Broadcasters find well-placed ally in fight against ad tax.

INSIDERADIO
February 28, 2015

A proposal to change how businesses can write-off advertising expenses brought leap-to-the-feet unity during yesterday’s NAB State Leadership Conference. "They will trample over ad tax deductibility over my dead body," Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said during a speech at the event, which brought a record 600 broadcasters from across the country to Washington. With Madison Avenue not far from his district office, Schumer’s remarks — enough to earn him one of his standing ovations — weren’t entirely surprising. But it signaled that opponents of an ad tax have an unwavering ally at the very top of Senate Democratic leadership. Schumer also drew rave reviews from broadcasters in the room for his crediting of local radio and TV for remaining on the air when massive snowstorms buried Buffalo under seven feet of snow last November. "Cell phones and electricity went off — broadcasters stayed on," he said. And he praised news operations, calling local broadcasters "the glue of America" in a changing media marketplace. "You are the beating heart of journalism," he said. Schumer also pledged he would "stay on the FCC" to make sure they treat local radio "fairly." Today broadcasters will meet with home state lawmakers to talk issues.

Radio’s digital revenue pie is diversifying. Radio is becoming less reliant on banner advertising and streaming audio ads and tapping more revenue from other digital channels. Though banner ads remain its top digital revenue source, managers surveyed by Borrell Associates forecast their share will drop from 36% in 2014 to 26% this year. Second place streaming audio is on track to dip from 22% to 19% during the same period. "The industry is lessening its dependence on those and significantly increasing advertising from sponsorships, promotions and mobile," CEO Gordon Borrell says. "That’s a good thing because that’s where businesses want to place their marketing dollars." Promotions are poised to grow from 14% of radio’s digital dollars to 16%, program sponsorships are on track to jump from 10% to 14% and mobile is expected to upshift from 1% to 5%. With local marketers buying more of what most stations aren’t selling — search engine optimization, reputation management and social media management — Borrell sees digital diversification at radio as a positive trend. "It allows you to think differently and to follow the money," he says. The practice of selling digital services to local clients is becoming more widespread: more than a third of those surveyed said their stations were either setting up a digital agency, planning to set one up soon, or already had one. Moving beyond banners and streaming opens up a larger pool of digital revenue that can help radio attract a bigger share of the local digital pie. While growing at a double-digit clip, radio’s digital development isn’t keeping pace with the rate at which local businesses are increasing their digital budgets. And that’s continuing to drive radio’s share of local digital ad dollars down.

CMOs are bullish on digital ad budgets. If there’s any doubt radio needs to keep its focus on digital, a survey of chief marketing officers at some of the biggest corporations in America shows that’s where they plan to increase their spending in 2015. Duke University’s biannual CMO Survey shows overall marketing budgets are expected to increase 8.7% this year. But while traditional spending will essentially remain steady (-1.1%) spending on digital marketing is predicted to grow 14.7%. And the CMOs are even more bullish on mobile. The survey shows mobile currently gets about 3.2% of marketing budgets. But that share is expected to triple in the next three years. CMOs reported their most positive outlook since the recession hit six years ago. On an outlook scale of 0 to 100, they came in at 69.9, compared to 47.7 in February 2009. "Marketers are beginning to spend against this optimism," Duke professor and survey director Christine Moorman says.

Ad market to radio: it’s not you, it’s me. Newly-released figures are putting radio’s 2014 revenue into perspective. Core U.S. ad spending grew just 1.6% last year according to Magna Global. That’s the smallest growth rate in six years. Not coincidentally, the RAB reported last week the radio industry also had its first down year in revenue also since 2009. Magna’s chief forecaster Vincent Letang says 2014 was a "disappointing" year for ad spending, pointing out that even with the political and Olympic advertising bonanzas factored in, the ad market grew by a still-modest 3%. Radio spot sales slipped, but it had plenty of company according to the Magna data. Even television revenue declined. Letang calculates across-the-board traditional media spending declined 3.4% last year. At the same time, digital revenue increased 15%. He also points out ad trends didn’t match the overall economic environment, blaming what he calls an "inertia of advertising spending to economic signals." Going forward, he thinks television will take a big hit in 2015 as marketers have taken all they can from radio or print. TV is where the big dollars are ripe for the plucking. "Traditional media budgets will come under increasing pressure because of the diversification of tactics and the opportunities created by digital formats and ‘big data’," he predicts. For radio, Letang last August projected the industry would see a smidgen of growth (+ 0.5%) now he’s a bit less optimistic (-2%) about 2015. But Letang also thinks there’s still a possibility a strengthening economy, lower unemployment rates, and improving business confidence could mean this year will turn out better than expected.

