BPN 1132 Cross-media still needs finetuning

Yesterday the Mediapark Jaar Congres (Media Park Annual Conference) took place for the first time: MPCJ 2008. Media Park is in Hilversum the place where most of the public and commercial broadcast stations have their base. Over the years digital media companies have based themselves in that park as well as every self respecting broadcast station has now at least one web site, if not more. The conference was well visited. No less than 602 delegates had registered. This is a big number in The Netherlands; but one should not forget that the admission price was 50 euro over against the usual 950 euro. It was a conference with lectures, short movie reports, pitches, a spoken column and two interviews. It was a lot to chew on.

The overall theme of the Conference was officially cross-media, but could have been specified more closely as cross-media in a broadcast environment. In no way for example the lectures touched print. The closest to that came during an interview with Michiel Buitelaar, the COO to be of Sanoma. Buitelaar has worked for KPN and is presently working for Endemol; but he will leave his present post, which he accepted hardly a year ago, as he misses the work floor.

He was asked what cross-media meant to him. Endemol is usually describes as a format producer, he said. Instead of the word format he rather used the word brand (he is probably already accommodating to his new employer, which sees it print magazines also as brands). Cross-media to him was the use of a brand over more than one medium. A rather superficial definition IMHO. Buitelaar is not talking about cross-media, but about multiple media. You take a theme and you apply it to a medium, using the characteristics of that particular medium and that sit. Just one way multiple media. No mention is made of the interactive side of cross-media, i.e. the particular response yielded by the medium. I guess Buitelaar should start reading up cross-media literature before he joins Sanoma.

Buitelaar was asked how far Endemol is with cross-media? Is it used in all the formats that are generated. Endemol is working on it and now starts for example to put web programs in social networks, so that people can tell their friends about a particular television program and discuss it. But cross-media has not penetrated yet into all corners of Endemol, was his assessment. The 360 degrees format was not accepted yet by everyone. Partly this can be ascribed to the fact that TV stations have little contact with clients, Buitelaar said. But cross-media was coming through slowly at Endemol as could be seen on Upstaged, a brand new entertainment event by the BBC.

Blog Posting Number: 1132

Tags: cross-media

BPN 1099 ilse gives up in favour of Google

The Dutch pioneer search engine ilse has lost the search engine battle in favour of Google and will no longer be the heart of Startpagina, the starting pages for Dutch language sites. The company ilse media is defining a new strategy.

In 1996 ilse, the first Dutch search engine, was launched by Wiebe Weikamp, Merien ten Houten and Robert Klep. ilse grew at an amazing rate and quickly became the market leader in Dutch search engines. Two years later in 1998, a group of friends, under the supervision of Durk Jan de Bruin set-up Startpagina. This site with site pages per subject, including all daughter sites (respectively 1,500 and roughly 5,000 pages) quickly grew to become the biggest Dutch internet portal. By 1999 Google appeared on the scene. In 2000 VNU magazines, now Sanoma magazines, acquired both companies and put them in ilse media B.V.

The search engine became the stimulus for the development of a digital publisher company. By now ilse media has a network of 150 websites, of which Starpagina is the largest. It has a news site and a weblog site. IN 2005 ilse media started a cluster of youngsters and youth sites under the name newrulez. Ilse media also manages the women and home sites of Sanoma publishers and the site TVGids.nl, an electronic television guide, for the public broadcast stations.

From the beginning the search engine ilse was a popular site for the Dutch language searchers. When Google started its activity, ilse was on its height and has been going down ever since. In the last year there was a discussion about the search engine. Most people thought that the engine had come at the end of the cycle. And this became clear from the penetration rate, which went down to 5 per cent, while the real use for searching went down to 2 per cent. Presently users of Startpagina use Google five times a week, while the search engine of ilse media is used five times a week.

Of course Google will bring in extra revenues. But the management of ilse media will have to contemplate the use of the search engine. The company is adamant in stating that the dismissal of their own search engine ilse is the beginning of the end. Ilse media is working on a new strategy for the search engine. One way will be to use the search engine for vertical sites like the women magazines of Sanoma.

On May 8, 2008 ilse media announced a new site, familii.nl, a family and relatives sites, which offers tools for keeping contact with family and relatives and for mapping the relatives. Familii.nl has a few competitors in the Dutch market: Verwant.nl, familieband.nl and familiepagina.nl. Verwant.nl is the Dutch version of the popular German Verwant.de and is run by De Telegraaf.

