The Infinite Dial

It's hard to believe, but it has been two years since I wrote a response to Chris Anderson's "The Long Tail : Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More", and particularly to respond to Anderson's assertion that the the "hit" was dead in the era of long-tail economics. Back then, I maintained that the hit was far from dead--it was just different. Surely in the past two years we have seen not only the Indiana Jones's of the world continue to be hits, but the Halos and the Guitar Heroes become new ones as well.

Now, two years later, we are beginning to see some challenges to Anderson's model. The Washington Post featured an article yesterday entitled "Study Refutes Niche Theory Spawned by Web," which details a Harvard Business School professor's attempt to verify or refute the impact of the "long tail." Professor Anita Elberse discovered that not only are the hits still the hits, but her research suggests that the Internet actually makes them bigger.

To his credit, Anderson praises Elberse's work, and I think the real answer is not that one or the other is right, but that surely the game has changed. The hit is far from dead--but I think the smartest thing we can say is that we have entered the "Post-Hit" era (and not the Anti-Hit era).

The real story of the Long Tail, to steal from Fareed Zakaria's excellent new book, The Post-American World, is not the "fall of the west," but the "rise of the rest." It's not that the hit is dead--far from it. But the non-hit, the long tail propositions, have as much claim to page one of your Google Search results as anything else. The hits now have some increased competition from aggregations of niches and customized, on-demand entertainment like podcasts, but what doesn't kill the hit will only make it stronger. In a post-hit world, would-be blockbusters cannot assume that a mass-media ad blitz will carry the day. As social media tools proliferate, word-of-mouth becomes more important than ever.

All of this means that if you create media that is truly worthy of being a hit, you have more ways than ever to get the word out. But increasingly in the "Post-Hit" world, a Super Bowl ad won't save a piece of crap. As the Internet provides long-tail players the ability to market and distribute content on a wider stage, the "hit" has to work just a little bit harder, and be a little bit better. In a content meritocracy, the consumer wins.

It is perhaps a sign of the times, but the station I've seen advertised most since I arrived here on Thursday is KCMP (the Current), the non-commercial indie rock/Triple-A outlet, which has advertising in a lot of downtown buildings/walkways. Then I saw Christian AC KTIS' transit advertising. Finally, from my hotel window I saw billboards for Country KEEY (K102) and Oldies KQQL (Kool 108), the latter of which advised that it was "kool to listen again" (in keeping with its back-to-oldies stance of the last year).

I thought I was going to get to hear Ron Gerber's eclectic Friday night oldies show "Crap From The Past" on the radio in real time this week with WCNR Charlottesville, Va., PD Brad Savage as a special guest. Instead, community outlet KFAI's block was hit by a freak power failure that lasted until the last five minutes of the show. And, as Gerber notes, in the digital age, it takes a lot longer to reboot a radio station once you get the power back. So I had to make due with going to the archive.

We've been following radio's attempts to replace the traditional spot sales model with a sponsorship model for several years. This morning, the Dallas Business Journal reports that Clear Channel's Classic Rock/Americana hybrid KZPS (Lone Star 92.5) Dallas has added some traditional pre-recorded spots to the all-sponsorship approach it launched in April.

Depending on when you listen to KZPS, you can still hear a sponsored hour, in which case the "commercials" are still likely to be the live DJ testimonials for that given sponsor that typified the station a few months ago. But you can also hear unsponsored segments where the live breaks feature various shorter live spots or client promo mentions. And there are also :30s for Verizon Wireless, DirecTV, and Wrangler, according to the Business Journal and our monitoring.

The pre-recorded spots are still few and far between on the air. GM J.D. Freeman tells the Business Journal that some clients found the live spot approach "restrictive." While the station remains committed to sponsorships, he says, the station is no longer "not going to consider [pre-recorded ads] because we don't think it's compatible with the station."

There have also been some tweaks to KZPS' music, bringing the station just a little bit closer to the Classic Rocker it once was. There are still songs from Americana acts like Wilco that you wouldn't hear on a Classic Rock station, and a handful of Country titles per hour (e.g., Waylon & Willie and the Bellamy Brothers' "Old Hippie" in the hour I monitored this morning). But it's also possible to go from "Are You Experienced" to "Sympathy for the Devil," two songs that don't have much of a Country/Rock or roots rock connection.

We'll look at the KZPS experiment in greater detail in a forthcoming Ross on Radio column.

We've reported from time to time on the various attempts by broadcasters to replace the spot sales model with sponsorships. That quest exists on the TV side, too. Advertising Age reports that AMC's well-received Madison Avenue/early '60s period drama "Mad Men" will finish the season with a commercial-free episode sponsored by DirecTV, with an eye toward eventually being able to move to a sponsorship-only model.