What You Don't Know About Millennials And Content Marketing

By Shafqat Islam Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2015

Google “Millennial” and it’s easy to see why every marketer is freaking out trying to reach this often misunderstood generation. Data is readily available that tells them these consumers are online all the time across various devices and that they don’t mind brand messages in the mix as they engage with content everywhere. Data is also available that shows marketers how much this generation is spending or will spend over their lifetime with brands they love. Naturally, brand marketers want in. Many of the studies confirm the same generational diagnosis: Millennials are overeducated, underemployed, iPhone-loving texters. I’m just at the top of the Millennial parameters (18-34 year olds or so) but I employ a hundred of them and have the opposite view: They’re incredibly unique with strong personal beliefs, preferences, and pride in their work. They are wolves, not sheep. Simply knowing where they’re consuming content online, or just buying into the data that they love brands their friends or celebrities endorse is thinking too short term to make an impact on your bottom line. We wanted to dig deeper into the nuances of what Millennials truly like and dislike when it comes to content and so we went into surveying 500 Millennials wondering if the existing data on “the herd” was going to prove true. Some of our findings may surprise you! Celebrity Endorsements Are Not The End-All, Be-All Despite popular beliefs about influencers, our research found that only 24% of Millennials respond more positively to content that references someone they respect (defined as celebrities, politicians, authors, etc.). If you’ve got a bottomless marketing budget, it certainly can’t hurt. But if paying for one celebrity endorsement represents your entire budget for 2015, I encourage you to think again. We also looked at this response by gender and found women slightly less enthused (47%, versus males, 53%). Dumbing It Down Is Not The Only Way Common belief is that every Millennial loves pictures of baby animals and lists like, “10 Things Only ‘Mass-holes’ or ‘Introverts’ Will Get.” Our survey data corroborated that humor is important to Millennials, in fact 70% said an article being funny is a reason to share. Yet our data showed content that’s intelligent and thought-provoking (62%) was the second driver of sharing. It doesn’t have to be strictly about current events (35%), or only related to a cause they believe in (49%) — it’s far more valuable for it to be smart. This speaks volumes about the importance of a true content marketing strategy — one that blends tone from funny to wise, and content type from licensed to original. It’s More About What The Brand Says Than What Their Friends Say A lot of brand marketers pontificate that social content “virality” is the key to content marketing success. Our survey data didn’t support this, a strategy that performs consistently over time versus seeing one huge (and often un-replicable) success is key. When asked how they feel about communications from leading brands, only 30% of Millennials said they like articles that are recommended by friends. When asked if they prefer brands their friends use, even fewer (26%) answered affirmatively. Backing that up, only 12% actively stated their dislike of brand communications via email, corporate blogs, etc. The door seems open for direct relationships with Millennials. At first, we looked at the raw data and asked each other — are they messing with us? Yet, many of the other “baseline” Millennial suppositions were proven out. They like helpful and useful content (60%), they won’t read something that’s “too long” (42%), and they’re less likely to convert if content is too sales-y (68%). All of those generalizations we’d heard before. They’re not messing with us - they’re finally living up to the kind of Millennials I get to meet and work with everyday. Instead of lowering our content to meet them, we need to make content worthy of their aspirations, intellect, and sense of humor. After all, Millennials will soon be running the world. Don’t you want them to keep your brand in mind?

Pay Attention To This: TV Engages People Half As Long As Digital, Nielsen Lab Study Finds

by Tyler Loechner, 6 hours ago 

Consumers may tune into TV on a regular basis, but they mentally tune out rather fast in favor of the array of "second screen" options.

On average, television holds a consumer’s attention only 39% of the time -- a rate that pales in comparison to the attention rates that laptops (70%), tablets (76%) and smartphones (77%) command.
That’s according to a new report from Nielsen and YuMe, a digital video ad tech firm, that is expected to be released Wednesday morning. MediaDailyNews got an early look at the data.
Over a two-month period, Nielsen and YuMe conducted in-lab observations on 200 consumers in Las Vegas. The consumers were told to engage with any of the devices (TV, smartphone, tablet and laptop) as they would at home for 20 minutes, and their actions were recorded. Nielsen and YuMe ended their experiment with 50 hours of video footage, and they claim the footage was then analyzed “second-by-second” to measure consumer attentiveness.

The television was on more than half the time (53%) during the experiment -- tops among all screens. Laptops (48%) were second, followed by tablets (38%) and smartphones (17%).
Tablets and smartphones are both passively "on" at all times, sending users notifications and vibrations as alerts that something new is happening. That passive "on" mode -- compared to televisions and laptops, which are of little to no use when off -- may help partially explain why the TVs and laptop screens were turned on for significantly more time.

On the flip side, TVs have a passive effect once they are on. After a consumer turns the TV on and chooses a channel, there is little interaction required. On a smartphone, unless a video is being watched, constant interaction is required if the consumer wishes to engage with new content.

Perhaps that’s why consumer attention to television rapidly deteriorated shortly after the screen was turned on during the test. Nielsen and YuMe note that attention to television dropped from over half in the first four minutes to under 20% in the final 16 minutes.
In addition to overall attentiveness, the report also notes how much consumers paid attention to ads on the respective screens.

When multitasking, consumers become even more focused on the “second screen.” In multi-tasking situations -- defined as situations in which consumers had at least two screens on at the same time -- ads on television were only paid attention to 30% of the time, compared to 71% on laptops, 93% on tablets and 100% on smartphones.

Paul Neto, director of research at YuMe, acknowledged that the smartphone sample size was low, and that smartphones are likely more similar to tablets.

“Ad load was not controlled during the experience, thus they would occur as they naturally do on the devices being used,” Neto said to MediaDailyNews. “Ad attention is when an ad occurs while they were paying attention to the device thus in attention view. For example, respondents were paying attention to the television 39% of the time it was on, and during that time, 30% of total ads were seen on average. Thus, 70% of ads were missed as the respondents attention was elsewhere.”
Neto said attention was defined “as when the respondent [was] looking at the screen.”

“No one is debating that consumers are multitasking. This ethnographic study was specifically designed to garner insights into users’ behaviors and preferences while multitasking,” Neto said in an earlier statement. “Despite distraction levels among consumers, it will be important for brand advertisers to continue running campaigns cross-screen, as viewers continue to show they are more attentive on laptops, tablets, and/or smartphones while ‘watching’ TV.”
The study also found there’s significantly more multitasking done in group settings than when alone; consumers multi-task four times more often when with other people.
Nielsen and YuMe also found that Millennials multitask 33% more than those over 35. However, among all age groups, the report found no significant relationship between gender and multitasking habits.

