Roving Eyeball

Fear of a Mobile Planet

In the first of what is sure to be many articles in a similar vein,  media planner Ben Kunz writes at BusinessWeek Online about how mobile media threatens Google's online revenue model. The smaller screen allows for fewer ads and less ability to monetize. If substantial shares of Web traffic move to handsets, this could spell trouble for the very digital models that media companies were hoping would save their dwindling offline businesses. Well, not likely. TV didn't kill movies and the Web didn't kill print, and it is likely that profitable models will be found to exploit mobile. The Eyeball's take is that mobile gives media brands the opportunity to recapture lost users. His nibs are rediscovering Time, CBS, USAToday, and Car and Driver precisely because their mobile extensions stand out and advertise their core value propositions so well. The real economics of mobile for most media brands should be how this platform helps engage the user across all other platforms, how it can be one arc in the loop of TV/Print,Web, email, SMS and WAP.

On minonline:

This Week: min Day Summit 2008 wrap-up, pictures, and links to Geoff "eMarketer" Ramsey's hyper-caffeinated "Wake-Up Call." Maxim celebrates opening its branded Dominican Republic Bungalows…in mid-Manhattan. We have the pics from the Dominican Republic.

Also check out Steve Smith's minsider blog.

In min This Month

Complex Magazine partners with Adidas to walk the walk of integration; 24/7 RealMedia's new BBN B2B ad network tries to succeed where others have faded away.

People News

Lambiase Gets on the Road

Rodale executive and former SmartMoney CEO Chris Lambiase is promoted to VP and group publisher for Running and Cycling. He now oversees Runner's World and Running Times brands and replaces Andrew Hersam, who leaves Rodale for a project that will be announced soon.  

Burbank Leaves AOL for Nielsen

Less than a year after joining AOL as its CMO, John Burbank is leaving the company to join Nielsen. AOL has seen a number of executives leave in recent weeks. According to reports, Burbank's CMO role had shifted as the AOL strategy has moved more toward its ad network and free content models. At Nielsen, it seems he will have a larger, overarching role in managing the brand across product lines and platforms.

eMedia Matchup

Greystripe

Born: 2005
Profile: www.greystripe.com and GameJump.com
Resides: San Francisco
Chaperone: Michael Chang, CEO
Income: VC funding from Incubic and Monitor Venture Funds
Status: Partnered with Opera Mobile Browser, MocoSpace, Vivendi Games and Digital Chocolate Games
Call Me:  415-651-2650

The ad-supported free mobile games service boasts almost 1.6 million games downloads from its partnership with Opera's Mini browser. Its GameJump portal is also partnering with other publishers for additional distribution. The company inserts ads in front of and after a downloadable mobile game session. It addresses the ongoing problem of getting mobile users to pay for games on handsets.

Lingospot

Born: NA
Profile: www.lingospot.com
Resides: Los Angeles, Calif
Chaperone: Nikos Iatropoulos, CEO
Income: Privately funded
Status: Recently partnered with Forbes.com to provide contextual pop-up bubbles on key words in articles that contain related content links
Call Me: 310-475-1600

In a new twist on the in-text pop-up ads model, users who mouse over select keywords in forbes.com articles will get a bubble with links to related articles both in Forbes sites as well as the network of hundreds of blogs and small sites within the new Forbes network.

Research & Stat Snacks

$184 Million Real VC Bucks Go to Virtual Worlds

While the buzz around virtual worlds like Second Life and There.com have eased a bit in recent months, Virtual Worlds Management, a trade media company in the space, reports $184 million invested across 23 worlds from the venture capital community in the first quarter of 2008. That interest has slowed from the $425 million funded in Q4 2007, but VWM explains that new metrics methods are not including as many games companies. Virtual worlds like Chinese casual games operator 9You ($100 million), Outspark ($11 million) and Unisfair ($10 million) were leading the pack. The term "virtual world" is starting to morph into other categories like social networking and casual multi-player gaming. One has to wonder how long the category is justifiable as a label before it just becomes a feature of various other genres.

Gays and Lesbians Are Blogtastic

File this under "we're not sure why they even asked the question." Harris Interactive finds that gay and lesbian online users are more active on blogs than straight counterparts. A survey of over 2,700 adults had 13% self-identify as gay, and of that group 51% say they read some kind of blog. This compares to 36% of straights. The gay and lesbian audience also participates more actively online, with 50% sending an instant message in the last month vs. 34% of heterosexuals. In fact, a quarter of gay men send an IM at least once a day.

