Here’s an interesting email newsletter from Citibank, my credit card provider:

More and more companies are offering incentives, contests, promotions  and benefits for engaging with their brand.  Marriott’s catalog of rewards continues to grow.  Have you seen the points auctions for “experience” events at  Starwood?   Airlines are expanding offerings beyond miles for trips, connecting their database members to partners.  Hundreds of companies are launching contests, sweepstakes and Instant Win promotions to attract attention, build their databases and strengthen the relationship with their consumer base.

There is a premium on consumer relationships.  The more value you can create for each member, the stronger the relationship with the brand.  The tools in your Triton Loyalty program allow you to accomplish all of this, and more.

There is much to learn from this simple CitiBank example.  Here are a few:

Valuable offers increase participation. Offering benefits can be the difference in brand choice.  That simple added incentive may be the difference in choosing one hotel over another, or keeping that one credit card instead of canceling.  It can also be the difference that keeps your member from seeking a competitor’s offer.

Offers are for members ONLY.  If I’m not in their “club” (a card holder), I can’t benefit.  Notice that these marketers are not offering their rewards as an “additional way to win”.  If you want the perk, you have to have a relationship.

Offers are compelling, unique and exclusive. They don’t have to be HUGE offers, but each has a compelling hook.  In fact, offers in the CitiBank example are the type of reward media partners are able to provide members every day.  Often we take these items for granted and  fail to market, position or promote effectively.

Their newsletter is short, to the point and the offers are showcased without clutter to distract.

More offers are available by clicking through to the link on their newsletter.

The communication is non-intrustive with a simple message “Private Pass Offers members access”.  The message is that the recipient is unique, special and this offer is available to a select few.

Membership has it’s privileges … access and exclusive benefits are one of the attractions.  It’s not all about the prizes, but about perks, benefits, access.

They don’t try to sell me something I don’t expect!  This newsletter is all about benefits to me, their member.  They understand WIIFM (What’s In it For Me).

With a Triton Loyalty database, you have the means to connect with your members (and non-members) just as effectively as American Express, Delta Airlines or Hilton Hotels.  The more you learn about them, the more customized and specific your offers.  Local rewards, combined with networked prizes, represent tremendous marketing opportunities.  Effective promotion is in your hands!  Let us help you create strategies for success.

Here are three must-have mobile solutions for your station to drive ratings and revenue engagement:

1. Text Messaging
Text messaging is no longer a “nice-to-have”; it’s a “need-to-have” solution. Credit pop-culture phenomenon like American Idol for serving as the learning-curve catalyst, as there are now more text-messages sent each day than there are phone calls made! A targeted text campaign can drive tune-ins while extending advertiser reach. Intelligent keyword auto-responders can be coupled with advertising flights for “spot tagging”; allowing listeners to text a keyword to the station to automatically receive more information from the advertiser, receive a coupon, or to enter a contest. This type of mobile implementation helps drive measurable ROI for your advertisers.  Be sure to choose a solution that integrates with your station’s core database for maximum effectiveness, includes an economical short code option, and provides you with unlimited keyword choices.

2. Mobile Streaming
In the not too distant past, increasing the reach of your station required FCC hurdles and costly engineering upgrades.  Thanks to the proliferation of 3G networks, that is no longer the case. If your station is already streaming, adding a mobile app is an easy and inexpensive way to extend the reach of your station to potentially millions of new devices.  As consumer behavior continues to shift, more and more listeners are using their phones to consume audio and video content. Furthermore, it’s likely that the mobile phone will bring “IP Radio” to the car before in-dash implementations as phones begin to include 4G/WiMAX, helping Radio retain its role as the “in-car medium”. Be sure to choose a solution that is platform agnostic, allowing your station to be heard on Blackberry, iPhone, and Android platforms. Also imperative is the ability to deliver and measure both in-stream and mobile display advertising on your listeners’ handsets. For the best implementation, select a partner that will synchronize artist bios, lyrics, and album art with your playlist to create an immersive mobile experience!

3. Mobile User-Generated Content (UGC)
One needn’t look further than YouTube to see the popularity of user-generated content. Considering that your station’s cume is comprised of thousands of “citizen journalists” equipped with cellular cameras, there is a tremendous opportunity to tap into this source of free content, while using your station’s loudspeaker to promote and monetize it on your website. Invite listeners on-air to submit their content for a “cutest baby contest” or “best beach body” promotion.  Not only will this drive a huge amount of page views to your websites, but it has an inherent viral marketing component as listeners instruct their friends to go to the station’s website and vote. Choose a mobile UGC solution that will allow listeners to submit either still or video content from any phone and includes tools to monetize the content through local pre-rolls, video-overlays, and companion advertising. Some mobile UGC solutions even include a human-review team that will review the content for you to ensure it adheres to your broadcast standards and does not contain copyrighted music, saving your staff time and potential legal headaches.

Paul Cramer, Paul@TritonDigitalMedia.com

Click the link for more….Internet Radio – Intent to Listen More

 ALL ACCESS President/Publisher JOEL DENVER noted, “We’re very pleased to be partnering with TRITON DIGITAL MEDIA to present these free webinars. Digital opportunities are exploding, and ALL ACCESS and TRITON are collaborating to help radio grow and have a bright future. Just set aside 20 minutes each WEDNESDAY, and you’ll gain a week’s worth of knowledge.”