The report is expected to be released Wednesday morning at Videonomics’ ADAPT Summit in Scottsdale.

Digital radio growth speeds up, forecaster says

INSIDERADIO

February 25, 2015

With internet radio in phones, cars, game consoles and even refrigerators, it’s no wonder analysts at eMarketer see usage stepping up. The firm forecasts 169.9 million Americans will listen to digital radio per month in 2015. That projected 6.1% growth rate compared to last year is an increase from eMarketer’s earlier forecast for 2015 that estimated growth of 5.9%. As total usage continues to climb, the laws of math mean the year-to-year increases will moderate in the coming years. But the forecast says internet radio’s reach will be larger than was predicted earlier. By 2018, eMarketer now estimates 184.8 million Americans will listen to digital radio each month. That’s up from its 183.4 million forecast released last February. The updated outlook also predicts that number will climb further to 191.6 million in 2019. “Digital radio has evolved into a viable, robust digital channel that complements social media, video sites and other mainstream venues,” the report says. Advertisers are following, although by how much isn’t entirely clear. The Radio Advertising Bureau reports broadcasters’ digital revenue grew 9% to $973 million last year. But that figure includes all forms of online revenue, not just that associated with streaming.

More big data is coming to online radio advertising. For the second time in as many months, an audio ad tech company has partnered with a big data platform with an eye toward improving the targetability of online radio advertising. The latest hook-up involves streaming ad services provider AdsWizz with Lotame, a data management platform (DMP). Common in digital advertising, DMPs allow marketers to combine audience data from a variety of sources. Lotame collects audience data — such as demographics, personal interests and online behavior — from websites, online video, mobile apps, social media and other sources. Its data will be integrated into AdWave, the audio ad exchange owned by AdsWizz, to allow advertisers to tailor their ad creative and delivery to specific audience segments. In the U.S., AdsWizz provides a range of ad services for iHeartRadio, Emmis, New York Public Radio, TuneIn and Marketron, along with ad networks and agencies. It claims to have doubled its audio inventory in the U.S. since the start of the year. Lotame’s data partners include BlueKai, eXelate, Kantar and Quantcast, among others. Last March Lotame bought AdMobius, a mobile audience management platform. The AdsWizz-Lotame deal follows January’s partnership between Triton Digital with data provider eXelate. AdsWizz CEO Alexis van de Wyer says the combination of third party data with one-to-one ad targeting "will offer audio advertisers unmatched access to their target audiences." Lotame chief revenue officer Kevin Kohn says the partnership’s targeting capabilities "will enable publishers to unlock even greater value from their existing stations."

Country comeback: station count hits 13 year high. Fueled by solid ratings, a crop of cross-over artists, and the rollout of a national brand by one of radio’s largest groups, the number of country radio stations is at its highest level since 2002. As the format’s programmers, personalities and musicians come together this week at the Country Radio Seminar, there’s plenty to be happy about. "I think the industry is very healthy," CRS executive director Bill Mayne says. Plenty of operators apparently agree. There are 2,132 country radio stations currently on the air, a 3% increase over a year ago according to the Inside Radio database. It’s also the most in more than a decade. Country radio’s resurgence, as well as a makeover for CRS, has led to a double-digit percentage increase in conference attendance during the past four years. Digital will play a large role at CRS again this year, and Mayne says organizers are bringing in several country outsiders such as Broadcast.com co-founder Todd Wagner to give a "fresh and different perspective" on radio. The definition of what qualifies as country music has certainly evolved, and Mayne thinks the swinging pendulum from a traditional sound to so-called bro country is part of the normal format cycle. "Country today is still the dominant music genre in the United States and it remains that way because it is very broad," he says. "People have been trying to get us to niche the format for the past 40 years, and I think one of the reasons that country radio has remained so strong is it has refused to be specifically defined." Albright & O’Malley & Brenner partner Jaye Albright says country performs well in more demos than just about any other format, from 18-24 to 45-54, both men and women. "The secret to its success is to find those common audience threads," she says.

Training Is The New Marketing: 3 Ways Training Can Appeal To Millennials

By Paul Sebastien Monday, Feb. 16, 2015

Much has been written about how to market to or engage with Millennials. Despite all the hype, Millennials are not overwhelmingly difficult to understand or connect with.
There are some defining characteristics: Millennials are mobile and social technology natives expect highly personalized (and colloquial) messaging, and resonate with companies that adapt quickly to current trends.. While these characteristics are increasingly applicable across other demographics as well, today’s most successful brands have embraced these characteristics as core values in order to appear fresh, relevant, and authentic to this new generation.

But what about the companies looking to hire and recruit employees in the Millennial demographic? Companies trying to hire or hold onto the Millennial workforce can leverage the draw of another key Millennial value: personal and professional growth.

Companies can stand out through office design, unique perks and company culture, but one of the best investments a company can make to appeal to Millennials is through a robust learning and training program. Here are three ways to tailor your training program so it appeals to Millennials:

Enable Personal Growth: Baby Boomers believed in building a comfortable lifestyle around a steady job, while Millennials strive for unique experiences and diversified skill sets. Many companies still see training as a series of boxes to check — sexual harassment prevention, emergency procedures, basic administrative tasks — but companies will stand out if they offer employees the ability to grow outside of their role. Whether employees have just entered the workforce or were recently promoted to management, they should be given the chance to learn a variety of skills and talents.

