Tablets Influence News Consumption

hugues rey, le Journal.

About one in 10 (11%) of US adults now own a tablet computer of some kind, with about half (53%) of tablet owners getting news on their tablet every day, according to survey results released in October 2011 by the Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism and The Economist Group. Almost eight in 10 (77%) tablet owners use their tablet every day, spending an average of about 90 minutes on them.

News among Top Tablet Activities

Consuming news (everything from the latest headlines to in-depth articles and commentary) ranks as one of the most popular activities on the tablet, about as popular as sending and receiving email (54% email daily on their tablet), and more popular than social networking (39%), gaming (30%), reading books (17%) or watching movies and videos (13%). The only activity that people said they were more likely to do on their tablet computer daily is browse the web generally (67%).

The survey also finds that three in 10 tablet news users (defined for this study as the 77% of all tablet users who get news at least weekly) say they now spend more time getting news than they did before they had their tablet. Just 4% say they spend less time while two-thirds (65%) spend about the same amount of time.

In addition, one-third (33%) of tablet news users say they are turning to new sources for news on their tablet, sources they had not turned to on other platforms such as television or their desktop computer. And more than four in 10 (42%) say they regularly read in-depth news articles and analysis on their tablet.

Tablet news users also say they now prefer their new devices over traditional computers, print publications or television as a way both to get quick news headlines and to read long-form pieces.

Tablet News Revenue Potential May Be Limited

At this point just 14% of tablet news users have paid directly to access news on their tablet. Another 23% get digital access of some kind through a print newspaper or magazine subscription. Of those who haven’t paid directly, just 21% say they would be willing to spend $5 per month if that were the only way to access their favorite source on the tablet. And of those who have news apps, fully 83% say that being free or low cost was a major factor in their decision about what to download.

Desktop Beats Apps for Tablet News

The study reveals that, so far, while about two-thirds of tablet news users have a news app on their tablet, the browser, carried over from the desktop experience, is still the more popular means of consuming news. A plurality of tablet news users (40%) say they get their news mainly through a web browser. Another 31% use news apps and the browser equally, while fewer, 21%, get their news primarily through apps.

Branding Important for Tablet News

Liking the news organization is a major factor for 84% of those who have apps. In addition, among both app and browser respondents surveyed about their behavior over the last seven days, the most common way by far to get news headlines was by going directly to a news organization’s content. Fully 90% of app users went directly to the app of a specific news organization, compared with 36% that went to some sort of aggregator app like Pulse. And, 81% of those who went through their browser accessed news headlines via a direct news website, compared with 68% who went through a search engine and about a third (35%) that went through a social network.

Starch: Tablet Ads Beat E-reader Ads

Magazine ads viewed on tablet computers are more effective than magazine ads viewed on e-readers in garnering consumer attention and engagement, according to data collected by Starch Advertising Research from May-July 2011. Starch data reveals that, on average, 55% of consumers who read a magazine on a tablet “noted,” meaning they saw or read a magazine ad on their device.

In comparison, 41% of e-reader magazine app users noted an ad. This means tablet readers are 34% more likely to note a magazine ad. To put these findings in perspective, the average noting score for all hard copy magazine ads Starch measured in 2010 was 53%.

About the Data: The study, executed by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, involved a survey of the general public and three separate surveys. The first was a general population survey. The next two surveys were conducted with a Pew Research Center panel of more than a thousand tablet users. The panel was developed through interviews with 40,000 US adults. A telephone survey was conducted with 1,159 tablet users and 894 tablet news users, and a web-based survey was conducted among a select group of those news users about their news habits over the past seven days.

What Obstacles Are Preventing Greater Digital Investments? – eMarketer

via What Obstacles Are Preventing Greater Digital Investments? – eMarketer.

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

Still room to grow in digital

Digital and interactive is not the No. 1 priority for companies when it comes to advertising. That position still belongs to TV, and a majority of advertising agencies feel there are several obstacles in the way of changing that.