This first week’s webinar: “Social Media 101,” will give you valuable info on how to get the best out of FACEBOOK, TWITTER and MYSPACE. Hosted by TRITON MEDIA’s JIM KERR, guests MARY ANN HALFORD who runs BIZWORKS360, WORK+LIFE FIT CEO CALI YOST, and MARKETING BEGINS AT HOME CEO DAVID PARMET they will give you must-hear, must-learn, must-do strategies.

 To sign up for this and future ALL ACCESS WEBINARS, every WEDNESDAY 2p (ET)/11a (PT), just click the pic…

What’s a feedback loop?  In simple terms, it’s reporting back to the respondent the result of their input.  If they care enough to complete an opinion poll, don’t you think they care enough to get the results?

Essentially, the feedback loop is nothing but effective promotion:

1. Tell them what you’re going to do, and invite them to participate
2. Do it.
3. Tell them what you’ve done, and demonstrate how their involvement mattered

Last night’s Grammy Awards demonstrated a perfect example of completing the feedback loop.  Throughout the broadcast, promotional announcements invited viewers to vote which song Bon Jovi would perform live on the show.  Voting took place on the CBS TV website.  The loop was completed when the band performed the chosen song.

In many cases, we fail to involve the audience after the input is received.  We ask them to fill out opinion polls, take a music survey, text an opinion, email a response or join our community, and they never hear how their participation mattered.  We do a great job inviting. We just need to find ways to complete the loop.

There are many ways to involve them.  Here are a couple:

1. In your email newsletters, include results of this week’s surveys.  You don’t have to go into details, just an overview to show how the results turned out.
2. On the main page of your website, show your audience how your music testing is trending.  A short paragraph from the program director or music director with a few songs highlighted rewards participants (my vote mattered) and encourages more to make their opinion known.  If you don’t play music, show the results of other surveys and opinion polls.
3. Respond to every contact (every text, every Tweet, every message) with a relevant reply message, not a generic response.  If you invite them to participate with your brand, respect them enough to have a relationship with them.

Completing the feedback loop is not difficult, but does take time and commitment.  As you plan campaigns, factor in this very important step.

WSJ – By SARAH MCBRIDE

“No suits. No DJs. No kidding,” reads the Web site for CBS Corp.’s radio station KITS in San Francisco. “You decide what plays.” After years of having program directors choose which songs get airtime, the alternative rock station is trying to give listeners the same thing the Internet oes: control.

Like most stations, KITS, 105.3 on the dial, normally works from a playlist chosen after extensive market research and put into heavier or lighter rotation depending on how new the song is, the artist’s name recognition and whether it seems to be catching on with listeners. But on Sunday nights, the station experiments with something called Jelli Radio, where listeners go online and vote songs up or down to decide what ends up on the airwaves.

If enough listeners hate a song, it can get yanked mid-spin. “Sex on Fire” by Kings of Leon was the first to get yanked on KITS’s Jelli radio; the chat room viewed it as overplayed.

Jelli is part of a strategy to harness online radio, a technology that has the potential to siphon thousands of listeners from the airwaves, or, if done right, bring in thousands more.

“If Google created a radio station, what would it be?” asks Mike Dougherty, chief executive of Jelli Inc., based in San Mateo, Calif. Jelli considered how Google tunes its search product to deliver the most relevant possible results, based on data from other users. “That’s the genesis of what we did.”

It’s called “crowdsourced” radio and companies such as Jelli and Listener Driven Radio LLC, are making it available to stations on a syndication basis, as well as through their own Web sites. Typically, they are using barter terms, meaning stations can run the programming if they turn over a chunk of the advertising airtime so Jelli or Listener Driven Radio can sell it.

Both services are new and relatively unproven. KITS in San Francisco is the largest station to try crowdsourced radio, but it’s been on only since the summer. Still, it’s been beating the programming it replaced and the station plans to expand Jelli’s hours, says a person familiar with the situation. Jelli is talking with several more CBS stations around the country.

Crowdsourced radio takes the concept of caller-request lines and kicks it up a notch, with a voting element. While some radio stations allow listeners to vote for a top song, usually it’s just for a small portion of the programming, rather than the whole.

On the Internet, radio services such as Pandora.com— which allows users to create personal radio stations, banishing some songs from play while giving the thumbs-up to others—are gaining traction with listeners. In some rankings of visitors to online audio sites, Pandora.com is the top service.

But traditional radio broadcasters can’t afford to cede the interactive radio field to the online-only specialists. Radio companies are struggling against some of the sharpest declines in decades. Citadel Broadcasting Corp. just filed a prearranged bankruptcy reorganization plan and Regent Communications Inc. fell into technical default earlier this year. Consulting firm BIA/Kelsey estimates radio revenue has fallen 19% this year.

Online revenue, while accounting for only a few hundred million dollars of the $19 billion radio business, is growing the fastest, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau.

If radio companies can marry the reach and convenience of over-the-airwaves broadcasts with the tailoring of the Web, the thinking goes, they will be in a strong position as they compete for listener ears and advertiser dollars.

Both Jelli and Listener Driven Radio, based in Cleveland, strive to do that. LDR, which is on Northern Lights Broadcasting’s KTTB in Minneapolis and soon will be on two big Citadel stations in Detroit and four Border Media Partners stations in Texas, asks listeners for email or SMS addresses when they request a song.

It’s optional, but if listeners give contact details, “We can send a notification whenever that song plays,” says Daniel Anstandig, president of McVay New Media. “That creates more tune-in.”

