When Tony Uphoff left The Hollywood Reporter to be president of CMP Technology’s business technology group, the late Bob Krakoff was left with a bit of a power vacuum. He promoted John Kilcullen, already publisher of Billboard (and a min Magazine Most Intriguing of 2006, I might add—score one for the intriguings), to head both the film and performing arts groups. Kilcullen packed his bags and moved to LA, where THR is based.

Now Eric Mika, who had been SVP and managing director of the group and in charge of much of THR’s international sales efforts, has been named SVP/publishing director of THR. Basically, publisher.

I give Kilcullen all of the credit in the world. Just read his profile in the 2006 issue of min Magazine. He invented the “For Dummies” series. He’s got some real cred. However, to me, this move shows that he couldn’t handle THR and Billboard entirely on his own—and who could? I imagine that Kilcullen will now be able to concentrate more on Billboard and also on larger issues of selling across the film and performing arts groups.

comScore’s response can be found here.  Basically, comScore has already taken steps to open its methods to the public through third party auditing by the Advertising Research Foundation, which is a very good first step.  But what the IAB is asking for, and what advertisers want, is standardization; not just transparency.

In Nielsen’s response, William Pulver, CEO of Nielsen//Netratings,  also stressed Nielsen’s accomplishments in terms of transparency, claiming to be the only company to have completed “MRC’s pre-audit,” which is a step towards an audit and transparency.  Again, consistency is what is being called for.

Once these audits are done, it will be important for comScore, Nielsen, and all the other services out there (WebSideStory, Omniture, WebTrends, etc) to collectively, and voluntarily standardize the way they do business.

Perhaps responding to Steve Fredericks’ call to action, the IAB sent an open letter on Friday, 4/20, to comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings calling for standardization in Net metrics.  The press release and letter can be found here and is worth reading, although a bit long-winded.  This issue has garnered much media coverage; a good rundown is the one in Nielsen’s MediaWeek, which can be found here.

Something tells me that Fredericks’ statements didn’t inspire Randall Rothenberg (pres/CEO of IAB) to stay up all night and write that long letter.  I’d like to think they did.

See a fuller analysis of the situation in this week’s min’s b2b.

On the second panel of the day, moderated by Steve Greenberger, EVP and media director at SLG Advertising, Steve Fredericks of TNS Media Intelligence, the massive French media measurement firm, called out IAB (the interactive advertising bureau, the trade organization for the online advertising industry). 

“IAB needs to step up and come up with parameters and metrics to measure online activity.  Standard metrics don’t exist today,” said Fredericks. 

In a later panel with Debbie Solomon of Mindshare and Bibhash Das of Omniture, both panelists discussed the problems with unique visitors and page views and other traditional metrics used to measure online activity.  They threw around terms like “unique browsers” and the more familiar “engagement.” 

But what do these things mean?  And how are they measured? 

IAB is in position to call for industry standards here, and I’d like to join Fredericks in imploring them to do so.  Maybe one year ago, it would have been hard to make such a request, but we now know so much more about how Web sites are utilized and how to filter for certain kinds of traffic—basically, how to measure. 

The challenge of measuring mobile engagement is looming on the horizon as that segment of the advertising industry ramps up.  Let’s get online measurement right first.

According to an April 9 report in the New York Post by vaunted media reporter Keith Kelly, the bidders for Primedia’s Performance Media Group (the remainder of the enthusiast titles and the bulk of Primedia’s revenues/profits—over 60%) have been whittled down to two: Veronis Suhler Stevenson, media investment bank/private equity shop/mezzanine partners (and parent to the min family), and Curtco Media, publisher of the Robb Report and other luxury lifestyle rags.

Interesting to me is the far-fetched but titillating possibility of VSS building a mega company from smashing together PMG with Advanstar, a huge B2B publisher/tradeshow producer that VSS just bought in a $1.142 billion acquisition.

Aside from both being massive publishing/media companies, PMG and Advanstar have some titles in common: Advanstar’s power sports group and PMG’s automotive group.

