This morning I wrote about Business Week mentioning WatchMojo.com in an article. Maybe that’s why I feel guilty and dirty reading this?
Bloomberg LP, the global financial data and news empire created by New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, is the winning bidder for BusinessWeek.
Terms of the offer will not be disclosed by Bloomberg and BusinessWeek parent McGraw-Hill Cos. But knowledgeable sources say that Bloomberg’s cash offer is in the $2 million to $5 million range and that it has agreed to assume liabilities, including potential severance payments. It remains to be seen how much of the magazine’s 400-plus staff Bloomberg plans to cut, but reports of a planned scorched earth campaign are overblown, say sources. BusinessWeek editor-in-chief Steve Adler told his staff shortly after the deal was announced Tuesday that part of the deal guaranteed that McGraw-Hill benefits would be extended to employees for one year after the deal closes.
Man. What has the world come to? Read more.
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WatchMojo NewsletterI get the same emails in the morning as Business Insider does, but wait for them to go through it, summarize and condense them (that’s actually meant to be a compliment). Namely:
A GREATER-THAN-EXPECTED SHARE OF BUDGETS ARE MOVING FROM MAGAZINES TO VIDEO AND CUSTOM SPONSORSHIPS
Video advertising has been one of the only areas of growth in both traditional and online media during 2009, with marketers embracing professional content providers like Hulu over user-generated sites. In addition, marketers and agencies has noted an increase in spending on “private label media” or “owned propeties,” which falls under a sponsorship buy for most advertisers.
We believe these two trends affect the same types of advertisers that have traditionally been big spenders on magazines–premium national advertisers focused on branding campaigns. As a result, it’s no surprise that a greater share of budgets could be taken from magazines next year in favor of online video and sponsorships.
To be sure, we’re not talking enormous numbers here. The shift in share from magazines to online in the the new forecasts amounts to about $50 million. Still, for new categories like video and social media, it’s the direction that matters. $50 million is also about the same revenue many national magazines generate in a given year.
IRONICALLY, MAGAZINES ARE IN A GREAT POSITION TO CAPTURE ONLINE VIDEO AND SPONSORSHIP DOLLARS
This last part echoes my central observation between old media and online video: those who want can’t and those who can won’t, with those who can being TV media companies and those who want being print TV companies.
Here is the full text from Magna:
NEW 2010 FIGURES REFLECT IMPROVING ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
New York, October 13th, 2009 – MAGNA, a division of IPG’s Mediabrands, today releases an updated US Media Advertising Revenue Forecast.
Although the economy continues to face challenges on many fronts, expectations about the future have improved markedly during the past two quarters. Among major economic measures, Industrial Production (IP) and Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) have the highest correlations with advertising, and forecasts of these variables inform our predictions of advertising revenue growth and decline. While consensus forecasts for PCE have not changed meaningfully, expectations for IP have improved. As a result, we are moderating our 2010 advertising forecast and now expect normalized advertising revenues (excluding local TV political and national TV Olympic revenues) to decline 1.3% next year. This compares with our previously published expectations for a decline of 2.1% during 2010. In total, we expect suppliers to generate $159 billion of normalized advertising revenue next year.
Fourth Quarter 2009 Still Down Vs. Fourth Quarter 2008, But Path Toward Growth Next Year Is Clear
For the fourth quarter of 2009, MAGNA forecasts that US media suppliers will collectively generate 9% less advertising revenue on a normalized basis than they did when compared to the prior year period. Industry revenues will fall from $47.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008 to $43.2 billion during the fourth quarter of 2009.
These figures reflect a moderating pace of decline compared to estimated revenue reductions of 13% during the third quarter and 18% declines during each of the first two quarters of this year.
As we previously forecast, the first half of 2009 marked the bottom of the ad-supported media economy’s decline. To illustrate the depths to which the economy fell during this period, year-over-year changes in PCE fell for three consecutive quarters between October 2008 and June 2009. Notably, there was no period since quarterly records were first published in 1947 which recorded any decline in PCE prior to the current downturn. Similarly, IP fell at a faster pace than at any time since 1975 during the past few quarters.
In this economic environment, turmoil was widespread among media suppliers. But fortunes in the second quarter were also relative, with direct media falling 11% and national media falling 13%, compared to local media which fell 26% primarily due to weakness in the automotive sector. Local advertisers generated $31 billion of non-political advertising revenue during the first half of 2009, less than any first half of a year since 1995. By contrast, direct and national advertisers were back to 2006 and 2004 levels, respectively, after more than two years of decline. Pockets of growth in the first half of 2009 included paid search and online video, and we expect these media types to lead the industry as the fastest growing major media categories for the rest of 2009.
Our longer-term forecasts remain in-line with prior expectations, as MAGNA forecasts total normalized media supplier advertising revenues will rise by a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 1.2% between 2009 and 2014.
Get the pdf here.
The authors of “Curse of the Mogul”, namely Jonathan Knee, Bruce Greenwald, and Ava Seave, allege that media moguls are a bunch of idiots, basically (note to their lawyers: yes, I am paraphrasing).
Via Business Insider:
For instance, News Corp acquisitions in the past decade, from the Journal to MySpace, have not gone over well. News Corp wrote down $3 billion on the Journal, and MySpace is pretty much worth zero at this point.
I understand MySpace [2009] < MySpace [2005] - granted, but still, am I crazy or was that not a great deal: Google paid Fox Interactive Media $900M to serve text ads on the digital properties of News Corp. because it wanted to block Microsoft and Yahoo! from landing the MySpace inventory.
News Corp. paid $580M for Intermix, which owned MySpace.
Today MySpace is no longer the largest social network out there, but it remains a very fierce player in music and entertainment.
I fail to see how it was a bad deal, even if its value keeps falling over time.
Launched in September 2009, by IT strategist and expedition rafting guru Brad Greene, Findsolve is the ultimate business solution platform.
“The advantage for businesses who sign up as the first in their category is that they will benefit from the worldwide launch of the site and begin to collect customer recommendations — and if they are good at what they do, they can stay at the top of our ranking system,” Mr. Greene said.
“No matter the size of the business, they will achieve popularity and better ranking by being the best at what they do, not being the biggest,” he concluded.
Brad began developing findsolve as a side-project while dividing his time project managing large IT projects and expedition river rafting in the wilds of remote Northern Canada & America.
Findsolve connects companies and business professionals in a social environment designed for interaction. Put simply, Findsolve will allow companies to post their solutions, ranking them by the number of customer recommendations and allowing people to find what they want, where they want, without trawling through search pages.
Chris Roberts, Founder of Engaged Marketing and University of Queensland Industry Fellow, said the internet was evolving rapidly and businesses were crying out for a better way to be found by those who are looking for them.
“You can pay so much for search engine optimization and still end up on the second or third search page amidst a list of web pages that might not be particularly relevant to the original search,” Mr. Roberts said. “findsolve is one of the best internet solutions I have seen — it puts everyone on a level playing field and gives the world a central place to look for quality information and solutions of any type or industry,” he said.
For more information, please visit findsolve.com
WatchMojo mentioned in Business Week article on online video content producers, written by Aymar Jean Christian:
Overdo it and you lose your audience, says Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, chief executive of online video site WatchMojo.com. Overexposure of a product will be more glaring in a three-minute Webisode than a longer TV show. “Are users that dumb to sit through and watch something that is blatantly commercial?” he asks.
Also re-published on MSNBC.
+ 1 for WatchMojo!
