News Bulletin – May/ June 06
Ireland prepares for interactive TV ads
http://www.enn.ie/news.html?code=9350510
Interactive television advertising has been relatively successful to date in the UK, but views are mixed on whether Irish advertisers will take to the service.
Recent developments have raised expectations in some quarters that Irish viewers and advertisers may increasingly use interactive advertising during 2003.
The first of these is the continued increase in digital TV subscriptions. Recent figures released by BSkyB showed it had 272,000 customers for the service in Ireland in the fourth quarter of 2002, which equates to about one subscribe per five homes. This was up 17,000 on the quarter previously.
Another has seen the UK’s biggest commercial TV operation, ITV, sign an agreement with BSkyB earlier this month that has sees ITV join RTE, BBC, Channel 4, and Sky on the same interactive TV platform. This means that an interactive advert developed for the Sky platform can be launched on all these channels.
According to Nicola Riordan, sales and marketing executive with Irish interactive TV company, Digisoft.tv, advertisers here are excited about the possibilities of interactive advertising.
“We are talking to a number of advertising agencies, as well as companies in sectors such as financial services, travel and retail about the potential of interactive advertising and feedback has been very positive,” remarked Riordan.
She said this was because such ads offer advertisers more than the usual static 30 seconds TV advertisements as they allow them to interact with the viewer directly for anything up to three minutes.
Riordan pointed to the UK as an example of a market that has taken to interactive advertising.
She said that recent research had shown that digital penetration in the UK is greater than 40 percent and 76 percent of households with interactive TV accessed interactive services, including advertising, in 2001. In addition, more than 240 interactive campaigns have been featured on the Sky platform since its launch and a report from Institute for Practitioners in Advertising in the UK has urged the advertising industry and advertisers to adopt interactive TV.
“Rapid growth in digital subscriber numbers, increasing use of interactivity in advertisements and the inclusion of all the major channels on the Sky digital platform are promising developments for Digisoft and our customers,” said Riordan. “These advances will allow our clients to reach a large and rapidly developing market by launching their interactive services across a choice channels.”
However, one channel that may not be broadcasting interactive advertising is RTE. The state broadcaster has recently purchased infrastructure that will allow the service to be offered and it was thought by some that it would start running interactive ads in mid-2003, but this may not now be the case.
RTE’s head of new media, Eugene Murray, told ElectricNews.Net that there had not been much demand for the service so far. "Interactive advertising in the UK has been quite successful, but I am not sure whether the size of the Irish digital market, as it currently stands, will be attractive enough to advertisers," commented Murray.
Conlon bows out of IAVI
Emma Conlon, Marketing and PR Manager with IAVI, has stepped down from her position. Emma, who has worked for the Institute for the last six years, was previously involved with PR for the National Concert Hall and the RDS. She will work on a freelance PR basis in the future.
Google leads search, Yahoo wins portal wars
http://www.enn.ie/frontpage/news-9696416.html
While Google is storming ahead of rivals in the search arena, it isn’t faring so well in its non-core offerings, according to figures revealed on Monday.
Newly compiled US statistics from online traffic analysts at Hitwise suggest Google reigns supreme in terms of searches and seems to be increasing its lead. Based on surveying last week’s internet usage, Google receives over 47 percent of search traffic, while Yahoo gets 16 percent and third-place MSN receives just 12 percent.
While Yahoo’s dominance in search has waned considerably in recent years (only a few years ago Yahoo had 40 percent of searches), it is by no means out of the way in the web portal stakes. For example Yahoo’s News & Media service garners a healthy 6.3 percent of news traffic while Google’s 1.9 percent news share ranks fifth for news behind Yahoo, the Weather Channel (5.6 percent), MSNBC (4 percent), and CNN (3.95 percent).
Yahoo’s mail service, Yahoo Mail, also leads the e-mail rankings, recording 42 percent of all visits to mail sites last week, followed by Microsoft’s Hotmail with 23 percent. Somewhat surprisingly, new boy MySpace Mail received nearly 20 percent of all mail site visits with Google lagging at the back of the class with just a 2.5 percent share for its Gmail service.
More than half of all internet visits are to business and finance sites and in this category Yahoo Finance and MSN Money Central are way ahead with 35 percent and 13 percent, respectively. Google Finance lies 40 rankings behind leader Yahoo with only 0.29 percent.
Looking at maps online is a growth area of the internet. Mapquest is the segment leader with 56 percent of this traffic followed by Yahoo Maps at 21 percent. Google Maps comes a credible third place with 7.5 percent while MSN Virtual Earth gets 4.3 percent of armchair explorers, and Google Earth receives 2 percent.
The figures were posted on the blog site of Hitwise analyst Bill Tancer on Monday and have created a mass of speculation already. Commentators are suggesting that Google has received a lot of press over its non-search capabilities but users have not changed over from established portals such as MSN and Yahoo due to familiarity rather than cost. Based on comments from Google spokespersons in the US media the search giant does not seem fazed by its low figures in its non core area and expects growth in the future.
How many (PR) bloggers does it take to change the world?
Piaras Kelly PR – Irish Public Relations
http://www.pkellypr.com/blog/2006/0526/how-many-pr-bloggers-does-it-take-to-change-the-world/
One.
It takes the rest of them to talk about it.
While Irish bloggers are busy waffling about a cease and desist letter. PR bloggers created their own storm in a tea cup last week about the launch of the Social Media press release by Shift Communications.
I agree that the press release is evolving, but I think it’s due to the fact that the way we digest information is evolving. The Social Media press release isn’t suddenly going to do away with puff copy. It does show some signs though of where we should be headed.