Employees should be able to explore beyond their core job description, too. Someone in marketing might want the chance to learn to code, and engineers can explore new hobbies or work on team management skills.

Smart companies will encourage their employees to build their skills across the board. Give your employees access to role-specific courses, but also those for broader personal and professional development ranging from public speaking to photography. It’ll add variety and new value to the job that many employees will love.
Be Accessible: Training should be mobile; easily accessible from any device and packaged in a format that’s easy to consume. Companies that offer one-time orientations and trainings aren’t appealing to the way Millennials (and so many of the rest of us!) prefer to consume content — quickly, and often on-the-go.

Take, for instance, Goldman Sachs. Jason Wingard, the company’s chief learning officer, recently laid out how orientation used to happen at the company versus how it is now. Training used to require bringing all employees together, essentially in a big room, for a massive training session with talks, videos and networking. Once it was done, it was done. It was expensive, inconvenient for employees and not conducive to a mobile, always-on lifestyle. Now, Goldman’s robust online training program allows new employees to learn at their own pace and on the device of their choosing. It allows for ongoing check-ins and lets new employees get up to speed even more quickly. It’s a win-win.

Make It Responsive and Personal: HR teams managing training programs should take feedback into account, and seek to constantly add new courses based on employee requests. Understanding what employees want will help you keep them engaged.
If a job leaves an employee feeling dissatisfied — be it from lack of challenge, growth or excitement — he or she will find it elsewhere. Companies can strengthen ties with their team, particularly the younger members, by asking what their employees want and working to deliver it.

Appealing to Millennials isn’t as confusing or complicated as many articles would have you believe. What Millennials seek is in fact quite similar to what we all want — variety, personal growth and a sense of working toward something bigger than just a job. Smart companies will appeal to those sensibilities, and, in turn, attract and keep the talent they need to stay competitive.

TV Upfront Spend Shifts, Cable Grows Steadily

by Wayne Friedman, Yesterday, 12:00 AM   

Historical trends for prime-time TV upfront spending continue to ebb. Media Dynamics, a media consulting company, says the growth of prime-time TV upfront revenue has slowed over the last five years (for the broadcast year 2010-2011 through 2014-2015) from the previous five seasons.

The last five upfront markets witnessed 11% higher spending to $90.5 billion -- with cable up 29% and broadcast networks adding only 1%. Growth in the previous five-year period -- 2005-2006 to 2009-2010 -- was at 19% to $79.9 billion over the previous period.
Cable share of the upfront market has grown steadily to a 50.5% share of upfront revenues in the most recent five-year period -- up from 44.2% in the previous five, and higher than 37.9% in the period from 2000-2001 to 2004-2005.

By way of comparison, ABC, CBS and NBC in the early-1990s, typically garnered 70% of all prime-time upfront sales, and is now around 37%.

Ed Papazian, president of Media Dynamics, Inc., stated: “Clearly, the slowdown in upfront spending is a function of declined economic growth, but digital media has also begun to siphon off upfront dollars.”

Media Dynamics says over the past 25 seasons, advertisers have spent $307 billion in TV’s upfront marketplace

Papazian adds: “The 2015-16 [upfront] season should be the most significant upfront in years, and possibly a tipping point for traditional TV’s dominance.”

Programmatic is helping marketers improve their aim for trigger advertising

INSIDERADIO

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2015

Another weekend, another two feet of snowfall in parts of New England. The latest storm no doubt brought more weather trigger ads to the airwaves. But the future of weather-trigger advertising may be changing, and programmatic buying is the culprit. "The strategy remains sound — it’s smart for a business to react to what’s happening in the real world," Initiative managing director of investment Christine Peterson says.

"It’s easy to do on radio, but new digital capabilities allow us to turn media volume on and off literally by the data trigger that doesn’t even require people to pull the levers." The snowy path leads back to big data as marketers can now crunch all sorts of numbers to decide where an ad buy lands. Take the dryer sheet brand that Peterson says monitors a market’s humidity. When it falls to a certain level, the ads start appearing. Computer-to-computer buying, where "if/then" parameters are plugged in, allows the execution to happen in the blink of an eye. "It can happen while I go and have dinner with my family rather than be a manual buy modification," Peterson explains, pointing out weather is just one type of data trigger buyers can pull. The strategy has already been used during the Super Bowl, World Cup and on award show red carpets for brands that aren’t the typical weather trigger users. "Any trigger that moves the business, we need to find ways to leverage that data to deliver media against it," Peterson says.

 

What data triggers mean for radio. Data-driven programmatic ad buys have largely been limited to online, but they’re hitched to the march of machine-based buying technology across all media. It’s a reason Initiative managing director of investment Christine Peterson thinks radio needs to embrace programmatic buying. "By no means am I indicating that audiences are declining in radio — they’re still there," she says. "But if we can find those same people in a channel that can be activated much more quickly and cost efficiently, then maybe the strategy will be used elsewhere unless radio reacts to the current buying marketplace." Marketers are also increasingly looking at programmatic triggers to change creative copy. Take a lawn care company that could use preset weather data to run a commercial that referenced a morning shower to tell homeowners it’s a good time to spread grass seed. Marketing officers are under growing pressure to link advertising and sales data, and they’ve given their marching orders to media planners. "Any trigger that moves the business — we need to find ways to leverage that data to deliver media against," Peterson says. Broadcasters may be warily eying programmatic buying as a way to drive down rates, but Peterson thinks there will also be a role for the traditional radio rep. "There are things that will never be programmatic, like in-depth integrated partnerships that still take intelligence and more time than anything," she says. "We’d rather spend our time on things that are big, high-impact partnerships, knowing that the more standard units can be automated."

