Mediaboss Marketing

It is important to not only understand disparate digital platforms, but also to identify which audience segments are consuming content and when they are consuming it.

In our previous article, we discussed how insurers can use addressable marketing strategies to achieve their awareness and conversion goals. Yet the ability to identify and target your customer and prospects is continually evolving every day. The importance of staying ahead in the race to develop and integrate new digital platforms is accelerating at a pace that can sometimes feel overwhelming. The individual consumer is increasingly empowered by digital media, through the ability to control when and what type of information they want to consume.

And companies are taking notice: See Facebooks recent acquisition of mobile messaging service WhatsApp for $22 billion, a startup with essentially no revenue, but access to more than 600 million active users. Just check out the figures:

Todays insurance leaders understand that digital investments and competencies must be achieved in order to establish a true competitive advantage in the insurance market space as more consumers investigate and shop on the web. In response to this digital evolution taking place, carriers need to ensure that their digital media programs are the stars of their own media portfolios. It is important to not only understand these disparate digital platforms, but also to identify which audience segments are consuming content and when they are consuming it.

Four critical areas enable insurance leaders to make better and more agile decisions around their digital strategies:

Size digital opportunity relative to the targetUnderstanding the size of your universe by segment is a critical component to a successful and scalable digital program. Implementing a segment-driven approach to sizing the opportunity will enable carriers to connect specific audience segment groups with distinct audience platforms and size the total opportunity based on each platform's associated reach. From this point, they are better enabled to develop media plans that are tailored to the appropriate segment, customer lifecycle and experience, and drive scale-based on those audience segments they want to target.

[Losing policyholders? The solution is ridiculous]

Gain a deeper visibility into media performance This starts with having a common and widely accepted attribution approach that will enable the carrier to measure and make sound business decisions around the allocation of your media spend. To gain the most consistent level of insight, its best to have a single, accurate version connected to your key metrics. How you measure your insights should also be scalable and flexible to add in new sources of data or to simply adjust to changes reflected in your current campaigns. Optimally, both top-down and bottoms-up approaches arerecommended and will provide you with a fully modeled view into the event stream that can assign credit to various touchpoints, timing, content, placement, and sequencing. A modeled event stream also provides substantiated insights into the holistic value that any medium contributes to a specific outcome.

Optimize around your specific measures of valueIn many situations, carriers will be able to define value solely based on a credit risk factor, while others will be able to create risk tiers (within behavioral or attitudinal segments) for a more thorough understanding of value. Value is also inclusive of the objectives associated with each segments lifecycle stage such as acquisition, retention, cross-sell, or lifetime value. Nonetheless, a clear understanding of the customer value or currency is required for each segment and should be aligned with your budgeting and forecasting plan to better allocate where media dollars are spent. Media plans can then be developed and adjusted based on the cost of reaching these individuals across the various audience platforms in both real-time and non-real-time environments.

Monetize digital media effortsNow that you have the right and agreed-upon measurement plan in place, its time to monetize your media efforts. There are three critical components to monetizing your digital efforts:

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Optimizing a Digital Media Strategy in Insurance

Announced at the end of yesterday's big Nexus 6 launch, the Nexus Player is Google's new living room media box - it's answer to the Apple TV and other set-tops like the Roku 3.

The tech giants have long been battling for control of our living rooms, and it's surprising to some extent that one product has not yet emerged with a significant share of the market.

In the Nexus Player, Google thinks it's finally found a product in which it can smuggle itself into your living room, supplying Netflix streams to your TV along with Android games and more.

It's a busy market place that Google is tackling here, and recent history is littered with failed attempts from all kinds of companies. Media boxes were once the obsession of hard drive manufacturers like WD, now it's tech giants like Google and Apple.

Google, you'll remember, has already launched the Chromecast in this area, and has in the past failed in its attempts with Google TV.

"Nexus Player is a home media player for streaming Netflix and playing games on your TV"

Have you heard? The DVD player is dead. The Blu-ray player is dead too. Physical media - its days are numbered and its influence on technology trends is certainly weakening. The Nexus Player is the latest candidate to stake a claim on this post-disc world.

It's a puck-shaped device that plugs into your TV via HDMI and it's small - measuring just 120x120x 20mm. It's dinkier than a DVD, though substantially thicker.

