Study shows video playing big role for newspaper sites

By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor

Newspapers are increasingly mining video and multimedia to boost their online traffic, according to a recent study from The Bivings Group.

The study said 92 percent of the largest 100 U.S. newspaper sites are offering video, a 31 percent jump from last year.

Thirty-nine papers offer original video content, 26 use video streams from the Associated Press, 13 offer video content from local news outlets, four use all three technologies and 10 papers use a mixture of two different types of video, the study said.

“While many industry experts fear that the Internet will spell the end of newspapers as we know them, [we feel] that the Internet presents newspapers with a unique opportunity to make up for lost circulation and readership,” said Erin Teeling, new media associate for the Washington, D.C.-based consultant.

The Bivings Group analyzed Web sites of the top 100 highest circulation newspapers based on the Audit Bureau of Circulations’ March 31, 2007 Fas-Fax report. Each site was evaluated based on the presence or lack of Web 2.0 features.

The study found that the use of interactive features increased in nearly every category compared to its report from last year.

Ninety-seven papers offer RSS partial text feeds, 95 percent of papers offer at least one reporter blog and 88 percent of newspapers allow comments on blogs, the report said.

Other findings include:

• The number of papers requiring registration increased by six from last year. Of this group three papers required a paid subscription, while 26 papers offered free access after registration.

• Forty-four percent of newspapers provide some form of bookmarking. In 2006, only 7 percent of newspapers provided bookmarking.

• Almost half (49 percent) of newspapers now offer online podcasts, compared to only 31 percent last year.

It’s new to U.S.

The development by newspapers of content geared to mobile devices, meantime, grew sharply, with 53 percent of papers producing news and information for cell phone users. The metric wasn’t even tracked in last year’s report.

Bivings cited the evolution of more sophisticated smartphones as a driving force fueling the growth of mobile offerings from U.S. newspapers.

Still, U.S. papers lag behind mobile marketing strategies employed by newspapers in other parts of the world, particularly in Europe and Japan (see Newspapers & Technology, July 2007).

The 2007 study also tracked user participation, monitoring such activities as user comment, user-generated content and social networking.

The number of newspapers permitting user comment, the study said, rose from 19 percent to 33 percent, while nearly 25 percent of newspapers accepted user-generated content, spanning photos, videos and articles.

Five percent of papers incorporated social networking features on their sites, including USA Today (see Newspapers & Technology, June 2007), The Denver Post and The Washington Post.

Grabbing a piece of the revenue pie

The Bivings study also found that while papers have added new features to their Web sites, many are “relatively unwilling” to link their sites to other sources and that papers continue to keep some content behind virtual walls.

At the same time, newspapers aren’t taking enough advantage of RSS technology. Instead, Bivings said papers should tap into the protocol’s monetization capabilities in a bid to attract new revenues.

Finally, Bivings attempted to answer the million-dollar question plaguing newspaper publishers: how to develop a profitable online model that will offset the losses in print advertising.

One recommendation: Papers should create Web sites strategically and visually superior to those of competitors.

For small newspapers, Bivings suggested they should steer away from AP and generic content and instead offer unique, hyper-localized information that is difficult to find elsewhere.

Finally, Bivings said publishers need to understand that consumers read both print and online editions of their newspapers, citing as proof a Scarborough study that reported that 81 percent of those polled using both print and electronic editions.

Getting closer to you

As video gains a foothold on newspaper Web sites, the demands associated with managing such high-bandwidth content is moving front and center.

Content handling companies such as Tewksbury, Mass.-based Mirror Image Internet are playing a more significant role as content demands grow.

The company, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, helps customers manage and distribute bandwidth-intensive content through a network of content access points located at strategic points around the Internet.

When a user requests a particular item, Mirror Image determines the most appropriate server from which to route the information.

Jim Hart, vice president of sales and marketing for MI, said the company has 23 of these massive data center-like environments deployed globally.

MI counts several large papers as clients, including The New York Times and Boston Globe (see Newspapers & Technology, July 2005).

“We are helping to incorporate video on newspaper sites to give the end user a richer media experience,” Hart said, adding that clients are adding video at a rapid clip.