“Online” Items

Review of Local Websites, 1999

In 1999, the PAFET group did an important information sharing project. Each group reported on their web site strategy and methods used to execute that strategy, marketing implementations, measurement of success, content mix and traffic.  Among the newspaper sites that reported was:

  • The Arizona Republic, AZ
  • Dallas Morning News, TX
  • Providence Journal, RI
  • St. Louis Post-Dispatch, MO
  • News & Observer, NC
  • The Press Enterprise, CA
  • Sacramento Bee, CA
  • Star News, IN
  • Star Tribune, MN
  • Town Talk, LA

There is also a table that compares all of the website traffic among PAFET members.

Online Consumer Survey, 1992-1993

The Interactive Services Association, a trade organization for companies that marketed online services [think AOL or CompuServe] to consumers, issued several reports about consumer behavior online.  The 1993 report was done just before the wide-spread use of the World Wide Web.  Here are some of the highlights from the report:

  • Active users find that no one system meets their needs completely, and seek out unique content and bargain features. Three in five online survey respondents use at least two online systems, and more than half subscribe to three or more. This should strongly encourage innovations by incumbents and unique offerings by new entrants – right-minded efforts will be recognized and rewarded by a market that restlessly seeks out new and improved services. (More representative survey data suggest that only about one-fourth of all online users use more than one system.)
  • BBS’s appeal to online users on both price and content. About two-thirds of respondents use bulletin board systems (BBS’s) in addition to commercial online services. A third or more cite cost, software libraries for downloading, and communication with other users as the reasons for BBS’s appeal. Commercial services must continue to expand their offerings beyond these latter areas in order to justify their higher fees.
  • Software downloading, communicating with others who share interests, and getting PC-related help and information lead in popularity among applications. Respondents were asked to choose, from a listing of 10, the three applications they use most. In addition to the three just mentioned, exchanging electronic mail with friends and family, and obtaining current, general news round out the first tier of most-used applications. Systems and services competing for the core of today’s market must continue to advance their offerings in these areas.
  • Online use by multiple household members is substantial and growing. Regular use by other family members was reported by a full 42.5% of respondents, almost double last year’s percentage. In addition, a remarkable one in ten of all respondents report regular use by a child or children 12 or under. Although Prodigy did not participate in the survey, its use by multiple-system users may underlay this phenomenon – along with the growth of family-oriented features on other systems. This paradigmatic change, regardless of its source, presents a new opportunity to be addressed broadly by the industry.

In a couple of years, there would a report on how to build online services that were Web-based.

The Future, a 1997 Memo

This is a memo I wrote to fellow executives at the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette in early 1997.  It outlines some of my views on the importance of online services and about the reorganization of a newsroom to have a great mix of skills among editors.

The overall direction that I see journalism [and journalists] heading in the next five to 10 years is one of multi-skilled individuals. These will be the people that will succeed and prosper in the next century. In a sense, we will be going back to our roots – the small town publisher/editor/reporter/ad salesman – to find models that put more responsibility for all aspects of journalism in the hands of the source. If good journalism is good story telling, let’s put all the story telling tools into everyone’s hands and give them the access to information to help tell their stories.

I’m pleased that I was right on some of the points I raised, albeit a bit too optimistic.

1995 Online Service Research Study

In early 1995, PAFET conducted a consumer online market research survey to establish baseline information in order to measure the development of the consumer online market. This document summarizes the goals, approach and results of that study.

[PAFET stands for Partners Affiliated for the Exploration of Technology. In 1994 six media companies [mostly a bunch of newspaper companies] created this research consortium to learn about and evaluate technology that could impact media and support the creation of new businesses and services.]

Some of the highlights of the study:

• The level of familiarity with online services among PC owners and online subscribers is lower than expected. Despite online services’ aggressive subscriber acquisition efforts and heavy media attention given to these services, almost 1 of 4 PC owners considers themselves to be “not at all familiar” with online services.
• Current online users still represent a niche market, that can be characterized as young, affluent, highly educated, and predominantly male. However, improved presentation of online content (via graphical and multimedia technology), faster transmission speeds, better content and lower prices are attracting more mainstream consumers.
• The demographic profile of online subscribers using the Internet and those who do not is very similar.
• Accessing or subscribing to multiple online services is not uncommon among current online service users. One of four online service users reported regularly accessing at least two online services.
• “News and information” remain the top reason non-online users subscribe to a service. The research results showed that, among current online users, the primary reason they chose their current service was for “news and information.” Among those who canceled a subscription within the past six months, “lack of use” and “lack of information” were cited most often as the reasons for the cancellations.

