendants will be issued lapel pins with the new logo and workers on the ramp and in cargo and catering will receive new caps.

This article was really relevant to me because my uncle used to be a pilot for United Airlines. I know that airlines have been struggling because it is such a difficult industry, but hopefully with the merger, this will be a successful new company.

Amazon Threatens to Cut Affiliates in California

MARCH 1, 2011

By SCOTT MORRISON

Ramping up its battle against Internet sales taxes, Amazon.com Inc. has warned it will sever ties with thousands of California-based advertising affiliates if the state government passes legislation requiring the e-commerce giant to collect taxes on items sold to residents.

In a letter to California's Board of Equalization, which oversees the collection of property taxes, sales taxes and other fees, Seattle-based Amazon said four bills introduced to the state legislature are unconstitutional because they would ultimately require sellers with no physical presence in California to collect sales tax merely on the basis of contracts with California advertisers.

"If any of these new tax collection schemes were adopted, Amazon would be compelled to end its advertising relationships with well over 10,000 California-based participants in the Amazon 'Associates Program'," wrote Paul Misener, Amazon's vice president for Global Public Policy, in a letter dated Feb. 24.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1992 ruled that companies aren't required to collect state sales taxes if they do not have a physical presence in that state.

Some cash-strapped states, however, have passed legislation requiring Internet retailers to collect tax if they have marketing affiliates in those states. The affiliates are typically websites that provide links to Amazon or other online retailers in exchange for a cut of any resulting sales.

Amazon has responded by ending affiliate programs in North Carolina, Rhode Island and Colorado. Amazon has also said it will cut ties with Illinois-based affiliates if the state governor signs recently passed legislation into law. Amazon is also at odds with state governments in Texas and New York.

In his letter to the Board of Equalization, Mr. Misener noted that "similar legislation in other states has, counterproductively, led to job and income losses and little, if any, new tax revenue."

California passed such as law in 2009, but it was vetoed by the governor.

California Board of Equalization member Senator George Runner said in a statement that Amazon's letter made it clear the bills in question would have negative impact on jobs in the state.

"In no uncertain terms, Amazon has made it clear to me that the checks they send Californians will be cut off overnight if pending legislation aimed at regulating their operations becomes law," said Mr. Runner.

I am from California, so this is not the first that I have heard of the huge taxes that are being imposed in order to pay off the massive amount of debt. It's a really unfortunate situation however, that so many California companies will suffer because of the state that they reside in. California is in desperate need of a structural revamping, because soon enough people and companies will be moving out, because taxes are simply too high.

Twitter Big on Smaller Advertisers

MARCH 2, 2011

Time: 1 1/2 hours


By AMIR EFRATI

Twitter Inc. is a hot property among investors, who are pumping up the company's valuation. But whether the start-up can live up to its multibillion-dollar appraisal depends on the likes of David Szetela, who holds the purse strings of numerous small and medium-sized advertisers.

Mr. Szetela, owner of online-ad agency Clix Marketing in Louisville, Ky., has had

his clients pay for ads on Google Inc.'s Web-search engine and on social-networking site Facebook Inc. But in January, a Twitter representative approached him to try advertising on the service, which lets users broadcast messages with 140 characters or less called tweets.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has hired ad sales directors and staff.

So Mr. Szetela bought ads on Twitter for five companies, including a health-supplement retailer. He also used Twitter ads to promote a book by venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki called "Enchantment," targeting users who expressed interest in the book's topic, persuasion tactics, by tweeting about it or searching for related information using Twitter's search feature.

The upshot: While Mr. Szetela spent more money advertising the book on Google and Facebook than on Twitter over the past few weeks, he said the Twitter ads—which cost more than $4,000 in total—led to more preorders of the book. The orders were in the "high hundreds," he said, adding that Twitter's "ability to target so efficiently and interject advertisements into a social conversation is unique."

Whether Twitter can woo more advertisers like those in Mr. Szetela's roster is crucial. Small and mid-sized advertisers are the ones that propelled Google's search-ad growth during the last decade and they are also boosting Facebook's growth.

While Twitter has had some success in selling ads costing as high as $120,000 for a 24-hour period to brand names such as Coca-Cola Co., small businesses spend roughly the same amount as big brands in the $26 billion U.S. online-ad market, according to David Hallerman, an analyst at research firm eMarketer.

"Twitter has built an audience, but in order to achieve the scale and revenue that Google and Facebook are seeing it needs to show that marketing dollars spent on the site can perform well for mom and pops, not just big companies," said Jonathan Strauss, chief executive of Snowball Factory Inc., which tracks marketing campaigns on Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter's effort to woo small advertisers, begun in December, comes amid investment froth around the start-up. In low-level talks with potential buyers, representatives of Twitter have said it is worth several billion dollars more than the $4 billion valuation set during a financing round in December, people familiar with the matter have said. More recently, JP Morgan Chase & Co. has been interested in buying a stake in Twitter, people familiar with the matter said.

The attempt to harness small advertisers is also the latest move by Twitter to tap its base of more than 200 million registered users. The company last fall elevated then-operating chief Dick Costolo to CEO, replacing co-founder Evan Williams.
[TWITTER]

Mr. Costolo, a former Google executive, had been charged with turning Twitter's popularity into a full-fledged business and had started hiring ad sales directors and staff—including Adam Bain, who previously ran revenue efforts for websites owned by News Corp., to be president of global revenue at Twitter.

Overall, Twitter, which was created in 2006 and began working with advertisers less than a year ago, is expected to generate $150 million in ad revenue this year, up from $45 million in 2010, according to eMarketer.

The growth is expected to come in part from a self-service system later this year that will let more small businesses buy ads on Twitter, much like Google's AdWords program. Twitter expects prices for some ads to rise as advertisers look to target the same users.

In January, Mr. Bain began a campaign to enlist more smaller advertisers by letting the direct sales team, which now numbers around 35 people, contact businesses that had previously expressed interest in advertising in Twitter.

Mr. Bain said Twitter ads "can deliver value for any business, large or small, by giving them new ways to amplify their existing Twitter presence and accelerate awareness and conversations about their products."
Digits

* Twitter's Ads: Here's What Works

Twitter has more than 125 big brands and more than 100 small- and medium-sized advertisers on the site, a person familiar with the matter said. Several small advertisers said in interviews that their early experience with Twitter was promising and they expected to allocate part of their future ad budgets to the site.

Because many Twitter users access the site from mobile devices, the company eventually will let advertisers target users based on their location, at first based on their country or city, a spokesman said. The company, which has about 350 employees, has begun hiring ad sales staff in Japan and London.

Twitter charges advertisers for each time a user selects an ad. Twitter's ad formats include Promoted Tweets—advertisements that look like regular tweets—as well as Promoted Trends, currently utilized by big-name advertisers, which allows a big brand to show an ad on a list of hot topics on Twitter's home page. It also offers Promoted Accounts, where a marketer pays to have Twitter recommend that users "follow" the tweets of a particular account.

Not every early tester is convinced Twitter's ad program will be as effective as Google's AdWords. Stewart Langille, vice president of marketing at Mint.com, a unit of Intuit Inc. that helps people track their finances, said ads on Twitter in recent months helped the site find new potential customers but didn't cause many of them to sign up for a Mint.com account. He added that "it's very early" and the system could improve.

A Twitter spokesman said ads are "a work in progress."

