MediaPost

For the first time since it began ranking the world’s biggest media owners, Publicis' Zenith Optimedia unit says two Chinese companies have made its “Top Thirty Global Media Owners” list: China’s TV network CCTV and search engine Baidu.

They join Brazil’s Globo as the only Top Thirty based in “emerging markets.” Otherwise, the list looks like what you might expect, with Google on top -- by a wide margin -- as the world’s largest media owner.

In fact, ZO estimates Google’s revenues are 47% higher than the second-ranked company on the list, US satellite TV operator DirecTV. And Google’s dominance isn’t waning. It actually grew eight points from a 39% margin over DirecTV in 2013.

Digital media may have the fastest organic growth rates, but it was the traditional medium of television that catapulted Madison Avenue's media spending during the first quarter of 2014.

Total media buys processed by the major agency holding companies pooling their data through Standard Media Index jumped 18% over the first quarter of 2013, largely thanks to blockbuster TV events -- especially coverage of the Sochi Olympic Games, the NCAA college basketball tournament, the Academy Awards, and AMC's season finale of “Walking Dead.”

TV ad spending soared 21% and accounted for nearly two-thirds (63.5%) of all advertising buys processed by the four agency holding companies -- Aegis, Havas, Interpublic and Publicis -- during the fourth quarter. “Digital” spending also continued to soar, expanding 23% during the first quarter, albeit with a big boost from blockbuster-infused traditional media companies’ digital inventory. NBC Universal, for example, broke into the top 10 list of Madison Avenue’s “digital vendors” ranking, thanks to an Olympian 249% surge in its digital advertising revenues during the quarter.

Looking to shift more media executives' minds to digital from TV, Google says nearly one-fifth of those watching YouTube are watching less TV.

A UK study found 19% of YouTube viewers are paying less attention to TV and that 17% are watching less TV overall. Three percent have stopped subscribing to premium cable networks and 1% have stopped watching TV entirely.

Some 1,583 UK respondents ages 13-64 were included in the study from June to September 2013: 1,171 were YouTube users, 412 were non-YouTube users.

Mobile shopping is no longer the purview of Gen Y and Gen X, as boomers and seniors are increasingly incorporating mobile into their brick-and-mortar shopping behaviors.

Mobile devices will account for 50% of Google paid-search clicks by December 2015, according to Marin Software.

Marin predicts that mobile will become the primary channel for search as investment in these devices increases, surpassing 42% in 2014. Marin found the conversion rate of search ads on mobile devices rose in the US during 2013, indicating that consumers are more comfortable with mobile commerce. The conversion rates of smartphones and tablets rose 57% and 67%, respectively.

In 2013, tablet conversion rates at 5.5% edged out desktop conversion rates at 5.3% for the first time. In 2013, the share of paid-search clicks from mobile devices increased from 21.8% to 34.2% of all paid-search clicks. The percentage that marketers spent on mobile campaigns saw a similar increases, with mobile spend share rising 45% from 19.3% to 27.9% in 2013.

One of the surprising take-aways at Marketing Politics here was, that despite the hyper-focus on “digital” and “multi-screen,” TV remains far and away the most vital medium for political campaigns.

That point was underscored on the local election scene during a presentation by Russ Schriefer, partner at Strategic Partners & Media. Schriefer tried to explain why TV works better than ever in political marketing, and he attributed at least part of it to the fact that TV programming may also be better than it has ever been before.

“Today, we still find that television is still moving numbers,” Schriefer reiterated, noting that when he invests ad budgets on television he sees direct results in the polls, and hopefully, in the polling booths. “As long as the creative is halfway decent, they will spit back what I am saying,” Schriefer said of the post-broadcast polling. Broadcast is the only medium, basically, where that is happening. It doesn’t necessarily happen in cable either.”

Schriefer did cite a variety of studies showing that the political media mix is beginning to disperse, and greater efficiencies are coming from those mixes, but he said he doesn’t see much of a shift from broadcast TV’s dominance in the next several years, especially in local races. Specifically, Schriefer said that campaigns that used to be able to generate a messaging effect with 300 to 400 rating points now require about 1,000 points, and that when the noise gets particularly cluttered near the final run.

Freedom Communications is continuing its aggressive expansion with the launch of a new Spanish-language weekly newspaper for Southern California, Unidos en el Sur de California.

The new newspaper, scheduled to debut March 21, will combine the editorial staff and production and distribution resources of two existing Spanish-language papers owned by Freedom: the Excelsior in Orange County and La Prensa, serving the Los Angeles metro area. Unidos en el Sur de California will publish four zoned editions every Friday, targeting Orange County, Inland Southern California, Coachella Valley and Los Angeles. The fourth Los Angeles zone, set to debut March 28, will focus on southeast Los Angeles and communities in the San Gabriel Valley. Together, the four zoned editions of Unidos will have a total circulation of 323,476, according to Freedom -- over 100,000 greater than the current combined circ of Excelsior and La Prensa.

[March 10]