Which websites users go to for health information

You’ve had a headache for about two days straight, and you think you have a slight fever. Are you getting sick? What are your options- go to the doctor? Go to a friend for health tips? Go to a minute clinic? Go online? For those of you who chose going online with your symptom inquiries, what website did you use? If you are like 53% of respondents from the Makovsky Health and Kelton research survey, you went to WebMD.

According to eMarketer, a recent study of US internet users went to WebMD as the major online resource for health information. Following the health website was Wikipedia with 22%, health magazine websites at 19%, advocacy group websites at 16%, YouTube at 12%, blogs with 10%, Facebook at 10% and lastly, pharma company websites with 9%.

The survey focused on pharma company websites a bit further. A common reason for a user to navigate to this website is to research drugs/procedures following a diagnosis. This goes in line with the earlier results that few users seek these types of websites for health information and diagnosis.

Health care advertisers should take note in where potential patients get information. 

Helpful tips to sales representatives to make media buyers and clients happy

Normally, this blog is intended to report and explain media research, new devices, gizmos, and general media news. This week, we are going to take a step back and talk about the human factor to advertising. Specifically, the sales representatives that help media buyers/planners and advertising agencies alike turn the clients’ expectations into reality.

It’s been said numerous times that word-of-mouth is the best form of advertising, which is true also in working relationships and reputations. A good word-of-mouth can help sales reps insure a loyal and long-standing working relationship with most media buyers out there. Let’s face it, we’re a particular breed. If we find a sales rep we like, we are not going to let them go for anything… even added value.

Here are a few tips from one media buyer to make the relationship mutually exclusive and mutually beneficial.

1.      Respond back to messages: Whether we call you, email you, or meet you in person, please respond back to us within 24 hours. We typically are working under a deadline, and need to make sure whatever we were asking for is on your radar. Even a message back saying, “I received your request, and I am working on it,” will earn you a few brownie points. Having to track down a person multiple times without a response will just make buyers grumpy. We know you are busy; we just don’t want to be forgotten.

2.      Be honest: Buyers know that sales reps need to reinforce the product with all of the good sales points, but please just be honest with us. If we want to buy a certain percentage of your inventory, and you don’t think it will actually run, let us know. We would much rather be told, “No, there’s not enough inventory to cover what you want. So, let’s look at other options…” vs. “oh, sorry, it didn’t run because there wasn’t enough inventory to support your buy.” What?!?! Now, we get the job of telling the client it didn’t work, which makes buyers grumpy.

3.      Manage expectations: Please try to under promise and over deliver vs. the opposite. Again, it makes the buyers grumpy.

4.      Write important dates down: If a buyer asks for recaps for a promotion or campaign by a certain date, write it down in your calendar. If we have to follow up multiple times, we get grumpy.

5.      Don’t blame others: Mistakes happen. We get it, but if you were to blame, own up to it. Please don’t blame traffic, corporate, your replacement while you were out, etc. It gets old, and it makes us grumpy.

Are you seeing a pattern here? Buyers can get grumpy for a variety of reasons, which isn’t helpful for the buyer/sales rep relationship. Likewise, we buyers know that we need to work on giving you more realistic deadlines and be patient when mistakes happen. We make them, too.

At the end of the day, a buyers main goal is to make the client happy. As such, we can only do that if we have a good team that consists of the buyers, sales reps, traffic department, and creative department. If we all work to make the clients’ goals our goals, there will be less grumpiness. Who doesn’t want that?

Local newspapers' classified revenues decrease

Media is not a constant, unchanging thing; it is something that is ever-evolving with existing vendors while new vendors enter the scene. What advertisers and media must do alike is figure out how each platform is unique and communicate that to the end user- the customer. MediaPost recently reported about how the free online classifieds site Craigslist has affected local newspapers’ own classified revenues.

A new study, “Responses to Entry in Multi-Sided markets: The Impact of Craigslist on Local Newspapers,” was created by the professors at NYU Stern School of business and Harvard Business School. Results showed that local newspapers reported a $5 billion loss in classified ad revenue between the years 2000 – 2007 when Craigslist came into the marketplace.

Observations of the papers that heavily relied on classified ad sales showed a chain reaction based off of diminishing revenues. These papers attempted to increase subscription prices to make up for the lack of classified, which in turn lead to lower subscribers. This led the papers to really rely on display ad rates.