The story also notes that one alternative to spots -- product placement -- hasn't proven to be a bonanza for the show, often because of its edgy content. Creator Matt Weiner says that Jack Daniels, which has one of the few product placement deals with the show, has "this whole list of how it can be used . . .They don't want to see people fighting. They do not want to see people having sex immediately after drinking. You're sort of like, 'What is the purpose of Jack Daniels if there's no sex after it and no fighting after it.'"

There's an article in today's Advertising Age about Head-On, the "apply directly to forehead" remedy whose ads are, by consensus, awful, and, as it turns out, awfully effective. "Not since 'I've fallen and I can't get up' has such a cheesy spot captured the public imagination," AdAge writes in, "This Ad Will Give You A Headache, But It Sells."

It's hard to remember now, but when GEICO became a saturation advertiser a few years ago, a lot of its early advertising wasn't much less obnoxious than the Head-On spots--redeemed only by what was then more an attempt at humor than actual humor, I thought. Now GEICO is one of broadcasting's most ubiquitous succcess stories.

There is a great article from the Wall St. Journal's Sarah McBride about the changes PPM is bringing about in Philadelphia. One of the 'shake-ups' reported is that Men listen to a lot more radio than reported in the diary methodology, and that rock is more popular than heretofore thought in Philadelphia, something our telephone surveys have shown there for years. And those men switch around a bit more than they might have otherwise indicated on the diary--for instance, while many Rush Limbaugh fans might just block out 12-3 on a diary, a PPM review may show a far different pattern.

There has been some grousing about PPM, some of it legitimate, some of it not. One thing PPM definitely does represent is change, and change isn't change if it doesn't break a few eggs on its way to an omelet. We should all be cheering passive measurement on, however, for one very important reason. Increasingly, advertisers and marketers don't care about how many 'points' they are buying, they want to buy results. Anything radio can do to drive the sales needle for our advertising clients, we can and must do in order to show the value and power of radio as a platform. Consider the diarykeeper who might block out 3 hours of listening to Rush, but actually switches around to WMGK, WMMR or WJJZ. It is entirely possible that someone who reports an uninterrupted block of listening to Rush never hears one of the show's key sponsors, because they actually spent almost as much time with another station. And when that happens, Rush's ratings (and rates) may go up, but their sponsors aren't getting value, because you can't drive traffic and sales if no one hears the spot. That is an unsustainable (and deadly) situation.

What we want to happen is for people who are reported to have heard a spot to have actually heard the spot...and visited the dealer, made the toll-free call, or logged on to make a purchase. That puts radio "on the same level playing field as top TV stations and the Philadelphia Inquirer," according to Greater Media's John Fullam, and that is truly in the best interest of your station, and radio as a platform. Media buyers may buy ratings, but they, like the people they are buying for, are really buying results. PPM offers a way to align those results with advertising expenditures like never before, even if we break a few eggs.

We are very proud to work with Greater Media in Philadelphia, and greatly admire their unwavering commitment to doing whatever it takes to understand--and master--the new landscape of PPM. The only "trick" to PPM is to make great radio, every day, and leave deeper footprints on and off the air. Embrace change, and it'll hug you back.

The recent eMarketer report on internet advertising passing radio advertising has me wondering: what counts in which column?

By all accounts radio's traditional spot advertising is shrinking, but some of that is being replaced by ads in station streams and on station web sites.

So I ask our readers in all sincerity, does in stream and station site advertising count as "radio" advertising, "internet" advertising, or both?

Perhaps this is merely a hypothetical; what matters, after all, is company revenues, not industry revenues.

But every day one gets the increasing sense that it will almost all be 'internet' advertising someday.

I was reading the "Hotline" today -- the daily political newsletter from National Journal -- and found a banner ad for a conference saying: "Radio gets out the vote." Here is what it links to: http://www.rab.com/politics/index.cfm?pmc=14
Bravo to the RAB and NAB for this initiative. I know some radio operators have mixed feelings about taking political ads, but at least the politicos, who will have zillions for '08, should be considering putting more money into the medium.

Our recent study on Podcast listeners continues to generate lots of great feedback around the Interwebs. BusinessWeek focused on the "modest" revenues for podcasting at the moment, while Pronet Advertising (a great resource for online marketing, by the way) pointed out the highly desirable demographic being reached by podcasts. Some have challenged the "low" numbers for video podcast consumption by pointing out stats like comScore's recent report on US Video Streaming, which is a fine report--but is apples to oranges as far as our data is concerned.

Let's consider audio podcasts for a moment. It is true that audio podcasts are a form of online audio--but not all online audio can be correctly thought of as a "podcast." The rising tide of online audio does indeed lift all ships, but the actual behavior of downloading an audio podcast and saving it to listen to later is markedly different than leaving Pandora on in the background to stream your favorite music while you work.