In an era where radio audiences are increasingly measured by electronic recorders called Portable People Meters, which can that track minute-by-minute listening, jumpstarting tune-ins has become crucial.

Because crowdsourced radio serves as a bridge between the Internet and regular airwaves, it becomes easier to sell advertising for both, say its creators.

John Rosso, president at Citadel Media, the syndication unit of Citadel, says that once he has Listener Driven Radio up and running on stations early next year, he plans marketing blitzes for advertisers. For a pizzeria, “We’ll sell spots on the air, spots online, we’ll send a DJ over there to do an appearance…. We’ll send out a text to say listeners get free pepperoni on their pizza today,” he says. “The whole idea is to try to surround the audience.”

Jelli’s Web site features a set of videogame-like tools designed to make the experience more interactive. Listeners can click on virtual animated rockets that accelerate a song’s rise to the top of a playlist. Virtual bombs can kill a song’s chances. It’s “a videogame on a radio station,” says Mr. Dougherty.

Listener Driven Radio—which touts a shift from broadcasts to “crowdcasts”—relies more on old-fashioned voting, but does so through modern technology, including mobile devices, a station’s Web site and social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

To help prevent any manipulation of the voting or the playlist, both LDR and Jelli say they have technologies in place to monitor abuses of the system.

2010 Digital Trends

From Adweek Brian Morrissey

1. Content at Scale. In remaking AOL, CEO Tim Armstrong has gone back to the future by betting on content. But Armstrong doesn’t believe content is king in the old way. In the new world, the race is on to use data and automation to produce content that people (and advertisers) want at as low a price as possible. That’s led to the rise of so-called content mills like Demand Media and Associated Content. AOL is betting its future on the area. The question for 2010 is whether this automation and data-driven approach will lead to a flowering of useful information or more detritus clogging search results with low-grade, ad-heavy Web pages.

2. The End of the Digital Agency. There won’t be a moment when the invisible line dividing digital and traditional agencies is completely erased. But 2010 will see the distinction blur to the point of being meaningless. The Great Race, as Forrester Research calls it, pits digital shops looking to hone their branding chops against traditional agencies adding tech skills. More digital agencies will compete for (and sometimes win) through-the-line assignments, and more clients will be willing to choose a lead agency based on which of its roster shops comes to the table with the best idea.

3. Social Gaming. At first glance, it’s easy to wonder why anyone would use FourSquare, the mobile social network that awards users points for checking into restaurants and bars. Start using it and you’ll see how addictive it becomes in competing to become “mayor” of your local coffee shop. The same goes for the runaway success of social gaming company Zynga, which has shown that people will spend real money for virtual goods. Marketers have just begun to dip their toes in the area, but brands are certain to explore it further in 2010.

4. Demand-Side Platforms. If there was a watchword of 2009, it was efficiency. That’s likely to continue well into 2010. Internet advertising remains inefficient to buy and sell. At the same time, behavioral advertising has attracted even more marketers to the notion of buying the audiences they want, using content as one of several signals. These trends led to the construction of ad exchanges, which in turn has fueled the development of agencies building out demand-side platforms like Interpublic Group’s Cadreon and Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi. More ad inventory will flow through these systems, threatening to further disrupt the digital publishing landscape with more automation.

5. Engagement Pricing There’s no shortage of critics of the Web’s ad pricing system. In crude terms, it divides into two buckets: clicks for direct response and impressions for branding. As the Web matures as a branding medium, 2010 should be the year when more publishers and marketers explore new pricing mechanisms that better reflect their goals. Promising starts have already been made in cost-per-engagement and time-based ad models by networks like VideoEgg and Lotame. The challenge is the same for any new approach: New models might make more intuitive sense, but they diverge from the accepted media-planning practices

6. Augmented Reality Grows Up. To date, augmented reality has proven to be another gee-whiz tool for agencies. Only a few efforts, like AKQA’s tool for the U.S. Postal Service that uses AR to find the right size packages, pass the useful test. That should change as AR and mobile converge to provide an array of useful services. City guide Yelp has shown the possibilities of AR with an iPhone app that lets users view reviews of nearby businesses (like restaurants) through their phone camera. While AR will likely retain its cool factor, its test for 2010 is in proving it can live up to the hype.

7. Social Media Morphs into Digital. If 2009 was the Year of Twitter, 2010 will be the year when social-media tools are treated as part of the fabric of the digital world. As Altimeter Group’s Charlene Li predicted, social media would become “like air,” and be pretty much everywhere. That means publishers and marketers will use tools like Twitter and Facebook Connect to make experiences more social. More marketers will look at social as an integral part of their digital strategy, rather than a stand-alone area for experimentation.

8. Privacy Wars. Data on consumers, the Web’s greatest strength, might also be its Achilles heel. Scrutiny on the collection and use of consumer information online will increase in 2010, as regulators grapple with whether the industry needs new rules of the road that give consumers more notice and say when their information is collected. The ultimate bogeyman — an opt-in requirement for collecting behavioral data -- probably wouldn’t fly, but Web players will likely be required to give more notice and choice to consumers when tracking their digital footprints. The ad-preferences dashboards rolled out by Google and Yahoo are a sign of things to come. Another possibility is marking behaviorally targeted ads to give consumers an easy way to opt out of tracking.