This is a new approach for social networking sites. I feel like Twitter is something completely different and there are no direct competitors so it doesn't surprise me that their advertising structure is completely different as well. As with Myspace and Facebook, time with tell how long they will stay around.

Code Breakers Can Read Washington Ads

MARCH 7, 2011

Time: 2 hours
Wall Street Journal

By THOMAS CATAN

WASHINGTON—This city is different; you just have to look at the side of a bus to see that.

"WE DON'T MAKE UAVs," reads one of the bus ads here.

"I have no idea what UAV stands for," says Marc Silverman, 29, a chemical engineer. "Is it something to do with AIDS?"

Every day in the nation's capital, commuters and visitors stare at ads in subway cars, on buses or on mobile billboards, unable to figure out what they mean.

But that doesn't bother advertisers. The ads aren't meant for everybody. They're only for the tiny part of the traveling public that holds the federal purse strings.

The wooing used to be conducted mainly in private. Companies would try to press a card into a policy maker's hand or meet a program manager at industry events sponsored by trade publications like Government Executive or Government Computer News.

But as the competition for lucrative federal contracts has intensified, it has spilled into the public arena—leaving many people baffled.

In one radio ad, a company called Qinetic North America touts its "engineering and technical support, field services support, plus innovative solutions to help protect our war-fighters including tactical robots and controllers, vehicle armoring [and] gunshot localization systems."

Another company—"the leader in cloud-based federal financial management"—offers "GCE Solution, with standardized financial business processes built in, eliminates the need for customizations that drive up costs and drag down projects."

Many of the ads on WTOP-FM, Washington's news, traffic and weather radio station, target government procurement officers and program managers as they're stuck in the capital's notorious rush-hour traffic.

Mysterious acronyms give the ads the flavor of coded Cold War era shortwave radio broadcasts: ISR, F136, IPV6 and ICD-10.

For the record, those stand for: Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance programs; a type of jet engine; a protocol by which data are sent between computers on the Internet; and the tenth revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems.

"Agencies demand provider diversity on networks on WITS 3 and GSA Schedule 70," says one radio ad, set to dramatic music. "Level 3 delivers it!"

Washington marketers say the gobbledygook has a purpose. Companies targeting a specific group of government employees "can use the federal acronyms so that they're weeding out the waste," explains Ralph Renzi, director of federal sales at WTOP radio.

In this case, the waste is listeners who aren't in the market for a fighter jet engine, aerial refueling tanker or cyber-security suite.

WTOP has seen advertising by companies seeking government contracts rise by up to 15% this year to become its biggest money-earner.

The segment has become so lucrative for the station that, a few years back, it started Federal News Radio, "the only station targeting the federal executive."

A typical ad on its website reads: "Get DCAA Compliant! Check out ICAT today!"

Clicking on the ad reveals ICAT to be an "Indirect Cost Allocation Tool for Government Contractors using QuickBooks."

The advertising segment has grown fast enough to have caught the attention of Google. The online advertising giant recently opened an office in Washington to target such advertisers. It says its Washington ad business has more than doubled in a year.

Some Washington ads revel in their obscurantism. One billboard, at the Pentagon Metro station, read: "THOSE WITH A NEED TO KNOW, KNOW," followed by a symbol made up of a circle with a wide "V" underneath. The ad was for a company named Palantir, which makes software used by intelligence agencies.

Companies like Palantir want to trumpet the work they do for agencies, but often that work is classified. That tension results in some of Washington's most confounding advertisements.

"They baffle me, to be honest," says Angel Bennett, who handled some intelligence accounts before becoming director of marketing for Flir Systems, which makes infrared imaging systems. "Most of the time you can't even send out a press release about the contract you've won."

Many ads aim their message over the heads of ordinary commuters at program managers, congressmen or procurement officers. Sometimes they miss their mark.

Take, for example, a recent advertising campaign by Northrop Grumman. Over a picture of a bombed-out city neighborhood, its subway ad read: "By the time you've identified the threat, we've already taken it out of the picture." In the lower, right-hand corner, a single clue: ISR.

The ad sparked a rash of online discussion.

"I still don't even get what they mean," wrote one commenter under the name Gulliver. "Who is the "you"? And who is the "we"?…Can anyone make any sense out of the slogan?"

"We don't tell the whole story" in our ads, says Randy Belote, a Northrop Grumman spokesman. "We let the reader try to determine what's going on."

Ordinary citizens who are baffled by Washington's ads can take comfort in the fact that people targeted by these ads sometimes don't understand them, either.

"ISR? I'm not sure on that," says Allan Burman, a former administrator of the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Federal Procurement Policy.

What about WITS 3? "Is that a network exchange?" he asks. "I have no idea."

And how about UAV? "That's an unmanned aerial vehicle," he says, triumphantly.

That still doesn't explain the ad on the bus. It turns out to be for a company called Mission Essential Personnel, which provides translators and analysts for the U.S. defense and intelligence communities.

The company plastered its puzzling ads over 235 buses in the area, it says, to draw attention to its unspecified services for the government. "Obviously, you don't get everything on the side of the bus as it goes by at 35 mph," says Chris Taylor, the company's chief executive.

But he says the campaign helped get the company noticed around Washington.

"I got emails from friends saying: 'I almost got hit by an MEP bus!" he says.

This article was really interesting to me. I have never heard of advertisers specially excluding people, but for advertisers in Washington, that seems to be the case. I wonder if there is also the psychological aspect, where those who understand the ads feel more privelaged and therefore more likely to remember the advertisement.

Television's Senior Moment

MARCH 9, 2011

Time: 1 hour 20 minutes
Wall Street Journal


By AMY CHOZICK

In CBS's new cop show "Blue Bloods," Tom Selleck, at the age of 66, plays a New York police commissioner. Kathy Bates, at 62, snagged the lead role in NBC's legal series "Harry's Law." And 62-year-old rocker Steven Tyler is fast becoming the crowd's favorite judge on his first season on Fox's "American Idol."

Viewers 55-plus make up nearly 60% of the weekly audience for 'The Good Wife' on CBS; a 30-second ad recently cost $108,000.

Television is starting to act its age.

For decades the TV industry has operated on a currency of youth, creating shows that appeal to 18- to 49-year-olds, the age group advertisers traditionally consider most likely to buy new products, switch brands and spend on everything from cars to soft drinks. But as the nearly 80 million baby boomers continue to age out of the coveted demographic—the oldest boomers are turning 65 this year, the youngest 47—networks want to charge advertisers more to reach them. After all, these viewers still watch a disproportionate amount of TV, and they control half of all U.S. consumer spending.

From Ed O'Neill's patriarch on ABC's "Modern Family" to 51-year-old Hugh Laurie on Fox's "House," boomers' influence can be seen in programming. On "NCIS," TV's No. 1 drama with an average viewer age of 57, strapping young naval investigators turn to wise 59-year-old Mark Harmon for advice.

Network executives' pitch to advertisers is that the current crop of aging viewers isn't like previous generations, who were winding down their spending at 55. This group buys iPads, redecorates, splurges on vacations and postpones retirement. "People still think of their grandparents when they were 60 wearing comfort shoes and baggy chinos," says Alan Wurtzel, NBC Universal's president of research. "These guys are just fundamentally different."

Networks had to do something. Despite the vast teenage contingent that tunes in to "American Idol" each week, the average prime-time TV viewer hit 51 this year.
Today's TV Shows, Tomorrow's Pilots

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TV networks are starting production on roughly 80 pilot episodes for new shows. Some share common themes with noted current programs.