Power Sports Group (highlights): Motor Age, Aftermarket Business, Dealernews (see this week’s issue of min’s b2b for numbers and an analysis on some of these books). The group is also comprised of five other magazines, numerous cyclical supplements, 16 consumer events, 3 tradeshows, 14 Web sites, and 42 training manuals.

PMG (highlights): Automobile, Automotive.com, Motor Trend. The group also consists of three other consumer books and an astounding 51, highly targeted enthusiast titles, including the colorfully named Mopar Muscle and Hot Bike (the “51” includes internationally targeted magazines).

One salivates at the leveraged selling opportunities available through Advanstar’s heavy, horizontal books and PMG’s extreme vertical niches. This doesn’t even take into account Advanstar’s impressive tradeshow machine.

Curiosity led me to call Tom Kemp, managing director at VSS, and had this to say when asked about the possibility of “Primanstar”:

“The short answer is no, but I can see how you could wonder about that, because certainly the power sports group at Advanstar is a combination of trade and consumer magazines and events serving the automotive and motorcycle markets. But looking at it just from a private equity investor standpoint, these are really separate business. Advanstar is a large transaction. Primedia would be another large transaction. It would be too complicated.”

Kemp added that it would be difficult to “get your hands around from a partnership standpoint” and “there would be huge questions about tax issues.”

95% of me says: Well, so much for that idea.

5% of me says: You heard it here first!

When the USPS hands down its rate changes in the coming months, small publishers are going to see another large rate increase, which will widen the gap between what it costs to mail one issue of a 1,000,000+ circulation magazine and what it costs to mail one issue of a 40,000 circulation magazine. I have two problems with this decision.

1. Many B2B publishers have successfully cultivated valuable niche audiences for their advertisers. One advantage of owning such audiences is the ability to further parse those audiences into smaller segments to be able to offer advertisers targeted marketing opportunities. Taking, for instance, an audience of engineers and separating from them chemical engineers with an e-newsletter, or a special micro-site. One of the best ways of attacking those niche segments is through print, a good example being the successful spinoff, Big Builder (part of the Hanley-Wood Builder franchise). Now that postal costs for niche publications are rising, publishers will be less encouraged to use print as a means to reach these highly specialized audiences. In the era of platform agnosticism, having every possible arrow in your quiver in order to run a successful brand franchise is increasingly important.
2. One of the mandates of the USPS is to facilitate the flow of information around the country. Whereas consumer print publications help create relationships between consumers and companies that market to them, trade publications are the lifeblood of many industries. And print publications still fulfill both information-flow and marketing functions that no other mediums fulfill: true discovery (what happens when you flip through a magazine and an ad or article just catches your eye); and portability—I still don’t see too many people reading Blackberry’s on the subway. The USPS needs to take into account the essential business functions that print trade publications provide when setting rates. First class mail rates already subsidize other forms of mail (including flats). This is a precedent to have small circulation books subsidized, too.

For those of you that are members of American Business Media: David Straus, counsel for ABM, is a great resource on this issue. His email is: dstraus@thompsoncoburn.com

When Diane, my publisher, asked me to write a blog for our new Web site, I was excited—at first. I was eager to inject my opinions into the swirling mass that is the blogoverse (one thing I like doing is coining new words…I’m sick of “blogosphere”). But then, I remembered something: I don’t read any “blogs.” Not only did I feel like less of an expert, but I wondered who would read my blog? Is writing for the blogoverse like writing into a vacuum?
Don’t get me wrong, I do a lot of online reading. I read Rafat Ali’s PaidContent.org. I read Paul Conley at PaulConley.com. I read Prescott Shibles and Eric Shanfelt. I read FishbowlNY. And, OK, I read John Buccigross on ESPN.com. But aren’t these columns? Aren’t these experts? Are these really “blogs”?
I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter. The fact is, these people have my eyeballs, and not because they are spouting off their opinions. They have me because they’re spouting off their opinions and they’re experts. When I think “blog,” I think “amateur.” This may not be the truth, but it’s certainly an image problem.
So, call this a blog if you must. I call it a column. If you think I’m not an expert, we can talk about downgrading to a blog. Let me know.