What You Can Expect for Adland in 2012

Advertising Age reporting:
...
Print keeps struggling with digital as industry eyes Time Inc.'s Lang
Tablets and other devices offer the biggest reason for optimism: Hearst Magazines President David Carey recently predicted that the company will more than double its paying digital subscribers by the end of the year, to more than 1 million. But both magazines and newspapers are likely to lose share of overall ad spending, leaving them fewer resources to cover higher costs and the necessity to innovate.
Time Inc. will begin to test the rewards of installing Laura Lang, who knows a lot about digital but little about magazines, as CEO.
The New York Times Co. is expected to try the same thing, scouring digital businesses for a successor to CEO Janet Robinson, who left abruptly at the end of 2011 amid persistent declines in share price and widening print advertising declines.
Newspapers also hope to realize benefits from erecting pay schemes on the web. The Times' pay meter -- priced so that the cheapest path to unfettered digital access is a weekend print subscription -- has already delivered its first Sunday home-delivery increase in five years.
And Congress may well authorize the Postal Service to abandon Saturday delivery, which would prompt some weekly magazines to spend the second half of the year planning alternate delivery schemes, earlier deadlines or an extra day of delay between them and their readers.
OK magazine has adopted a schedule that puts nearly a full week between its close on Thursday and its arrival on newsstands the following Wednesday.

MOBILE

In 2012, look for mobile to stop being all about shiny new devices
With smartphones and tablets from a range of manufacturers flooding the market, this year's focus will be to get content, commerce and advertising to consumers on whatever device they happen to be holding.
Apple has officially lost its grip on the U.S. smartphone market, with Google's mobile software Android now running on nearly half of all smartphones in the country, according to ComScore. This year could also see regulators green-light Google's $12.5 billion acquisition of handset-maker Motorola, which would take the online-ad giant even deeper into the phone market.
http://adage.com/article/news/expect-adland-2012/231836/

Hearst Records Profitable Digital Business

Online Media Daily reporting:  For the first time, Hearst’s U.S. digital media business achieved solid profitability in 2011, per Hearst President David Carey in a yearly wrap-up sent to employees on Tuesday. He reiterated the company’s 2012 goal of over 1 million monthly paid digital subscribers.
Over the past 18 months, Carey said the company nearly doubled in size thanks to “organic growth, new products and acquisitions.”
...“Our efforts have resulted in a broadly diversified business,” Carey explained. “Today, roughly 40% of our revenues are U.S. print and digital, 40% international print and digital, and 20% are services (iCrossing and CDS Global).”
In the rapidly growing e-reader space, Hearst is currently selling more than 400,000 digital editions every month, according to Carey, while more than 40 of the company’s book titles are in e-format.
A number of Hearst titles will introduce fresh designs and re-imagined editorial formats -- starting with a new look and increased trim size for Harper’s Bazaar next month.
In addition, Hearst plans to invest in emerging e-commerce initiatives, and is looking forward to the upcoming launch of two branded YouTube channels, according to Carey.
Also of note, Carey said he expects Hearst to fast-track the transition to HTML5 for all of its Web sites, which should allow for a better user experience on mobile devices.

Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/165075/hearst-records-profitable-digital-business.html?edition=41812#ixzz1iVDgRsle

The Cover Story: The Best (and Worst) Sellers of 2011

Women's Wear Daily reporting:
No matter what crisis there is on the newsstand, there are a few people who sell no matter what.
Take Sarah Jessica Parker. She pops up on the cover of Elle back in January, Vogue in August and Marie Claire in September and delivers each monthly its second or third best seller of the year. Or, let’s consider Heidi Klum, who can help deliver Lucky its second best seller in March (175,000 sales in a year when they need it!) or bring the August Glamour its second best performer (510,000 sales, in a year when they really need it!). Or Jennifer Aniston, who was Marie Claire’s top seller of the year in that sleepy summer month of July, and, from all indications, delivered Elle one of its best performers of the year in November.
It’s that time of year, everyone. Time to look back and see who sold (and who didn’t) at the newsstand for monthly magazines in 2011. All data is taken is from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, much of it from the Rapid Report, which is subject to minor change since it has not been audited. The majority of publishers have filed results through October or November issues.
So, if SJP, Heidi and Jen are consistently sellers — and have been for some time — isn’t there a newcomer we can add to the list?
Mila Kunis was the new runaway success of 2011. Kunis’ August GQ cover delivered 205,000 sales, by far its biggest hit of the year, through November. She took to W in March and delivered sales 15 percent above average for the fashion monthly. She was the February cover star of Cosmopolitan and brought in 1.7 million sales, which is nearly 10 percent better than the monthly’s average for the first half. And then she graced the cover of Elle in August in a portrait with Justin Timberlake, which brought in 250,000 sales, fourth best of the year for Elle...
http://www.wwd.com/media-news/media-features/newsstands-best-and-worst-sellers-of-2011-5441321?module=today