9. Data Gets Creative. Until recently, data has remained the preserve of ad targeting. Expect that to change in 2010 as more marketers tap into the popularity of data visualization by providing tools for consumers to see data in action. Sprint used this approach to produce a hit advertising campaign with the Sprint Now widget. The king of this approach remains Nike Plus, which uses data visualization to show runners how they’re progressing. Thanks to open application programming interfaces, Twitter has spawned dozens of data visualization offshoots, conditioning people to mix their social data to find interesting trends.

10. The Year of Mobile, Finally. After many false starts, 2010 figures to be the year when the mobile advertising market finally takes off. Heavyweights Apple and Google are poised to face off in the key market, with Google pouring its seemingly infinite resources into the development of the Android operating system. The competition will open up new opportunities for marketers in the burgeoning app economy. The biggest push should come in location-based services, which hold the possibility of giving brands the chance to minutely target consumers.

Online Coupon Usage Climbs

Emarketer

Online coupons were a breakout site category during the 2008 holiday season, and the ongoing economic downturn only helped their popularity over the past year. comScore reported that coupon sites were the third-fastest-growing category in November 2009, with unique visits up 33% month over month to 37.5 million. Borrell Associates expects the total value of online coupons redeemed to almost triple over the next five years, reaching $22 billion in 2014.

Borrell reported that although only 5% of coupons redeemed in 2009 were online, they represented one-fifth of the total value of coupon redemptions. The proportion of coupons distributed through online channels was somewhat higher, and is also expected to increase in 2010

2011 Hispanic Marketing Trends

MediaPost by Jose Villa

Most lists that come out this time of year take a stab at prognosticating what will happen in various industries during the next 12 months. I’m sure you thought the headline on this article was a typo: Why would anyone be writing about trends in Hispanic marketing 12 to 24 months out?

Well, frankly, while I no doubt realize that 2010 will bring numerous evolutionary changes to the Hispanic advertising and media world, I believe 2011 will result in far more disruptive and revolutionary change. Why?

First, Hispanic marketing trends usually follow trends in the general market. While these changes historically lag by three to five years, media and marketing technology have shortened that gap to one to three years. So the transformational changes that have affected mainstream advertising and media will bear their full brunt on our industry by 2011.

In addition, by the end of 2010, U.S. Hispanic Internet penetration is on pace to reach almost 70%, once and for all ending the debate about whether the Internet is a Hispanic mass marketing medium.

Finally, the 2010 Census results will be out in early 2011 and will no doubt bring increased attention to the Hispanic market because the numbers will be big. This attention will not all be good, as I addressed in a blog a few months back, because in addition to more advertiser activity, it will translate into more competition from general market agencies attempting to service the market.

2011 Trends

1. Erosion of Spanish TV’s Prominence Although Spanish-language TV has managed to avoid the fate of its general market counterparts, trends such as online video (note the popularity of novelas on YouTube), the trend toward “on-demand” and DVR time-adjusted consumption will eventually impact Spanish TV. More importantly, the value of the big two’s (Univision and Telemundo) content will begin to be “crowded out” by competition from cable, mobile and Internet video options and cheaper access to home country content on all three of the aforementioned platforms. 
2.  Polarization of the Hispanic Acculturation Model Most Hispanic marketing strategies are built on the foundation of the familiar three-part Hispanic acculturation model (unacculturated, partially acculturated and acculturated). While this model will continue to be valid, it will become increasingly polarized as the differences among the three segments increase, particularly in relation to demographics and media preference. The coming “tsunami” of U.S.-born young Hispanics (in 10 years, 62% of all teens will be Hispanic) will only exacerbate the differences that will exist among the various segments.
3. Shift in Emphasis from Traditional to Digital Channels Ultimately, clients make the decision as to where budgets are spent, and their increasing preference to go digital in the general market will carry over to their Hispanic advertising efforts. I’m already starting to see Hispanic digital reviews, especially as clients focus on targeting specific Hispanic segments, trading reach for deeper engagement. Hispanic direct response activity will also migrate to the Web, particularly as Hispanic digital performance channels eat away at traditional options (DRTV, direct mail, etc.). 
4.  Mobile Marketing Although mobile marketing’s arrival has been prematurely announced for the last five years, its undeniable growth in 2010 will finally reveal the full potential for using mobile to reach Hispanics in 2011. In fact, mobile will likely start to replace local print media consumption (newspaper readership), and opportunities with couponing, QR codes and apps will make Hispanic mobile marketing the fastest growing segment in Hispanic media by the end of 2011.
5.  The “Second Offensive” of the General Market Agencies As mentioned above, the 2010 Census results will help drive a new wave of interest in Hispanic advertising, both among marketers and general market ad agencies looking to continue to grow. Just like the lines between traditional and digital agencies were beginning to blur in 2009, by 2011 the lines between general market and multicultural marketing will become hazy, much to the dismay of specialist Hispanic shops. 
6.  Social Media Takes Center Stage To borrow a phrase from Adweek, social media will “be like air” and a part of all things advertising. This will be the case in Hispanic advertising, as the over-indexing of Hispanics on social media should provide the “writing on the wall.“ However, like in the general market, clients will start to take social media programs “in-house,” especially those focused on creating and managing communities. 
7. Other Hispanic Media Will Experience Differing Fates While Hispanic TV and print will suffer as a result of trends toward digital, radio and OOH have an opportunity to emerge stronger than ever and evolve with changes in technology. 
8. Arrival of New Media Platforms Once gaming companies (gaming networks, online games, game developers, etc.) adopt more sophisticated demographic tracking capabilities, they will introduce a promising new media channel to reach Hispanic gamers of all ages and types. GPS-enabled marketing, which should come of age in mainstream marketing in 2010, will be poised to open new doors to reaching Hispanics in 2011. 
9. People will Talk about the “Good Old Days” of 2008 and before As with the general market advertising industry, overall ad spending will take a long time to return to its pre-recession peaks. In the case of Hispanic media spending, those 2008 numbers won’t be seen again for a long time.

