As Mary Meeker, the Queen of the Internet, made clear earlier this year, mobile is on the wrong side of a monetization gap. While consumers are spending more and more time on mobile devices, advertising revenue there is still lagging well behind traditional online -- some $30 billion was spent in online advertising last year in the U.S. vs. $1.6 billion for mobile ads.
Top reasons why location is so important in mobile ad campaigns
Does the mobile package you offer your retailers include a store locator (you know, one of those groovy maps that shows where to find their favorite brands)? According to Millennial Media’s November S.M.A.R.T. report (2012), there are a few compelling reasons why it should:
- 55% of Retail and Restaurant Advertisers indicated driving in-store traffic as one of their campaign goals.
- 44% of all Retail and Restaurant campaigns use a store locator in the mix.
- 61% of Retail and Restaurant Marketers use location-based targeting to drive in-store traffic.
If your goal is to drive traffic to your advertisers’ locations, then a map is your best bet to get them there. Classified Concepts helps newspapers across the country with their mobile, online and print location based products for Retail, Entertainment, Real Estate, Auto and Garage Sale categories. Learn more from us at www.classifiedconcepts.com.
Newspapers failing to diversify and grow younger audiences.
Greg Harmon of Borrell Associates, who has been tracking readership trends for more than a decade said that “the average print reader is a female nearing 60, when the average age of the national population is 43.” He continues “The user of a newspaper website is a little less female than the print subscriber and just over 50 years old. Our research shows that print and web readers are basically the same people – and that the average age of the online newspaper audience keeps getting one year older every year.”
So how do we know that newspapers are doing a poor job diversifying their audience? Professor Rich Gordon of Northwestern University completed a study in September 2012 based on 300 of Chicago’s largest news-oriented sites. His main focus was to determine who was linking to whom so that he could better understand whether the readers of a particular news source were coming in via a third party (new audience), or simply being redirected from a sister site (existing audience).
After studying the results, it was clear that newspapers were gaining the bulk of their link-driven traffic by steering existing readers from place to place on their own sites. Specifically, he found that 81.7% of the links generating traffic for sites associated with the Chicago Tribune came from within the newspaper’s family of sites and that 80.4% of the link-driven traffic at the Sun-Times Media Group came from its corporate cousins.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with redirecting readers to various places within the same newspaper company. However, the lack of engaging new audiences can, and will, be detrimental in the end.
One example of how newspapers can leverage new and younger audiences is by linking to third party content. An example of this would be The Chicago Tribune’s ChicagoNow.Com. They aggregate content from many Chicago area bloggers covering just about any topic out there. This allows blog users to become engaged and perhaps stumble upon valuable staff generated content on the main Tribune site.
For industry news, follow me on Twitter @aprildauzat
Want to grow younger audiences via innovative and valuable mobile engagements? We can help. From Real Estate and Garage Sale apps to Shopping and Entertainment. Contact us today! info@classifiedconcepts.com
Did you know hurricanes follow patterns?
We all follow patterns, routines, if you will. Daily, weekly, monthly norms to get us from one point to the next. Turns out hurricanes aren’t so different. Learn more today in our final post on hurricanes on our sister blog at Maps.com: Hurricanes Tracking Hurricanes.
And thank you for joining us for this diversion from our regular “classified” content. If your media company is interested in learning more about Geography In The News and licensing it for your print or online use, feel free to contact us at info@classifiedconcepts.com, and we’ll gladly put you in contact with Dr. Lineback and his team.
What does the Coriolis Effect have to do with Hurricanes?
Ever wondered what the Coriolis Effect has to do with hurricanes?
Well, it is NOT that phenomenon that makes water go down the toilet clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, and counterclockwise in the Southern.
According to About.com, The Coriolis Effect is defined as “result(ing) from the earth’s rotation causing freely moving objects to veer toward the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere. It effects things like wind, ocean currents, airplanes, missiles, but does not effect toilets or sinks.” (In case you were wondering, that would be better referred to as “Secondary flow”, or in my book, “ambient swishing.”)
In our brief series on hurricanes this week, we’re sharing Hurricanes and the Coriolis Effect straight from the Geography In The News archives. Read on to learn more…
The devastation of the U.S. Gulf Coast by hurricanes Katrina and Rita has captured the media’s attention for weeks. 
Even as New Orleans and the impacted Gulf Coasts of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas begin to recover, questions are being asked about the characteristics of hurricanes and similar storms.
A reader of Geography in the News recently wrote asking about the rotation of storms. He said he knew that winds around low pressure cells in the Northern Hemisphere rotate counterclockwise, but did not understand how the Coriolis effect was involved in all wind circulations.
Sailors have long recognized that wind directions are deflected, seemingly by some invisible force. In 1835, however, French mathematician Gaspard G. Coriolis first described the phenomenon. Originally, it was called the Coriolis force, but the more recent and more accurate name is the Coriolis effect.
The result of the Coriolis effect is that wind directions in the Northern Hemisphere are deflected to the right, while those in the Southern Hemisphere are deflected to the left. The cause of the Coriolis effect is the earth’s rotation.
As a simple example, a hypothetical airplane leaves the North Pole on a 12-hour trip flying directly south toward Quito, Equador, located on the equator (80 degrees west longitude). During this 12-hour trip, the earth would rotate half way around and the plane would arrive in Sumartra, Indonesia (100 degrees east longitude). Clearly, from the ground, the plane’s direction was due south, but the earth’s rotation beneath the plane’s flight path created the illusion of the plane flying southwestward—a deflection to the right (from the plane’s origin at the Pole). No matter which direction air moves in the Northern Hemisphere, the earth’s rotation causes it also to be deflected to the right for the same reason.
A simple experiment used by geography teachers is to cut a circle of cardboard, punch a hole in its center and place it on a pencil. While spinning the cardboard disk counterclockwise to simulate the rotation of the Northern Hemisphere, the demonstrator can attempt to quickly mark a straight line on the disk with a marker. Regardless of the direction attempted, the mark will always turn to the right. Turn the disk over, rotate it clockwise to simulate the Southern Hemisphere and the mark will always turn to the left.
Winds blow from high to low pressure. These winds attempt to move in a straight line, but are always deflected by the Coriolis effect. For example, as wind moves toward a low pressure center, as with a hurricane, its direction is altered so that as wind crosses each isobar surrounding the low, it must cross to the right of a right angle. The cumulative effect causes the hurricane to circulate counterclockwise.
Although this counterclockwise motion may seem counter intuitive, it makes perfect sense by standing at the wind’s origin and realizing that the deflection is causing the wind to cross each isobar to the right, rather than at a 90 degree angle. If it were not for the Coriolis effect, the wind would blow straight into the eye of a hurricane and there would be no circulation.
Conversely, as wind blows out of a high pressure cell, it also must cross isobars at right angles. Putting one’s self at the origin, or the center of the high pressure, it is easy to realize that high pressure cells circulate clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere.
Wind direction, then, can indicate many things to those who closely monitor the weather, even novice weather forecasters. A conclusion called Ballot’s Law says that if you face directly downwind in the Northern Hemisphere, the center of a low pressure cell should be located somewhere to your left. This accounts for the counterclockwise rotation of storms, such as hurricanes and other low pressure cells.
Hurricanes & the Coriolis Effect (download the article)
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Hurricane Landfalls
Today’s article from Geography In The News looks at hurricane landfalls in the continental US – there have been quite a few in recent history. Wow, it’s amazing how quickly a map can get the point across! Join us on our sister blog, In Carto and read “Is No Place Safe from Hurricanes?“