Retailers may feel better about buying radio ads in 2015. Retail is a critical radio ad category and the National Retail Federation is projecting shop owners will have a good year. The trade group forecasts retail sales will increase 4.1% in 2015. If accurate it would mark the biggest annual growth since 2011 when retail sales for the year increased 5.1%. "The economy appears to finally have gained some real traction after a somewhat turbulent 2014," NRF chief economist Jack Kleinhenz says. Even so, he sees a few "wild cards" like the price of gas. Consumers may be having the same doubts. The U.S. Commerce Department said last week that retail sales slid 0.8% during January. "We aren’t quite out of the woods," NRF president Matthew Shay concedes. But he thinks retailers are facing "far fewer obstacles" than they did a year ago. "The ingredients are there for a more sustained and robust expansion," Shay said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Traditional TV Ad Revs: Still To Grow, Perhaps At Expense Of Digital Platforms

A media critique by Wayne Friedman Monday, Feb. 16, 2015 Note: This column was first published last September, but is still relevant today.So what if we got it all wrong? Maybe more money than realized will land on traditional TV than on digital services in the future years. This isn’t to discount digital advertising growth -- just to alter those crazy expectations. For some time, many TV/Internet advertising estimates have been talking up how online revenue will be larger than traditional TV advertising revenues -- around $70 billion per year currently. And in particular, digital video will be a major factor. But there are some key variables to consider. For one, Brian Wieser, senior research analyst for Pivotal Research Group, believes it comes with the availability of traditional TV inventory supplies: “If new inventory is freed up as characterized here – and even if it is not – we can still envision two other sources of incremental revenue, potentially: programmatically-driven data-driven or audience driven buying, and the shift of online video onto traditional TV -- rather than the other way around,”  writes Wieser. Of course, traditional TV business guys would have to get their act together -- and somewhat fast.  Still, the current evidence isn’t overwhelming that sharply higher Internet video advertising dollars are a given, says Wieser. In the age of digital video on-demand and seemingly better engagement, Wieser reminds us: “Web video remains highly concentrated among a small share of the population. Further, there remains relatively little consumption of high quality conventional TV content on the web; even short-form video is relatively scarce, except for user-generated content.” Digital-media-minded marketers may still be wedded to the digital video sites. But, in future years, price, as well as lack of scale, might hinder strong continued growth. Television cost per thousand viewers are still cheaper by way of comparison -- $10 CPMs and less, says Wieser -- versus digital platforms. And then one should consider that even TV’s niche-iest networks generally have much more scale than key premium digital areas. Concerning the biggest video advertisers, Wieser says many still haven’t moved much to online areas.  Why? “It is perceived as different by most advertisers when compared with ads that run adjacent to premium video-based content.” So what are we left with? Traditional TV networks rushing to ramp up programmatic media buying -- something which marketers desperately want -- as well as buying systems that would focus in part or in a large majority, on audience-targeted buying. Additionally, those big digital video estimates -- especially those in the future -- should include digital video incremental gains made by traditional TV networks and/or producers.

Will Spying TVs Be the Next Frontier in a War Between Good and Evil Hackers?

Hollywood, Esq

3:54 PM PST 2/9/2015 by Eriq Gardner                         

Amid concern over what new generation television sets are capable of doing, one group seeks a legal exemption to pry open the software.

Samsung

There were a lot of people watching the series debut of Better Call Saul on Sunday, so here's a tough question: How many of those television sets were tuning in to spy on their viewers? If TV countersurveillance is actually a thing, what role will hackers play?

The issue of television eavesdropping is suddenly turning heads after The Daily Beast reported Thursday that buried in the privacy policy for Samsung's Internet-connected SmartTV was an advisement that device owners should "please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.”

Parker Higgins, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, had some fun with the revelation, comparing it to a scene out of George Orwell's 1984:

After the Daily Beast story came out, Samsung rushed to note that it took privacy seriously, that it employed "industry-standard security safeguards and practices, including data encryption," that voice recognition could be deactivated or that the TV owner could always disconnect the TV from the WiFi network. In other words, the SmartTV could always be rendered less useful. Some commentators opined the flap was "no big deal," while other TV owners are being cautioned, "Watch what you say around your Smart TV."

But there's another issue — perhaps an even bigger one — that was highlighted in a comment by the Software Freedom Conservancy to the U.S. Copyright Office last week.
Every three years, this office hears petitions to exempt certain activities from being illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention protections. This time, the Software Freedom Conservancy is making a bid to essentially allow the hacking of Smart TVs. The main basis for its proposal is to achieve interoperability and advances that will make for better Smart TV applications.
Then, there's the issue of surveillance.

Yes, tools such as voice recognition can be deactivated, but on pages 8-9 of a 38-page comment, the Software Freedom Conservancy also raises the scary prospect of what others — beyond manufacturers like Samsung and advertisers — might do with the broad functionality of Internetenabled audio and video recording devices in pretty much every living room in the country. Might someone activate a microphone from afar?

"Smart TVs have been shown to contain security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious hackers to access them remotely and run harmful code," writes the Software Freedom Conservancy. "Some of these also make use of a Smart TV's built-in microphone and camera. In sum, research on the security of the Smart TVs on the market strongly suggests that manufacturers do not build sufficient privacy or security safeguards into their TVs."

