NBCOlympics, Yahoo, and the usual sporting site suspects aren’t the only beaches on which the Olympics traffic wave hit this month. Rodale’s RunnersWorld.com reports a personal best last week of 5.14 million page views, with Monday running the fastest leg at 885,000 views. The site wisely leveraged its expertise during the second week of the games, which featured track and field events. A blog straight from Beijing gave the site a personal feel, but the RW microsite is a good example of narrowcasting. While the rest of the sports sites struggled to manage masses of sports and stories, this destination gathered the key events into a nice menu of clear clickstreams. There were daily recaps for drive-by viewing and home grown video that offered a different take on the games than the endless streams NBC gushed online. An “Olympics Photos” newsletter and online slideshow helped spike traffic as well. A content partnership with NBCOlympics.com surely helped, but RunnersWorld coverage did stand out for its concision and depth.

Anyone who has been with me oh these many years of digital voyeurism know how many made-for-the-Web video series we have seen. I go back to the days when the felons of TheDen were sucking up VC money left and right in the hopes of bringing TV-style content to a Web with precious few broadband customers. Learning that lesson, the wags at PseudoTV turned to lo-res Webcams transmitting public-access-level programming of anyone they could pull off the street. Then the mode turned to animated series. Everyone wanted to leverage cheap Flash production itno the next South Park. And so companies like Icebox, Atom Films, and Shockwave tried launching series after series of offbeat curios. Anuone remember Hard Drinkin’s Lincoln? Angry Kid? Stainboy?

I didn’t think so. And so as online video takes off I admit some skepticism about the likes of Seth “Family Guy” MacFarlane and Joss “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” Whedon brining their talents to Webisodics. We have been here before. After ding the mildly funny “Landlord” sketch for his Funny or Die site, Will Ferrell hasn’t delivered much of a second act. And wasn’t it Tim Burton who tried to bring repectable creativity to the digital video format years ago, too?

So I was surprised, nay, impressed by two Webisodics I screened this weekend. The ongoing “N” series from CBS Mobile and Simon and Schuster is an animated graphic novel that promoted the upcoming release of Stephen King’s short story of the same name. Using what we used to call limited animation, the creators have add music and minimal movement to static graphic novel drawings. The 20 very short one-minute episodes are very effective in drawing the viewer in to a story about a psychiatrist who seems to catch his patient’s obsessive-compulsive mania. The relentless melodrama that each micro-episode hits frankly woks very well, both on the Web and even on the phone. You can watch a package of five episodes or one at a time.

The other series that shows great promise for the format is Joss Whedan’s comic Dr. Horrible’s Singa-along Blog, featuring Neil Patrick Harris as a hapless, wannabe super-villain. The production values (including many musical numbers) sets a new high standard for the form, and the three-episode structure makes for a compelling narrative arc.

Perhaps more astonishing is that both series are using the fee-based model via iTunes. In the case of Whedan’s Dr. Horrible, the series is among the most popular in the iTunes library.
If publishers are wondering if the Web can support tried and true narrative genres like suspense and comedy, I strongly suggest they check out these series. They made these crusty cynic a little more hopeful that the Web medium could create genuine entertainment.

Even as ad pages decline and layoffs continue in the magazine industry, the digital side of the print brand equation continues to show strength. The Magazine Publishers Association announced yesterday that traffic to magazine branded Web sites climbed another 8.5% in Q2 2008 compared to same period last year.  This rate of growth is double that of the Web in general, the MPA argues, based on Nielsen stats on 314 Web sites. Almost all the metrics showed improvement. The number of sessions per month was up 9.9%. Perhaps most telling is the duration number, which increased 21.5%. This larger than average spike may reflect the increase in both video and game cotnent at many magazine sites, since those two media formats are proving the stickiest. The average visit is now 4 minues and 25 seconds.

