A link to full results and article can be found here

For obvious reasons this information helps us as media planners educate our clients with additional insight and key facts supporting the use of different media vehicles within our plans. One obviously assumes that media owners who attract and audience do so with quality content however it’s also obvious that certain brands and their editorial contributors do have higher value for the audience.

Of most note to me personally are the following…

• Network World and eWEEK – more influence than CIO Magazine. 
• That the top tech journalists are all from not tech publishers
• No place for Walt Mossberg of WSJ in this journalist list
• The high placing of the new Bloomberg BusinessWeek – impressive for a magazine who was so badly run down just six months ago.

Definitely food for thought and perhaps a wake up call for some brands….

Link to the article is here

As expected the reality of proven sucess is very unclear but what appears most evident is that those who dedicated time and effort and seemingly enjoy the media platform are generally those who see it working for them. Unfortunately I think it’s also obvious that we like to self validate, especially in marketing, and will willingly look for success in programs we believe in, perhaps being more generous than we should.

I don’t doubt there are ways to make social media work, especially for those who really “get it” and spend time on it. The question of course is whether that’s a proportion of time that is sustainable or even achievable for most B2B marketers, who in my experience are always struggling to manage thier resources effectively.

What do you think ? Is Twitter really working for you?

The view was universally held here that this could be another media platform game changer especially effecting print media and for B2B marketing in general. By next week every agency employee will be equipped with an iPad so we can get to know it intimately…but why the enthusiasm?

Well firstly the demographic of the adoption is very interesting. Just Media conducted a LinkedIn poll to assess the early adopter use of this device amongst the hard to reach “C Suite” audience. The results are extremely interesting and can be found here “Just Media iPad Poll”

In Summary 11% of C Suite executives claim to already own one and use it regularly while another 26% say they plan to get one. Pretty impressive stats.

Most interesting is that this skews more heavily towards C Suite executives in enterprise sized companies with adoption already at 27%.

Since other research we have seen to date point to this audience being the most avid consumers of print media and less inclined to consume content via the web, this adoption is even more startling. This perhaps illustrates the iPad’s most interesting feature as a media device – the fact it transcends both digital and print media formats….easily displaying content in a user friendly, portable and relaxed environment that simply is not the case with traditional internet sites on a laptop.

Is this playing out in reality – the answer is yes. Look at this week’s example. Wired has just launched an iPad app.  Apple announced they were naming it, “App of the Week,” on iTunes and, as of yesterday evening, WIRED has had 62,431 paid downloads.

 To provide some context to this number, within the first 5 days of being on-sale, the app has sold the equivalent of 76% of Wired’s average monthly newsstand sales. Additionally, based upon Apple’s disclosed sales of iPads, the app was downloaded and installed on roughly 3% of all iPad’s!

According to Mendelsson reaserch 20% of Wired’s print audience is C suite and the publication claims 72% hold a “Management” function it’s not hard to see a consistent pattern emerging here as regards the advantage of planning to use this device for B2B campaigns.

Finally let’s not loose sight of the advertising potential here. Fortune expect to mirror Time’s iPad ad format with up to ten pages of content and three imbedded video’s, all of which play in immaculate real time high quality versions. WSJ’s app shows some additional ad formats that are bold without being too intrusive and again offer nice interactivity. So far the ads are not distracting and the environments are uncluttered. In most cases the initial ad looks like the equivalent print ad which as we know has more impact than standard online banners.

So we have seen the future and it’s obvious that another media sea change is heading our way.

This from B2B Magazine…”Research firm eMarketer said Monday that it has revised its forecast for U.S. Internet ad spending upward to 10.8% growth this year compared with 2009″.

“EMarketer said it anticipates that search spending will increase 15.7% this year, while banner ad spending will jump 8.2% and video spending will increase 48.1%.”

This last fact is the most interesting. The huge growth in advertising video on the web is finally upon us, driven almost certainly by two factors:

1/ Video is now regularly consumed on web devices, driven by the You Tube generation and the fact that bandwidths and delivery now allow us to see decent quality content in a satisfactory manner (less of the “buffering” syndrome). Advertisers are more confident their ads will be seen as intended.

2/ Targeting and accountablity is offered at a much higher degree through online media than traditional TV where video based ad content has traditionally been delivered.

What impact will this have? Firstly more advertisers can now consider TV ads without having to have a TV budget. It’s become much more affordable as a media option and will indeed grow as a result. Already this year we have many more instances of clients creating video content for their sites with versions created for running as video ads.  

Secondly the shift will drive change within the TV industry. They will have to respond by offering more metrics and targeting capabilities. They have the potential to out perform the web. Cable companies know a lot about their subscribers – what they watch, who they are, where they live, etc and can combine this powerful information to offer individualized targeting every bit as robust as the web. They will soon be able to offer much greater penetration of intereactive services too, allowing the audience to engage directly and most importantly measurably with different ad campaigns. This shift in budget will only accelerate that developmental process.

Expect to see big changes in TV land within the next 12-24 months.