September 2008

Obama, McCain have contrasting styles in Web advertising

It's been hard to avoid Barack Obama's distinctive red, white and blue "O" logo on display ads as you tool around online, particularly on news sites. In contrast, the star logo of his Republican presidential rival John McCain's campaign hasn't shined as brightly across the Web. That's because the Democratic presidential candidate has focused much more heavily on display ads, according to data released Thursday by ComScore. In contrast, Nielsen found last month that McCain had outpaced Obama on search-engine ads. Obama's campaign averaged 91,740 display ad views a month from January through June, ComScore found. The campaign had 244,276 in June alone. In contrast, the McCain campaign averaged 7,435 display ad views per month for the same period. Obama's display ads were "almost universally positive" and focused on increasing awareness of his campaign, said Andrew Lipsman, a senior analyst at ComScore Inc. McCain's display ads often focused on specific issues, with a mix of positive and negative messages, Lipsman said. "Although the Obama campaign has been using so many more display ads, they're all general brand-building ads. They all ask you to join the movement," Lipsman said. "They may be missing an opportunity to speak to more fragmented audiences about specific issues."

Online tools let parents peer into their kids' school day

Technology is helping eliminate some of the guesswork about what happens after kids climb onto the bus. Increasingly common Web programs let parents track lunch-money spending, schoolwork habits and tardiness. Critics say some programs give parents too much control. After all, children have to learn to become more independent as they grow up, and such programs let parents keep a close watch on what their kids are doing.

FCC's First Network Neutrality Ruling taken to Court

Comcast is appealing a Federal Communications Commission ruling that the company is improperly blocking customers' Web traffic, triggering a legal battle that could determine the extent of the government's authority to regulate the Internet. Comcast challenged the FCC decision Thursday in the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington. Comcast executive vice president David Cohen said in a statement that the company is seeking "review and reversal" of the FCC order and that the commission's action was "legally inappropriate and its findings were not justified by the record." While the FCC action did not include a fine, it does require Comcast within 30 days to disclose the details of its "discriminatory network management"; submit a compliance plan describing how it intends to stop these practices by the end of the year; and disclose to customers and the commission its new plan. Cohen said Thursday that the company will comply with the FCC's order. Prior to the FCC action, the company had said it will switch to a management technique that treats all users the same by the end of the year. Meanwhile, the Media Access Project, representing Consumers Union PennPIRG and Vuze Inc, filed appeals in New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Although MAP's clients hailed the FCC's action against Comcast, they want the courts to eliminate the FCC's Dec. 31 deadline and make Comcast comply with the agency's order immediately. "Comcast can very easily drag this out at least until we get into a new FCC," said MAP attorney Harold Feld. "Who knows? They may be able to get the FCC to continue to delay and never actually give us the injunctive relief that we asked for."

FCC wireless tests aim to end debate

The Federal Communications Commission may gather enough data through wireless testing this week in Seattle to quiet debates over the potential interference that could result from a proposed spectrum auction. The FCC has proposed auctioning off spectrum and requiring the winner to offer free wireless broadband services in a portion of the spectrum. But the wireless industry contends that the technical rules that the FCC is proposing for the spectrum will lead to interference for 3G phone users, causing a degradation of their services. T-Mobile, one of the more vocal opponents of the FCC plan, has already conducted tests that it says clearly demonstrate the harmful interference. "But what we've been asking for is joint testing with the FCC," said Kathleen Hamm, vice president of federal regulatory affairs for T-Mobile. The FCC is conducting some of the same tests T-Mobile has already done plus some additional tests, focusing on interference between handsets running on the different frequencies, said Julius Knapp, chief for the FCC's office of engineering technology. After the testing is complete, potentially at the end of the day Thursday or on Friday, the FCC will issue a report with its findings. The commission may or may not officially ask for comments on the report, Knapp said. "But we're confident people will weigh in on what it means," he said.

