Headlines make it appear that the creative market is in a freefall. Layoffs at agencies, newspapers and magazines closing their doors, even online advertising has taken a hit. But digging a bit deeper, there are some reasons to be optimistic.
Publicis Groupe, the parent of many large agencies, reported this week a drop in profits that is close to 10%, and revenue for all businesses dropped from $6.5 Billion to $6.2 Billion – a $300 million drop. But the good news is that their CEO is indicating that their business is recovering, and that they expect to see revenue growth in 2010. The slowing rate of decline is being reported by their peers at Omnicom and Havas, and recent forecasts from Interpublic are pointing towards a recovery in ad spending later this year.
AOL, in the middle of a major rebranding and conversion to a media company, reported a decline in online advertising revenue last quarter that was only in the single digits – but they were profitable and made over $1M in profits after losing $1.96 Billion, with a B, in the same period last year. They’re still predicting declines in ad revenues through the end of the year, and – no surprise here – even larger losses of subscription revenue.
Ad pages placed in magazines are still declining, but it is now in the single digits. The good news is that nearly one-third of publications are seeing an increase in advertising pages, and those that are succeeding and profitable are implementing multi-platform strategies to reach their audiences via mobile, on-line, and in print.
Overall, the signs are looking more positive for the creative economy for 2010. While this may not lead to more hiring or more tech spending, it is showing a return towards normalcy.
Archive for the ‘technology’ Category
Creative economy showing signs of stabilization
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
eBook readers good for publishers
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009Earlier this week I wrote about the expanded use of e-readers. This growth is good news for publishers, authors, consumers, and the environment. Publishers will have more control over their digital content. Early digital books were often distributed in Adobe’s ebook format, which had many problems that limited the acceptance of ebooks. The user experience of reading on a desktop or laptop was one issue, but the biggest problem faced by publishers was Adobe’s lack of security and digital rights managements. It’s not that Adobe didn’t try to secure ebooks – but unfortunately their efforts weren’t good enough. Adobe’s e-reader format involves a modified PDF format with a “light” form of security. The security stopped technical neophytes from pirating books, but many publishers found that distributing books in the Adobe ebook format is the equivalent of posting your books on-line for free. This is because Adobe’s ebook security is quickly and easily bypassed or cracked by a user with even modest technical capabilities, and many books distributed in the ebook format end up posted on free streaming sites within days and sometimes only hours of being offered for sale on-line. Some cracked ebooks then get sold by pirates on sites like eBay, so the pirates profit and the publisher and author don’t receive anything for their efforts.
The new ereaders appear to provide more control over who can view a book, and they operate within a more controlled environment providing an additional level of security that Adobe never achieved with their ereader format. While Adobe has made some attempts to create proprietary readers for newspapers to help distribute the AIR player which competes with Microsoft’s Silverlight – but I view this as misguided, as reading is moving to devices and off the desktop and laptop. The winner in the eBook arena appears to be eInk, who is making the displays used by many of the readers.
Some of the new ereaders, like the Nook from Barnes & Noble, will allow users to share books –similar to what occurs with paper versions of books. If someone wants their own copy for extended use, they will purchase it. Increased sales and reduced piracy is good for authors as well, and consumers are able to obtain books instantly. The reduced cost of printing and distributing books likely won’t trickle-down to consumers right away, as companies recover their investment in these new technologies, but eventually this cost savings may find its way to consumers.
Who is at risk from ereaders? Printing companies, paper manufactures, and traditional print layout and production artists. I’ll write more on this in a future post.
Microsoft Mix: Thoughts and impressions for the creative, design, & marketing community
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009Microsoft has made some pretty significant announcement here in Las Vegas today that will impact the way you communicate on-line, develop Web and interactive content – and event how you think about what is on-line and what is a desktop application…
Silverlight 3 was announced here and has some technical features that are useful for developers -things like GPU acceleration and support for additional CODECs such as H.264, MPG 4, and AAC but the real mind-blowing things revolutionize the user experience:
- Live streaming with full DVR-like controls – pause / slow motion / rewind for live streams. This puts Silverlight live streaming miles ahead of anything else. NBC announced they are renewing their use of Silverlight for all streaming of the next Olympics (Vancouver) using Silverlight.
- HD streaming – you’ll see this at the next Olympics as they’ll be streaming all content in HD.
- Out-of-browser experiences on Mac and Windows – not just a browser plug-in
- Off-line support: Silverlight 3.0 applications can run as stand-alone applications. So they can consume services while connected, and then switch to an “off-line” mode when not connected.
- Support for multi-touch – like the “pinch” – think Minority Report or iPhone
I’ll have more updates throughout the event… as I’m at a Microsoft-focused event, most of my posts will focus on their technology this week…