Texting: It’s Not Just For Children Anymore

MediaPost By John Capone

The stereotypes of the teenager whose thumbs are surgically attached to his or her mobile device and the older parent who sees the same as a phone without wires are, like most stereotypes, not entirely inaccurate — but also not very reliable either.

According to new research by mobile messaging company Tekelec, 60% of those over 45 were found to be just as likely to use SMS as they were to make voice calls from their mobile device. The survey of 500 people in North America and Europe also found that text messaging is gaining on email as the preferred means of daily international communication, with 32% of responses across all ages preferring SMS, compared to 33% for email. And nearly a third of respondents said their use of SMS would increase in 2010.

In addition, more than 80% of respondents across all age groups thought they would get a quicker response from a text than from an email or voice message. Women preferred to let their fingers do the talking, with 40% describing themselves as ‘mainly texter,’ compared to 30% of men.

One more difference between the sexes: women were more likely to engage in TV voting via text, with 25% versus just 14% of men engaging in such behavior.

But those under 35 were the most likely age group to vote via text, with 16% of them saying they do so, followed by 9% of 35- to-44-year-olds, and 7% of those 45 and older. However, 35- to-44-year-olds are the largest consumers of news and sports by text, at 18% compared to 17% for those under 35, and only 8% for those over 45.

Report: Shifting African-American Population

Jan 12, 2010 -By Todd Wasserman, Brandweek

Though many marketers are focusing on how the 2010 U.S. Census will show growth in the Hispanic population, a new study argues that the African-American community presents another great opportunity. The report, commissioned by BET and based on U.S. Census Bureau data, shows that black Americans are both more well-off and more suburban than previously thought.

Overall, the report, entitled “African Americans in 2010,” finds that the black population is growing 34% faster than the population as a whole. When the U.S. Census tallies its 2010 numbers, demographers expect it will show that there are about 50 million Hispanics in the U.S. and around 42 million African Americans. But though there are fewer African Americans, the population is changing in ways that make such consumers more attractive to marketers, namely: 

• African Americans are nearly six years younger than all consumers; 47% are between 18 and 49 years old, which is considered the top-spending age demo by marketers.
• Black households making $75,000-plus have increased 47 percent in the last five years—1.5 times faster than the general population. 
• If current trends continue, by 2015 more than half of all black Americans will live in the suburbs. 
• Although their population is smaller, there are more African-American households in the U.S. than Hispanic households because the latter tend to have larger families. 
• 42% of black adults have never married compared to 26 percent of all adults. This trend is increasing among younger age groups. 

Jacklynn Topping, a business strategist and co-author of the study, acknowledged that there is some bad news as well. Although more young black women are going to college, men of the same age are not achieving at the same levels, by and large. She said, “I have not seen anything that indicates that  is changing.” 

But the data shows a change in the population that Topping believes marketers should act on. “The main point is that in times when you’ve got flat or declining sales, this is a growth market, and marketers need to look at it like that,” she said.

 For instance, Topping said that although Diane Keaton does ads for L’Oreal and Ellen DeGeneris promotes CoverGirl, there is currently no black “face of aging,” though there are plenty of African-American baby boomers approaching their seventh decade.  

Peter Franchese, co-author of the study and founder of American Demographics, said he believes the black population is very similar to where the overall population was 15 or 20 years ago in terms of education, income and geographic concentration. Franchese said most people are unaware that blacks are moving to the suburbs in such great numbers. “We tend to think of blacks living in the inner cities and nowhere else, but that’s no longer true,” he said. 

One marketer that has picked up on the trend is The Home Depot, which includes partnerships with Steve Harvey and Tom Joyner to forge “a consistent and sustainable dialogue with customers in the segment,” said Tia Robinson, a rep for the retailer. “The Home Depot recognizes the importance of connecting with the African-American consumer market. As such, we have a 360-degree marketing plan to help us reach our target.” 

Over time, Franchese said he believes that the move is likely to make black and white Americans much more similar. But in the meantime, Franchese thinks marketers will need to address African Americans differently than they do the general population. 

“Here’s my take. I think for some time, maybe five to 10 years, marketing people should address this market with a deeper understanding of the cultural differences, which are going to gradually disappear as  they move to the suburbs,” he said. 

Audience for Online Video Keeps Climbing

Adweek By Mike Shields

Despite having achieved mainstream status a few years ago, the total audience for online video continues to balloon. And YouTube’s dominance in the category seems boundless, as the site delivered more than 10 times as many video streams as any other site in the U.S. last month.

According to the latest report issued by Nielsen Online, 137.4 million Americans watched Web video in December, a healthy increase of 10.3 percent vs. the same month in 2008. Those viewers streamed over 10.7 billion videos during the month, representing an increase of 11.8 percent vs. the same time period a year earlier.