Blog Posting Number: 1099

Tags: search engine

BPN 1064 Another Dutch educational Publisher for sale

ThiemeMeulenhoff, the educational division of the Dutch newspaper and book conglomerate PCM, is for sale. That was a surprise announcement at the presentation of the annual report.

ThiemeMeulenhoff had a turn-over of 64,5 mln euro, growing 5 percent. The division is good for 10 percent of the total turnover of PCM Publishers. The division employs 255 people. PCM withdraws from the educational market as the company expects more investment, while ThiemeMeulenhoff does not have the scale to justify these investments.

PCM Publishers limits its activities to newspapers and books for the coming years. It will use the money its gets for ThiemeMeulenhoff to consolidate its position after the Apax affair, which left the company with a great loss. It is funny to see this decision of withdwawel from the educational field by the new board, after that the Apax dominated board had announced to sell off the book division and stick to the educational division.

So ThiemeMeulenhoff is one of the latest victim in the educational field. Just a month ago Sdu announced to sell its educational activities with a turn-over of 5 mln euro. Earlier VNU, Wolters Kluwer and Reed Elsevier sold their educational divisions.
Now only the division VBK Educatief with 150 employees is part of a newspaper and book conglomerate, NDC/VBK. Some time ago PCM and NDC/VBK were in merger talks, but they broke off.

The Dutch educational publishing landscape has been shaken dramatically over the past years. VNU sold its educational division Malmberg to a private equity fund, which found a home for the company with the Finnish publisher Sanoma. Wolters Kluwer sold its educational division to Bridgepoint Ltd. Also Reed Elsevier sold off its educational division. So now the consolidation race starts affect the smaller educational publishers. It is unclear what company will be eager to acquire the educational activities of Sdu. Will ThiemeMeulenhoff be acquired by Sanoma or NDC/VBK?

The changing of the landscape has been going on for some time. VNU, Wolters Kluwer and Reed Elsevier disposed of their educational divissions to specialise in resp. market data, legal and health and scientific and business information. But Sdu and ThiemeMeulenhoff dispose of their educational activities now that the Dutch government has decided to organise the free book acquisition for secondary schools.

Update 12/4/2008: NDC/VBK has shown interest in acquiring the educational division of PCM. Synergy between the two educational divisions would be an argument. The turn-over of the primary school sector rose 30 percent for ThiemeMeulenhoff. In the vocational sector the turn-over rose 17 percent.

Update: PCM Publishers, the Dutch newspaper and book holding, has sold its educational division Thieme Meulenhoff to NDC/VBK for an undisclosed sum. Thieme had a turn-over of 65 million euro in 2007; this was 10 per cent of PCM’s turn-over.

The newspaper and book holding NDC/VBK will combine Thieme Meulenhoff with its own educational division, Veen Bosch & Keuning-educational. The new combination will have 400 employees and an annual turn-over 100 million euro. Together with Malmberg Educational and Noordhoff Publishers the combination Veen Bosch & Keuning-educational will belong to the top three educational publishers in the Netherlands.

Blog Posting Number: 1064

Tags: education, educational publishing

BPN 1040 Sdu to sell off its educational activities

Another Dutch publisher is getting rid of its educational division. After VNU, Wolters Kluwer and Reed Elsevier sold their educational divisions, Sdu Publishers has indicated that their educational activity is up for sale. Sdu considers these activities no longer as core activities. In 2007 Sdu made a turn over of 5 million euro with these activities.

The educational title list consists of school books for secondary and higher vocational education in the field of ICT and technology; Sdu is market leader in those sections. However Sdu does no longer see those publications as core activity. Financially the activities are small in comparison to the company’s turn-over of 200 million euro in 2007. In terms of focus, the publishing house, the former government’s print office, profiles itself as a home for information professionals, especially in government. With the announcement of the sale, Sdu announced the acquisition of JobsRepublic.nl, an online job database operator for government, semi-government, provinces and municipalities.