FCC Releases Small Ops' HD-Waiver Order

The Federal Communications Commission released its order granting small cable operators a three-year exemption from FCC rules requiring cable operators to carry TV stations' HD signals in HD after the Feb. 17, 2009, transition to digital. In 2001, the FCC, to avoid "material degradation" of a broadcaster's signal on cable and the potential for competitive gamesmanship, ruled that a cable "operator may not provide a digital broadcast signal in a lesser format or lower resolution than that afforded to any digital programmer." This meant that if a cable operator carried a cable HD channel in HD, it could not downconvert a broadcaster's HD signal. The FCC concluded that the HD-carriage requirement would be a hardship on smaller operators, which asked for the relief.

2008 Biennial Review of Telecommunications Regulations

The FCC is in the process of conducting its comprehensive 2008 biennial review of telecommunications regulations. The FCC is required to: 1) review biennially its regulations "that apply to the operations or activities of any provider of telecommunications service," and 2) "determine whether any such regulation is no longer necessary in the public interest as the result of meaningful economic competition between providers of such service." The Commission is directed to repeal or modify any such regulations that it finds are no longer in the public interest. The FCC is asking for suggestions from the public as to what rules should be modified or repealed as part of the 2008 biennial review. Interested parties may file comments on or before October 6, 2008 and reply comments on or before October 27, 2008.

News Execs Fire Back at GOP Media Attacks

After several primetime speakers at this week's Republican National Convention unleashed a barrage of attacks on the news media for their coverage of vice-presidential nominee Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, network news executives defended their coverage and dismissed the charges as a stale political strategy meant to distract viewers from legitimate election issues. Scrutiny of the nominee only intensified Monday when the campaign revealed that the socially conservative Palin's 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, is five months' pregnant. "Network news and cable news literally did not touch the story until the press release came out from the [McCain] campaign," said Steve Capus, president of NBC News. "So when our critics demonize that coverage, I don't know what they're pointing to. It's been a respectful handling of a sensitive matter. There is nothing to that criticism. Nothing." "What people who are politically motivated are trying to do is take every outrageous blogger that exists online and lump them into traditional media," Capus said. "And that's not a sophisticated analysis of journalism. That's someone making a political argument. Any objective analysis of the facts would come down on a different conclusion."

"It's a time-honored marketing ploy and, every time they bash the media, it means they're not talking about a vision or a plan. But the best antidote to cynical marketing is solid reporting."
-- Jon Klein, CNN

Obama Outdueling McCain on Web

In what has been an overall lackluster year to date for political advertising online, Sen. Barack Obama has outdone Sen. John McCain when it comes to generating exposure and traffic on the Internet - or at least through the first six months of the year, said comScore. Obama averaged over 90 million display ad impressions per month from January to June of this year, versus McCain's average of 7.4 million, found comScore's new report. That disparity peaked in June when Obama's ad operations team ran over 240 million impressions to McCain's 3.2 million -- however, it should be noted that this gap in activity occurred when Obama's campaign was in the final stages of a prolonged primary battle with Sen. Hillary Clinton, while McCain had wrapped up his party's nomination month's earlier. On the search front, where McCain has been the more active advertiser, based on various recent reports -- Obama is generating far more "natural" searches. comScore found that from January to June Obama's name averaged 5.4 million search queries a month versus McCain's average of 1.3 million. Thus, as a result of the heavier search interest and display ad volume, Obama's Web site has consistently drawn a larger crowd, averaging four times as many unique users from January to June (2.2 million versus 583,000).

37.2M Tune In to Palin's Speech

Over 32 million people watched Alaska Gov Sarah Palin accept the nomination of the Republican party to be Vice President. That was just over 1 million short of the 38.3 million who tuned in to watch Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) speech on the final day of the Democratic National Convention last week, but significantly more than total viewers for the speeches of VP nominee Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del) (24 million) or Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) (26 million).

$5 Million for Digital Media Experiments to Innovate Journalism

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has launched the third year of the Knight News Challenge, a contest awarding as much as $5 million for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news and information exchange. The deadline for applications is Nov. 1, 2008.

Benton

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