Mobile News

Men's Health Mobilizes Those Rock Hard Abs

While reported elsewhere as somehow entirely new and novel, Men's Health will make its pages interactive via mobile image database technology. Using provider SnapTell, readers will be able to send phone cam images of the ads into a database that recognizes the page and sends back additional information. Several years ago, ElleGirl and other HFMUS magazines started a similar program with Mobot. Last year Maxim had a "mobile" issue with SMS short code prompts next to articles and ads. The return channel of SMS response to the photo snap can link to any manner of WAP site, coupons, videos, etc. For advertisers, the value add is that it calls greater attention to the ad creative itself and extends the relationship with the user. It is unclear how the magazine will cue readers to taking the snap, how involved the instructions will be for use and whether users will have to email the image to a specific address or use a downloadable application to send in the pic. All of these elements have been barriers in the past to getting good performance from this approach. SnapTell is also powering a similar in-book program in the current issue of Rolling Stone, with select advertisers participating.

M&A and Other Deals

CondeNet Books SFO*Media

Conde Net continues to acquire its way out into the wider Web. Expanding its travel reach from Concierge.com, Conde buys the publisher of HotelChatter.com and Jaunted.com, SFO*Media. Together the sites represent a million uniques a month. Travel is a very cluttered and diverse category online, with a long, long tail of niche content. Finding a way to stand out in that cacophony is an achievement, and any two blogs that can attract a sizable audience consistently is even rarer. In February, Concierge itself reported 774,000 uniques to Min's Digital Box Scores.

Video

VCs Love That Video, Too

Along with Virtual Worlds, online video isn't bringing much cash, except from VC funds. According to a custom study for MeTeeVee.com from Dow Jones, $460.5 million in funding went to video-related start-ups in 2007, up from $266.9 million in 2006. In the first quarter of 2008 alone, investment has outpaced last year's rate, with $217.3 million. Oddly enough, most publishers actually running online video are wondering whether when and how it will show a profit. Apparently, being a start up is the best way to raise money from the video hype.

Sites to See

Hollywood Reporter Is Brand New

The Hollywood Reporter's total brand relaunch this week includes thorough redesigns of both print and online at THR.com. All the usual suspects are here as the site catches up with the latest trends. The new site adds more integrated ad units and the de rigueur video component. We counted five ad units for Iron Man on the front page alone, and a review of the film (which linked to the wrong place, by the way). The THR Network of video includes four channels: box office rundowns, interviews, festival reports and news. And naturally, there is the blog, "Hollywood Live Feed," which features quick takes on news throughout the day and a morning ratings update via email. A digital edition of THR is now available in 12 languages.  See minonline.

AOL Claims a Comeback

As paid subscribers dwindled, executives fled and Time Warner stockholders urged a sell-off, the much-maligned AOL was quietly building traffic at a number of properties, the company claims this week. Citing Media Metrix figures for March, AOL says that its major content sites grew 11% in unique visitors year-over-year and 35% in page views. AOL verticals (home, games, music, sports, etc.) have all grown into double and triple digits in the last year. New sites and projects like Asylum.com (men), Walletpop.com (consumer finance), Spinner.com (music) and Urlesque.com (blog and Web media) illustrate the evolving AOL content strategy. Following in the success of TMZ, AOL is developing new standalone brands and URLs that gain identity apart from the AOL brand. This is sort of an anti-portal strategy, it seems: develop brands that are not easily associated with a massive corporate entity.

Vendor News

24/7 Goes Psycho...Graphic

Claiming to be the first ad network devoted to deeply psychographic targeting, 24/7 Real Media partners with Mindset Media to target consumers by personality traits. A "Mindset Buy" can target personality: creativity, assertiveness, self-esteem, and 17 other qualities. Mindset Media studies the online habits of users to determine how different personality attributes map against different sites and against different products.

Ripple6 to Power Gannett and Meredith Social Networks

New York-based white label social media provider Ripple6 will build a community for Gannett around indie bands. And for Meredith, the company will start a social site for recipe sharing. Meredith says it is considering more such social networks that target "women's passions" and that work across the various online properties. Ripple6 tools let users create their own profiles and erect their own groups to share text, photos and videos. The company recently built a community for P&G and its Guiding Light soap opera fans.

Face Time

May 1, 2008
The National Magazine Awards
Honoring magazines, in print or online sponsored by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME)
NYC

May 1, 2008
Interactive Advertising: Where Science Meets Imagination
The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA

This one-day event on emerging media and technologies in interactive advertising is a collaboration of Netplusmarketing and Advertising.com.

May 13, 2008
min Digital Webinar: How to Build & Monetize Community Online & Measure Audience Engagement
Tuesday, 1:30-3:00 p.m. ET