Boomers watch some 170 hours of TV a month, or five to six hours a day, according to Nielsen Co.—compared with an average of four hours and 49 minutes a day overall. Almost half of boomers use digital recording devices and stream shows online.

"They are the TV generation. It's where they grew up, and it's still their cultural touch point," says Sheron Davis, behavioral sciences director at Omnicom Group's BBDO New York ad agency.

Viewers 55-plus make up nearly 60% of the weekly audience for CBS's legal drama "The Good Wife" and ABC's "Dancing with the Stars." Even for high-school singalong "Glee," the turn-on, tune-in, drop-out generation accounts for a per-episode average of 2.5 million viewers, or 21% of the total, Nielsen says.

Boomers can thank themselves for the industry's ageism, says Matt Thornhill, president of market-research firm the Boomer Project. As the post-War generation came into adulthood, they made shows like ABC's "Charlie's Angels" and "Happy Days" hugely popular—and hugely valuable to advertisers. Ever since, networks charged advertisers a premium to reach 18- to 49-year-old viewers and discounted older audiences. In fact, for the most part, viewers over 55 haven't factored into ad rates, which made them without value to the networks.

Currently, networks still charge advertisers more for shows with younger viewers. A 30-second ad on "The Good Wife" cost, on average, $108,000 in the fourth quarter of 2010, or roughly $25 per thousand viewers, according to SQAD Inc., a Tarrytown, N.Y., media-research firm. In contrast, on a Wednesday night on top-rated "American Idol," where the average age is 44, Fox can charge $435,000 for 30 seconds—or about $46.75 per thousand viewers. "Glee," one of prime-time TV's youngest shows but whose audience is nowhere near that of "American Idol," gets $47 per thousand viewers.

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(t-b) Fox; CBS; Getty Images (3); Everett Collection (3)
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Producers and network executives still cringe when a series is deemed "old," and they still brag about nightly 18-to-49 ratings. But they also are trying to reflect aging boomers' tastes and values.

Networks are retooling boomer classics to tap boomers' '60s nostalgia. CBS, which has the largest (and with an average age of 56, the oldest) prime-time audience, launched a new "Hawaii Five-0" last year. The sleek look and sexy actors brought in young viewers, while the "reboot" of a classic pleased older viewers. ABC has a "Charlie's Angels" remake in development. NBC is developing a pilot about Playboy bunnies, while ABC is working on one about Pan Am flight attendants—both set in the '60s.

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FOX

The audience for 'Glee' is one of the youngest on prime-time TV; a 30- second ad recently cost $251,000, according to research firm SQAD Inc.
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The networks want marketers to ignore age and pay for viewers based on income and other factors—in effect paying more for affluent viewers who are 55-plus. CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler says the network has always created shows that appeal to all ages. But "boomers have always been a priority customer for us," she adds.

"Rather than saying a 22-year-old is more valuable than a 58-year-old, we're saying, 'Look, the fact is an affluent 58-year-old is certainly more valuable than a 22-year-old who is just getting by,' " says David Poltrack, chief research officer at CBS Corp., parent of the CBS network.

Still, most marketers prefer to reach young consumers, whose buying preferences can make a product or service cool so that it eventually catches on with older buyers. "Young people are still prime targets for mortgages, car loans and investment advice," says Joe Abruzzo, head of research at Havas SA's MPG unit, with clients such as Dannon, Carnival Cruise Lines and Sears Holdings Corp. Networks are selling advertisers on older consumers "because that's what they can offer."

Pharmaceuticals, luxury-car makers and financial firms are on board. "This isn't a wave, it's a tsunami," says Jim Speros, chief marketing officer at Fidelity Personal and Workplace Investing, a unit of Fidelity Investments. "[Boomers] have to feel like they're seeing themselves in the [TV] spot."

Five years ago, MTV Networks' cable channel TV Land repositioned to catch viewers in their 40s. It replaced prime-time reruns of "The Andy Griffith Show" and "Leave it to Beaver" with repeats of "Roseanne" and "Everybody Loves Raymond." And it put out a call to agents and producers: Pitch us the pilots the networks have deemed "too old."

One result is "Hot in Cleveland," TV Land's original comedy series about three L.A. women stuck in Cleveland en route to Paris, co-starring Betty White and Valerie Bertinelli. The writers insert jokes or guest appearances that hit the boomer sweet spot: Wendie Malick plays an aging actress who cringes when she's offered a role as the grandmother of starlet Megan Fox. When Mary Tyler Moore guest-starred, it was her first role opposite Ms. White since "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."

In contrast, says TV Land President Larry W. Jones, a lot of shows have audiences in their 40s, but jokes that revolve around 20-somethings. "We want our audience to feel like they're part of the club," Mr. Jones says.

Last year, NBC Universal's Mr. Wurtzel conducted a study of so-called Alpha Boomers, who are boomers ages 55 to 64, and found them willing to change brands, spend on technology, use social networking sites and purchase online. They spend $1.8 trillion annually on food, cars, personal care and other products. "Our message to advertisers is that if you don't start being more sensitive, you're going to lose these guys," Mr. Wurtzel says.

This article was very surprising to me, however once I read it everything made sense. I know that even in my own home my mom and sister watch the majority of the television, and even then my mom has my sister beat out. This is because once people get older, they follow a much more structured routine. While I don't mind turning on the television, many nights I have babysitting, night class or meetings that interfere with the prime time lineup. My sister is in high school, and plays volleyball 3-4 nights a week. It is smart for TV shows to tailor their cast towards an oldr generation because that is their central dmeographic.

NY Times begins charging for digital access

Time: 1 1/2 hours
Wall Street Journal


NEW YORK — The New York Times began charging Monday for full access to its website and mobile services.

The third-largest U.S. newspaper is charging $15 every four weeks, or $195 a year, to read more than 20 articles a month on its website. That fee also covers a subscription on the newspaper's software for smartphones. The new fees kicked in at about 2 p.m. EDT.

Readers who want unlimited access on the website and the Times' software for Apple Inc.'s iPad tablet computer have to pay $20 every four weeks, or $260 annually. A digital subscription covering the website and both mobile options costs $35 every four weeks, or $455 annually.

The New York Times Co. is charging for digital access because online advertising revenue hasn't grown fast enough to offset losses in print ads.

Print subscribers will keep free online access. The Times is hoping to bring in more digital revenue while giving print readers more reason to keep their subscriptions.

The company declined to say Monday how many people have signed up for a digital subscription. But on Monday afternoon, the newspaper's customer-service line has a message telling people that they should expect longer-than-usual waiting times because of a high number of callers.

There are still ways for Web surfers to keep reading Times articles for free after they reach the 20-article limit in a given month.

Readers coming from a search engine such as Google or Yahoo get five free articles per search service per day. And there are no limits on the amount of traffic coming from two of the Web's most popular tools for sharing information, Facebook and Twitter.

Amazon.com Inc. said Monday that people who subscribe to The New York Times on the Kindle will get access to the newspaper's website at no extra cost. It didn't say when this would go into effect, just that subscribers will get more information in the coming weeks. Subscribers pay $20 a month to read the Times on the Kindle.

The Times said users of the iPhone and Android devices have to download a new version of the Times' software. An updated BlackBerry app is coming soon, so those users will get free access for now.