The problem is one of metrics. Podcasters have little recourse but to use the same types of "reach and frequency" metrics that mass media providers have relied upon for years. This results in a currency of "downloads" that does podcasters a tremendous disservice, in my humble opinion. Clear Channel Online can measure and credibly claim almost 1 million unduplicated listeners per week to their online streams. There are two issues with similar measurements of podcasts. One is that there is no agreed upon metric--read this post from Adam Curry and the subsequent comments and decide for yourself if Podshow generated 12,000 or 52 million "download requests," whatever they are. The second problem with measuring downloads or "download requests" is that this metric is woefully inadequate in terms of capturing the level of engagement that a podcast listener has with the content. If I have a classical station on in the background for 6 hours, does it equate to my downloading and listening to Podchestra? Common sense says "no." In fact, advertisers and marketers are increasingly more sophisticated about the measurement of engagement.

Next week, the Advertising Research Foundation will be hosting its big annual convention, Re:think 2007, and we'll be there as well, giving a talk on the measurement of experiential marketing. Engagement is more than just a buzzword--there is a serious effort on the part of Edison and all of the other members of the ARF to craft a metric and methodology to place engagement where it belongs in measuring brand impact. If I download and listen to Leo Laporte's "this WEEK in TECH" podcast and listen to it in its entirety while driving to pick up Sam at daycare, I have done more than 'download,' I have engaged with the brand, with Leo as a credible host, and even with the sponsors of the show, who are generally more relevant to me (in that context) than anything I might hear on mass media. That's worth more than a "download."

Podcasting is not a replacement for other forms of reaching audience--it is a valuable tool in the context of a complete media mix. The continuing evolution of the engagement metric will provide a more equitable way to equate lower traffic, but higher involvement media such as a podcast alongside higher traffic channels such as broadcast radio and TV. In the end, I agree with noted podcaster Michael Geoghegan that the success of the medium should not be pinned on the success of the term podcasting. Nor should it be pinned on the number of downloads a show does or does not spark. What matters for marketers is the level of engagement, consumer trust and brand involvement a consumer has with a podcast. The combined market of audio and video podcast consumers now stands at 16% of the country, and it is a valuable, marketable and highly lucrative demographic. There's a real market there--but podcasters have to be a little smarter, work a little harder and exploit the unique advantages and benefits of podcasting to get there.

Watch this space for more on engagement in the weeks ahead.

Despite the long tail, in no way is the 'hit' a thing of the past. In fact, as I wrote about earlier this year, society and our culture are simply disaggregating--and re-aggregating--around new norms. Here's one--you want a hit? This will be a 'hit':

A nice little interview with Jack on the pros and cons of Google's foray into radio ad sales. Among the quotable quotes:

So, if I am a station owner like CBS or Clear Channel and I have several hundred thousand listeners to one station in one market (not to mention the millions of listeners I have every day to my entire platform) I am probably not going to see the benefit to having Google's sales staff out there selling their ad words for a higher rate than they are paying me for my millions of listeners.

Read the rest here.

Wired News reports today that the number of monthly visitors to websites for U.S. newspapers rose by almost a third in the first half of 2006. Yes, the dead tree part of their business has fallen--substantially in some cases--but the get-our-brand-and-advertising-in-front-of-eyeballs part seems to be doing just fine. So while the newspaper itself may be in its decline, the "newspaper business" seems to be doing pretty good.

One of the most interesting components of this rise in online newspaper readership is a significant increase in 18-34 year-old readers. There is an encouraging lesson for radio here--though a market may only be able to naturally support one newspaper and a couple of dozen radio signals, there is no FCC spectrum to be bought on the web--radio stations have just as much right to it as anyone else, whether they use it to stream their station or just connect local eyeballs to local advertisers, which remains radio's strength. Winning in that business seems like a pretty good growth investment to me.

It has been almost a year since I wrote about the importance of radio station blogging, and radio has still been extremely tentative about dipping its collective toe into this vital form of communication (and its complement,consumer generated media.) For many stations, their reticence to enter the blogosphere is not only understandable, it might even be prudent. Rest assured, however, that blogging is not going away, and it has profoundly changed the landscape of "customer service," public relations and even altered the very soul of some companies (Microsoft being the most obvious example).

So, here we are in 2006, and you are thinking about it, or would at least like to know more. Where should you look? Well, we put our heads together on that very issue, and have assembled a fantastic panel at this year's NAB Radio Show in Dallas. The panel is entitled "Opening The Kimono: Harnessing the Power of Blogging" and it will definitely be lively, informative--and just might provide the impetus for you to think about your station in an entirely new (and potentially profitable) way.

