June 2014

Gannett: Social Plus TV To Drive Programming

David Lougee has an idea for broadcast syndication. If the president of Gannett Broadcasting has it right, by fall 2015, viewers will interact with celebrities on talk shows and game shows via social media on their smartphones and tablets.

“There’s an opportunity for us and other broadcasters to take advantage of the organic relationship between social media and television,” Lougee says. “The majority of our viewers have an Internet-enabled device within three feet of them when they are watching television.”

“Whether it’s a smartphone or a tablet, it’s a direct-to-consumer relationship,” he says. “It doesn’t go through the cable provider’s set-top box. There is no gatekeeper. So, the only thing we’re limited by is the imagination of the producer.”

6 reasons mobile learning is booming

Speak Up 2013, an annual survey lead by Project Tomorrow, focuses on digital learning and college- and career-ready skill development. Survey results reveal that educators, school and district leaders, and parents understand that mobile devices help students access more digital content and digital learning opportunities.

School and district administrators say that tablets (41 percent), one-to-one programs (28 percent), mobile apps (22 percent), and bring-your-own-device policies, or BYOD (22 percent) have had a significant impact on transforming teaching and learning.
Eighty-six percent of school and district administrators said mobile learning increases student engagement.
Mobile learning also helps each student personalize his or her learning (67 percent).
School leaders note that mobile learning helps students develop a number of skills that will be necessary in college and the workforce, namely critical thinking and problem solving (51 percent), collaboration and teamwork skills (47 percent), and strong communication skills (37 percent).
Thirty-two percent of technology administrators said that allowing students to use their own mobile devices helps schools address budget challenges while still giving students access to technology.
The 2014 survey reveals that 41 percent of principals said they were comfortable with such a move. An additional 10 percent said they had already changed school policy to support BYOD.

Audiences Increasingly Going Mobile for Entertainment

A study conducted by global mobile video advertising firm Vdopia found that mobile consumption of entertainment-themed media is sharply on the rise. The information was pulled from the Vdopia Mobile Insights (VMI) Series, which takes a look at brand and consumer behavior across the Silicon Valley-based company's global reach of 330 million people. Past studies in the VMI Series have zeroed in on automobile and multicultural topics. The number of people who said they looked at entertainment content on their smartphones during a given month went up 28 percent. Purchasing tickets using a mobile device increased 40 percent. Mobile audiences were also twice as likely to click on entertainment ads than those who viewed the spots on a non-smartphone platform. They were 45 percent more likely to remember the ads, compared to 24 percent of those using a regular computer or other non-mobile device.

Why cross-device ad targeting is so promising -- and so challenging -- for mobile

Online marketers have long relied on cookies to track users’ behavior on the web in an effort to deliver targeted ads as accurately and effectively as possible.

But two major factors continue to minimize the relevance of cookies in mobile: Apple’s Safari browser doesn’t support third-party cookies, preventing advertisers from tracking users and retargeting pitches across multiple sites. Similarly, the webview technology used by native apps to display online content is unique per application, preventing the sharing of information between cookies or with the browser.

The latter problem is particularly troublesome because apps continue to dominate the time spent on smartphones. Apps accounted for an overwhelming 86 percent of the average US mobile consumer’s time in 2013, according to Flurry, while the web claimed a mere 14 percent, down from 20 percent in 2012. So while consumption of mobile data continues skyrocket, the mobile advertising industry still lags behind.

Online Pirates Thrive On Legitimate Ad Dollars

Movie and music piracy thrives online in part because crafty website operators receive advertising dollars from major companies like Comcast, Ford and McDonald's.

That's the conclusion of several recent reports that shed light on Internet piracy's funding sources.

Content thieves attract visitors with the promise of free downloads and streams of the latest hit movies, TV shows and songs. Then they profit by pulling in advertising from around the Internet, often concealing their illicit activities so advertising brands remain unaware. Pirate websites run ads that are sometimes covered up by other graphics. They automatically launch legitimate-looking websites as pop-up windows that advertisers don't realize are associated with piracy.

At the end of the day, the pirate website operators still receive a check for serving up a number of views and clicks. The illicit activity is estimated to generate millions of dollars annually. That's only a small portion of the roughly $40 billion of online ad spending every year. Yet it is helping to feed the creation of millions of copyright-infringing websites that provide stolen content to a growing global audience.

Why C7 Won't Be an Upfront Standard This Year Despite GroupM Agreements

Other media agencies aren't likely to follow in GroupM's footsteps by striking broad agreements to use C7 in upfront deals, according to people familiar with the upfront market.