While this can be taken as a strike towards local newspapers, it can really be the starting ground to refocus on what consumers want from a news product. Advertisers will have to work with news vendors to come up with cost effective and mutually advantageous opportunities to reach target audiences. 

Online ad revenue grows for local radio

Local radio stations have been working to incorporate the digital platform into its arsenal of options for listeners and advertisers alike. Overall, online ad revenues have increased for local radio stations, but how does that compare to terrestrial radio revenues?

MediaPost reports that experts are suggesting a 14% increase from 2012 for online ad revenue for local radio stations. The Radio Advertising Bureau arranged the report, and Borrell Associates lead the study. In 2012, online ad revenues reached almost $371 million, and estimates place the end of 2013 seeing revenues of up to $420 million.

While traditional ad formats were decreasing in value for radio stations, there has been growth in other formats like social media, audio, video, and email. Approximately 20% of all digital revenue came in the form of streaming audio ads.

Digital continues to grow in radio; however, it is important to note that it remains a small portion of overall revenue. Local radio stations’ online ad revenue only contributes 2.5% of total earnings.

Nielsen uses a new definition of TV homes to generate the Universe Estimate

Prior to the television industry’s 2013/14 season upfronts, the Nielsen Company typically releases its new TV home estimate. This allows advertisers to better estimate audiences.

According to MediaPost, the overall American TV household Universe Estimate grew from 2012. Last year, it was estimated that there were 114.2 million TV homes. This year, the estimate has grown by 1.2% to 115.6 million. In fact, there are about 1.6% more TV viewers from last year, which calculates into 294 million viewers who are 2 years old+. 

One reason given for this growth could be the new Nielsen definition of a TV home. Now, each home must have at least one working TV or monitor that can deliver content by means of antennae, cable set-top-box or a satellite receiver. The satellite receiver could include a broadband connection.

With the new TV home definition in use, it will be interesting to see how the TV home population develops over the next few television seasons.

The most common demographic for tablet owners

Tablet computers haven’t been available to consumers for too long, but they have gained major ground to be in the hands of a third of American adults.

Pew Research Center released information this summer on the demographic breakdown of tablet owners. According to the Center for Media Research, data shows that by May 2013, 34% of adults owned a tablet computer. A tablet could be any one of the following devices: iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Google Nexus, or Kindle Fire. Compared to the previous year, ownership was at 18%, and going back to 2011 at 8%. Obviously, there is a history of steady growth for the device.

If advertisers were to make a broad generalization of the typical tablet owner, it would be an adult between the ages of 35-44 (49%), who graduated college (49%) and had a household income of $75,000 or more (56%). Reports show that these demographic categories have the highest index for being an owner of a tablet.

The demographic categories that have the lowest index for being an owner are people aged 65+ (18%), who did not graduate high school (17%), and who make less than $30,000 (20%).

Interesting to note is that about 50% of people who are parents to minor children have a tablet device. Compare that to 27% of people without children have one.

As ownership will most likely continue to grow, it will be interesting to see if the demographic breakdown will remain the same.

Research done to show if TV affects tweets or if the reverse is true

It’s not a new discovery in the media world that people can utilize multiple screens at the same time. What research hasn’t established is the concept of one media screen driving the other’s viewership up and vice versa. According to AdvertisingAge, the Nielsen Company and Twitter are working together to discover the correlation between live TV ratings and tweets.

Using SocialGuide, which derives from Nielsen and McKinsey & Co, over 221 primetime broadcast programs were monitored for the TV ratings and tweets. The study found that higher TV ratings often lead to more tweets of the particular show. Results showed a 48% increase in tweets when a live TV program grew in ratings. Likewise, as the number of tweets grew, it increased the live TV ratings in about 29% of the studied episodes.

Reports warn that this outcome may not occur with every program. A few examples of extremely hyped TV shows on Twitter that did not respond with high ratings were Oprah’s interview with Lance Armstrong and SyFy’s first viewing of “Sharknado.”

Overall, it makes sense. If you are browsing Twitter while watching something on TV and see a lot of chatter about a different program, it wouldn’t take much effort to change the channel. Similarly, if a particular show is so great for a variety of reasons, and you just need to share the wealth with everyone else, you may tweet about it.