Shares of The New York Times Co. fell 6 cents to close Monday at $9.22.
—Copyright 2011 Associated Press

I guess I am a product of my generation, but I am completely against newspapers charging for online content. Especially one of the biggest newspapers in the world who has plenty of advertising revenue to depend on. Paying for the Wall Street Journal this semester I felt was slightly more warranted, but the New York Times is a heavily biased newspaper that does not tell me anything that I couldn't find from free websites such as aol.com

Still Active in China, Google Hunts for New Business

March 28, 2011

Time: 45 minutes
Wall Street Journal


While it continues to battle the Chinese government over censorship and privacy concerns, Google Inc. is pushing forward with a bid to find new business.

In a speech earlier this month, Elliott Ng, Google’s new director and head of product management for China, said the company was not only generating revenue there, but had its most profitable month ever in China in December.

Google is also hunting globally for acquisitions that can support the company’s initiatives, particularly in mobile and e-commerce applications, Ng said at an open-sourced lecture event organized by a group called Techyizu.

“Google is a small player,” in China, Ng said, but it will continue to grow its business.

Ng said the company would not be changing its approach towards China when it comes to Internet search. Early last year, after experiencing cyber attacks in China, the company redirected its Chinese site, Google.cn, to an uncensored Chinese-language version hosted in Hong Kong. China is one of only five geographies in the world where Google does not receive more than 50% of search traffic, according to Ng. The others are Taiwan, Russia, The Republic of Korea, and the Czech Republic.

The bulk of the work that Google’s staffers are doing in China is centered on servicing global operations, Ng said.

A spokeswoman for Google said the company was focused on selling ads to Chinese companies looking to export their products overseas, and on new types of display advertising for the country’s booming Internet market.

“If you look at the new areas that they’ve been getting into with mobile Internet and cloud computing, they should be looking in areas like that and shopping around in areas like that,” said Michael Clendenin, founder and managing director of RedTech Advisors (China) LLC. “There’s still tons of untapped opportunity there.”

In an interview with WSJ earlier this week, Daniel Alegre, Google’s president for the Asia-Pacific region, said the company’s run-ins with the Chinese government haven’t hindered the company’s ability to launch Android-based devices in China. “The importance of Android is that it’s an open-source platform,” Alegre told WSJ. “Anyone can use it. Because of that flexibility, China Mobile launched a number of Android phones so we’re not really limited in terms of the Android penetration.”

Clendenin said Google could still make its presence felt in China, either through proxies or through joint ventures. “It makes sense for them to look at China not just for the pure play China opportunity, but for them to scoop up technologies that could be applicable in other markets,” he said.

One reason for Google’s continued success in China, despite its having ceded the market to domestic competitors last year, is the explosive growth of the overall online ad market in China.

According to Clendenin, the online ad market grew approximately 46% in 2010 and is expected to grow 40% in 2011. So even with Google’s declining market share the company was able to ride the overall growth of the advertising industry to the best performing month of the company’s history.

– Jonathan Shieber

After reading this article I am still surprised how there are countries like China which are so drastically different from the US. When you have communism in a country global companies have to come up with a completely new approach.Advertising is no exception. It is difficult to picture a megacorporation like Google struggling, but China is a huge country and to not be the top search engine there is a big deal.

Networks, Advertisers Call New Plays Amid NFL Strife

MARCH 28, 2011

Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Wall Street Journal


By LAUREN A. E. SCHUKER

Since the National Football League locked out its players about two weeks ago, some cable and broadcast networks have been preparing contingency plans to air alternative programming in case games are canceled this fall.

Advertisers, who spend roughly $3 billion a year on commercials that run during NFL games, also are forging new plans and considering buying commercial time on other marquee programming should the work stoppage continue into the football season. Some advertisers already have bought commercials on Viacom Inc. television networks as a backup.

"Football is so important to networks and buyers that they can't afford not to plan ahead," says Sam Armando, who heads television research at SMGx, an ad-buying consultancy arm of Publicis Groupe SA. "Both networks and advertisers are definitely working on a Plan B.

"It's not like you can replace football overnight with other sports or prime-time shows," he continues. "There are contracts and schedules and a lot that has be worked out."

Adds Michael Nathanson, a media analyst for Nomura Securities: "The lockout may be resolved over the summer, but these networks and agencies have to plan now for their fourth quarter. And if football is off the air, guess what? You've got a problem."

The standoff between the NFL owners and the league's players over compensation has become particularly threatening to the league's television partners as record numbers of viewers tune in to watch the NFL.

For the second year in a row, the Super Bowl in February smashed records to become the most-watched telecast in U.S. history. About 111 million people watched the game on Fox Broadcasting, according to Nielsen Co. News Corp., which operates Fox, also owns The Wall Street Journal.

Now, the potential cancellation of games would deprive networks of a crucial way to attract large numbers of viewers and advertisers.

While advertisers haven't yet changed their usual May schedule for buying NFL ads, executives say the uncertainty has heated up the advertising market for other programming that draws large audiences. Golf, college football and prime-time dramas are among the areas attracting extra interest.

"We have talked to all our clients, and they're nervous," says Jeff Lucas, who runs ad sales for MTV's music and entertainment divisions, which together include the Viacom-owned networks MTV, VH1, Comedy Central and Spike TV. He says that many of those channels' top advertisers—auto makers, brewers and mobile-telephone companies—are also the top marketers for the NFL.

The NFL's television partners, including CBS Corp., Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN, Fox and Comcast Corp.'s NBC, remain hopeful a work stoppage won't disrupt the coming season, but some are still forming contingency programming. ESPN has the cushion of college football and, along with Fox, can show Major League Baseball games. Other networks will need to be more creative.

"We remain optimistic that a settlement will be reached sooner rather than later, but we are considering contingencies in case it isn't," said a spokesman for Fox Sports, which airs games on Sunday afternoons. A spokesman for NBC Sports, which airs football on Sunday evenings, declined to comment regarding possible contingency plans, as did a spokesman for CBS Sports.

Some cable channels are taking a more aggressive approach. Spike TV, which doesn't own rights to show the NFL, is considering developing several alternatives in case games are canceled on rival broadcast and cable channels. Spike President Kevin Kay says the network, which draws large numbers of men 18-49 years old, is contemplating booking a live boxing match on a Sunday night in the fall to capitalize on a possible NFL work stoppage. Spike is also considering pushing up the start dates of its regular television series, such as football comedy "Blue Mountain State," which would begin in September rather than October.

Mr. Kay says his team already has begun talking with the producers of "Blue Mountain State" to see if they can get their writers to produce episodes sooner. In addition, if NFL games are canceled, he is considering temporarily moving the show—which normally airs at 11 p.m. Wednesdays—to Sundays, when most professional football games are usually played.

"We're already seeing advertisers asking questions about where they can move their money if there is a work stoppage," says Mr. Kay, "and in some cases, we are the answer."

MTV's Mr. Lucas says a number of companies have already committed to advertising agreements on shows across the Viacom networks whether or not the work stoppage continues. He adds that 90% of the roughly 33 million people who frequently watch NFL games are also frequent viewers of the Viacom channels.

"A lot of advertisers depend on the NFL to launch products, but they need to launch those products whether football is on or not," he says.

This article really made me see how fragile the advertising industry is. Moreover, I didn't even consider how many industries would be affected by an NFL strike. It is common knowledge that the NFL brings in huge advertising revenue during their games. And for good reason, their viewership during the regular season is through the roof. If the NFL strikes there will be several industries that will be jeopardized. It is smart for them to have several backup plans, but if the NFL does strike they will still lose a great deal of money.