While the number of streams per visitor showed only marginal growth, Web video viewers are watching longer clips. Time spent per viewer watching online video jumped 13.2 percent to 193.2 minutes in December.

And while Hulu, the joint venture between News Corp., NBC Universal and Disney, continues to demonstrate tremendous growth — making it the No. 2 video site on the Web — YouTube continues to account for a disproportionate amount of the clips consumed on the Internet. The Google-owned property streamed over 6.4 billion clips in December, while Hulu streamed almost 635 million videos, per Nielsen. YouTube also reached nearly 106 million unique viewers versus Hulu’s 13.6 billion.

Curiously, Nielsen and rival comScore continue to report audience numbers for Hulu that are miles apart in scope. While comScore’s data places YouTube far ahead of other players in the segment, it estimates Hulu’s audience to be over 43 million users — roughly 30 million users more than Nielsen’s estimates. Similarly, according to Hulu, comScore’s data indicates that the site’s average monthly streams recently topped 920 million, almost 300 million more than Nielsen tracked.

Gartner: Mobile To Outpace Desktop Web By 2013

MediaPost by Mark Walsh

Mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access devices worldwide by 2013, according to a new forecast by research firm Gartner. That’s an even more aggressive outlook than Morgan Stanley’s projection that the mobile Web will outstrip the desktop Web in five years.

Gartner estimates the combined installed base of smartphones and browser-equipped enhanced phones will surpass 1.82 billion units by 2013, eclipsing the total of 1.78 billion PCs by then.

But the firm warns that many sites still are not optimized for the mobile Web, even though cell users expect to make fewer clicks on their phones than on a PC. To successfully expand into mobile, publishers will have to reformat sites from the small form-factor of handheld devices.

Looking ahead to 2014, Gartner estimates that 3 billion of the world’s adult population will be able to conduct transactions via mobile or Internet technology. “Cash transactions will remain dominant in emerging markets by 2014, but the foundation for electronic transactions will be well underway for much of the adult world,” according to the firm.

In a more qualitative prediction, Gartner says that by 2015, context will be as key to mobile consumer services and relations as search engines are to the Web. Where search provides the key method for organizing information and services on the Internet, context will be critical to delivering personalized user experiences on smartphones.

“Context will center on observing patterns, particularly location, presence and social interactions. Furthermore, whereas search was based on a ‘pull’ of information from the Web, context-enriched services will, in many cases, prepopulate or push information to users,” stated the report. New offerings like Google’s “Near me now” feature — providing information on nearby business and services based on a mobile user’s location — come to mind in that vein.

Gartner added that any Web company that doesn’t become a mobile context provider risks handing over customer ownership to a competitor that is providing location-aware or other services that create context for users. As Gartner expects Facebook to be the hub of the social Web by 2012 (it’s not already?), it should also play a key role in social networking to mobile phones.

Arbitron Study of Satellite Radio

PR NewsWire

Arbitron’s study showed that more than 35 million total adult listeners tune in to SIRIUS XM, 32 million of which are weekly listeners. 

The study found SIRIUS XM listeners prefer satellite radio over other audio options available to them. Respondents indicated that the percent of total time spent listening to audio in general is 62% to SIRIUS XM, 16% to AM/FM, 4% to streaming internet, and 10% of the time using mobile devices.  

Arbitron found that in a typical day, SIRIUS XM listeners spend 2 hours and 45 minutes in their vehicle, which is significant, given that while they are in their cars, they spend 71% of their time listening to SIRIUS XM compared with 17% of their time listening to AM/FM radio, and 5% of the time using mobile devices.

 Significantly, the Arbitron study revealed that past week SIRIUS XM listeners indexed higher on key audience attributes – education, income, and receptiveness: 

• 56% of SIRIUS XM listeners graduated from college or have advanced degrees compared with 24% of AM/FM radio listeners and 25% of the general population(1).  
• 24% of SIRIUS XM listeners have household incomes of $150,000 or more compared with 9% of AM/FM radio listeners and 9% of the general population(2).
• Of those who indicated they were more likely to change the channel when a commercial came on, in comparing SIRIUS XM and AM/FM radio, SIRIUS XM listeners are 61% more likely to stay with a commercial on satellite radio than with those that air on AM/FM radio stations. 

 The Arbitron study excluded SIRIUS XM’s music channels since they are commercial free. The study focused solely on SIRIUS XM’s news, talk, entertainment, sports, and other commercial programming channels.  Arbitron found that listeners spent more than seven hours a week listening to these commercial channels on SIRIUS XM.

Flash Cookies Could Become Hot-Button Privacy Issue

MediaPost By Wendy Davis

Web users are not yet deleting Flash cookies as often as they shed more traditional cookies, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to use Flash technology to track consumers online. That’s according to a new report commissioned by media audit company BPA Worldwide.

The report, authored by analytics expert Eric Peterson, warns that the use of Flash cookies, also called “local shared objects,” to override consumers’ choices could invite new privacy laws. “With the attention given to consumer privacy on the Internet at both individual and governmental levels, we believe that companies making inappropriate or irresponsible use of the Flash technology are very likely asking for trouble, (and potentially putting the rest of the online industry at risk of additional government regulation),” writes Peterson, CEO and principal consultant at Web Analytics Demystified.

Several years ago, Peterson shook up the online ad industry with a report that around 40% of Web users deleted their cookies at least monthly. Before that research was published, many industry observers assumed that relatively few people trashed cookies.

