One of the few people whose New Media work I loyally follow is the British web publishing pioneer Danny Meadows-Klue. I first met Klue during the mid-1990s when he was online publisher of The Daily Telegraph (www.telegraph.co.uk). Since that job, he has co-founded the UK and European Interactive Advertising Bureaus (elected their president four times before serving as the first chief executive with both for four years) and has helped launch more than 20 digital trade associations and initiatives as far afield as Mexico and New Zealand. He is currently Chief Executive of www.DigitalStrategyConsulting.com, which trains sand coaches executives in digital strategy, publishing, and advertising.
I’ve always found Mr. Meadows-Klue’s analysis trenchant. Moreover, he’s one of the few New Media publishing/broadcasting analysts who (if you’ll permit me to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw) can tell the difference between a car crash and the apocalypse. For a year or so at Syracuse University, I’ve been meaning to add Meadows-Klue’s continuing analysis to the list of readings for my post-graduate students of New Media Business. I’ll start in the Spring 2012 semester.
Here are a few things he’s lately brought to my attention:
According to calculations by entreprenuer Darren Herman, using publicly available data, five companies control some 65 percent of the world’s online advertising spending ($64 billion). Google controlled the largest portion, 46 percent.
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For the first time, Microsoft Internet Explorer’s worldwide share of the web browser market has slipped below 50 percent. So much expecting a browser software with an operating system to continue dominating the market.
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Smartphones and tablet computers now drive nearly seven percent of U.S. web traffic
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Forty-two million homes in the U.S. and Europe have been connecting their personal computers or game consoles to their television and watching streaming video on their TV screens. The European were most likely to hook their personal computers to televisions. The Americans were most likely to connect their game consoles to their TVs.
Many thanks Vin. There’s a healthy flow of posts and research of things we found interesting, here… http://www.digitalstrategyconsulting.com/intelligence
A frustration I think you me and Jim share is the slowness of media groups with origins in print at realising the need to adapt. Back in the 90s there was everything to play for, yet many squandered the opportunities they had by applying lethargic processes at a time which needs revolutionary change.
When a group of us came together to set up the IAB trade associations in the UK and Europe, it was heavily driven by a handful of innovative (traditional) publishers. We could see how the gatekeeper roles that newspapers and TV had played in mass marketing would be challenged through disintermediation. As early as the mid 90s it seemed clear that search would remove the constriction on access to classifieds, and that Craig Newmark wouldn’t be alone in figuring out a free-to-air model for classifieds.
Yet the media groups dominated by traditional thinking are those that can never see passed the old paradigms. The 15 year debate about charging a subscription for content is the square peg for the round hole. I wish more publishers would be listening to you, making round pegs, and filling both the web and their business plans with the right content for the right models.
Look forward to catching up. Been far too long!