Apparently, the proposed solution to black hat hackers is some white hat hackers. The Smart TVs have all sorts of firmware encryption and administrative access controls, and viewed in a certain light, that's a good thing. In its response to the Daily Beast story, Samsung itself pointed to encryption. But not everyone trusts a corporate behemoth to ensure privacy —especially when these companies are promulgating disclaimers about the personal data being collected. Thus, the group asks for permission to circumvent technology protection measures for the purpose of finding and exposing security and privacy issues in Smart TVs.

It's noted that copyright law contains an exemption for good faith "security testing," but according to the filed comment, "the exemption favors private disclosure, potentially giving courts discretion to withhold it from researchers who publish information about security vulnerabilities in Smart TVs."
In short, the "good" hackers want permission to expose what the "malicious" hackers might do with your television set. What's stopping them at the moment is access control and copyright law. It may be possible to find out who is watching the watchers — or at least, how — but that's said to be too much of a secret at the moment. Sure, Orwell had this one right.



























 

Small market broadcasters work with Nielsen on alternatives to ratings diaries.

INSIDERADIO
February 10, 2015


Is radio ready to ditch the decades-old paper ratings diary for good? Nielsen and a small market committee within its Audio Advisory Council are exploring potential new ways to collect, measure and report radio usage in diary markets. The impetus is a growing belief among clients that diaries are no longer sufficient to measure today’s fragmented media marketplace. Meeting monthly by telephone since the Council’s fall meeting, Nielsen says the committee has provided "valuable insight" into how it can continue to improve the diary service. "Their candid comments, coupled with input we received from talking with our customers in recent months, is helping to shape the roadmap of how the service we offer in small and medium markets might evolve," a Nielsen spokesperson says in a statement. The company will share those plans with its Advisory Council, Policy Guidelines Committee and clients in the coming weeks but declined to comment further. Sources on the committee, which is led by Nielsen VP of product leadership Brad Feldhaus, tell Inside Radio it is discussing several options. Among ideas that have been floated: supplementing the diary with telephone retrieval or online samples; merging it with other Nielsen local market measurement techniques; developing a more economical version of PPM; putting measurement software in cellphones; using different techniques for different-sized markets; and measuring fewer days per week and filling in the rest of the week with modeled data. The hope is that the world’s largest, most sophisticated measurement company can come up with something more reliable than a paper diary and a No. 2 pencil.  
Dissatisfaction with the diary service is costing Nielsen clients. A growing number of broadcasters have cut the cord with diary measurement. Redwood Empire Stereocasters, a 35-year Arbitron/Nielsen subscriber, is the latest not to renew. It joins Galaxy Communications, Davidson Media and Birach Broadcasting in operating without ratings, along with Salem Communications and Saga Communications in some markets. Redwood VP/GM Tom Skinner says he doesn’t believe the diary service offers reliable ratings and that he could no longer justify its rising costs, due to lower transactional dollars in Santa Rosa, CA, where Redwood owns four stations. "The diary is old technology that I’m no longer willing to invest in," says Skinner, who served for 12 years on the Arbitron Advisory Council, including two terms as chairman. "In a way, Nielsen showed us the weakness in their own diary by inventing the PPM." Adelante Media Group CEO Jay Myers adds, "It’s been made worse by the fact that the currency among most advertisers has been the PPM and that has hurt diary markets." Gerry Boehme, a former 34-year Katz Media Group executive with a research background, says relying on recall-based ratings methodology "poorly positions smaller market radio against all competitors, including PPM-measured radio." Boehme, who served on the Arbitron Advisory Council for more than 20 years and operates GB Consulting, contends the diary meets none of the objectives measurement systems are designed to address: Provide reliable measurement at a reasonable cost, gain acceptance among buyers and sellers, demonstrate high ROI and maximize profitability for the ratings supplier. "The marketplace is rapidly changing and radio needs to keep pace," Boehme says.

New digital ad units may help radio sell display ads. Radio stations received 45% of their digital revenue through the sale of banner ads in 2013, twice what was billed from streaming audio ads, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau. With display continuing to dominate many stations’ digital sales, new research on the latest ad units may help make that inventory easier to sell to clients. Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) research focused on the so-called "rising star" display ads including such units as pushdowns, filmstrips and sidekicks which have more interactivity and engagement with consumers. The IAB says its study shows they’re helping brands get noticed more than with traditional display ads. The data shows the new ads have 30% stronger brand recall with just one exposure, rising to 42% when the consumer actually has some interaction with the ad. Consumers were also three-times as likely to interact with the ad — 34% versus 11% who interacted with the old-style banner ads. That’s probably due to the fact that the typical person stared at the more entertaining banner ads five-times as long. And while they’re also, on average, larger than old fashioned banner ads, the research shows consumers found them less annoying. "We knew that better creative canvasses have visual and emotional appeal, and garner interaction," IAB top researcher Sherrill Mane says. "The big challenge has been to demonstrate that aesthetic breakthroughs contribute to brand equity and our rigorous and comprehensive study substantiates that." Peter Minnium, who heads brand initiatives for the IAB, says the study confirms what was instinctively known all along: consumers pay more attention to the new display ads.

Eliminating Sales Team Time Wasters

Article | Mon, 02/09/2015 - 00:00

by: Brian Cleary

 

Sales teams are the lifeblood of every organization as they are tasked with acquiring market share and growing revenues and profits. Ensuring that sales teams are equipped with the right sales content and tools, at the right time and location, is critical in order to realize the highest yield out of a sales opportunity pipeline in the shortest period of time. As the use of mobile devices by sales teams continues to increase, organizations are finding that they are improving sales engagement at the point of customer/prospect conversation.

