Advertising is still at the heart of media freedom

There's something of a controversy over the Dish Network's technology that automatically skips over advertising on content recorded on their DVR system.  It's been the focus of Dish's advertising program as well as a Congressional investigation on the Future of Video.  Most people are pretty thrilled with the technology and it is boon to Dish.  

I am a devotee of blasting through commercial breaks with my DVR and I'm a little envious of Dish subscribers who have the tech, although I'm very happy with Direct TV over anything else I've tried (AT&T doesn't service my area with their system).  Here, however, is where the controversy rages.

Dish is dropping AMC and a half dozen other channels over increasing fees, claiming there are nbot enough viewer to warrant the increase.  The problem is all the channels Dish is dropping are also subsidized by advertising and he advertisers are balking at pay rates for commercials that people never see.  The channels we are talking about produce some of the best programming on the planet and are award winners.  The network fees and advertising revenue are what makes it possible for them to continue doing that.

I hate commercials as much as the next guy but the reality is that advertising still finances most of our media.  The more we make advertising ineffective the more we are going to have to pay for good programming... unless of course you like reality shows.

That goes for stuff other than TV.  A few years ago there was a study put out that found that engineers got most of their information about new products from news releases.  That immediately got marketing folks in engineering-instensive industries to give up altogether on advertising and just putting out press releases.  What everyone ignored in that study was the reason they got most of their information from news releases is that there wasn't any other source of information easily found on the web... because everyone was cutting back on advertising which reduced the amount of third-party information about products.  You know, journalism.

So even though I don't like most advertising I keep remembering what it is there for:  To keep me informed as well as entertained.  We should all keep that im mind.

There's media and then, there's media , Part 3

Contributed articles became a very big deal during the Web 1.0 boom.  Suddenly, print and online publications had a huge need for new content.  Not only did publications start running news releases, verbatim, but they started asking companies to write opinion and analysis about their own industries.  Public Relations companies were flying high organizing the rush of opportunities.  Then the boom busted.  Publications started disappearing, mostly print but several online publications as well and both journalists and PR folks started looking for other means of income.

That did not, however, stop the demand for contributed articles.  The publishing world found that they could fill a lot of space, especially on line, with opinion, white papers, technical documents and presentations that they didn't have to pay for and could cut their newsroom budgets even more.  When webinars came around, they could actually charge companies to put their crappy power point presentations on the publication websites when they couldn't get them to buy advertising space.

Much of this material was managed by sales/marketing/pr departments and it is considered "earned media" because it doesn't directly sell products or services.  It isn't, though.  It's still owned media and edges into purchased media more often than not.  It is two steps up from advertising, one step up from press releases and it still doesn't reach into the realm of trustworthy media.

Moreover, it probably gets read/viewed less than press releases, according to many senior editors I talk to.  Most contributed articles get significant engagement, judging from the comments that follow publication online, but the publications say very vew people are actually reading them.  Those that do are mostly the author, the people that work for the author, the PR firm hired to place the article, the marketing department of the company the author works for, and the competitors who want the publication to run a rebuttal.

So to wrap up, before we get into truly trustworthy content, Websites, marketing material, press releases and contributed articles are all owned content, even if they make it to a third-party site.  They are viewed as slightly more trustworthy than advertising, but not by much.  To be trustworthy, content must be created by and published by a third party that is specifically engaged to be as objective as possible.  That will be the next post.

There's media and then there's media, Part 2

Social and earned media content is seen as truer because it is uncontrolled and has the perspective of the third party. Whether it comes from a known journalist or from the comments on a Facebook post, the readers know, in the least, that the author is not on your payroll. That provides a level of objectivity and even integrity that doesn't exist in an advertisement or corporate website.

 Last post we looked at "suspect content" that is distributed over owned and paid media.  It's suspect to the audience because it is highly controlled and partisan.  Today we look at the "trustworthy content" that is found in earned media.

 Social and earned media content is seen as truer because it is uncontrolled and has the perspective of the third party.  Whether it comes from a known journalist or from the comments on a Facebook post, the readers know, in the least, that the author is not on your payroll.  That provides a level of objectivity and even integrity that doesn't exist in an advertisement or corporate website.

 A lot of marketers will put the press release in the earned media content bucket, but they are completely wrong.  Now, I know Paul Miller at UBM will take issue with this, because UBM magazines and websites, as well as those at Hearst, Penton, Advantage, et al, publish a myriad of news releases on their pages.  Paul will claim that because they appear on their news engines it gives the information believability.  But then UBM also owns PR Newswire which is the "cash-cow" press-release distribution service the company owns. so he has to say that.  The viability of press releases is the cornerstone of most earned-media strategies in the corporate world.  But trust me, press releases do not equate with real earned media.

 Press releases are owned content, even when they appear in third-party print and online sites.  The content is determined and controlled by the source.  It's distribution is paid for by the source and no one believes the content except those already predisposed to believe it.  I've written a lot of press releases in my career and I have been tracking the readership for more than a decade.  I have discovered that almost all of all the true readers of press releases (excluding impressions caused by web-search spiders) consists of people employed by the company that issues the release, or employees and executives of the competition of those companies.  The percentage of journalists that read those releases off the wire is almost unmeasurable.  It's not that they don't want to read them.  They can't.  There are thousands of releases flooding through the wires every hour, so they are no help to the journalist trying to follow an industry or trend.  