Advertisers Wary of Myspace

Time: 55 minutes
Wall Street Journal

MARCH 28, 2011

By EMILY STEEL

With its traffic plummeting and its future uncertain, social-media and entertainment site Myspace is having an increasingly hard time drawing advertisers, especially for long-term deals.


In February, Myspace registered its sharpest audience declines since the site began its downward spiral in 2009. Traffic to Myspace last month plunged 44% from a year earlier to 37.7 million unique U.S. visitors, its lowest monthly total since February 2006, according to comScore Inc.

Meanwhile, people who visited the site spent on average 59% less time in February than they did a year earlier, comScore data show.

The declines come as Myspace owner News Corp. pushes ahead with efforts to unload the website. Options that have been discussed include combining Myspace with another website, such as a gaming or social-networking site, in exchange for cash and equity in the merged company. Executives also have talked with private-equity and venture-capital firms about deals in which such a firm would take over the business, leaving Myspace employees and News Corp. with minority stakes.

With so much up in the air, several marketing executives say they are hesitant to commit ad dollars to Myspace, particularly for larger or extended campaigns. "We're not seeing our audiences on Myspace, and not seeing them play the big influencer role they once did," says Shiv Singh, head of digital for PepsiCo Inc.'s PepsiCo Americas Beverages, which hasn't run an ad campaign with Myspace since 2009. "We don't know who will own them or what they will look like in June or July."

Rosabel Tao, a spokeswoman for Myspace, declined to comment. Myspace is owned by News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal.

Myspace used to regularly attract big splashy ad purchases from major marketers looking to tap into the social-networking craze and Myspace's willingness to participate in innovative campaigns.

A series of big-name sponsors, including McDonald's Corp., Sony Corp.'s Sony Pictures, State Farm Insurance and Toyota Motor Corp., signed up to the launch of Myspace Music, a joint venture with several record labels, in September 2008.

When MySpace's popularity among Internet users was surging—it peaked in 2008—the site regularly sold the high-priced ad space on its homepage months in advance.

Today, Myspace still charges relatively high prices for splashy ads on its homepage, but demand has dropped off, and several marketers say they no longer make commitments months in advance.

"Nobody is going to commit to an upfront because they wouldn't know who they are going to be writing checks out to in six months," says Ian Schafer, chief executive of Deep Focus, a New York-based digital ad agency owned by Engine USA, which creates campaigns for clients including Microsoft Corp., Nike Inc. and Hearst Corp. Mr. Schafer says his clients haven't run an ad campaign with Myspace for several months.

"They have gone dormant over the past two years with advertisers," says Scott Kelly, digital marketing manager for Ford Motor Co., which hasn't run an ad campaign with Myspace in about two years. Ford was in discussions with Myspace about a campaign for its Mustang brand in 2009, but the talks fell apart when Myspace closed its Detroit office and didn't follow up, Mr. Kelly says. "They literally left town and left the campaign on the table. We haven't done a campaign with them since."

In their meetings with ad buyers, Myspace's ad-sales teams pitch the site's extensive reach, its targeting options, self-service ad-buying systems and opportunities to create interesting promotions, such as the opportunity to "hijack," or take over, the site's homepage. Homepage hijacks cost a minimum of $750,000 to $1 million, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Some marketers say they still are open to buying short-term display ads on the site, which are paid for based on the number of times an ad is viewed, because Myspace continues to draw a sizable, though shrinking, audience that ranks it 26 among U.S. Web properties. Those ads cost a couple of dollars per thousand views, according to ad buyers.

Standard display ads for Citigroup Inc. appeared on prominent sections of the site for several days last week. A Citigroup spokeswoman declined to comment.

Myspace also has a deal with Google Inc. to sell a portion of its ad space through Google's advertising systems.

"Myspace still has a strong teen audience, and is good for gaming and content sharing. Depending on the campaign, Myspace is definitely still in the mix," says Joe Mele, a managing director at Razorfish, a digital ad agency owned by Publicis Groupe SA, which creates campaigns and buys ads for clients including AT&T Inc., McDonald's and J.C. Penney Co. He added, however, that clients might question the firm's rationale for recommending Myspace.

Kelly Twohig, an executive vice president at Publicis Groupe's Starcom USA, which buys ads on behalf of such marketers as General Motors Co., Bank of America Corp. and Kellogg Co., is more critical. "This is not a place you are going to go for a franchise opportunity, something multiyear or multiquarter. You are not going to invest resources and talent in something big that may not be there for the long term."

U.S. ad revenue at Myspace dropped 39% in 2010 to $273.8 million, according to research firm eMarketer. The News Corp. segment that includes Myspace reported an operating loss of $156 million for the quarter ended Dec. 31, primarily due to the site's poor performance. Search and advertising revenues at Myspace for the quarter shrank $70 million from a year earlier.

Myspace revamped its site in the fall, trying to attract users between 13 and 35 years old. The site dialed back its focus on connecting with friends, aiming to become a hub for music, entertainment and games. Chief Executive Mike Jones says that Myspace now is a "complementary offer" to Facebook Inc., which is "not a rival anymore."

Visitors to the site have steadily dropped off since then, even as the company continues to release new features. Myspace recently unveiled a new homepage with more of a focus on music, movies, celebrities and TV. The company also is developing a new linkup with Facebook that would allow musicians and bands to manage their Facebook profiles from Myspace, according to people familiar with the matter.

"Their fall from relevance has been so significant, that advertising on Myspace just doesn't make sense to us," says Chuck Sullivan, senior vice president of global online services for hotelier Hilton Worldwide. Mr. Sullivan says that Hilton hasn't bought any ad campaigns with Myspace for more than two years.

This article was not very surprising for me. For the past few years Myspace has been becoming less and less popular. I am curious to see if something similar will happen to Facebook, however with the popularity of Facebook that is hard to imagine.

Facebook Taps Executive From Time Warner

Time: 45 minutes
Wall Street Journal

MARCH 29, 2011

By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER

Facebook Inc. said it hired Mark D'Arcy, the president of Time Warner Inc.'s Global Media Group, as director of global creative solutions to help boost the appeal of the social networking service's ad offerings.

In the newly created role that he will begin in early May, Mr. D'Arcy will be responsible for leading a team charged with developing ideas for how advertisers can use Facebook in their marketing campaigns.

"There is a great need for the creative community ... to learn how to leverage the incredible power of Facebook to improve the way brands tell stories," said Mr. D'Arcy in an interview.

Some ad agencies say they are spending more on Facebook ads, but suggest the company limits itself with ads in small boxes that typically include a picture, video or line of text. Some marketers prefer flashy ads that take over a screen and offer interactive capabilities, which Facebook has avoided in favor of associating marketing with information about users' friends.

Mr. D'Arcy, who is 39 years old, said that Facebook's approach to advertising fits with a wider shift in marketing "from intrusion to engagement"—that is, from ads that get in the way of content to marketing that is interactive or even desired. "You have to be doing something that is contributing value to audiences," he said.

Options include exploring new ways for marketers to interact with the birthdays, photos and other data that users enter into Facebook, he said. Mr. D'Arcy said he would also work with people from the music, television and film business to develop ways to improve their experiences on Facebook. Earlier this month, Warner Bros. films began renting movies via Facebook.

Originally from New Zealand, Mr. D'Arcy will be based in New York City. He will report to Mike Hoefflinger, Facebook's director of global customer marketing. At Time Warner, Mr. D'Arcy led a group that created content for advertising partners.