But technology alone does not improve sales execution. In fact, having the productivity tools that enable them to engage with content and the customer is more important than the mobile device itself. Consider the financial impact that is being created by the time it takes to find content across fragmented content silos and the replication of work that is going on across an organization because content cannot be easily found when needed. By identifying the biggest inhibitors of sales effectiveness, organizations can implement strategies to address these and quickly maximize sales team’s efforts.

Inhibitors of Sales EffectivenessTwo timeless problems for sales professionals around the world are wasted time and lack of organization at work, both of which have a direct impact on a company’s revenues. Much of these issues are caused by content-related issues.

 A 2011 EMI Industry Intelligence Report found that in an average week, technology sales professionals spend eight hours developing client presentations, five hours looking for marketing collateral and four hours searching for customer information outside the organization. Over a full year, 17 hours each business week translates to approximately 106 full sales days lost. A 2013 KnowledgeTree survey showed that 84 percent of marketers believe they’ve done a good job in making it easy for salespeople to find content they need – yet only 51 percent of salespeople feel that the right content is readily accessible. That’s a lot of time that could be spent more productively – especially if the marketing team has already developed resources for sales reps to use.
Another challenge: customers today are much more educated than even before. A recent Corporate Executive Board study of more than 1,400 business-to-business customers found that nearly 60 percent of purchasing decisions have been made before having a meeting with a supplier sales representative. Additionally, IDC Research on sales enablement discovered that buyers felt that 57 percent of sales reps were either not or only somewhat well prepared during their initial meeting. If an organization’s sales rep is not well prepared for a meeting with a well-informed prospect, the results will be disastrous.

The numerous content repositories that sales reps are required to navigate also make it very difficult to find the latest sales content and selling tools. It’s not just enterprise file shares and portals where sales content is typically housed; it’s also across applications such as Salesforce.com, Seibel, ERP systems or content management systems such as OpenText and Documentum. Asking mobile device users to search and surf through massive directories of files and folders is not an effective or cost-efficient way to look for content.

Minimizing Time Wasters to Maximize Sales Teams’ EffortsMobile technologies provide sales professionals with a significant advantage to maximize their efforts and be more engaging with customers. Customers who are short on time need relevant content that’s personalized and customized to the challenge that they’re facing, and mobile devices such as tablets are ideal in these situations. Sales representatives can preload content specific to the customer and present it to them quickly, even engaging them interactively by incorporating simple questionnaires to be completed by touch. Tailoring the discussion with a prospect or customer will always get better results for sellers.
Beyond the mobile device itself, organizations with the right mobile productivity tools in place that help with customer engagement can rapidly improve its sales team’s effectiveness. Here are a few examples:

Push relevant content. Mobile users asked to use a desktop search and surf paradigm get frustrated navigating content because it’s not optimized for the form factor of the device. This, in turn, prevents mobile users from being successful in finding the information they need to do their job. Tools that enable marketing departments and sales teams to push the right content to the right sales rep at the right time and location, directly to their device, are vastly superior to the alternative.

Unlock sales tribal knowledge through expert networks and collaboration. By identifying the exact content that top sales performers use and sharing that tribal knowledge with the rest of the sales team, organizations can improve the performance of the collective group by transforming individual success into repeatable behavior across the entire sales department. The key: transfer knowledge in a passive manner so that it doesn’t burden experts in the sales team with a mentoring role or requirement to post on an internal social network. Instead, leverage the ability to collaborate on content by providing mechanisms to comment and annotate directly on content. Leverage social media network techniques by enabling sellers to subscribe and follow content and content publishers to understand what content sellers are using or creating.

Reduce administrative tasks and automate paper processes. In an ideal world, sales reps are spending their time selling, but the reality is there’s a large amount of administrative work that must be completed. Tools that automate manual processes on mobile devices, including ones that embed content into forms and workflows to capture data on mobile devices in real time, free up significant amounts of time for the sales rep.

As most sales organizations today are mobile, there are innovative solutions that are emerging to enable a mobile sales workforce to be more effective when engaging with customers and more productive to increase their available selling time. By focusing on providing dynamic, on-demand content that sales teams can access during a selling situation, organizations can improve execution, reduce costs and increase revenues.

Brian Cleary is chief strategy officer at bigtincan, a leader in mobile content enablement whose products provide access to all relevant content combined with all the tools needed to enable a mobile workforce to be productive.

Borrell: Traditional media controls half of all local digital advertising.

INSIDERADIO
February 9, 2015

 One-third of the $104 billion spent on local advertising last year was sold by online companies. That’s according to Borrell Associates data which shows that when the web advertising sold by radio and other local media is factored-in, digital’s share is far greater. "Traditional media controls half of all digital advertising," firm president Gordon Borrell says. "So it still controls about three-quarters of all local advertising because they’re selling quite a bit of digital in the marketplace." The digital evolution means some ad formats have cooled while others have become must-buys. Spending on targeted banner ads has doubled, for instance. "If you’re running run-of-site banners, people don’t care anymore, they want them targeted," Borrell says. His firm projects digital video spending will jump 50% this year. At the same time paid search is fading with marketers forecast to cut spending 5.7% on the format this year. Email marketing is also said to be cooling while digital audio remains a tough sell. "In all the surveys of small and medium size businesses we’ve done, we haven’t seen anybody asking for streaming audio advertising — it’s just not big to them," Borrell says. Overall, Borrell projects local advertising spending will increase 5.8% to $110 billion in 2015. "There is a slight rise, but it’s not bouncing back to where it should be," he says, pointing out that’s still below 2005 levels. "Classic advertising [growth] has flattened," Borrell says. "Advertisers are spending a lot more on promotions, which is marketing, but it’s not classic advertising." Spending data shows local promotional budgets overtook local ad budgets in 2007, following a similar milestone in national advertising recorded two years before that. These trends and the future of local media will be the focus of Borrell’s Local Online Advertising Conference, March 2-3 in New York. Inside Radio readers can save $100 on their registration fee by using the promo code "Inside100."

