According to The Wall Street Journal, Liberty Media is paying more than $100 million to buy a stake of BodyBuilding.com from the site's founding family and a private-equity firm. Once known primarily as an investor in media companies, Liberty has taken steps in recent years to become more of an operator of its own businesses. In the past couple of years it has assembled a sizable portfolio of Internet ventures to …
Consumers Want Digital Utility, Not Advertising
More than two-thirds of consumers who use the internet have used it to research package-goods products, according to a new survey by Prospectiv, a firm that provides online customer leads for marketers. Of the consumers who use the internet to research package-goods brands (48%) do so primarily to get product information. Another 46% use the internet to seek savings or coupons, while 6% are primarily looking for tips …
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Karpian Wisdom Floweth
Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 has some great advice, as always, for those working to understand the new advertising culturescape. Google turned search advertising into the most profitable media business on the web by following the basic principle that advertising must create value for consumers. Search advertising is so powerful because the ads are relevant and USEFUL. The most successful new advertising models will …
Spread Real Wings If You Want To Fly
I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Garden & Gun's new editor, Sid Evans, in The New York Times this morning. Here's the heart of the piece: “There’s a kind of arrogance here that anybody who’s not in New York isn’t here for a reason,” Mr. Evans said last week over elk chops and bourbon at Henry’s End, a restaurant in Brooklyn Heights near his apartment. “You really do begin to believe it, that the only smart people …
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When Consumers Are At The Controls
TV is a totally passive medium. The interwebs is the polar opposite. So, it's no surprise to learn that Internet video watchers are 47 percent more engaged by the advertising they encounter than traditional TV viewers. The same study found that viewers were 25 percent more engaged in the content on the shows, as well. [via ars technica] …
The 30-Second Spot Is Alive, Well, And Expensive
You'd think that smaller TV audiences would lead to falling ad prices, right? Not so, according to this story in the New York Post: Although it seems counterintuitive, it's the law of supply and demand. As the TV audience shrinks, advertisers have to buy more ads to reach their target number of viewers. But that increased demand for ad slots creates scarcity, which in turn leads to rate hikes. In the fourth quarter, …
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Media Resurrection
According to The New York Times, real estate tycoon, Samuel Zell, is shaking things up at The Tribune Company. After completing an $8.2 billion deal on Thursday that makes the media company a privately held operation, Zell made himself chief executive, announced a new set of directors and managers, and declared that the troubled company would look to raise revenue. He disparaged the conventional wisdom that the …
Sony The Magnanimous
Steve Rubel points to two brand-supported content aggregators that I was not previously aware of—Sony's Stories We Digg and JC Penney's Fall Shopping Guide. Here's Sony's description of their service: This site, which is powered by the Digg open API, is built to serve as a filter for the Digg community, and beyond. We’re hand selecting the very best and most relevant Digg stories we think HD lovers will find …
