Silicon Valleywood

Andreessen & Frank Black: Separated at Birth? August 14, 2009

Frank Black, Marc Andreessen – can you tell the difference?

Hello world! January 14, 2009

I’m moving. This will be the new home of my Jupiter blog archive. The old place was here.

Why MSM Shouldn’t Blog, Part XXIII June 5, 2008

Professional journalists blogging is often a good idea. Fresher, faster takes, with some personality added, and the chance for a “conversation.” (Though not here, bigod.) However, venerable trade journals trying desperately to remain relevant in the 21st Century to reach a younger audience online should be a little choosy about how they apply the technique. Check out this comment:

I’m with B. Younger, this is hardly news to anyone with a life. The 26 to 40 year-old demographic is reading this blog, btw, and I think you just lost their attention.

If Variety e-in-c Peter Bart was just being ironic – or practicing the time-honored tradition of “any excuse to run a sexy photo” – well, he needs a gag writer.

Keeping Score: 1Q08 Online Ad Growth April 25, 2008

Microsoft/MSN showed solid online advertising growth, growing 39% in Q1 worldwide to $619 million. If you subtract aQuantive’s ad revenue of $47 million, it still grew 29%. MSN, however, suffered over $200 million in losses.

So, if you’re keeping score, and my calculations are correct, worldwide online ad sales growth for Q1 is looking like this:

Google (ex-TAC) &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp$3.75 billion, up 45%
Yahoo (ex-TAC) &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp$1.1 billion, up 13%
Microsoft (minimal TAC included) &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp$619 million, up 39%

AOL still to come.

Another Great One Passes November 10, 2007

I’d rate Armies of the Night and The Executioner’s Song among the best of all time. Could even make a case for Song as The Great American “Novel” of the twentieth century’s second half.

Norman Mailer appraisal.

Tivo as Market Research November 8, 2007

The Journal does a piece on Tivo’s market research efforts. We called this a missed opportunity over a year ago, so it’s great to seeing it gain some traction. Heck, I’ve been known to predict a Tivo-Nielsen merger, only half-facetiously.

TiVo’s data will push the ball forward from what Nielsen provides in at least one respect. It will include information on 20,000 homes, compared with Nielsen’s sample size of 3,000 homes with DVRs. More important, TiVo will offer marketers the opportunity to survey some of its users via an online poll to ask deeper questions about their viewing habits and their feelings about both the ads and the marketers. (Nielsen doesn’t allow marketers to query its poll respondents.)

One Thing You Need to Know About Millennials September 26, 2007

I’ll be at the Millennials conference tomorrow morning, on a panel with MTV Networks and Alloy. We’ll each be sharing Five Things you need to know about millennials. I don’t want to tip anybody’s hand — and I’ll probably blog some tidbits tomorrow — but one of my Five is about influencers. Jupiter surveys show that teen influencers tend to work cross-category in contrast to grown-ups, who are specialists. That is, a single teen influencer will carry clout among friends and family on a variety of things: music, fashion, games, etc., while adults, even 18 to 24 year-olds, are more likely to to affect only one. See you there.

Big Guys’ 2Q07 Online Ad Growth Update August 2, 2007

For those keeping score, advertising revenue growth at the big guys:

Google (ex-TAC) – 64% (if my calculations are correct)
Yahoo (ex-TAC) – 11%
AOL (US, ex-TAC) – 12% (more details when I finish mulling over the earnings call)
MSN – 33% (and it’s Microsoft’s fiscal fourth quarter)

2006 US market share (Figure 2 for clients). Oh, heck, I’ll print it again for lazy freeloaders (you know who you are):

US Online Ad Spending, 2006

Google 25%
Yahoo 15%
AOL 8%
MSN 7%
Others 45%

Source: JupiterResearch Internet Advertising Model

Synergy Rulz, Dood July 30, 2007

At least some are attributing The Simpsons movie’s strong opening to that much-hyped, but rarely delivered bugaboo — cross-media synergy. Hey, I’m a believer. And I’m not the only one.

The analysts I’m talking to attribute the film’s success to Fox’s omnipresent marketing (including Homer opening this week’s Tonight Show and earlier American Idol as well as that inspired 7-Eleven cross-promotion). Pic insiders have nothing but praise for the year-long marketing and distribution campaign which Fox orchestrated throughout the News Corp empire.

…and More Silly Data July 10, 2007

So it looks like Nielsen/NetRatings is going to do the obvious thing and talk about total minutes as the key engagement metric. This is in the face of Web 2.0 programming techniques that devalue page views. Makes sense to me, especially since Jupiter’s been doing it for over five years (with comScore data, no less).

However, as colleague Emily Riley pointed out earlier, nobody buys ads this way yet, and probably won’t for some time. And for pete’s sake, even though a GRP a relatively primitive way of counting an audience, why have we as an industry still failed to create something that’s comparable? Or comparable enough for media planners to do ROI tradeoff analysis without using Black-Scholes differentials?

Finally, I have to observe — even though readers know my heart is with the publishers — no sophisticated media planner or programmer buys or builds off of one metric. Especially one that’s reported the way a publisher wants it organized. Who buys “Fox Interactive Media?” Nobody. They buy MySpace or Fox News or IGN. The only thing this one-stop metric is for is press releases.

As an ex-AOL exec said to me and Emily today, they’re dancing in Dulles.