For years Madison Avenue's leading thinkers have pondered the same fundamental question: How much of their advertising actually works? In what is likely the grandest post-buy analysis of all time, the Advertising Research Foundation this week will release findings of a review of more than a dozen of the most sophisticated cross-media case studies ever conducted. Its conclusion: About $50 billion in U.S. ad spending is "wasted." That figure equates to about 18.8 percent of the $266 billion in U.S. ad spending estimated by Universal McCann for 2004, but the precise number isn't as important as the fact that the ad industry now claims to have identified some of its biggest and most obvious areas of waste.
Any goodwill towards newspaper companies for strong performances in August may be short-lived. September is more than halfway through and already several companies are warning that in the end it won't look pretty.
Patricia Calhoun, editor of Denver's Westword, joined director John Sayles and others associated with his new film, Silver City, on a promotional tour through Colorado. She has a cameo appearance as a journalist in the film. From her seat on the Silver City Express bus, she observes what happens as the movie premieres in several cities. Also on the tour was cartoonist Tom Tomorrow, whose work appears in many alt-weeklies.
Twelve former employees of the Cleveland Free Times have filed a lawsuit in Ohio against New Times and Village Voice Media, reports the San Francisco Bay Guardian. The suit is the latest fallout from an October 2002 deal between the two companies that shuttered Free Times and New Times Los Angeles. The deal led to a Justice Department antitrust investigation that culminated in a consent decree in which neither company admitted guilt. The suit alleges that the workers who lost their jobs when the two papers closed were terminated illegally; the lawyer who filed the suit is seeking class-action certification.
Catherine Nelson, associate publisher of AAN member Shepherd Express in Milwaukee, Wis., is scheduled to deliver a lecture titled "There Are Alternatives" at the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association convention next month. The PNA Web site describes Nelson, who was formerly publisher of two Pittsburgh alt-weeklies that went out of business, as "an industry guru on alternative papers." In addition to her position at Shepherd Express, Nelson presently serves as publisher of the new, daily-owned Core Weekly, which competes with AAN member Isthmus in Madison, Wis. (Scroll down the linked page to read about Nelson's lecture.)
The Chicago Reader will hit stands on Thursday, Sept. 16, with a colorful front page and new layout, marking its first redesign in 12 years, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. Rather than feature the text of the lead story, the new front page will read vertically and be highlighted by color photos and art above the fold. An advertisement will be below the fold. The paper's inner sections will also get front-page makeovers to prominently feature week-at-a-glance calendars and critics' picks. Editor Alison True tells reporter Eric Herman that the goal of the redesign was to put "a lot more information on the covers."
Some newspapers have begun allowing readers to buy goods directly through online classifieds or bid for merchandise on the papers' Web sites, but their entrance onto the e-commerce stage is off to a rocky start. The industry agrees that papers must have a strong presence online as readers spend more time on the Internet, but debates both readers' interest in local papers as online shopping destinations and whether such transactions can be profitable for newspapers.
ignaling a potential falloff in ad spending next year, WPP unit Millward Brown Tuesday released a survey indicating that far fewer senior level marketing executives plan to boost ad spending in the major media in 2005. The study, Millward Brown's so-called "Marketing & Media Snapshot 2004," was sponsored by Advertising.com and shows that online media continues to have the greatest ad budget expansion plans among marketers, with more than half planning to boost spending in the medium in both 2004 and 2005. However, the percentage of marketers planning to boost online ad outlays in 2005 fell more than three percentage points to 54.1 percent in 2005.
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