For starters, one man’s spam is another man’s treasure. I’ve pitched a story to two journalists before and I was shot down in flames by one, but given a nice feature by the other. In much the same way, when I issue a press release generally I don’t expect every single journalist in the world to write about it.
Everyone has their own viewpoint and their own opinions. I believe that Shift Communications are closer to the money with the inclusion of a link to ongoing coverage, industry news and reaction.
I’m a big fan of Cnet’s ’The Big Picture’ feature whereby news readers can click on the option to put the story into context by showing a diagram which illustrates how it is related to other stories. (Example – Story and The Big Picture)
If press releases are going to start to evolve though, the media are also going to have to make the same leaps and bounds. Too many outlets are taking the walled garden approach when it comes to their online news sections. As a story develops, the article should provide links to relevant milestones in the overall story.
The Internet has enabled press releases to become a much richer experience, providing journalists with related stories, putting them into context and showing current trends. How they evolve will be interesting to watch, but the Social Media press release is only a step in the right direction, not the destination.
Ryanair criticised over ’untruthful’ free flights offer
http://www.breakingnews.ie/story.asp?j=247169100&p=z47y7xx5x&n=247170087
Ryanair failed to make travel restrictions clear in a promotion for three million free tickets, the industry watchdog ruled today.
The budget airline’s national press advert breached the code’s rules relating to truthfulness, the Advertising Standard Authority (ASA) said.
Its offer of “three million £0 tickets – just pay your taxes and charges” did not apply to flights on Fridays or at certain times on other days.
However, the advert failed to make this clear, with small print stating only that the offer “… excludes travel for major sporting events and holiday periods”.
The offer was only available on flights between noon on Mondays and noon on Thursdays and only after midday on Saturdays. It did not apply on Fridays.
After an investigation, the ASA said: “We concluded that the ad was misleading and told Ryanair to make clear all significant exclusions to offers in the small print of future advertising.”
Ryanair said the advert was not misleading because it made clear that the offer excluded major sporting events and holiday periods.
The advert also directed customers to the airline’s website, where all the terms and exclusions were explained, the airline said. Around 98% of Ryanair bookings are made online, the company added.
Power to the public relations people
Celebrity culture is critiqued in a wry British satire, writes Michael Idato.
In the murky, manipulative world of Prentiss McCabe, the fictional public relations company that is the centrepiece of the brilliant new satire Absolute Power, anything, or anyone, can be spun.
A boring Big Brother contestant flogging an appalling novel? An ambitious archbishop with the Church of England’s top post in his sights? What about a famous TV historian whose sources are unsound? It’s all fair game to spin doctors Charles Prentiss (Stephen Fry) and Martin McCabe (John Bird).
The series, which borrows its name from British historian Lord Acton’s famous quote that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, explores the tools, mechanics and methodology of public relations and its complex relationship with the modern culture of celebrity.
Acton uttered the line while speaking about the crisis of “Papal infallibility” that rocked the Roman Catholic world in 1870. Absolute Power examines its implications in a more modern context.
“There is such a huge need for celebrity in this country and, I’d guess, all over the world,” producer Paul Schlesinger (Wild West, People Like Us) says.
“You ask young people what they want to be and the idea of wanting to be something specific is being eroded. The answer has become, ’I just want to be famous or rich’, and fame is more addictive than anything else.”
Absolute Power was created for radio in 2000, written by Mark Tavener, whose major credit was the dark comedy In the Red, about “murder, finance, and intrigue in the halls of the BBC”.
Tavener moved two of In the Red’s characters, Prentiss and McCabe, into Absolute Power, which focused on political spin in the wake of the rise of Britain’s New Labour movement in the late 1990s. Three years later, when Absolute Power was adapted from radio to television, Schlesinger admits the drastically different political landscape required a serious rethink of the show’s focus.
“A lot of time had elapsed and we felt the jokes had to widen out from the purely political to cover other stories,” he says. “The nice thing about a PR company, which wasn’t just a political PR company, meant we could look at PR in all its forms.”
The brief changed from dirty politics to celebrity scandals.
Changes were also made to the Prentiss-McCabe team featured in the radio series: arrogant Prentiss, wry McCabe and a work experience girl.
“It seemed an unlikely, or slightly incredible, team of people to be dealing across all these landscapes,” Schlesinger says.
In came devious Jamie Front (James Lance), honest Alison Jackman (Zoe Telford) and party girl Cat Durnford (Sally Bretton).
“A larger group of characters enabled us to cover a lot of different stories and to introduce another layer of character stuff, which I hope comes across in the television series,” Schlesinger says.
With Fry and Bird confirmed for the television version, Schlesinger was able to secure a great writing team: journalist and media commentator Mark Lawson and screenwriters Andy Rattenbury (Teachers) and Guy Andrews (Paparazzo).
“Stephen, as Charles Prentiss, has bucketloads of arrogance, a huge kind of brain and a huge amount of boldness in his approach. John, on the other hand, has a wonderful, benign cynicism. He’s slightly more cautious and he brings a wonderful dryness and wryness to the character. Once the writers got hold of that, we pushed it to its limits,” Schlesinger says.
Absolute Power is the latest in a long line of BBC comedies that began on radio before moving to television. Little Britain, Goodness Gracious Me and People Like Us were all radio comedies.
The relationship between the two media cultures, Schlesinger says, is vitally important to developing new ideas in comedy and entertainment.
The traffic isn’t all one way. Schlesinger recalls Little Britain’s Matt Lucas and David Walliams first dabbled in television, then radio, before returning to television, while Goodness Gracious Me creators Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal first pitched their series to TV comedy chief Jon Plowman, who decided its best chance was on radio.
“What is great about that is that it is a two-way process,” Schlesinger says.