 This is what creates earned media:

1. A journalist/blogger's assignment


2. A journalist/blogger's curiosity


3. A journalist/blogger's personal relationships


4. A journalist/blogger's field of vision and/or hearing

 That's it.  All four of those are intertwined.  There are some journalists I know that won't accept emails from sources they don't already know.  There are some that don't accept emails at all.  There are some that can only be reached through direct message through Twitter.  There are some that you can only contact by knowing where their favorite Starbuck's cafe is and hanging out there for a week.   They may go to tradeshows, but only stay in the sessions and avoid the show floor.  Some only go to the show floor and quickly walk through to see if anything grabs their attention and turn their badges around to make sure no one knows they are media.  They all have subjective filters they place in the way of information just to keep the flow to a dull roar.

 The press release that so many companies put so much concern and effort into is only for their reference once you have their attention.

 Getting earned media is not formulaic.  It is not free but it is less expensive than what owned and paid media costs.  But it takes an enormous amount of effort over a long period of time to attain ... unless you have an effective social media strategy.  What you probably think that means is not what what it really is.

 But before we get into that, we're going to talk about contributed articles.  That comes next.

The value of content

The term “return on investment” (ROI) gets bandied about a lot in my business, as in “what’s the ROI of you service?”  We all know what that questions is supposed to mean: how much money can I make back from what I pay you?  But no matter how many statistics and case studies you throw at the questioner, the real question is: “How little can I actually pay you for your service?”

I’ve started answering that question with another question: What is your content worth?  If the customer can answer that question, I can better answer their original question.

Every company, especially engineering-driven companies, says their content has immense “value.”  They believe that their customers have an absolute need to hear what they have to say.  It is so vital that the customers very existence depends on purchasing a particular product or service.  At least, that’s generally how they answer the question.  But they can’t put a monetary value on that content.  They can assign a monetary value to their product.  They can justify the price with studies and statistics and benchmarks.  But they have no idea how to valuate their story.  So I break it down for them this way:

If the customer won’t pay to read your content, if the media won’t pay to publish your content, and if you wont pay the media to publish your content... then your content has no value.  And if I promise a 10X return on your investment in proliferating your content, 10 times 0 is still 0.  So the ROI will be 0.

At this point of the conversation, they state that they are making an investment in my services, which is a good point, but that’s where we come back to my original question.  So what is the value of your content?

If you go cheap on your investment in content generation, management and distribution, you won’t get much in return.  On average - 9 times out of 10 - a technology start-up doesn’t want to spend more than $500 on the development and distribution of a news release (possibly the most worthless piece of content any company can ever make), including the cost of the wire service.  Over the years I have determined that even the most incompetent execution of a communications strategy can net a 5X ROI.  So by that measure, the $500 investment can net a $2500 ROI.  

 And that is the value of most content.  You have to determine if that is worth your time and effort. 

Google changes the game for marketing amateurs

The recession for PR folks actually began in 2000 when non-marketing professionals figured out that by posting a news release on a wire service, they could show tons of "clips" to their bosses that stated, verbatim, the corporate crap in the releases.  They no longer needed press relations budgets and had become their own "news outlets."  Google did that to the PR profession.

But recently, Google did a big favor for the hacks when they changed their algorithm to cut out hits on content farms.  This, effectively, eliminated the budget benefit of bad-press-releases-on-wire-services strategy.  

I haven't done any press releases for companies for a while because they are really useless exercises, but I got roped into a contract with a company, after getting promises that they wouldn't have me do the same old thing, that forced me into that really bad strategy once again. I noticed very quickly that when the release hit the wire, It showed up only once in Google, under the wire service I used.  Now the service gave me links to where it could be found elsewhere, but those links never showed up on Google.  This is a big change.

There were other hits, but they came from sites that I had personally developed a relationship with; that I had developed a strategy to reach and convince to cover the story.  There were conversations with other influencers that said they would keep an eye on the story as it developed, but unfortunately, for this project, I would not be around to keep the momentum going.  It was up to the client to maintain and develop relationships... and of course they are not, because they don't know how.  Now they are wondering why it isn't working the way it used to.

So we are almost back to the way it was before 2000.  Trying to run public relations on the cheap is a good way to wast money and watch your company die.  Time to rethink your strategies.

Why things don't work...anymore

I just got off my fourth phone call in the past week from someone asking my to help them get some media attention on another partner release.  I've told them the same thing I've been telling everyone for three years: Unless it is a painfully slow news month the chances are virtually zero.  Here's why:

 First, there are 5,000 private technology companies in early to mid stage funding in the US at any given time, according to Dow Jones,

Second, All 5,000 of those companies are negotiating with at least on Fortune 500 company on some sort of partnership/joint agreement.  All of those companies will issue at least one news release about the agreement and will be seeking media coverage.  That means the technology press are dealing with, on average 13 partnership announcements every week.

Third, none of these agreements will mention what specific customers are being served by these agreements, nor what products will be made available to customers as a result of this collaboration, nor will they contain anything more than a very general, high-level and superficial endorsement of the private tech company's involvement.

Finally, the target audience for these announcements is always a very limited part of the entire market, possibly 10-50 people total who are directly affected by the relationship between the two companies.

The press are part of what is called mass media.  Their goal is to produce information that is valuable to the largest possible number of people in a given industry.  10-50 people does not meet that requirement.  On top of that, the press is given the responsibility of finding out information that is out of the ordinary and 13 announcements a week that virtually say the very same thing, with changes only in the players and the names of the products, do not constitute what is callled "news."

Partnership announcements are good for three things: filling out space on websites, keeping the name of your company active on the web, and for salesmen to hand out to the 10-50 people that really care.