How much numbers like these tell us abotu the health of the magazine industry online specifically is not entirely clear. It does speak to the added effort and richness of branded media sites generally, and we would love to see similar numbers run against other types, like gaming sites or TV and newspaper brands online. We doubt very much that consumers respond specifically to a category of media online so much as the presence of familiar brands. As the eco-system online becomes more diverse and complex, with social networks and media linking driving more traffic, we suspect that familiar brands work at an advantage. When faced with a a line of possible links to stories in a blog or a search result, the tried and true sources will win more often than not. As magazines, like newspapers and TV, learn to weave their way into the eco-system through smarter SEM and social media partnerships, we fully expect all branded sources of information to outpace the Web in growth.

Today Break Media and video ad platform Panache released preliminary research suggesting that pre-roll video ads do not depress video usage as much as we suspect. Since the Interactive Advertising Bureau issued guidelines for ad length and delivery methods, a high percentage of viewers stick with the ad to its end. Testing four in-stream ad units over 11 weeks, the companies found 87% of people completed the pre-roll and 77% of viewers stayed at least 15 seconds with videos having overlays. The videos, which ran exclusively on Break.com, had an astonishingly high click through rate of 10%.

In another study from Jupiter, the research firm says that pre-rolls discourage video viewing only 5% of the time. This study is based on European usage, but even without understanding the EU context Jupiter’s number seems unbelievably low. Some of the research is covered at AdAge here, and more at Epicenter here.

Some may see this as the positive effects of the IAB’s guidelines. Others will argues that publishers overstated the effect pre-rolls have on video viewing. I would argue that the study is not comprehensive enough to prove much except the strength of Break.com and its relationship with a young male demo audience. One of the ways pre-roll advertising depresses usage is simple avoidance altogether. Users come to know which sites run lengthy pre-rolls or suffer under clunky delivery systems with lots of lag. The user experience, good or ill, translates to re-use. Anyone who goes to a major TV news site (whose name I will not mention) knows they still may get ridiculously long pre-roll ads attached to tiny clips. As a user of the site I think twice and thrice before clicking on any of their videos. As much as I like the rest of the site, I think their ad-to-content ratio just sucks.

The best video ad experience I have seen is at Hulu.com. There is a fair exchange of value that lets users taste the content they crave before getting hit by an ad. Sidebar ad units keep the brand in view until a short commercial message comes only after the publisher offers something of value. In the end, however, the best ad experience on TV, digital video, on iPods, phones, or whatever, are just good ads. Sure we need smarter and more responsive ad formats and technologies. But in the end what we really need is ad creative that engages the user either because it is relevant or just plain artful.

How many magazines throw branded versions of themselves and their scant video offerings onto YouTube in the hopes of riding the media sharing and social network craze? Have you seen some of the sad traffic some of these major print brands attract? How media companies get into the user-generated eco-system without seeming like over-dressed interlopers is the question of the moment. One answer is to sponsor a contest that lets users of these systems do what they love to do most, make media about themselves.

The People.com Red Carpet Report contest at YouTube is a strong execution that the partners say has grabbed hundreds of thousands of views as YouTubers submitted short samples of their own red carpet interviewing talent. Now in stage two of the judging, the contest has filtered down ten finalists for open voting. Editors and professional interviewers made the first cut to ensure editorial integrity to the process, and sponsor Revlon has a prominent sponsorship that includes interviewing tips.

The enture model is a smart way of leveraging the YouTube vibe without surrendering to its vagaries and chaos. Keeping disciplined, editorially driven frames around user-generated content will be the key challenge for media brands as they enter this world. The interested of advertisers still need to be served. A clean-well lit place with predictable, high quality material is guaranteed here. But at the same time the raw energy of users and grassroots talent still pokes through.

Nearly all members of the media circus knows David Carr. He writes a media column for the business section of the New York Times and is generally on the media “scene”, speaking at events and moderating panels at NYU, among other things. But his book The Night of the Gun offers a fully reported account of his troubled past and eventual triumph over drugs and demons back in his native Minnesota. He went back in time to interview people who knew him before he knew himself and he recounts every great success and “wish-I-would’ve-forgotten-that” moment with the same candor.

