Echoing the results of question 1, no participant believes regional papers will be online only within the next two years either. However, only a third of respondents believe we will always have a print version of regional papers. Almost a third expect regional papers to go online only within five years reflecting the dire financial predicament regional publishers currently face. 

The thrid question asked where people expect to source their news in the future. Almost two-thirds of Measurement Matters readers still expect to use established media brands, like the BBC and Wall St journal, to receive their news. These big media providers have a strong position to work from and how they continue to develop and integrate their brand with online and mobile technologies will be crucial to their future success or failure.   

This poll has now closed but you can continue to take part in the future of news discussion through Paul Hender's new post on News 2.0. 

Amid last night’s awards and celebrations, media commentator Roy Greenslade gave a fantastic keynote speech which balanced nostalgia for print journalism with the realities of a modern media world: “Even those of us with print in our veins” must recognise that newspapers are doomed, as print is a “dying business model”. While the basic premise of the speech was simple – that newspapers are a dying medium – the speech drew on many wider issues to support its conclusion. 

 The current economic climate can only expedite rigor mortis in the industry with revenue streams drying up at an alarming rate. As Greenslade, rather bluntly, put it: “[Visual advertising] has gone off a cliff in the last six weeks”. 

With the growth of citizen journalism and interactive media channels we are currently in a “transition” period. Traditionally top down news reporting, for example, is being challenged by the growing force of bottom-up citizen journalism. No longer do we (the audience, the citizens) passively accept those accounts fed to us by publishers but, enabled by technology, we choose to publish our own accounts ourselves. This ‘new media’ is eroding the “mini-god-like status” the press formerly held. 

Significantly, Greenslade did not stop with his frank assessment of the status quo, but went beyond to illustrate two ways in which news brands can adapt and thrive in the modern world where everyone is, or can be, a journalist.

First he spoke about ProPublica – the philanthropically funded, non-profit newsroom – which describes itself as providing ‘journalism in the public interest’ or, as Greenslade put it, writing stories “of moral force”. Notable is the fact that newspapers can use resources like this to offset overheads in the face of lower revenues. 

Each story we publish will be distributed in a manner designed to maximize its impact. At the outset, at least, that means that many of our “deep dive” stories will likely be offered exclusively to a traditional news organization, free of charge, for publication or broadcast.

The second is Spot.Us, which allows people to promote stories they deem important. Like ProPublica, Spot.Us is funded through public donations allowing a small pool of journalists to generate news which can be used across the media world.

Spot.Us is a non-profit project of the Center for Media Change. We are an open source project, to pioneer “community funded reporting.” Through Spot.Us the public can commission journalists to do investigations on important and perhaps overlooked stories. All donations are tax deductible and if a news organization buys exclusive rights to the content, your donation will be reimbursed.

These sites outlined are excellent examples of how bottom-up journalism can be effectively leveraged to have a positive impact on publisher’s bottom lines.

In conclusion, Greenslade very simply stated: “New media is the future”. The challenge for us all is to find new and better ways to use it.

  *Photograph of Roy Greensldae by Johnny Greig (http://gallery.johnnygreig.com/)

We’ve been debating this morning if we need to extend our boardroom to create more wall space to put the ten awards we collected at last night’s AMEC Awards... As one presenter joked: “I hope you’ve got a bus to take all these home in…!” 

It is a huge testament to the talent, skill, passion, dedication and diligence of our team here at Metrica that we were short listed in seven out of the eight categories, twice in two categories, and walked away with ten awards in total. 

Case studies of the winning work are available for those interested – please just drop me a line.  

We would also like to congratulate all our peers who collected awards last night. The standard of both entries and judging was reportedly very high, which is great news for the industry, proving the high standards we aspire and work to.  

Here’s to another year of exciting growth and development as we head into 2009. 

The Society for New Communications has issued an executive summary of a forthcoming study, the "ROI of Press Releases."   The study results state the obvious -- the terrain and tactics of press release distribution have changed.  But some of the legacy requirements remain.

PR professionals stick with their traditional goals of announcing news and increasing thought leadership.  Marketers view SEO and reaching consumers as the most important tactics in this case.  Small business owners position online press releases as business development tools and potential profit centres. 

What struck me most about the survey results was the lack of a clear winner in criteria for measuring the success of online press releases… regardless of your profession. As seen by the clustering of the survey responses (multiple selections allowed), those who rely on PR remain unclear about the best metrics: 

• Online press release republished on websites (79.6%)
• # times online press release viewed online (76.8%)
• Articles generated from the online press release (75.4%)
• Media interview requests (74.2%)
• Traffic to organization’s website (~73%)

What do these results say to me?  First, more must be done to prove the value of an online PR function.  Second, traditional press release success criteria, such as distribution and exposure, remain the default metrics for PR success, whether online or offline.  What this study fails to engage with (and the study authors note this limitation) is that we need to move to more robust models of capturing larger indicators of success, such as product sales from online articles and related behavioural shifts that result from online and offline PR).    

