Following stats released earlier this month indicating that most papers had suffered a decline in circulation in June despite it being a news-filled month there is now some better news. The Guardian has released some financial results that suggest its new digital first strategy is working.</p> <p>Digital revenue reaches almost £46 million</p> <p>At a briefing to staff, the editor in chief of The Guardian and Observer, Alan Rushbridger, stated that The Guardian has managed to increase its online audience by 38% over the last year, to slightly fewer than 68 million unique browsers. Digital revenue has grown just over 16% to £45.7 million in the financial year to April 1st 2012. The combined 5.8 million digital and print reach of the title is now higher than any other UK newspaper, the nearest competitor being The Times and Sunday Times at around 5.5 million.</p> <p>Increased digital investment contributes to overall losses</p> <p>According to Rushbridger, the additional digital revenue has almost offset the decline in print revenues; print advertising alone has fallen 4% to £43.7 million, although other financial information about sales and other print products was not disclosed. Overall, the company raised just over £196 million in revenue, slightly up from £198 million in the year before, though overall it made a loss of £44 million largely due to it’s increased investment in digital content and products such as tablet apps as part of its “digital first” transformation strategy. </p> <p>The title hopes to halt its losses through redundancy as well as doubling digital revenue to almost £100 million over the next three years. </p> <p>

Does your brand or business have a Twitter account, and is it proactively used to create a voice for your business to communicate with customers and potential customers? Many well-known football clubs are now doing so, and according to Twitter’s Head of Sport for the UK and Europe, other brands should take note. </p> <p>Football brands embrace the channel</p> <p>According to Lewis Wiltshire, both big UK football clubs such as Liverpool and Arsenal as well as European clubs Barcelona and Real Madrid, have been busy over the last year or so developing their own distinctive “voices” across Twitter. Putting hashtags – the subject titles given to something being discussed which allows all tweets on a subject to be viewed together, such as “#carlingcup” or “#2012season” – on other media such as posters encourages consumers to go online and tweet their own opinions on the specific subject. Arsenal, for example, tweets multiple times a day, talking about fixtures, tickets, making live game comments and posting quotes from players. Wiltshire also suggests re-tweeting fan (or customer) comments as a way to build a closer personal connection. </p> <p>Use twitter to develop more personal communications</p> <p>Of course, as Twitter’s Head of Sport, he has a vested interest in promoting the use of the microblogging site, and keeping up a constant stream of tweets isn’t realistic or possible for many brands with small or even non-existent marketing teams. However, many brands could make more use of the short form content site than they do, using it to develop a more reactive and consumer-friendly face than an often very static website. Are you using Twitter yet?<br />

Printed newspapers have struggled to maintain sales and circulation (and thus, of course, ad sales, which makes up the bulk of their revenues) for some years - in fact ever since the internet became a mass-market media and users began ramping up their consumption of online content. Latest statistics from the official measurers of newspaper circulation in the UK would suggest that this trend seems to be deepening.</p> <p>Tabloid circulation down</p> <p>The latest figures from ABC, covering June’s circulation, shows that despite the month having a number of newsworthy events – the Queens’ Diamond Jubilee and the Euro 2012 football tournament, for example – the majority of titles measured suffered drops in circulation.</p> <p>Notable in particular was the drop in circulation in the tabloid sector; in contrast to the normal market activity that sees tabloids increase their circulation whenever England is playing in a major football tournament. Despite England staying in the tournament for over a week, tabloid papers (which include The Sun, The Mirror and The Star amongst others) saw a decline of 0.74% month on month, with The Sun, for example, down 7.65% year on year, although it remains the paper with the biggest UK circulation at 2.583 million.</p> <p>Quality papers down though midmarket bucks trend</p> <p>Most “quality” papers also exhibited falls in circulation, although mid-market titles (such as The Daily Mail, and The Express) saw a slight increase, thought to be likely to their heavy coverage of the Jubilee. The Guardian, for example, was down 1.49% month on month, with a significant decline of 17.75% year on year. So when was the last time you bought a newspaper?<br />

