Week of March 12, 2007

Goodbye Pageviews

Friday, March 16, 2007

One of the slides in our New Media Landscape report released earlier this year was "AJAX Killed The Page View." AJAX is a web technology that allows content to be updated on the page without a whole new page loading. You can see this in action when you use services like Gmail. The problem with AJAX is that it hurts companies who provide better functionality (AJAX technology) by lowering their pageviews. Comscore just issued a press release that they are aware of this and adapting their measurement for the future by releasing a figure called "Visits," which will measure frequency based on time, rather than full page views.

This will certainly help sites with lots of cutting edge functionality or content that minimize page views over time (for example, video). Only time will tell if this will become the standard for advertisers, however.

Interesting New Music Service Launches

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Imagine a combination of Last.fm, streaming radio, satellite radio, a media player, and a digital song player like the iPod. That's the broad business plan of new music service Slacker, which launched this week. The idea is to take a collaborative music filtering service like last.fm, and deliver it in revolutionary ways, including mixing it with your own digital song collection via its player and presenting the music via an actual hardware device.

With founder members from companies like Musicmatch, Rio, iRiver, their digital music pedigree is pretty strong. But the question remains: Is this a replacement for radio or simply a time waster for those who like to discover new music?

Google Moves Into TV

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

As long expected, Google has started moving into selling advertising on television. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Google is testing television advertisting in Concord, California. This follows Google development or testing of advertising products for newspapers, magazines, and radio.

Consumer Generated Content That Doesn't Suck

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

The big buzz this year is consumer-generated content, including several well-publicized campaigns to have "average" viewers produce TV spots for large-scale consumer products. As many have noted before, many of these "amateurs" have worked in the film or televisions business and the winning spots in these contests had the slick look and feel of your average agency-produced spot. Is this what they really had in mind?

The Discover Channel had another idea. They recently encouraged viewers to produce parodies of their existing programming such as "Mythbusters," "Dirty Jobs" and others. They aired a number of the parodies on the channel and have posted them on discover.com for users to watch on demand. They're sloppy, uneven and some of them are really funny. The bottom line is that they dared to let "real" viewers have their say.

What about radio? How about asking listeners to do a spoof of the morning show? Or how about getting them to produce original bits to win a prize? And, taking a cue from the big consumer product companies, what about getting listeners to produce commercials for an open-minded client? After all, if it's good enough for the NFL, Unilever and Frito-Lay, it should be good enough for a your morning show or a local car dealer.

Indie Music and the Long Tail

Monday, March 12, 2007

As part of a recent consent degree proposed by the FCC last week and agreed to by a number of large radio groups, many radio stations will soon be dedicating blocks of programming to play independent and local music. The devil's in the details, but smart stations will look at this as an opportunity to provide a real service and not just as a way to get regulator's off stations' back.

Music ≠ Record Companies

The back-story is that the public's appetite for music has never been greater, despite the record labels' problems. The Long Tail view is that since it's easier than ever for people to find new, unsigned or obscure music, and easier for musicians to distribute their music, there's more interest than ever in this sector. The market for this music is growing rapidly, so radio has an opportunity to reassert its leadership position.

Music radio stations should view themselves as the filter for everything music for their listeners. And why shouldn't we be the filter for compatible new and indie artists as well as what the labels dish out? In fact, as consumer control and choice grows through devices like the iPod and new media, the exposure of the best up-and-coming music will take on an increasingly important role. After all, no one hears new music through his or her iPod, they hear it first from their favorite radio station...if we're doing our jobs.