STRATA, a software company for media buying and selling, polled agencies about their clients’ preferences in Q4 2010. Spot TV is still the top advertising medium, with 44% of respondents saying it was the area where their clients were most focused. Internet and digital came in with 21%.

 

 

Clients are still turning to traditional advertising methods, but they are open to incorporating social media and digital and interactive tactics. Sixty-one percent of advertising agency respondents said they used social media as an online marketing tactic in Q4, and 78.9% reported using Facebook as a part of client campaigns.

The survey also found that 80.6% of agencies have clients interested in advertising on the iPhone, while 51.4% were interested in the BlackBerry. More than 30% of respondents plan to use some kind of location-based service in 2011, but only 10% of clients have asked to advertise on Apple TV or with an iAd.

While 24% of respondents reported there were no major obstacles in the way of increasing clients’ digital and interactive ad spending, a majority of agencies feel there are still challenges to be overcome. Lack of channel effectiveness was the greatest obstacle, with 26% of agencies choosing it as the primary problem. Another 23% cited lack of advertiser demand.

 

 

Clients will continue to show increasing interest in emerging technologies as they prove their effectiveness and ROI. But agencies must work to overcome the remaining obstacles to greater digital spending to make interactive the top priority for clients.

CBS Cuts Ties To Outside Ad Networks For Display, Launches Its Own (source: paid-content.org)

Updated: CBS Interactive is cutting the cord on third-party ad networks and some online ad exchanges effective immediately, paidContent has learned. The company is preparing its own ad serving platform, dubbed Madison, to power the CBS Interactive (NYSE: CBS) Premium Ad Network for its group of properties, betting that it can better handle its own inventory as the economy begins to recover. The decision to go in house was first reported by AdAge.  Thanks to its purchase of Cnet last year and its moves since then, CBS can claim 200 million monthly users across its sites, securely placing it among the top 10 global web properties. By taking back its inventory from ad nets, CBS is testing the weight of that acquisition.

CBS Interactive President Neil Ashe told AdAge he accepts the probable decline in revenue as a result, but he contends the CBS digital unit can do better on its own over the long term. CBS Interactive isn’t cutting off third-party sites altogether. It will continue to hand over some ad space to online exchanges, including Yahoo’s Right Media, Google’s DoubleClick and Publicis Groupe unit Vivaki’s Audience on Demand platform. Third parties that can promise the kinds of data and prices that meet CBS Interactive’s targets will be allowed to serve the company’s ads.

The unit will immediately discontinue the use of third-party ad networks for display ads across all of its global sites. CBS Interactive says it expects to gain a range of demographic, behavioral and re-targeting options; more flexibility in its relationships with selected third-party online ad firms; and more customized ad programs tailored to its specific audience.

Since Wenda Harris Millard compared inventory on remnant ad networks to “pork bellies” almost two years ago, more and more publishers have been rethinking the efficacy of handing their ad space to third parties. But when the economy worsened last year, the debate became more or less academic. In the meantime, the number of ad networks has only increased, even as many forecasters two years ago had expected a quick contraction.

Lately, a number of publishers have indicated that they would move to scale back their dealings with ad networks. Most notably, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong clarified the company’s stance on how it would use its own ad network, Advertising.com. While Armstrong dismissed an analyst’s report that AOL (NYSE: AOL) would pull all its premium inventory off Advertising.com, he said the company would place more emphasis on developing its in-house sales team.

CBS Interactive’s inventory pullback from nets such as Advertising.com and ValueClick (NSDQ: VCLK), could spur other publishers who have wanted to make similar moves. Fo now, it joins a number of other high-profile publishers such as Time Inc. (NYSE: TWX) and Hearst, who have made a point of withholding inventory from ad nets this past year. But ad networks insist that, despite making headlines, it won’t make much difference to their continued expansion. As Mike Cassidy, CEO of ad net Undertone Networks, tells AdAge, there is some concern about Yahoo’s plans to block some third parties from its Right Media exchange. Yahoo’s message to the ad nets is very simply this: add value through data and more sophisticated targeting or get chopped.