Sdu is the latest Dutch publishing house selling its educational activities as non-core activities. VNU sold its educational division Malmberg to a private equity fund, which found a home for the company with the Finnish publisher Sanoma. Wolters Kluwer sold its educational division to Bridgepoint Ltd. Also Reed Elsevier sold off its educational division. These publishing companies have all chosen to be active in a specific field of professional information (VNU, now Nielsen in market data, Wolters Kluwer in legal and health, while Reed Elsevier is active in scientific information). Sdu has now chosen to disband the educational activities and focus on governmental information. Given its present composition of core activities it will mean that the section Business Information with a strong component of ICT will be the next section to be sold off. After the sale of Sdu’s educational activities, only the newspaper conglomerates PCM and NDC/VBK have educational divisions in their publishing mix. So far these conglomerates have not chosen for a specific focus and still have newspapers, books, including educational books and methods, magazines and capital intensive print plants.

In time and space, Sdu is late in abandoning the educational activities in order to grow to a more focussed publishing house. For PCM and NDC.VBK it will also be a question of time given the market size and politics in the Dutch educational market. There are roughly 22 million people who speak, read and write Dutch, mainly in The Netherlands and Belgium. Also politics is now meddling in publishing as the present government team intends to fund books for secondary school from September onwards; book packages will now have to be tendered according to European rules. This will make the marketing and selling of school books unnecessarily complicated; besides it will be difficult for small educational publishers to conquer a market share. It will also complicate the change-over from books to e-learning.

Blog Posting Number: 1040

Tags: education, educational publishing

Digital households

The digital households in the Netherlands can be characterised with five types of internet users. That is the result of a long running survey for Sanoma magazines and online services. The survey consists of a quantitative and a qualitative part. In the qualitative section members of households are questioned, while a camera is running.

The five types of internet users are:
- help seekers: these people use internet sparsely, need help from other people; they usually have an older type of computer and use a dial-up connection;
- fun internet users: for these internet users internet is a source of entertainment. They play simple games, download music and sometimes a movie;
- functional users: these people use internet for directory information, e-mailen and internet banking. They do not use internet daily and they turn off the computer after having used it;
- frequent surfers: these users are active on internet, but watch also TV and listen to radio. Frequent surfers use internet functionally, but also for fun. They have an ADSL connection;
- technofans: young men with an affinity to technology. The computer is relatively new and the center of life. The computer is never closed and used for all kind of applications. Technofans speak through internet via comments, polls and reviews. They have no problems with online buying, even from unknown web shops.

The last group consists of active, hard nosed internet users; usually young men. Technofans influence the buying habits as they put product reviews online. Dutch people like to read these reviews before a capital intensive purchase. Some 45 percent of Dutch people have abandoned a planned purchase after reading a negative review.

The segmentation in five groups is of importance for marketing. A site prominently used by functional users should be different from a techno fan site. For functional users perhaps cross-channel communication should be used. The level of internet experience and the way in which internet is used is relevant for the way internet users can be addressed on a website. It will also influence the creative process, choice of medium and title of publication.

Blog Posting Number: 779

Tags: digital households

Blogs not popular with the Dutch

On June 1 The Next Web Conference will take place in Amsterdam. The conference has grown into an international conference with leading speakers such as Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media), Jay Adelson (Digg) or Marten Mickos (MySQL). Besides the special The Next Web Interview Teaser videos, there was a quantitative survey into the name familiarity, the use and the added value of Web 2.0, online networks and blogs among Dutch consumers. Some 1053 people were asked to fill out the survey on internet; so, it is a biased impression. The results of the survey are available on internet in Dutch (! It is an international conference) as a PowerPoint presentation, be it still in the Dutch language.

Not too many Dutch internet users do recognize the term web 2.0, despite the fact that the term is known since 2003, when Tim O’Reilly used it for the first time... In principle this is not surprising as web 2.0 is a multifaceted term, comprising, wikis, RSS, APIs, social bookmarking, mash ups and web based software. On the other hand the 40 percent of the respondents are active on online networks and half of them log in daily. The projection is that half of the Dutch population is daily online for at least 2 to 3 hours.

I will pay attention to the blogging results of this survey. In the Netherlands there are 800.000 weblogs, according to an estimate of Paul Molenaar, COO of Sanoma and CEO of Ilse media group, at Blognomics 07. Some 50 percent are using Web-log.nl, the ilse blogger service. This estimate concerns only Dutch language blogs and not blogs in another language originating from the Netherlands like this blog.

