Our editor at large covers the doings at Google and AOL, King Howard's final broadcast days & more from the interactive week.
Except for the New York City transit strike, all talk this week has been about Google, AOL and Howard Stern.
Yahoo! Inc. revealed this week that more than 4.4 million video streams of its Howard Stern webcast were streamed to fans last Friday -- the day of the event -- and that more than 214,000 users simultaneously watched (on Yahoo!) the live Howard Stern celebration activities after his final day of terrestrial radio. Those numbers are significant in that they top any other live entertainment webcast.
As I reported last week, Yahoo! escorted Stern on a Yahoo!-branded double-decker bus after his final FM radio show to an exclusive SIRIUS special event at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square, which lasted almost five hours. As a result, there were more than 10,000 new Yahoo! group members, more than 1100 photos shared via Flickr, which were viewed half a million times, and over 122,000 Yahoo! podcast streams in association with the Howard Nation community.
Stern will be making his debut on SIRIUS satellite radio on January 9, and SIRIUS reports the Howard Stern webcast produced dramatic results in retail sales from users clicking through the Yahoo! site. The four retailers listed on the Howard Stern live event site -- Best Buy, Circuit City, Radio Shack, and Crutchfield -- each reported sales far above their average business, and, in some cases, sales above their best selling days of the year.
Stern's departure from broadcast radio last week has raised the questions of how many loyal Stern fans will follow him to Sirius Satellite Radio, and how this move will impact the satellite radio market overall. According to Hitwise, the market share of visits to SiriusRadio.com and XMRadio.com increased 99 percent and 62 percent respectively for the week ending December 17, 2005 versus the same week last year.
Maybe the man really is the king of all media.
Speaking of royalty, the biggest story in recent history was Google's decision to shell out a kingly sum of $1 billion for a five percent stake in Time Warner's AOL earlier this week. Google will become the only shareholder in AOL other than Time Warner. Time Warner will retain management control and full strategic flexibility over AOL, while Google will have certain customary minority shareholder rights.
Much has already been said about what this deal means to the various parts of this business and the world at large (check out Kevin Ryan's SearchTHIS column this week), but the companies are calling the deal an expansion of the original strategic alliance formed about three years ago.
The agreement creates a global online advertising partnership and makes more of AOL's content available to Google users. Google will continue providing search technology to AOL's network of internet properties worldwide. Most notably, the companies are planning on expanding display advertising throughout the Google network and collaborating in video search and showcasing AOL's premium video service within Google Video.
Finally, the companies will work on enabling Google Talk and AIM instant messaging users to communicate with each other, provided certain conditions are met.
JupiterResearch forecasts that online display and search advertising spending will grow at an average annual rate of 10 percent between 2005 and 2010, driven by the media and entertainment, financial services and automotive industries. Any guesses on which two web properties will see most of that money?
Speaking of research, DoubleClick Email Solutions this week released the results of its sixth annual Consumer Email Study, which said that the lines between personal and professional email usage are blurring and consumers are less wary of spam than they used to be. According to the data, fifty-seven percent of respondents view their work email at work during the day at least occasionally, while almost as many view work emails from home in the evening (55 percent) and on weekends (54 percent). In addition, forty eight percent of respondents check their personal emails at least occasionally at work during the day, with twenty-one percent doing so all the time.
DoubleClick says that almost half of all respondents report owning at least three email accounts. While ninety-five percent consider one of their addresses to be their primary account, almost three quarters of respondents (72 percent) use a single address for making online purchases. The average consumer has maintained the same email address for four to six years, while two-thirds of respondents have never changed their email address. Finally, while spam is still an issue that concerns a large number of consumers (55 percent are very concerned), viruses (75 percent), identity theft (67 percent), spyware (66 percent) and scams (61 percent) are of greater concern to consumers.
Of course, there's more to our business than email, spam, Google and AOL, so it seems important to mention that next week will mark the beginning of an end of sorts for TV advertisers. They will no longer spend as much time wondering just how many of their ads are skipped by DVR users, because Nielsen Media Research will start offering ratings that include time shifted viewing. Nielsen said they'd start small, tracking just 60 DVR households, but that number will grow quickly. Clients will have access to minute-by-minute viewership of the DVRs, and, since the sample is so small, the ratings will probably be more useful for spotting trends than for individual shows. I don't want to relaunch the debate on the merits of TV ratings, with which we're all too familiar. Instead, I'll simply say that this is a good start and can only mean good things for interactive
On that note, since we won't be publishing next Friday, I want to take this opportunity to wish you a wonderful holiday and a very happy and prosperous New Year! Here's to more good news, more good starts, more moves in the right direction and more of the boundless innovation that makes this business so exciting to work in.
I look forward to seeing you here in 2006!
iMedia Connection Editor at Large Masha Geller is the founder of interactive marketing and corporate communications consultancy Geller Public Relations in New York. She has been covering the interactive advertising industry since 1999 as the former editor in chief of MediaPost.com, and is a widely-published thought leader in the interactive arena.