The study’s questionnaire and research methodology were designed by Maritz Research (Los Angeles, CA), PAFET Operating Committee members, and market research directors and managers at each of the newspapers included in the study.

Also included with this post is the presentation made by Maritz Marketing.

Leveraging Web Sites for Newspaper Ad Sales

In 2005, the Newspaper Association of America [NAA] asked the Digital Futurist Consultancy to undertake a research and communication project to help newspaper companies better leverage their digital sites [the Web] to sell more advertising in their analog editions — the print product. The project was done by Howard Finberg and Leah Gentry, industry associates and friends from way back. Leah was a digital pioneer at the LA Times while I was working in Phoenix.

Here’s a taste of what we wrote for the NAA magazine, Presstime, about the project:

“Leveraging Your Web Site for Ad Sales,” a new NAA report, highlights ways newspapers can make better use of their Web sites to attract and service advertisers.

The report, produced for the Association by The Digital Futurist Consultancy, www.digitalfuturist.com, examines whether newspapers are using their sites to promote print advertising, to share their marketing and pricing data, and to provide customer service to new and existing advertisers. The report’s findings include:

  • 55 percent of the sites reviewed have an area for marketing the print edition.That still leaves lots of sites without any marketing information for potential advertisers.
  • 60 percent provide visitors with advertising rates and information about deadlines, terms and ad sizes.
  • Less than 10 percent provide a self-service area for advertisers. The report defines self-service as the ability to schedule and upload an advertisement.

We were proud of the report and saddened by the missed opportunities.

To read the full report just follow this link to the PDF.

10th Annual Interactive Newspaper Conference

I was a speaker at the Editor & Publisher magazine’s 10th Annual Interactive Newspapers Conference in Atlanta, Ga. My speech was recorded live on February 18, 1999 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Here’s a bit of what I said at the start of my speech:

I made a presentation to our managers at Phoenix Newspapers a couple of weeks ago, and I sort of titled it “Armageddon” and whether, when we lose all, some share of classifieds in the next three years, what impact will that have on the bottom line. And if you look at the latest research from Forrester, they predict, on industry average, a 7% reduction in bottom line figures. If classified continues going the way it’s going then seven percent of us won’t be here next year, unless other things happen.

Another couple of interesting statistics is that in less than a dozen years, in 10 years, everybody under 50 will be computer literate. We’re all basically computer literate here; and obviously, the generations coming behind us are all computer literate. And even scarier is that by 2010, everybody under the age of 21 will not have known a world without the Internet. To us, some grey hairs [old folks] in the room, along with myself, is that we can remember, hot type and cold type and all that. And we remember when the Internet first took off.

This transcript is sometimes hard to read since the transcriber didn’t catch all of the jargon. However, it gives you a taste of what we were talking about in 1999.

Survey of the Online Consumer, 1994

In the spring of 1994 the Interactive Services Association conducted its third annual survey of online users. The report was released in spring 1995. The survey goal was to better understand how online [and early Internet / Web] users went about their cyber business.

These four services represented 85 per cent of the total consumer online market in the spring of 1994. Users were self-selected, in that they participated in the survey of their own volition. These are the service providers whose data appears in this report:

In total, the survey received more than 12,000 completed responses. As the volume of  response varied from vendor to vendor, data were weighted to reflect the subscriber market share associated with each of the service providers at the time of the survey to give a more accurate national picture.

Some of the headlines from this report:

  1. The consumer audience for online services is broadening. The income levels of online users, as well as their age and usage patterns, are becoming more diverse, reflecting a growing acceptance of online services by consumers outside the traditional high-tech early adopters.
  2. Given this trend, it appears plausible that by the end of 1995, for the first time, consumers who have been active for one year or less will make up the majority of all consumer online users-a sea change in member composition in just three years.
  3. Online subscribers who also use the Internet represent a different user profile. Internet traffic is driven by users who are younger than traditional online subscribers.

It is fascinating to look at users from that period — more than 30 years ago from the date of this posting in 2022.