The growing consumption of online content across mobile devices has another, intrinsically linked, affect – a corresponding growth in the amount of online searches and clicks being conducted across phones and tablets. However, search spend seems to be lacking behind this consumer activity.</p> <p>Ad spend doesn’t keep pace with growth in clicks</p> <p>According to Marin Software’s Online Advertising report for Q2 2012, mobile devices such as iPhones and iPads accounted for around 13% of advertisers’ search spend in June this year, despite search now accounting for around 20% of user clicks. The research comes from Marin’s Global Online Advertising Index, which looks at the 1,800 advertisers and agencies that use the Marin ad platform.</p> <p>Cost per click higher on computers</p> <p>The report also suggests that mobile search displays a higher click through rate (CTR) than search on desktops, with the volume on mobile devices growing at a more rapid rate than advertiser spend is, which results in lower average costs per click at present. According to the research, the UK CTR on smartphones was just under 5.7% in June 2012, but just 2.65% on computers (and 4.4% on tablets). Cost per click was around 15 pence on smartphones, 35 pence on computers and 30 pence on tablets. </p> <p>Paid search volumes keep on growing</p> <p>Over all devices, paid search click volumes were up over 50% with impression volumes up 85%. However, click through rates have actually declined a little with cost per click staying constant. CTR in the Eurozone and the US are a shade higher, though they come with a slightly higher cost per click.<br />

If you own an Apple iPad, do you consider it cool? How about other tablets on the market, perhaps the Samsung Galaxy Tab – would you or anyone that you know consider that to be cool?</p> <p>Judge determines against Apple</p> <p>Well, according to a High Court Judge in the UK, the latter just isn’t, and he has used that as the basis of a court judgement. Judge Colin Bliss was presiding over a case in which Apple had requested he ban sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab in the UK (as they have, partially successfully, in the US), on the basis that the Samsung had infringed their design rights in the creation of the Android powered device, which has a similar retail price to Apple’s offering.</p> <p>Designs similar, but Tab “not as cool”</p> <p>However, Judge Bliss denied the application, noting that there were both design similarities; “from the front they belong to the family which includes the Apple design”, and differences; “but the Samsung products are very thin, almost insubstantial members of that family with unusual details on the back.” Overall, he declared: “They do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design. They are not as cool.”</p> <p>Apple will almost certainly appeal the judgement, as a statement released afterwards makes it clear that they still believe that Samsung (and others) have effectively copied their successful design. However, for the moment, the Galaxy Tab is back on the UK market, in all its glorious un-coolness.<br />

Do you consume news, either online, in a newspaper, over or the radio or on TV every day? According to new research from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, some 75% of people in the UK are exposed to news each day, either by reading, watching or listening.</p> <p>US and European consumers more likely to consume news daily</p> <p>However, according to the study, this level of consumption lags behind many European countries and the US. For example, around 90% of Germans consume news every day, just above the percentage in Denmark, with around 82% of French and 78% of American consumers doing so. </p> <p>Conducted by polling company YouGov, the study interviewed 6,000 consumers in five different countries. One thing the UK did exceed other countries at though, was consumption of celebrity news – just over a fifth (21%) of UK consumers said they were interested in stories about music, film and gossip, with 16% of Americans, 14% of Germans and French, and just 9% of Danes saying the same thing. </p> <p>Online news most popular for UK readers</p> <p>Interestingly though, UK consumers were more likely to consume news online than via any other channel; of the 75% who did access news daily, 82% had read an online news story in the past week, compared to 76% who had watched TV news. The report suggested that is largely influenced by the dominance of the BBC in the supply of online news content; in no other country was a broadcaster’s own website cited as the most popular source of online news. A fifth of readers found interesting stories on Twitter or Facebook. </p> <p>So where do you get your news?<br />

Established as an online bookseller in 1994, Amazon has long been known for its ambitious expansion policies. When it expanded into technology hardware with the Kindle in 2007, it seemed an almost obvious next step, given Amazon’s clear vested interest in keeping us reading, regardless of whether it was physical or digital books.</p> <p>It would now seem that the success of the Kindle and the new Kindle Fire, the most successful Android tablet on the market (the crown for most popular tablet overall of course goes to Apple’s iPad range), has somewhat gone to their heads. </p> <p>Analysts suggest smartphone in development</p> <p>A couple of reports from analysts would suggest that Amazon’s next technology venture might be a smartphone, to compete with Apple there too. The latest report, from Bloomberg, suggests that Amazon is working with the same manufacturer that Apple use for the iPhone (Foxconn) to develop a new Android phone that would be branded from the retailer. </p> <p>Apple’s reasoning for doing so is clear: to get an Amazon smartphone complete with one-click, integrated access to Amazon’s ever increasing online offerings into people’s pockets, wherever they are. Consumers are increasingly showing themselves to be happy to buy simple goods through their smartphones, a trend Amazon would be happy to facilitate. </p> <p>Competition would be fierce</p> <p>However, the smartphone market is considerably more competitive than the e-reader one, and Amazon are likely to have to heavily subsidise any phone hardware to get market traction. The question is; do they have the stomach to take on Apple, Google and Microsoft on this one?<br />