The title of the panel does not refer to a mid-panel wardrobe malfunction, or anything more suggestive than "social networking." Instead, "Opening the Kimono" is all about making the crucial, first decision about launching a blog: how transparent do you want to be? Blogging requires a willingness to let the listener peek behind Oz's curtain (to mix metaphors) in a way that you might not be comfortable with (yet). Salting your blog with canned marketing messages and press releases is a fast path to irrelevance--only a truly open and honest two-way discussion has any chance of building relationships (and creating traffic). Opening that kimono might be difficult, but we have assembled an excellent group of guides.

Leading off the panel is the Founder/CEO of Weblogs, Inc and current GM of AOL's Netscape site, Jason Calacanis. If you want insight on monetizing your blog, harnessing the power of consumer generated content and how AOL is tackling some of the same issues you are, Jason is the goto-guy. He will also be speaking at the Jacobs Media Summit on "The Future of Media," so if you come away from that talk with questions on how to make some of his ideas tangible and concrete with your station's website, you will want to stick around for this panel.

Also speaking will be Anil Dash, who is a Vice President at Six Apart, the leading company in the business blogging space and developer of the software behind many of the blogs and websites you probably already visit everyday. Six Apart's hosted TypePad service is used by thousands of popular blogs, and their flagship software product, Movable Type, has powered this site and the main Edison Media Research site for two years. Anil has been an "A-List" blogger for many years, has some radio in his background, and is one of the most engaging speakers on technology and trends you are likely to hear at the NAB this year.

Bryan Jay Miller, the General Manager of Internet-only WOXY will also join us. WOXY is just beginning to dip their toe into blogging, but they already have an extremely active message board community that should be the envy of any broadcast radio station. Bryan has built an impressive brand on the Internet--without the benefit of broadcast airwaves--and has done it thanks in part to fearlessly engaging with their audience and valuing their online feedback. Bryan's insight into community-building online (and where to take it next) will prove invaluable to this discussion.

Finally, if there is one thing that I would like you to remember about this panel, it is that this will not be a panel to only send your "tech guy" to. This is a panel for everyone concerned about building a brand on the Internet and monetizing your content. The issues behind deciding when, how and if to blog are big issues--50,000 footers--and should involve PD's, GM's GSM's AND Webmasters. I hope to see you all. As always, we welcome your comments here, or just pop me a note if you have any questions.

For now, YouTube is the best way to reach 18-34s with viral marketing. Period. With radio marketing budgets sliced to the bone, there may be no more efficient way for radio to create some viral buzz than with an edgy video campaign. Certainly, individual stations can take part, and harnessing the creativity of your listeners is one way to get started. But viral video marketing might also be a great way for the industry to create some buzz around HD with some really edgy and even controversial online-only spots. The biggest knock on radio amongst the 18-34 YouTube crowd isn’t the fidelity of the signal, or even the spotload--it’s their perception that radio is not creative, is too repetitive and has lost its role as the arbiter of music taste. Investing in a YouTube-distributed campaign (that listeners might Digg) is a great way to combat the “cookie-cutter” perception by pushing some boundaries.

Want some inspiration? Here are some of my favorites:

The Cog - Honda Advert

Virgin Atlantic - Sleeping Parter

Citroen C4 Transformer

Creative Keyboard

Prince of Persia (have a strong stomach!)

And my current favorite:

Happy Mornings

Can a commercial make me switch to Folgers from Starbucks? That one came pretty close.

Google radio ads are starting to air in Detroit, and I can't wait to hear how things work out. There are a lot of doubts about this venture, and believe it or not, Google doesn't walk on water. But they do experiment a lot, and aren't afraid of failure, and that makes them smart. That also makes Greater Media's John Fullam pretty smart, too, as you can see from his quotes in the article linked above. I think he asks the right questions here, but he's absolutely right about the potential if it works. We're proud to have John as a client.

As the posters say, you'll always miss 100% of the shots you don't take. (Of course, this is the version hanging on my wall, but that is another story.)

I caught a random blog post from a Massachusetts blogger this morning about WFNX's recent "Summer of Snapple" (more from Sean Ross here). The post, When FNX was like a public radio station ..., pointed out something worth thinking about. Commercial radio takes a lot of flack in the blogosphere, and there are lots of the blogueristas who maintain that they have abandoned commercial radio in favor of their MP3 players, or their particular flavor of social-network-music-tagging-web 2.0 service. But for many, it isn't commercial radio that's broken, it's the interruption model of advertising. As this blogger says,

I think your experiment was a success, and I hope you bring back this model -- I'll definitely be listening if you do!

It's an "if," but one as loaded with promise as it is threat. There are lots of these voices out there--the TiVo generation of radio, waiting for our next experiment.