Peterson’s study about cookie deletions helped fuel searches for new tracking technologies that would prove more permanent than traditional cookies. Some companies began hailing Flash cookies — which were initially developed to store users’ preferences for Flash-based applications like online video players — as a potential tracking tool.

Flash cookies are not stored in the same place as HTTP cookies, which means that users who tell their browsers to delete cookies aren’t getting rid of Flash cookies. Users can erase Flash cookies through other means, including at Adobe’s online controls. But at this point, few people appear to be aware that Flash cookies even exist.

The use of Flash cookies appears to have grown in recent years. Researchers at UC Berkeley reported last summer that 54 of the top 100 sites set Flash cookies, while 31 of them stored similar information on Flash cookies as on HTTP cookies. At those sites, even if users delete their HTTP cookies, they can be reconstructed based on information on the Flash cookies. What’s more, Berkeley researchers found that at least one company was using a Flash cookie even when users had opted out of tracking through the Network Advertising Initiative’s opt-out cookie.

Peterson recommends that Web sites that use Flash cookies disclose their existence in privacy policies, make sure consumers can easily opt out of tracking via Flash cookies, and also refrain from using such cookies to override consumers’ preferences.

Jules Polonetsky, director of the think tank Future of Privacy Forum, says he supports Peterson’s recommendations, but would go one step further. He says that companies also should refrain from using Flash cookies for tracking, given that most consumers don’t know about the technology. “To use a mechanism that most users are unaware of to track them is extremely poor privacy behavior,” Polonetsky says.

Erica Newland, a policy analyst at the watchdog group Center for Democracy & Technology, agrees. “Right now the use of local shared objects do not align well with consumer expectations,” she says. “No matter how they’re implemented, we think these pose additional privacy concerns.”

Extreme Reach Launches Ad Industry’s First Mobile Application for Managing Video Ads and Monitoring Ad Deliveries

PRNewsWire

Extreme Reach, Inc., a leading provider of digital video advertising solutions, announced today that it has launched the ad industry’s first mobile application for managing and monitoring video advertising content and distribution. The application, called “Extreme Reach Anywhere” enables ad agency Traffic and Production Managers to use their mobile device to review video commercials and receive up-to-the-minute information as ads are completed, available, quality-tested and distributed to the media (including television broadcasters, Internet publishers and other video channels).

The app is designed to make it easier and more efficient for ad agency teams to execute detailed and timely advertising tasks. As video advertising has become more prominent across multiple digital channels and more specialized for each channel, the responsibilities of Traffic, Talent and Production Managers have become more complex and demanding. Often, their work involves attention to detail and supervision that extends well beyond standard working hours.

Vicki Gabello, Print and Broadcast Traffic Manager at CarMax, an Extreme Reach client, said, “We now have a tool to enhance our creative work flow. This app is really nice at pulling and viewing current creative from our library, which allows us the flexibility to easily preview and share spots from anywhere.”

 “This is the best way to check the music and talent details of a client’s spot, on the fly,” added Suzanne Wieringo, Talent Business Supervisor, at The Martin Agency, a Richmond, VA based ad agency. “It’s easy to pull up and view spots, no matter where I am. And the video quality is so good, I can see every detail.”

Specific functions of the Extreme Reach Anywhere application include the immediate review of new video advertisements as they are completed in post-production, real time monitoring of the delivery status of each commercial to the media, video quality details, and ad content information such as slate, Ad ID, version, lengths, tags such as 800-numbers and disclaimers, and more.

 ”The remote monitoring and management capabilities of our new mobile application make it possible for users to execute campaigns with greater efficiency and agility. We’re very pleased that the app also enables greater flexibility and balance in the personal lives of our clients,” said John Roland, CEO of Extreme Reach. 

The new mobile application is an extension of the company’s online advertising platform, which includes the Extreme Reach Creative Library. The platform has thousands of users, many of which are in advertising roles other than Traffic. Account, Talent and Production Managers, as well as agency client personnel use the Creative Library to view, share, review and compare their video advertisements. The new iPhone application is designed to enable each of those user types to access the Creative Library from anywhere.

The Extreme Reach Anywhere iPhone App is currently available to Extreme Reach clients at no charge.

Canadian Radio Stats

Marketing Charts

Conducted by Foundation Research Group on behalf of the Radio Marketing Bureau (RMB), the study found that daytime listening has jumped an estimated 40% over the last three years, and is now on par with drive-time listening.

The study attributes the growth in daytime listening to people spending more time in their cars and an increased ability to listen to the radio at work.

The fifth annual study, based on telephone interviews with 1,060 Canadians 18 and older, found that Canadians spend an average of two hours and 12 minutes a day listening to the radio, an amount nearly equivalent to that of the inaugural study conducted in 2006 (two hours, 13 minutes).

Radio’s “versatility and transferability” has enabled it to withstand the pressures of emerging technologies, said RMB vice-president Peter Heron.

“Radio’s been very consistent; we haven’t taken a real hard hit because of the introduction of new technologies or the proliferation of the Internet,” he said. “It’s a brand that has adapted and transferred well to online.”

Even though 53% of Canadians now own a portable listening device such as an iPod, 83% of survey respondents said the time they spend with radio has either increased or stayed the same as the previous year. 

The study also found that 38% of adults listen to radio either some or most of the time while on the Internet, and that about one third of adults have listened to radio stations online. Of that amount, more than half (58%) say they stream local stations. The study also found that 39% of respondents have visited a radio website.

