Posts Tagged ‘online’

Today sees the disappearance of The Times and The Sunday Times behind the dreaded paywall. An introductory offer of £1 per week for the first 30 days, and £2 per week after that is the only way you’ll get to see what both news sites have to offer. But how likely are we to fork out for content, and will we really miss anything if we don’t?

The staff at The Times seem very confident – at a recent PR Newswire Meet the Media event Tom Whitwell, Assistant Editor of The Times with responsibility for online, saw no reason why the paywall would turn people away from the site. Tom suggested that peoples’ attitudes towards paying for content have changed drastically in recent years; people no longer have qualms about paying £9.99 for The Times iPad app or spending a cheeky 59p on the latest version of Angry Birds for their iPhone. What will attract paying readers to the site, according to Tom, is its wealth of specialised content and the feeling of being part of a closer relationship between the reader and writer. I particularly liked his comparison of paying for content to watching live music – would you rather see your favourite band for free at Wembley, or pay a small price to see them in a smaller, intimate venue?

But not everyone agrees with Tom. The Guardian recently published the result of two surveys into reader attitudes towards print and digital media, The first, from Ipsos, saw a meagre 11% of online adults stating they would choose to access their news digitally and only 3% saying they would opt for a monthly online subscription. An overwhelming 77% said they had no interest whatsoever in paying for news content online. The second survey, compiled by YouGov, had similar results with 83% of respondents saying they would refuse to pay for online content.

Quite contrasting views I’m sure you’ll agree, and as The Times is the first non-specialist UK newspaper to head behind the paywall, we have no real comparison to show who is right. I feel that there will need to be something pretty spectacular on the site to encourage me to pay – what about you?

As the late Michael Jackson once sang: “It don’t matter if you’re black or white.” A new study from Ruder Finn supports this hypothesis.

Ruder Finn Intent Index

The Intent Index reveals a new view on why people go online and redefines how we look at demographics. The important concept here for digital business trends is that marketers need to truly connect with their audiences, and not treat their online communications like a checklist of tasks.

As a result, Ruder Finn co-CEO Kathy Bloomgarden has said that “intent is the new demographic.” She continues,

“Delving deeper into the underlying motivations of online behavior is critical to developing proactive strategies. Just being online is not enough to leverage digital channels to drive business imperatives. Audiences must be targeted based upon their intent.”

She recently discussed the Intent Index in a video interview with PR Week in the US.

You can view the results, which will be updated quarterly, with a cool, interactive flash tool here: www.ruderfinn.com/intent

It’s quite addictive.

You can view the full press release along with interesting results here: RF’s New Study of Online Behavior Focuses On User Intent

The survey has the capability of being narrowed down for specific industries, and an EU-focused survey is planned for a future quarter. Please comment if you’re interested.

For those of you on Twitter, here are some “re-tweetable” findings (using #intentindex or #rfintent via @RuderFinn):

More than twice as many people go online to socialize (81%) than to do business (39%) or shop (31%)

72% of people go online just to become part of a community

Seniors are going online today for the same reasons younger people are; to have fun (82%) and to socialize (80%)

More people go online to connect via a social networking site (41%) than to post comments or opinions (34%)

More people go online to be entertained (82%) than entertain others (48%)

People seek education and entertainment: most people go online both to learn (88%) and have fun (83%)

Almost half of people (47%) go online to learn to improve themselves and nearly one-third (31%) to find self-help experts or books

The desire to learn drives people to the Internet; top areas are new subjects (68%), the world (65%), a disease or condition (61%)

Three times as many people go online to compare prices (66%) rather than people via dating sites (21%)

E-commerce isn’t dead — one-third of people (34%) go online to purchase an item

Top things people go online to buy: household items (49%), electronics (45%); music (35%), movies (29%)

More men (42%) than women (36%) go online to do business

Women comment, men read: 55% of women go online to find venues for personal expression compared to only 43% of men

The age of blogs: 44% of people go online to create or update blogs and 42% of people go online to read other people’s blogs.

Women (48%) are much more likely than men (39%) to go online to advocate for an issue or position

The Ruder Finn Intent Index is based on a study among Internet users that asks respondents how frequently they go online for 295 reasons. The Intent Index shows that a person’s intent may be a better indicator for how to develop a communications campaign than demographic formulas. This post also appears on Left Brain.

A company that specialises in broadcast media came into the office today to give us a talk about the possibilities out there in the world of broadcast.

Despite the increasing number of media channels available, print coverage remains the medium of choice for most clients and pr efforts reflect this. In fact broadcast media can often be seen as a bit of an add on.  Are you pushing the release out to all contacts on the media list? Well then you better add in some broadcast media! And even then most people think as far as TV but might not consider online or radio.

Today’s discussion looked at TV, radio and online broadcast but it was the facts thrown up about radio that interested me most. Radio has perhaps suffered for a while under the false impression that it is an outdated channel but this is by no means the case. Did you know for example that according to Q1 figures radio stations now have 45.8 million listeners per week in the UK? Indeed listening rates are higher than TV rates all the way up to mid afternoon. With figures like these and with hundreds and hundreds of radio stations in existence suddenly radio looks like a very interesting proposal.

Would be interesting to hear if anyone out there has done any radio campaigns recently and how they went? Is radio as worthwhile as these figures would suggest?