Granted, it is early days in developing metrics for an emerging media relations tool.  However, PR metrics must not only measure reaching the media but reaching the public directly.  Perhaps charities, such as one mentioned in a recent Metrica blog post, hold the key to proposing commercial angle metrics structure to how best to measure the success of our evaluation criteria.

In response to a growing number of requests from clients for information regarding current media trends and how they will affect their measurement, we have compiled some top-line statistics concerning audience and advertising data which are available for download by clicking on the image below:

Overview

The figures deliver some stark findings, particularly in relation to advertising, with falls in advertising revenue across most media types.

Given the ongoing debate regarding the use of advertising to calculate the ‘value’ of PR, how will this affect those organisations that use AVE’s?

The short answer is that AVE figures are declining in value so as advertising rates come down the same article in the same location will be ‘worth’ less this year than last. Of course its real value in terms of changing hearts and minds and driving business outcomes may well be unchanged.

This begs the question, how much sense does it make to benchmark PR with advertising when we are entering a recession, given how adversely advertising can be affected? In 1991 for example, UK advertising revenue fell 5%.

As Kristin Wadge recently posted, by employing more appropriate metrics (i.e. not AVEs), it is possible to demonstrate (in meaningful ways) how cost-effective PR is and how it delivers genuine ROI. Indeed, although total marketing spend is likely to decline, there is a massive opportunity for PR to increase its share of the pie as other forms of marketing struggle to prove their worth. In September’s edition of Admap, WPP media investment company GroupM predicted a 4% growth in PR investment over 2008, while traditional media advertising is expected to fall by almost 3%.

Print media – latest figures

• Circulation figures for national newspapers have fallen by 30% over the last 20 years with consequent reduction in advertising revenue

• Only the Financial Times and the Sun have bucked this trend in the last year, with both holding pretty steady

• The FT has done well out of the global financial crisis while the Sun has been aggressively cutting its prices in order to win readers

• The Guardian has joined the Daily Telegraph and the Independent in actually raising their cover prices in a desperate attempt to retain income

• According to the Quarterly Survey of Advertising Expenditure, adspend in business and professional magazines has dropped 4.8% in the 12 months to June 2008 while consumer magazines fell 2.1% over the same period

• Although many print titles are struggling, it is premature to declare the death of print. The growth of free newspapers has meant that the total worldwide newspaper circulation actually increased by 3.65% in 2007 (World Association of Newspapers)

TV – latest figures

• Audience figures for the five main ‘terrestrial’ channels have fallen by 25% over the last decade with BBC1 and ITV being the strongest hit

• Mainstream audiences have fallen with the take-up of digital TV – satellite revenue experienced an increase of 9% over the last year

• Falling audiences, combined with a reduction of the average CPT (cost per thousand) advertising rate has resulted in the total advertising revenue for ITV being slashed by almost half in real terms since the turn of the millennium.

WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell, told an industry audience in London last week that traditional broadcasting companies like ITV operating in one media, in one country would struggle in the future. ITV’s managing director of brand and commercial Rupert Howell responded to this on the BBC’s media show, by arguing that TV advertising is becoming more cost effective. He stated that current rates are equivalent to what they where in 1992, taking inflation into account. However media consultant Matthew Horsman commented that ITV was being affected by the old adage “the money will go where the eyeballs go”.

Online – latest figures

• Although online advertising expenditure has been increasing at an exponential rate over the last decade, even it is not immune from the worsening economy with a 4% fall in revenue in the second quarter of 2008

• Matthew Horsman, again speaking on the Media Show, commented that there is a common misconception about the growth of online advertising - he mentioned that while online search has increased dramatically, online display advertising has been pretty flat recently

• Online AVE figures are more closely linked with display advertising rather than search.  Since the cost per user has been static, the total cost is therefore dependent on the number of unique users. As has been posted on Measurement Matters a number of times, the real number of people seeing a particular webpage is up for debate and almost certainly a lot less than many people think.  The result of this is that online AVE's are likely to decline as the traffic figures catch up with reality.

So these are the trends up until now, but what about the future. Metrica’s Paul Kennedy has set up a poll so that you can have your say about the future of media with regards to news consumption, it would be great if you could vote.

Last week, while at the PRSA International conference, Richard posted on the Christian Science Monitor's decision to publish online only from April 2009.  This is an exciting move within the media industry as there is an increasing amount of evidence that audiences are looking to the internet for their daily news fix.  Paul Hender will be sharing some of that data on Metrica's Measurement Matters in the next couple of days so watch this space.

From an evaluation perspective, Metrica has been helping its clients to adapt to this shift for some time now.  We have been working with them as their PR plans have incorporated online media outlets and social media.  

We would love to know your views on the subject.  Let us know what you think about the CSM's decision.  Is it the beginning of an inevitable trend which will spell the end of blackened fingers, as the good ol' fashioned paper gets phased out?  Or will the big national papers always retain a hard copy?  Does the same hold true for regional papers?  Or will declining ad revenue force the smaller regional publications to rein in costs by going online only? And will the proliferation of web technology and online interaction change the entire way which we find our news?

Sorry, this poll has closed, but you can find the results here.