Giving users the tools to manipulate and mash-up their own media has always been an iffy proposition. There usually is a gulf between how people say they want to “take control” of their media what they really have the patience or ambition to do online. And so we were curious about the response to SI.com’s Video Mash-Up feature in this year’s Swimsuit site. Users can pick up to four models and then edit together their own custom videos of the clips, even add transitions, filters and graphic overlays and audio. The interface is colorful but involved for a Web application. Surprisingly to us, SI.com tells us that more than 2300 videos have been produced by visitors so far. Perhaps more important is the audience for these user-generated short films. The top two videos have received 13,000 and 11,000 views respectively. When it comes UGC, the 80/20 rule applies. All you need is a core of ambitious media mavens to take the controls and produce the new content, but the audience for this material is multiples larger.

When NPD Group released its latest sales stats for the music industry this week, the wrong-headed headline at most sites focused on the Apple connection. According to 2007 sales, iTunes is now the second most important music retailer, right behind Wal-Mart. Granted, this is a landmark in digital content history, but the scarier story for all publishing brands is in the deeper stats. NPD reports that 2007 saw more music acquired overall (up 6%), mostly from digital purchases, but the actual level of music spending declined 10%. In other words, in a digital world, publishers are struggling to extract the same value even from an expanding audience. This is something we have been discussing in the pages of MIN for years now. The move from physical to digital media surely carries cost savings but it also represents a significant decline in available revenue. How many online ad impressions and audience does it take to balance a lost page of print advertising or a lost magazine subscriber? The music industry continues to be the canary in the coal mine of digital transformation, and its song is not sweet.

You can spin the latest figures from Avenue A|Razorfish in two different directions. The agency billed $735 billion last year, of which 39% went to vertical sites, 31% to search, 19% to portals and 11% to ad networks. SVP of global sales Jeff Lanctot says they are seeing more spending move away from portals and into the longer tail. They estimate portal CPMs increased only 7% last year, compared to vertical site CPMs growing 20% to 30%. In one sense this sounds good for magazine media, many of whom serve verticals or, wisely, are starting to aggregate smaller sites and blogs around their specialty. The bad news may be the sheer speed of fragmentation, however. Last year, Avenue A spent across 863 sites, which mushroomed this year to 1,832 different sites. While overall spending was up 36% in 2006, that larger pie was cut into more than twice as many pieces. The challenge for branded media is not just to make their content more digitally friendly, but to recapture highly diffused spending. The second part of the equation may prove trickier and more costly than the first. The full Aveneu A| Razorfish outlook is available here and Jeff Lanctot’s blog is here.

The most prestigious award in B2B journalism…so why am I not up for one?! ::Wink wink::

Congratulations to those deserving few who are up for the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a trade journalist: the Jesse H. Neal Award. There will be a finalist breakdown in this week’s min’s b2b, but, for now, just two quick observations (that may or may not contradict each other):

- IDG always makes a great showing at the Neals. This year is no different as the tech publisher has 17 noms if we count correctly. There are other companies with lots of nominations, too, but, as far as we can tell, IDG is the only company guaranteed to land at least one Neal: The three finalists in the best staff-written editorials or opinion columns category are Computerworld, Computerworld, and PC World–all IDG pubs.

- Scratch what I just said: Crain, another name that we frequently see on the finalist list, is the only publishing house up for best single issue of a newspaper or tabloid.

Good luck to IDG, Crain, and all the rest of the finalists!

Click here for the minonline brief and complete list of noms.

I was not totally surprised this morning to hear that Ascend Media had sold its Princeton, NJ-based health titles to Intellisphere.  A few things, however, did surprise me about the transaction:

1. This is a case of an e-media company buying traditional media assets.  This sort of bucks the paradigm that we’ve seen over the past…forever.  I can’t think of a situation exactly like this occuring during my years of watching the business.  Can anyone correct me on this?

2. When I got to the office this morning, a voice mail from Ascend CEO Vicki Masseria was waiting for me.  The company, it seems, couldn’t wait to spread the news on this.  I know that Vicki is a very busy person, especially the day after closing a big deal, yet she took time to give me and some of my friends at foliomag.com and btobonline.com a call.  Why?

3. Perhaps because, according to Masseria, Ascend has no further plans for major divestments.  Masseria seemed excited to be moving through this stage of the company.  I’m not totally convinced that this is the case.  First off, I think if some deus ex machina came down and offered VSS (parent to theminsider) and CCMP Capital Partners a nice offer, they would take it.  Second, I still think there’s a chance that Advanstar will snap up all or part of Ascend.  I know, I know: Advanstar is in a seperate fund from Ascend, and so working that little transaction might be complicated, but there is precedent.  Chemical Week, an AI property, was also owned by a seperate VSS fund before AI bought it (AI is also parent to theminsider, and VSS is parent to AI).  (Ps - When I mentioned this little theory to people at VSS, they told me that that was not in the works at all.)

Check out the original news report at minonline.com here.