As media writers go, Carr is nothing short of the best. I believe his writing and not just the words on the page (or screen) but the intention behind them. Not only is his flavorful take on the sometimes mundane world of business amusing, but it’s honest and clear.

His book is much of the same - honest and clear, flavorful and amusing. A good story-teller obviously, but to tell a great story about the moments of your life that you are not not so proud of is a talent of a much grander caliber.

The book’s website is also a media-rich experience. Check it out here.

After months of major media brands like ESPN and Time Inc. threatening to pull their remant inventory out of the ad network commodities market, it turns out that most top drawer publishers are making even more use of ad networks this year than last. According to the new Interactive Advertising Bureau numbers, publishers went from selling 5% of inventory through networks in 2006 to 30% of inventory in 2007. Citing supply outpacing demand, the IAB also urged content providers to make smarter use of the inventory to keep CPMs hearty. The research showed that advertisers moving more of their budgets online were looking for the efficiencies and pricing that networks offered. Publishers, on the othe rhand, were not making use of yield management and multiple network vendors. Ads sold through networks were priced at up to 90% discounts, which no doubt will exert even greater pressure on overall CPMs. What is the proper response to this erosion in ad value? It is hard to say at this early stage whether the publisher-branded vertical ad networks will make much of a dent in this trend. Nor is it clear how many publishers really will take their inventories entirely in-house. One ad network executive complained to me recently that the rhetoric from big brands about selling all their own online inventory and rejecting networks is a sham. He claims that many of them continue to use ad networks liberally even as they say that they don’t.

So, are adnetworks in or out? Was the “pork belly” dust up of a few months ago much ado about nothing? Are ad networks and branded media co-dependent? Or, conversely, are the major sites just not leveraging their own inventory very effectviely?

In yet another sign that eyeballs are way ahead of revenues when it comes to online video, Silicaon Alley Insider and video analytics firm TubeMogul polled thousands of producers on their monetization models. While the sample was relatively unscientific and wildly diverse, the results still are indicative of a platform waiting for a workable model. Only 51% of respondents claim to see money on their video, and $12 seems to be the typical CPM. Almost 27% say they monetize all their video inventory, although I can’t say whether that means they are monetixzing it very well. Too much video I see contains house ads, even as the publisher claim they are selling out inventory. On the other hand, almost half are selling less than half of their inventory, with 23% monetizing only 15% or less of their video. Nearly half of all video that is being sold is being done with a partner, which means that whatever CPMs do accrue get parsed in some way.

The full data is available in a window at the SAI site and it is worth reading, if only for the anecdotes respondents provide at the end. Never prodcut video with your own money, one wise publisher recommends. Oops. That advice comes too late for many of us.

Citing the reverse correlation between economic outlook and media spending, Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) issues a relatively upbeat outlook for overall media revenues this year. Communications spending should grow 5.4% to $923.91 in 2008, driven by international markets and alternative media sources that offset declines elsewhere. Businesses still need mission-critical services and consumers need some relief from recession depression, says VSS in it Communications Industry Forecast 2008-2012.  Professional business information andinstitutional services are the big leaders, with 8.5% growth.

While traditional ad spend is not receding as dramatically as it has in prior recessions, consumers are responding according to plan. The share of disposable income going to communications will rise 6.1% this year.

What will decline, and ultimatel pressue many media sgment, is the overall time spent with media. For the third year in a row, consumer time spent will all forms of media will decline .1% to 3,493 hours a year per person. Time spent with digital media will increase however.

For magazines, it doesn’t look so good, kids. The average growth rate of revenues for consumer titles was only 2.8% between 2002 and 2007, and that will fall to 1% through 2012. The bright side is that outsourced custom publishing will be a hot growth area, with 11% CAGR through 2012.