In an email, Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said Mr. D'Arcy "understands that marketing can be more engaging and effective when it is social by design and he has the experience to help brands and agencies get there."

In a written statement, Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes said that in Mr. D'Arcy's seven years with the company he "tirelessly shared his intense creative nature with fellow colleagues throughout the company and with clients across the industry."

Separately, a federal judge ruled that a court case against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will remain in federal court, denying the plaintiff's motion to move the case to New York state court.

In Buffalo, N.Y., U.S. District Judge Richard J. Arcara found that Mr. Zuckerberg lives in California. Mr. Zuckerberg's parents live in New York. He had listed their home as his residence before moving to California to work on the now famous social-networking site.

Paul Ceglia, of New York, is suing Mr. Zuckerberg, claiming an agreement that Mr. Zuckerberg allegedly signed as a freshman at Harvard in 2003 gave Mr. Ceglia a right to 84% of Facebook. Lawyers for Mr. Ceglia had claimed Mr. Zuckerberg lived a transient life out of a duffel bag.

A lawyer for Mr. Ceglia wasn't available for comment Monday.

Lawyers for Facebook and Mr. Zuckerberg have called both the case, and Mr. Ceglia himself, a fraud. Mr. Ceglia's lawyers have said such a characterization is "nonsense," and that they have evidence that would hold up in court.
—David Benoit contributed to this article.


After reading this article I was surprised at how many different approaches there is marketing. The best advertisement, is of course when one doesn't realize that they are being marketed to. This is the objective, I feel,of Facebook's advertising. It seems that with the creation of this new position that Mark D-Arcy will fill, that Facebook will be seeing a lot of new advertising methods.

Comcast Sets Tone With NBC Staffers

Time: 1 hour 35 minutes
Wall Street Journal

January 27,2011

By SAM SCHECHNER

On the eve of taking control of NBC Universal, Comcast Corp. executives on Thursday hosted a company-wide meeting with employees to introduce themselves and spell out their priorities, including fixing NBC's prime-time hours.

Steve Burke, who is set become chief executive of NBC Universal, used the event to set a new tone for the company, introducing a new corporate logo. At the meeting—with live segments beamed from New York, Los Angeles, London, Miami and Philadelphia—Mr. Burke also discussed a new corporate "credo" that reads, in part, "We like to keep score and win."

Comcast is set to close its deal to buy control of NBC Universal from General Electric Co. late Friday. In that deal, approved last week by regulators, Comcast is merging its suite of cable networks with NBC Universal's assets, and will take a 51% stake in the new entity. In the deal, Comcast is contributing cash and assets worth roughly $13.75 billion.

Employees were greeted in their offices Thursday by signs and cupcakes bearing the new logo, and a welcome package that included a thick book detailing the histories of Comcast, NBC and the Universal studio. They also were given certificates for 25 shares of Comcast stock, about a $575 value.

NBC's colorful iconic peacock will remain a fixture in the logos for NBC, MSNBC and CNBC. But the logo for company itself, to be called NBCUniversal, removes both the peacock and the outline of a globe from Universal's logo. The old logo was introduced when NBC and Universal merged in 2004. The logo also deletes the space between NBC and Universal: Legally, NBC Universal will be known as NBCUniversal, as it appears in the new logo, a person familiar with the matter said.

The company-wide meeting, streamed online for employees not attending in person, included appearances from Comcast founder Ralph Roberts, as well as his son, and Comcast CEO, Brian Roberts.

Mr. Burke, interviewed in New York by "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams, said that fixing NBC's evening hours is a prime priority.

Robert Greenblatt, whom Mr. Burke has appointed to run NBC's entertainment operations, has his work cut out for him. NBC dominated prime time in the 1990s and early 2000s, but has tumbled most of its competitors.

Mr. Greenblatt has already started ordering pilot episodes of potential new series for the fall schedule. They include "Smash," a musical about putting on a Broadway musical, and "Are You there Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea," a sitcom based on an autobiography by Chelsea Handler.

Ms. Handler also hosts a late-night show on cable channel E! Entertainment, which Comcast is folding into NBCU.

It seems like a huge production for two large companies such as NBC Universal and Comcast to be merging. I am curious to see how NBC will do in the coming years, especially in the prime timeline up. NBC is still a major network, regardless if it is a little behind in the ratings compared to competitors.

Data Growth Boosts Vodafone

Time: 1 hour 25 minutes
Wall Street Journal

February 3, 2011

By LILLY VITOROVICH

LONDON—Vodafone Group PLC on Thursday reported solid third-quarter revenue, driven by an explosion in customers' data usage and strong free-cash-flow generation.

Vodafone posted a 2.1% rise in group service revenue—one of the key figures tracked by U.K. analysts—to £10.96 billion ($17.74 billion) for the three months ended Dec. 31, underpinned by growth in India, Turkey, the U.K. and South Africa. It is the fifth sequential quarter of improvement.

Vodafone said revenue from data services grew 27% due to "strong smartphone and mobile connectivity sales." On an annualised basis, Vodafone's data revenue is more than £5 billion, and has exceeded messaging revenue for the first time. Third-quarter group revenue rose 3% to £11.89 billion from a year earlier.

"Our performance has been driven by the effective execution of our strategy to strengthen our businesses and deliver growth, particularly in data services and emerging markets," Chief Executive Vittorio Colao said.

Vodafone, which appointed a new chairman a day earlier, said adjusted operating profit for the full year is now expected to be at the upper end of a range between £11.8 billion and £12.2 billion.

Free cash flow before licence and spectrum payments and one-off tax-related payments was £1.1 billion, lower than last year due primarily to working-capital movements. The company posted cumulative free-cash-flow generation of £4.6 billion, consistent with Vodafone's expectations of free cash flow of more than £6.5 billion during the 2011 fiscal year.

Vodafone didn't provide profit figures for the third quarter but will report full year results on May 17.

At Verizon Wireless, in which Vodafone holds a 45% stake, service revenue rose 7% in the third quarter, driven by net customer growth and higher data revenue.

Vodafone Wednesday appointed Royal Philips Electronics NV's chief executive and president, Gerard Kleisterlee, as its new chairman, succeeding John Bond, who came under fire from some shareholders last year over the mobile giant's strategy and track record on acquisitions.

Vodafone shares have risen 30% during the past 12 months, outperforming London's FTSE 100 index, which has risen 13% over the same period.

I especially related to this article because I was just recently in Ireland and I saw how popular Vodaphone was across the pond. It is undoubtedly because of such a rise is smartphones worldwide. They said that data plan's accounted for a significant number of sales and I would expect since smart phones are so popular in the US is comes to no shock that they would be popular in Europe and other parts of the world as well.

Myspace's Future Gets Fuzzy

Time: 2 1/2 hours
Wall Street Journal


February 7, 2011

By EMILY STEEL And RUSSELL ADAMS

News Corp.'s early talks to sell Myspace have focused on deals in which the conglomerate would retain a stake in the struggling social-media and entertainment website, according to people familiar with the matter.

News Corp. has hired Allen & Co. to advise on "possible deal opportunities for Myspace," the investment bank said.

News Corp. executives are holding informal talks about a handful of options. In one scenario, News Corp. would combine Myspace with another site, possibly in gaming or social networking, in exchange for cash and equity in the merged company, the people said. Executives also have talked to private-equity and venture-capital firms about taking over the business and setting aside stakes for News Corp. and employees of the reorganized site, the people said.