Do you regularly click on online ads? Most experienced online consumers would probably answer that one with a no. If pushed, most of us would probably admit to occasionally doing so, but that we aren’t swayed in our buying decisions by them, regardless of how well targeted the advertisers and publishers might claim they are.</p> <p>Are clickers attractive consumers?</p> <p>However, a new report from the ad re-targeting company Criteo begs to differ. Yes, it is an ad re-targeting company, so of course they have a vested interest in persuading advertisers that attractive, lucrative online consumers are regularly clicking on online ads. However, they claim to have analysed data from some 147 million unique browsers over a week in March, so that’s some body of data. </p> <p>A fifth of users make half of ad clicks</p> <p>Criteo use their report to argue that, far from being internet newbies being led down the garden path or savvy readers with no intention of buying, ad clickers are a valuable bunch of people who do frequently spend money online. In fact, they reckon that the more people click, the more they are likely to buy. A small percentage of the online audience (20%) do make up for 50% of clicks, but Criteo say that’s OK, as they are also responsible for a disproportionate amount of sales.</p> <p>Overall, Criteo think that some 43% of regular buyers on its clients’ sites do click on the company’s re-targeted ads – which essentially seems to be saying that your fans like your ads, which is great; but, as far as we can see, leaves the issue of how to attract the non-fans still wide open. So don’t give up on the acquisition ad testing just yet.<br />

Despite sounding like a YouTube knockoff, the recently launched YouView has nothing to do with consumer driven content; it’s a service that aims to offer both catch-up TV as well as new on demand content via the internet on your television.</p> <p>Product late to market </p> <p>Initially proposed for 2010, the technology has now arrived in the form of a £299 Humax box (although high-profile backer Lord Sugar suggests that this could be more in the region of £99 in a couple of year’s time).</p> <p>The box will allow users to record future shows much in the way that existing personal video recorders and Sky+ devices do, but it now incorporates the capability to go back a few days to see programmes you might have missed first time round on the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. Of course, the capability to do that already exists through the iPlayer and 4OD, but the producers of YouView are betting on the ease of having this facility on one device to get you to pay up. Sky have also said that they will be adding their Now TV content - effectively pay-per-view movies and sports. </p> <p>Entering competitive landscape </p> <p>The question is, will people pay nearly £300 for this capability, given they can already use PCs or tablets to view this content, and have access to many other smart TV platforms such as Freeview Plus or Virgin Media? If launched in 2010, it might have stood a great chance; 2.5 years later, for many people, it will be too little, too late. </p> <p>

Are you planning to up your spend on content marketing activities this year? Well, if you are, you are not alone; according to new data from the Content Marketing Association (formerly known as the Association of Publishing Agencies), the industry spend on content marketing is set to rise significantly this year. However, according to Marketing Week, brands need to take care in how and where they invest.</p> <p>According to the research, based on a survey of marketers, 73% of marketers say they will increase or at least maintain their spending on content marketing this year. On average, marketers will be spending some 20% of their marketing budgets on content marketing. Why? Well, another survey from the CMA and Panelbase.net apparently suggests that content marketing initiatives now reach the majority (70%) of UK adults every month, with 61% of them reckoning that the marketing efforts do make them feel more positive towards the brand. So that’s one good reason. However, according to the CMA, brands need to be wary of reckless spend, and look to hire specialist agencies or in-house specialists rather than general marketers, as well as spending their own time and budget on building audiences carefully over time.</p> <p>Over a third – 37% - of marketers intend to spend money on content-led websites, with 30% spending on branded mobile or tablet apps. Customer magazines attract a quarter of marketers to spend on them, with email newsletters and branded games bringing up the rear, with 22% and 15% of marketers respectively adding them into their budget plans. How does your budget look in comparison?</p> <p>