antti.vilpponen.net

Finnish citizens have had to cope with a tremendeous amount of low quality journalism this past week. Our foreign minister, Mr. Ilkka Kanerva, had sent some text messages to a female dancer who then ran off to the yellow press to release them to public scrutiny. Even the (normally) highly respected Helsingin Sanomat fell in and wrote numerous articles on this matter (then again they are the unofficial horn of the Social Democratic Party - Kanerva is from the National Coalition Party).

The down side of all this is, in my opinion, that this kind of journalism is here to stay. Why? Because of the internet and the media companies’ inability to renew their old, unsustainable business models. Iltalehti and Ilta-Sanomat are usually competing head to head for the highest ranking website in terms of online visitors and visits on the weekly TNS Metrix ranking.

They are constantly losing ground in the offline world as people are reading news online. Once online, you have to be quick and react immediately to the latest events to be the site that people pass around through e-mail and IM. If you’re slow you’re gone. Well, no you’re not - if you decide to compete on something more sustainable where people actually spend time and enjoy the content. Have you had a look at the Finnish yellow press websites? Their front pages are long as hell - that’s because you need as much coverage on as many items to grasp the interest of a wide, very fragmented audience.

The problem of losing advertising money is not something only the Finnish press is battling with. US saw the biggest plunge in advertising revenue in 50 years. Media companies’ business models are heavily outdated and if they cannot renew their way of thinking and creating value for the customer - we will see many more scandals covered in the hope of a few more eyes grabbed for attention.

Photo by diver227, licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

(via TechCrunch)

I was recently given a product sample when I went to Stockmans to buy some deodorant and aftershave. They gave me this small packet similar to the one shown on the right.

The lotion was some sort of moisturiser for your face after shaving. It felt good but I only barely managed to get a small drop out to actually use it. I liked the product but I didn’t really have enough of it to start using it - ie. my personal usage patterns of toiletry products would have had to be changed. I’m not used to that stuff.

However, if they would have given me enough lotion to use for maybe 5 times, I might have actually gotten used to it and walked back to Stockmans to get some more in proper pack. Didn’t happen - lost sale. I think this is still a problem especially with so called beauty products that people aren’t used to them and thus small samples don’t really do anything for the user. You’d be better of making sample sizes (at least for men) a bit larger and getting them using the product for a while.

Photo by bchow: June 1, 2006 Freebies Free Stuff Mail Call

Have a look at the image below. It’s a screenshot from a relatively popular business website in Finland. I’ve marked the content in pink. Am I the only one to notice that there’s slightly too much noise in there in the form of advertisements and other widgets and gimmicks?

I’m sure they’ve managed to capitalise on the traffic very well with regard to media sales, but how sustainable is the traffic in the long run (or even in the short run)?

Money is important, there’s no doubt about that. However, I do feel there are some principles editors of websites should keep in mind. In this case the content becomes unfindable and thus makes the reader work twice as hard.

Then again - as an advertiser, I don’t see the website that appealing when there are about 10 other advertisements already grasping for the reader’s attention.

Slashdot writes about Battlefield 2142 in-game-advertising and how this is portrayed among users as spyware. This leaflet also explains what EA is after. I understand the frustration the consumers are going through.

I believe the business model is the biggest problem here. When consumers pay for something they are taught that they don’t have to put up with advertising. It’s in the logic built by the the world around us. EA could have put out two different versions of the game, one with in-game-advertising that would sell a lot more cheaper and the other one with the option not to show in-game-advertising (and naturally this one would be priced more heavily to cover development costs in one purchase).

This is giving consumers an option - the natural thing they want anyhow.