News Corp. and Myspace said no formal discussions with investment or acquisition partners have been held.

News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey said last week that the company hopes to reach a decision on Myspace in the first half. He said partners in the U.S. and abroad have expressed interest and that an outright sale is one option.

Talks with potential partners began in November after Mr. Carey said the site was running out of time to stem losses. Myspace Chief Executive Mike Jones and Jonathan Miller, News Corp.'s chief digital officer, subsequently concluded that Myspace could attract more talent and have better financial prospects as an independent Internet company, according to the people familiar with the matter. Mr. Carey then gave his blessing to pursue informal talks regarding some sort of deal involving the site, the people said.

Mr. Jones in November had conversations with people in the industry about the site, according to a person familiar with the matter. Some of those people began to consider an investment but decided against it, the person said.

A Myspace spokeswoman said, "All interested parties are directed through a single process managed by our bankers, who have just recently been retained."

Another possibility is a partnership with a gaming company, according to the people familiar with the matter. They said News Corp. is interested in the revenue potential of online games and see Myspace as a gateway to avid game players.

That could be difficult, however. In December, only 4.4 million of the site's 50.1 million unique visitors used Myspace's games section, according to comScore Inc.

An investor who had spoken to Myspace said the company likely would be valued in the tens of millions of dollars. Others said it was too preliminary to estimate a price. News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal, paid $580 million to buy Myspace in 2005.

Myspace's traffic continued to decline after the site last autumn shifted its focus to entertainment from social networking. Myspace's December traffic of 50.1 million visitors was down 27% from a year earlier, according to comScore. Myspace executives said the decision in January to cut the company's roughly 1,000-person work force in half put the site on a fast track toward profitability.

The day employees were told about the latest round of job cuts, Mr. Jones touted the early success of the autumn revamp as an entertainment hub. Myspace has seen an "uptick in returning and new users," with more than 3.3 million new profiles created since the relaunch, he wrote in a memo to employees.

For the quarter ended Dec. 31, the News Corp. segment that includes Myspace reported an operating loss of $156 million, $31 million deeper than the segment's year-earlier loss. News Corp. blamed the wider loss mostly on lower search and advertising revenues at Myspace.

I related to this article a lot because the first social networking site that I had was on Myspace. With the new picture "The Social Network" up for countless movie awards, it is safe to say that social networking is on the rise. However Facebook seems to have a monopoly on the industry. It will be interesting to see if Myspace merging with another company will be enough to revamp the website and make it as visited as it once was.

U.S. Magazine Circulation Drops Further

Time: 2 hours
Wall Street Journal

February 7, 2011
By TESS STYNES

U.S. magazine circulation continued to weaken in the second half of 2010, according to preliminary data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The steady decline in U.S. magazine newsstand sales accelerated in the second half of 2010, falling 7.3% compared with a drop of 5.6% in the first half.

Overall, total paid and verified magazine circulation declined 1.2%.
Steep declines have plagued the magazine industry in recent years as readers migrated to the Internet for news and entertainment and the recession curbed discretionary purchases.

Hearst Corp.'s Cosmopolitan again recorded the most single-copy sales, at an average 1.6 million copies, down 11% from a year earlier.

On a total paid and verified basis, Better Homes and Gardens published by Meredith Corp., remained in the top spot, with circulation growth of 0.7% to an average 7.7 million copies. It took the top spot from Reader's Digest in the second half of 2009.

Newsstand sales of US Weekly fell 16% to 812,089 copies, posting the biggest decline among the nation's 25 most-sold magazines.

Of the seven publications with newsstand sales growth, the biggest newsstand gainer was Bauer Publishing's Woman's World, with a 9.1% increase to 1.3 million copies.

The biggest paid-circulation rise was by Game Informer Magazine at 5.1 million copies, up 33%.

AARP The Magazine and AARP Bulletin continued to have the highest circulation, at 24.4 million and 23.6 million, down 2.6% and 2%, respectively.

I knew that magazine sales were declining but I thought in the recent years that they had made some sort of a comeback. Because of that this article was very surprising to me. I wasn’t surprised, however, that Cosmopolitan has the most single copy sales since I feel that their key demographic is young women who might not want the actual subscription. This article shows that with all the benefits that the Internet holds, there is significant drawbacks in several industries.

AOL, Huffington Doubles Down On Free News

Time: 55 minutes
Wall Street Journal

February 7, 2011

By NAT WORDEN

AOL Inc.'s $315 million acquisition of online news website Huffington Post boils down to a wager that free, ad-supported online news content can become a substantial profit driver for a large media company.

The Internet company, spun off from Time Warner Inc. in 2009, is now asking investors to look past its short-term financial suffering while it restructures and makes acquisitions, staking its future on becoming a digital content company and a one-stop shop for major brand advertisers looking to shift their spending online.
AOL's deal for Huffington Post puts Arianna Huffington, in charge of integrating the new media venture she founded with AOL's patchwork of sites, like the technology blogs TechCrunch and Engadget and the Patch local news sites.

Ms. Huffington, a prolific and outspoken political commentator, has also been a critic of the recent scramble by traditional publishers to find subscription business models.

News Corp. charges for full access to The Wall Street Journal and charges for its new tablet-computer newspaper, The Daily. New York Times Co., meanwhile, plans to begin experimenting with a pay wall for its flagship paper.

"Free content is not without problems, but it's here to stay, and publishers need to come to terms with that and figure out how to make it work for them," Huffington said in a speech at a journalism conference in late 2009 hosted by the Federal Trade Commission.

She clashed over her business approach at that event with News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch, who is also an ideological rival to Ms. Huffington. Mr. Murdoch said the survival of high-quality journalism requires that consumers pay for news online and accused news aggregation sites, like Huffington Post, of acting like "parasites" by linking to and getting revenue from stories published by other outlets.

Ms. Huffington defended her site against that charge, noting that news aggregation is legal and that it drives large amounts of traffic to the sites of News Corp. and other publishers. She also said news aggregation is "part of the web's DNA."
Huffington Post had raised about $35 million in venture capital since its founding in 2005. It was expected to generate "north of $50 million" in revenue this year, up from $30 million in 2010. It also expects $10 million in operating income before depreciation and amortization this year.

By comparison, New York Times's news media group posted digital ad revenue of $212 million last year, and Comscore puts the December audience at its flagship site at 45 million unique visitors, compared with Huffington Post's 25 million. New York Times plans to launch an online subscription business soon that will give readers a free sampling of articles on its site before charging for access.

AOL is undergoing a major restructuring, and its fourth-quarter operating income more than doubled thanks to cost-cutting efforts, even as its revenue dropped by more than 25% and its ad revenue was down almost 30%.

Chief Financial Officer Arthur Minson said AOL could return to growth in operating income before depreciation and amortization by 2013.

"AOL is not a one year turnaround story, but we didn't come here for it to take five years," he said, adding that the Huffington Post would help speed the process.

Obviously from a consumer’s perspective having free news is a huge benefit. I think that because the internet has been such a huge part of my life especially as a student, it seems ridiculous to me to charge for articles when there is so much free content online. I regularly frequent AOL for news articles, and paying for the Wall Street Journal seemed so excessive, (although I will admit it is nice having it delivered to my door every morning). I think that soon all news content will have to rely on ads for revenue because with free news available, it will be hard to persuade consumers that their articles are worth the price.