How’s Business? First quarter is off to a slow start. The polar vortex of 2014 hasn’t returned, but the chill in first quarter ad sales appears to have blown in again. Several radio group heads say they’ve seen an unexpectedly slow pace of activity across local markets in all four corners of the country. Forward pacing data can be unreliable, particularly in the lighter revenue months of first quarter. But the amount of money put on the books in January fell short of a year ago. "It’s scary," one group head says. The data seen by Inside Radio suggests industry revenue is pacing mid-single digits behind 2014. NRG Media COO Chuck DuCoty, who says his company shook off a slow January and has seen business improve in February and March, says one factor for last month’s softness may have been the calendar. Most sales reps didn’t begin hitting the street until January 5 because of how the New Year’s holiday landed, cutting nearly a week from the month’s sales effort.

Radio markets are more intertwined than ever.
Radio has traditionally served as an early-warning system for what’s happening in the economy since it’s a lot easier to buy or cancel a radio spot than a multi-million dollar television campaign. And while Friday brought an encouraging jobs report from the government, retail sales numbers have been softer than expected — even with falling gas prices. Radio remains at the whim of consumer sentiment. "Advertisers are not going to spend a lot of money to start new campaigns unless they think they can get sales from it," BIA/Kelsey chief economist Mark Fratrik says. "So, local markets have seen less than spectacular growth." The U.S. may have the strongest economy in the world at the moment but the economic recovery is still not at the level that America had become accustomed to.


What's exacerbating things for radio is that the slower ad market comes at a time of bigger change. It’s why Fratrik thinks when one market sees a pullback in business, it’s no longer isolated to one geographic region of the country. "You can say that the economy is in the doldrums, but underlying that tepid growth there is all this additional competition for listeners and advertisers — and that hits every market equally," he says. Fratrik says there are still some optimistic signals for radio, such as how strong sales have been in the automotive sector, which traditionally is among the industry’s biggest advertisers. BIA/ Kelsey forecasts radio revenue will grow 2% in 2015.

Gen X Is 50; Are We Going To Call Them Boomers Now?

By Stephen Reily Monday, Feb. 9, 2015

I’ve written here before about whether “Boomer” is the best term to describe the midlife consumer. Over many years I’ve learned that using the word Boomer makes many people think “old” — hardly the right word to apply to people just turning 50. I haven’t been able to persuade anyone to abandon the word yet. But maybe they will now. Last month marked an important transition, for Boomers and for the generation following in their wake: Gen X turned 50. “Slackers” Are Actually Excited About Their Age  Over the last 10 years I’ve been asking Boomers how they actually feel about reaching midlife. As 2014 came to a close, I started asking the same question of Gen Xers. We might have expected — the members of this famously cynical generation themselves might have expected — to enter midlife with a sense of doom. After all, it was Gen X icon Molly Ringwald who said (in 1985’s “The Breakfast Club”), “When you grow up, your heart dies.” In reality, the opposite turned out to be true. As further described in a new special report, even these famous “slackers” are actually excited about their futures. Just as “happiness” studies have routinely showed that life improves (sometimes unexpectedly) around age 45 - 50, the women of Gen X tell us that they like what’s happening as they get older. Seventy-eight percent of them defined their feelings about aging in exclusively positive terms. They said things like “I love love love my age.” And they admit this is sometimes a surprise. As one respondent said, “How being my age actually feels and the concept of age that I had as a child is completely dissonant. I feel great about my age.” The Original “Geeks” Are More Digital Than Ever Maybe now that Gen X is 50 we’ll stop hearing questions about whether consumers over 50 actually use the internet — at least we should. It was 32 years ago that Gen X icons Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy starred in “War Games,” a movie in which teenagers hack into the U.S. nuclear defense system and then have to play a computer game to save the world. And you thought Millennials invented hacking and computer games? Gen Xers don’t remember life without digital tools, and they have adapted for the last 30 years to each digital revolution at work and at home. That isn’t going to stop just because they turned 50. Eighty-four percent of Gen X women told us they bought themselves a smartphone in the last 12 months (another 71% bought a new tablet/iPad), and they are using it in as many different ways as their Millennial children to remain in an ever-growing network that includes three (or four) generations of their own families, colleagues and friends. The #1 way they communicate with their parents is by telephone; the #1 way they communicate with their children is by text; and the #1 way they communicate with friends is by Facebook and other social media. No wonder they keep buying new phones. Marketers who want to reach consumers aged 45+ have been over-dependent on television and print; in 2015 they’d better get themselves onto that phone. Life Stage Trumps Generation Boomers were the first generation to find that turning 50 opened up a new world; neither young nor old, the longevity revolution gave them 20 years to enjoy a stage of life their own parents had not known. Gen X is now learning the same lesson — and they are following their Boomer peers into a new happiness at 50. Whatever we call them, people aged 45 - 65 are living a now-familiar life stage, one that is not defined by the generation they were born into. Are we ready to stop calling them Boomers?