GroupM has entered into agreements with broadcasters including CBS, Fox and NBC to pay for ad time based on commercial ratings across seven days, a measure called C7 in the industry.

The current standard, C3, only considers commercials seen within a three-day window. While most agencies did C7 deals for select clients during the 2013 upfront, GroupM's agreements will apply to a breadth of clients across its portfolio of agencies, according to people familiar with the pacts, making it the biggest move yet into paying for seven-day viewing.

GroupM, WPP's powerful media-agency group, controls about 30% of the total dollars spent on network TV, with clients like Procter & Gamble, AT&T and Paramount Pictures. And RBC Capital Markets analyst David Bank wrote that most other agencies will "likely have to move in lock-step at some point soon."

But its move isn't likely to generate a domino effect, at least not in 2014, some media buyers and others insist. Other agencies are still hesitant to strike broad-based agreements for C7 that would apply to a majority of their clients.

DOJ to review decades-old music licensing rules

The Department of Justice has kicked off a process to review its decades-old consent decrees with the music industry’s largest licensing organizations. The move was applauded by the two organizations -- Broadcast Music (BMI) and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) -- who have protested the decrees, saying that the Justice Department’s rules to protect competition in the music licensing market have not kept up with changing technologies.

“The Department understands that ASCAP, BMI and some other firms in the music industry believe that the Consent Decrees need to be modified to account for changes in how music is delivered to and experienced by listeners,” the Justice Department wrote in its announcement of the review. The Department directed commenters to file via the agency’s website or mail by Aug 6.

The agency’s rules for BMI and ASCAP date back to the US government’s concerns in the 1940s that the music industry’s two largest licensing organizations -- which sell blanket copyright licenses to those looking to play the music publicly, such as television stations and restaurants -- were acting in anticompetitive ways.

But BMI and ASCAP -- whose consent decrees were last updated in 1994 and 2001, respectively -- say the rules haven’t kept pace with changing technology, including the proliferation of Internet radio services like Pandora, depriving songwriters and publishers of fair compensation.

Growing pains in shift to digital records

A massive transformation of the nation’s medical system is underway as doctors and hospitals migrate to digital records.

The shift promises to fundamentally alter medical care in the United States by introducing standard information technology across the system.

A uniform electronic health record will give doctors a more complete picture of a patient’s medical history, including data from other clinical settings that might be missing in a paper record. But healthcare providers say they are struggling with the transition under the federal “Meaningful Use” incentive program that was designed to speed progress.

Four years after its rollout, hospitals and doctors say the electronic health records (EHRs) initiative is hampering their ability to deliver care.

“These software programs have deprived us of our efficiency, taken us away from interacting with patients and forced us to be secretaries and clerks,” said Dr Steven Stack, a past board chairman of the American Medical Association (AMA). “These are real frustrations for physicians, and they need to be addressed with a mid-course correction in the program,” he said.

Former FCC Chair Genachowski Gets MasterCard Board Seat

Former Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski has been elected to the board of MasterCard, the company said.

Genachowski was one of two newly elected members, rounding out the 13-member board. It is a one-year term.

Genachowski exited the FCC in 2013, joining The Carlyle Group in January 2004 as managing director of telecom and media in the Washington office, focused on acquisitions and media and telecom investments.

Rep Honda cruises to victory in South Bay; Khanna in second

In one of the nation's most-watched House races, seven-term Rep Mike Honda (D-CA) outpolled fellow Democrat Ro Khanna by a wide margin in their South Bay district, which nonetheless could be hotly contested in November. With 42 percent of the votes counted, Rep Honda had 50.3 percent to 25.8 percent for Khanna, a former trade representative in the Obama Administration. Bringing up the rear in the heavily Democratic 17th Congressional District were a pair of Republicans, Stanford Medical Center Professor Vanila Singh with 16.2 percent and Silicon Valley executive recruiter Joel Van Landingham with 7.7 percent. The Republicans' supporters could tighten the November runoff if they prefer the tech industry-supported Khanna over the liberal, labor-backed Honda. One reason voters are supporting him, Rep Honda said, is that "people understand that tech is not the only thing in this valley. Silicon Valley is a great economic engine, but everyone has to share in that." The contest also pitted the power of traditional organized labor, one of Rep Honda's main sources of support, against the growing political muscle of high tech. Along with labor groups such as the AFL-CIO, Rep Honda boasted the support of environmental organizations including the Sierra Club and much of the Democratic establishment, including President Barack Obama, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA12) of San Francisco and California's two US senators.

Benton

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