How The Long Tail Cripples Bonus Content/Multimedia

paidcontent reporting:
Well, the long tail has hit the book business, and hard. The number of e-books published in 2012 is going to exceed a million, easily. That’s more than eight times as many books as were published to the public a year ago, and many times the number twenty years ago.
Most of those books will be in the long tail and by most economic measures, will fail. A few will end up on the short head and do just fine, thanks very much.
But what about the future of the book? When will we see books with seriously high quality embedded video, multiple endings, plot twists based on your pulse rate and significant interactive features that aren’t that difficult to dream about?
Phil Simon sent along this interview with the head of Ingram books [David “Skip” Prichard]. It’s filled with breathtaking visions of the future, and they are economically ridiculous. The Long Tail creates acres of choice, so much as to make the number of options almost countless. But at the same time, it embraces (in every format) much lower production values. For what Michael Jackson and Sony (NYSE: SNE) paid to produce the Thriller album, today’s artists can make and market more than 5,000 songs. You just can’t justify spending millions of dollars to produce a record in the long tail world...
...
The same thing that happened to music is going to be true of books. The typical e-book costs about $10 in out of pocket expenses to write (more if you count coffee and not just pencils). But if we add in $50,000 for app coding, $10,000 for a director and another $500,000 for the sort of bespoke work that was featured in Al Gore’s recent “book”, you can see the problem. The publisher will never have a chance to make this money back.
Sure, there will be experiments at the cutting edge, but no, they’re not going to pay off regularly enough for it to become an industry. The quality is going to remain in the writing and in the bravery of ideas, not in teams of people making expensive digital books.
The market didn’t really make a conscious choice here, but the choice has been made: it’s not a few publishers putting out a few books for the masses. No, the market for the foreseeable future is a million publishers publishing to 100 million readers. Do the math. Lots of choice, not a lot of whistles. And no bells.
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-how-the-long-tail-cripples-bonus-contentmultimedia/

Almost 40 Percent Of Facebook Use Is By Mobile App

paid content reporting:

“Sometime in the last couple of days, the monthly active users of Facebook’s mobile apps passed 300 million,” writes Enders Analysis analyst Benedict Evans, citing Facebook data.

That is 37.5 percent of the 800 million total monthly active users Facebook disclosed in September, when Facebook said there were 350 million monthly active mobile users, making Facebook one of the most mobile-centric online services out there.
Half of active iOS and Android users (225 million active mobile Facebook users) and 70 percent of BlackBerry users have installed the Facebook app, Evans writes.
“In other words, 70 percent of mobile users and 30 percent of all users used apps to access Facebook,” Benedict Evans writes.
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-almost-40-percent-of-facebook-use-is-by-mobile-app/

Highlights Of 2011: A Crazy Year In Mobile, By The Numbers

paidcontent reporting:
If we accept that the modern mobile computing movement kicked off in 2007 with the launch of the iPhone, than 2011 was easily the most pivotal year we’ve yet seen. Here are five numbers that illustrate just how eventful a year it was.
324 million: The number of smartphones sold worldwide through three quarters of 2011 (according to Gartner), and feel free to tack on another 120 million or so to account for the fourth quarter. That’s a 63 percent increase compared to the same period in 2010. And amazingly, that’s still only about a quarter of mobile phone sales in general, which underscores just how much growth remains in this industry as component costs decline and wireless networks improve.
194 percent: The growth in Android smartphones worldwide from the third quarter of 2010 to the same period this year. Android’s growth has been nothing short of phenomenal, and while the aging Symbian remains the world’s most widely used mobile operating system Android has lived up to everything Google (NSDQ: GOOG) ever hoped it would in helping to ensure that one company—Apple—would not dominate the modern mobile market.
33.62 billion: The market value shed by Research in Motion (NSDQ: RIMM) during 2011, the year in which it became clear that the company has no clue how to move beyond the BlackBerry that sustained its business for so long until the iPhone made it look pedestrian. At year’s end, RIM had once again delayed a next-generation product while begging for more time, and time is most assuredly not on its side...
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-highlights-of-2011-a-crazy-year-in-mobile-by-the-numbers/

What’s Coming In 2012: The Content Industry Strikes Back

paidcontent reporting: he online content industry is shaped by a 1998 set of rules called the DMCA that is supposed to strike a balance between protecting intellectual property and encouraging online commerce and creativity. But content owners say the balance has become unfair and that other players in the digital space—web hosts, search companies, payment processors, etc—should assume more responsibility in protecting brands and IP rights.
In 2011, content owners took a double-barreled approach to changing the balance. This involved pursuing court appeals to erode so-called ‘safe harbors’ while at the same time attempting to push through a new law called the Stop Online Piracy Act that would effectively tear up the 1998 rules. The content owners came up short this December after opponents bottled SOPA up in committee and a California court confirmed that video-sharing site Veoh did not have to actively police its users.
But 2011 was just the opening act. Content owners are also placing their hopes on the ongoing YouTube-Viacom (NYSE: VIA) appeal (a decision is expected any day) that has the potential to tee up an eventual Supreme Court review of how different businesses must police unauthorized online content. As for SOPA, the bill’s bipartisan backing is eroding quickly in response to warnings from both liberal and conservative thought leaders about its potential consequences. But SOPA supporters have vowed they will pass it all the same in early 2012...
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-whats-coming-in-2012-the-content-industry-strikes-back/