Super Bowl Draws Record Audience

Time: 1 hour
Wall Street Journal


February 7, 2011
By SAM SCHECHNER

Head coaches Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Mike McCarthy of the Green Bay Packers spoke before Super Bowl XLV on Sunday.

A record number of viewers watched the Green Bay Packers defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers in Sunday's closely fought Super Bowl, as professional football continues to reel in an otherwise fragmented TV audience.

For the second year in a row, the game set a record as the most-watched telecast in U.S. history. Approximately 111 million people watched the game on Fox Broadcasting, according to Nielsen Co.

That is about 4.2% above last year, when New Orleans's defeat of Indianapolis on CBS Corp.'s namesake network unseated the 1983 series finale of "M*A*S*H" as the most-watched single broadcast in the U.S.

The big audience is a boon for Fox, which has seen its average prime-time audience of 8.1 million viewers decline 18% from this point last season, according to Nielsen, with declines in some of its big series like "House" and weaker post-season baseball ratings.

Both Fox and The Wall Street Journal are owned by News Corp.

A tight matchup, popular teams and cold weather across much of the U.S. helped boost viewing, analysts suggested.

Pro football and with a handful of other popular events like the Academy Awards have seen their audiences spike in recent years even as viewers splinter among a growing number of channels. In each of the last four years, the Super Bowl audience has broken its own audience record, according to Nielsen data.

For the regular National Football League season, an average of 17.9 million people tuned in, up 7.6% from the previous season.

The big Super Bowl numbers look bigger in part because of population growth. When looking at the percentage of the households that tuned in, rather than the absolute number of viewers, none of the recent Super Bowls approaches the peaks of the late 1970s and early 1980s. About 49.1% of TV households watched the 1982 Super Bowl, compared to 46% on Sunday. Still that percentage is bigger than any Super Bowl since the 1996.

In the teams' home media markets—Pittsburgh and Milwaukee—about 59.7% of homes with TVs were tuned to Sunday night's close game, according to preliminary data Fox provided. In the New York City area, about 42.6% of homes with TVs were watching, which Fox said was the most that had tuned in for a Super Bowl not featuring the New York Giants in 28 years.

Fox gave the coveted post-Super Bowl spot to its musical series "Glee." That boosted its audience to 26.8 million people. So far this season, 11.6 million have watched the show, on average.

From a marketing perspective, having a viewership of 111 million people is obviously a very positive thing. With this being the single most watched broadcast in history I think that companies will find that the ridiculous prices that they were paying for thirty second ads was money well spent. After a viewership of 111 million people this year I can’t even imagine what the going rate will be for a standard commercial for the Superbowl next year. It was be interesting to see how much of a raise in sales companies receive after their ad airs.

At Super Bowl, Many Ads Fail to Score

Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Wall Street Journal


February 6,2011

By EMILY STEEL

A mini Darth Vader and consumer-created ads from PepsiCo scored points in the first half of Sunday night's Super Bowl in a game where commercial time is largely lacking the laugh level of past years.

Advertisers are having plenty of fumbles. Ad time is dominated by auto makers and film studios, which generally create dull ads. Several star-studded ads fell flat, including a spot for Snickers featuring Roseanne Barr and Richard Lewis that failed to live up to the buzz of last year's Betty White ad. Some ads featuring Super Bowl ad icons, such as CareerBuilder's chimpanzees and the GoDaddy.com girls, felt stale, ad executives said. And some early Anheuser-Busch InBev N.V. ads got a thumbs down from ad executives, who have high expectations for the perennial Super Bowl advertiser.

CarMax's takes the "kid in a candy store" idea to new conclusions.
Volkswagen AG was one of the few auto advertisers able to break the mold for the often dull car category. It had a "Star Wars"-themed spot in which a little boy dressed in a Darth Vader costume thinks that he has discovered the "Force" to start a 2012 Passat parked in the driveway.

"It's brilliant and simple. It will win the water-cooler discussion," said Allen Adamson, managing director at WPP PLC's Landor & Associates.

The ad, which captured pregame buzz with more than 12 million views and more than 10,000 comments online before kickoff, was one of two spots for Volkswagen's VW created by Interpublic Group of Cos.'s Deutsch LA.

Sunday night's game is expected to feature ads from more than eight companies in the auto category, including General Motors Co.'s Chevrolet brand, Volkswagen's Audi luxury brand, Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz, BMW of North America and South Korea's Kia Motors Corp. and sister car maker Hyundai Motor Co.

Few are standing out, ad executives said. One Chevrolet ad shows a couple kissing goodbye after a first date and the man checking his date's Facebook status using his car's technology as he drives away. The Audi spot, which attempts to pitch its message about a new class of luxury, features a pair of well-dressed men escaping a mansion.

Using humor and going after buzz can be risky for auto advertisers because cars are big-ticket items where safety plays an important roll in the purchase, ad experts say. The effect—combined with a series of movie trailers for film studios — is leading to a game that largely lacks the comedic energies of years past.
Marketers spent about $2.8 million to $3 million for a 30-second spot during this year's matchup between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers, which was expected to draw a huge audience amid a year of record-breaking viewership for the National Football League.

Some familiar characters returning to the Big Game are being met with a less enthusiastic homecoming. Ad executives said the ad for online jobs site CareerBuilder, which featured chimpanzees making it impossible for a human co-worker to park his car, wasn't fresh.
In typical Super Bowl style, the big game featured a lineup of celebrities during commercial time. A spot for flower-delivery firm Teleflora had country music star Faith Hill giving love advice to a young man.

Pepsi's "Torpedo" ad gives the geeky guy at chance to be hype for once.
But several star-studded ads failed to deliver. Internet company GoDaddy.com's commercial, which showed 77-year-old Joan Rivers as its new GoDaddy girl, was a tease, ad executives said. "That's like a cold shower," said Izzy DeBellis, co-chief creative officer at MDC's Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners, which worked on a BMW ad slated to run during the game.

Meanwhile, the Snickers spot failed to satisfy after setting high expectations last year with its ad featuring Betty White. This year's commercial starred comedians Roseanne Barr and Richard Lewis at a logging farm. "It's no Betty White," said William Charnock, chief strategy officer at Interpublic Group's RGA.
Anheuser-Busch, the game's exclusive beer advertiser for more than two decades, isn't delivering a stellar year of commercials so far, ad executives said.

The company's Clydesdale horses and actor Peter Stormare starred in a Wild West-themed ad for Budweiser. In the ad, Mr. Stormare walks into a bar and demands Budweiser beer. After taking a sip, he breaks out singing Elton John's "Tiny Dancer." Ad executives said the ad didn't feature enough of the horses.
PepsiCo returned to the Super Bowl for the fifth year in a row with its "Crash the Super Bowl" contest that sources ads from consumers. The company bought six spots, three for its Doritos chips brand and three for its Pepsi MAX soda.

The favorite among ad executives was a Doritos spot that featured a man licking the cheese residue off a co-worker's finger.

The amateur producer who creates the Doritos or Pepsi MAX spot that ranks highest in Super Bowl ad contests in the coming days will have a shot at a contract to create another ad for the brands.

"People are always rooting for the underdog, for the kids to beat Madison Avenue. Pepsi now owns that," said Mr. Adamson.

It was very interesting to me that this article said that the commercials were less entertaining than in past years. I watched the ads this year and found most of them to be quite entertaining. Perhaps because I might not be in the demographic that ads are normally targeted to which is why I found them appealing and the majority of viewers did not.