Here are some of the results:
- 6 out of 10 Dutchmen do not read blogs;
- of the blogreading Dutchmen 62 percent spend less than 1 hour on the reading of blogs.

It is interesting to read why people would read a blog:
- content is the most important factor for the reliability of the blog;
- the blogger is also a criterion for the reliability of the blog;
But no less than 31 percent says that reliability is not a criterion. But people like a well written blog (26 percent) and 14 percent hates spelling mistakes. Links to other reliable sites, references to sources. Surprisingly design is hardly an item (8 percent), while only 3 percent hate advertisements. The amount of comments, the amount of posts, trackbacks and the URL are not heavy weighing criterions for the reliability. The number of RSS readers is totally irrelevant. (These results are completely contrary to the famous rules of the big bloggers. Of course not many Dutch bloggers enjoy any popularity worldwide).

The vast majority of the Dutch population does not keep a weblog. Only 1 in 8 maintains a weblog, of which 3 percent has more than 1 weblog. 90 percent of the webloggers spent 2 hours or less per week on writing blogs, while 6 percent work more than 7 hours on writing their own blogs.

Looking at the results of this survey, one conclusion is clear: blogs are not popular with the Dutch. However how do you get 800.000 blogs?

Blogposting Number: 767

Tags: blogging

UGC Skoeps already cash flow positive

At Blognomics 07 I again heard the story of Skoeps, a joint-venture of PCM and Talpa. Skoeps is a user generated and moderated content site where people can upload videos and pictures of news events and sell them. Excluded are photographs from VIP spotters, paparazzi and ambulance chasers. The site has now 1.2 million page views, 200.000 unique visitors and 4.000 reporters.

After half a year the company behind the site is cashflow positive. It makes money out of advertisements, sales of user generated content (UGC) video and photographs to media companies, delivering a video player, SMS and MMS shared revenue and a web shop. A reporter gets 50 percent of a video or a photograph, which is sold on to a media company. The videos do sell, but the sale of the photographs lag behind; part of the problem is the problem is the perceived amateur treatment of the photographs by professional photo-editors.

Part of the success is the technology, the upload software and the video player. Version 2.0 of Skoeps has been introduced in 2007 earlier than expected. Now the company can move internationally. There is now an English version in the Netherlands, filled with Dutch items as well as a German version. These versions are trials for foreign launches. Foreign services will not necessarily bear the name and logo of Skoeps. The concept and technology are available as white labels as well. For example Zoom.in produces the Flemish and French Belgian sites.

But it was a surprise to hear that Skoeps will be introduced in Africa to countries as Mozambique, Kenia, Nigeria, Ghana and South-Africa. These are not the countries you think first of for expansion. Normally entrepreneurs want to expand in Europe to countries as the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and last of all to France and using the UK as a stepping stone to the USA. But this service goes to Africa. A foundation has been instituted to steer the activities, which are in a certain way also non-commercial and idealistic. Skoeps wants to go to African countries as this will provide an opportunity to get out of that continent other pictures than the obligated and politically correct photographs. The company Africa Interactive has been set up to collect and distribute the news through internet and mobile. Eventually this company will in due time produce internet television, discussion forums, magazine, web logs, photographs and written news.

To my surprise I read in an Emerce article that Africa Interactive had been set up by an old colleague of mine, Pim de Wit. We worked together in 1979 in the Intermediair Library Project. He was the marketing man and I did the editing. We repackaged free articles of the Intermediair magazine into paid books, which was possible to good marketing (come to think of it: there should be room to repackage free internet info in paid books). We also published a series with titles as time-management and people-management. We called it business porno as we mailed those books in discretely brown paper envelopes. They titles were usually bought, but sometimes a manuscript was offered. I can still remember a book about careers of which the first sentence read like: Your job will come to an end. Hard-nosed Pim went on and made his career in VNU magazines, which were sold to the Finnish company Sanoma in 2001. In 2005 he was moved out of his job as CEO of the Dutch Sanoma magazine division. And this is where his link with Africa starts. After Sanoma he took a social job as the managing director of the Dutch Zoo Association and, amongst others, some elephants and tigers do come from Africa.

Blog Posting Number: 751

Tags: user generated content, user generated video, user generated photograph