 Heron predicted that radio will remain buoyant indefinitely. “As long as the station brands are doing a good job of giving the audience what it wants, I can’t see it being difficult to maintain that trend,” he said. “[But] they have to continue to find new ways of entertaining, which is where the online aspect comes in.”

Survey: Moms Sharing Product Opinions via Social Media

dmwmedia by Mark Hefflinger 1-26-10 

A recent survey of 1,725 mothers found that 51% share their opinions about products on Facebook, 39% posted reviews on retail sites like Amazon, 28% did so on personal blogs, and another 15% used Twitter.

The survey was conducted by ExpoTV, which recently launched a research service, but also operates a site that lets users upload video reviews of products and services; respondents were culled from visitors to its site.

The survey found that

• 89% of moms polled were on Facebook
• 46% were on Twitter
• 92% of mothers said they trusted consumer descriptions over brand descriptions
• 78% of moms said a video review helped them in a purchasing process.

 Half of respondents had uploaded a video to YouTube, Facebook or another site, with 36% reporting having uploaded a video talking about a brand or product.

Almost 90% said they “would” upload a video talking about a brand or product in the future.

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To most people, 2009 looked like a catastrophic year for radio. Advertising revenue dropped 23 percent during the first nine months of the year. The introduction of Arbitron Inc.’s Portable People Meter showed that people listened to radio stations in shorter bursts than previously estimated. And on Dec. 20, Citadel, the third largest radio broadcaster in the country, went into bankruptcy reorganization.

But to Neal Schore, chief executive of Triton Media Group in Sherman Oaks, it’s paradise.

“There has never been a better time to be in radio,” said Schore. “Our company is heavily invested in the growth and re-emergence of radio. It’s time for the re-invention of radio.”

Triton, which produces and distributes radio programming, is growing thanks to an emphasis on developing Web sites, and providing them with online content and promotions.

Triton’s production business is old-school radio, as a network supplying programming to stations. The network produces shows featuring political commentators Laura Ingraham and Neal Boortz, plus pop music programming, jokes of the day and news tidbits. Triton makes money by attaching advertising to the content.

But its Internet business is designed for the age of Web 2.0. Triton sells software for streaming audio and video, and manages loyalty and reward programs that drive traffic to station Web sites – listeners can log on to a Web site and enter drawings for concert tickets or music downloads, for example. The company also sells software that measures the audience of online audio ads, and it sells ads for station Web sites. Triton then splits the ad revenue with the station.

The company estimates 2009 revenue at $225 million, with 80 percent coming from traditional radio content and 20 percent from Internet services. “Both sides are growing, but digital is the heavier growth sector,” Schore said.

Web site clients in Los Angeles include KRTH-FM (101.1), KIIS-FM (102.7) and KFI-AM (640). Triton has 5,100 client stations across the United States for its digital services.

Schore expects an ad-buying rebound this year as the downturn eases. Radio was hit especially hard by the recession, because the medium’s largest advertisers – automakers, banks and retailers – didn’t buy the airtime they used to because they were in crisis mode.

Meanwhile, the Internet side of the business is growing, as online ads offer measurement tools that help advertisers know where their dollars produce the most sales.

“We expect the recovery on the ad side to be heavily dependent on accountability,” Schore said. “Radio has always been a targeted medium so when you combine traditional radio with the real-time metrics of streaming audio, it creates a compelling package for advertisers.”

As advertisers and their agencies learn how radio and the Internet work together, Schore expects more money will pour into radio advertising, starting this year.

But Mary Beth Garber, president of the Southern California Broadcasters Association, said there are lots of companies trying to help stations monetize their Web sites, each with a different measurement system, creating a marketplace of confusion. Plus, the marketplace is evolving as digital agencies enter the field to handle online ads.

“What’s difficult is translating the data we have into a form that digital agencies understand,” she said. “That’s where Triton and others are stepping in. But the challenge is selling to the digital agencies because it’s very different from how you sell radio.”

Ahead of history

Schore, a former private equity fund manager, started Triton in 2006 with partner Mike Agovino, a former executive at radio ad sales firm Interrep. They had financial backing from Oaktree Capital, a private equity fund in Los Angeles.

Even as Triton began with mostly traditional programming, the founders knew that the Internet side would be their growth engine.

“We launched knowing that broadcasters would need our service, but they might not yet recognize that need,” Schore said. “I attribute our success to focusing on a need in advance of the marketplace recognizing what was happening.”

Today, Triton’s primary shareholders are the founders; Oaktree; and Black Canyon, another L.A.-based private equity firm. About 100 of the company’s 550 employees work in the Sherman Oaks headquarters, or in offices and recording facilities around Los Angeles. The others are in offices in most major United States markets.

In addition to riding the anticipated upswing in advertising for 2010, Schore plans to expand his services beyond radio. He believes TV stations, newspapers and even sports franchises can use Triton’s loyalty programs and site management software.

Finally, he hopes to prove wrong the skeptics who predict the death of radio because of MP3 players, the Internet or other new media. He also notes that 92 percent of the U.S. population listens to a radio station every week.

“When TV launched, people said radio was dead; when cable TV launched, people said it would hurt radio; and when satellite radio launched, people thought it was the end of over-the-air radio,” Schore said, “none of that happened. Although the ad market has been challenged the last couple of years, the audience has not been challenged. Radio stations still have an incredible connection to their listeners.”