Forgoing any kind of physical media playback, it's designed exclusively to stream and download video and music from both the internet and your own home network. So it's a Netflix player then - right?

Link:
Updated: Nexus Player: Everything you need to know about Google's Android TV box

President Vladimir Putin signed a law today curbing foreign ownership in Russian media, shrugging off criticism that the Kremlin is undermining the independent press in a swipe at global publishers and broadcasters.

The law requires Russian media with foreign owners to reduce non-Russian ownership to 20 percent by the end of 2016 after amending constituent documents by February of that year. The Vedomosti daily, published jointly by the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, and Axel Springer SEs Forbes Russia are the biggest independent media outlets in the country.

Since becoming president in 2000, Putin has brought major television stations under state control, pushing opposition discourse toward the Internet. This year, as geopolitical tensions flared over the conflict in Ukraine, Putin has tightened control over the World Wide Web and media.

This is another step toward closing Russia, isolating its information space and removing elites from criticism, Nikolay Petrov, a political science professor at the Higher School of Economics School in Moscow, said by phone. Vedomosti and Forbes have been the two remaining strongholds that could afford criticism toward Putins elite and havent agreed to compromise with the Kremlin.

The law also threatens to squeeze owners of entertainment television in Russia, including operators CTC Media Inc. (CTCM) and Walt Disney Co. (DIS), cable TV channels such as Discovery Communications Inc. (DISCA) and publishers of glossy magazines, including Sanoma OYJ (SAA1V), Hearst Corp. and Conde Nast.

Communications Minister Nikolay Nikiforov met with executives from media with foreign shareholders last week and agreed to form a working group on how to comply with the new law.

Hearst Shkulev Media, which publishes Elle and Maxim magazines in Russia, will need to amend its shareholder structure to bring its editorial group in compliance with the new requirements, co-owner Viktor Shkulev said. Still, the company is seeking to keep Hearsts participation in other business areas, he said.

CTC Media may need to either delist shares in the U.S. or buy back shares to comply with the law, Vedomosti reported Sept. 26. The company said last week its studying options to defend its shareholders and comply with the legislation at the same time. The Russian unit of Discovery declined to comment last week. Disneys local office couldnt be reached for comment today.

The law was drafted sloppily, Petrov said, adding that glossy magazines and entertainment TV channels will probably be exempted. The Kremlin was aiming to tighten control not over them, but over socio-political media.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ilya Khrennikov in Moscow at ikhrennikov@bloomberg.net

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Russia Threatens Foreign Media Ownership With New Rules

CTC Media Inc. (CTCM) plunged to a five-year low after President Vladimir Putin enacted a law capping foreign ownership in Russian media companies at 20 percent by the end of 2016.

The shares, which only trade in the U.S., slumped 2.8 percent to $4.86 in New York yesterday. CTC was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange in 2006 and is the only publicly traded Russian television company. Stockholm-based Modern Times Group AB (MTGB) is the biggest shareholder, with about a 39 percent stake, while 36 percent is held by various U.S. and European investors, the company said in a statement last month.

CTC tumbled after Putin signed legislation lowering the threshold for foreign ownership in media companies from 50 percent. The tighter restriction comes as Russia increases its control over communications in the country amid a standoff with the U.S. and its allies over the Ukraine war. Putin has called the Internet a creation of U.S. spy agencies, and the government earlier this year banned anonymous public access to the Web.

It seems the worst is yet to come, Sergey Vasin, an analyst at OAO Gazprombank, said by phone from Moscow yesterday. The new law is signed into effect while slowing economic growth is already resulting in less revenue from ad sales. There is just no reason for any optimism.

Russias $2 trillion economy will expand 0.3 percent this year, the worst performance since it shrank in 2009, according to the median forecast of 38 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Growth has been squelched by international sanctions linked to the war in Ukraine.

CTC Media said in a statement that it is considering options including a capital reorganization and divestments to comply with the lower foreign-ownership threshold.

The company might consider restricting shareholder voting exclusively to domestic investors while allowing foreign stakeholders to receive dividends and other financial benefits without being able to influence management, said Konstantin Belov, an analyst at UralSib Capital.

There is no easy option for CTC Media to comply with the law, Belov said by phone from Moscow.

CTC Media will develop a solution protecting all of our shareholders to the fullest extent, Yuliana Slashcheva, the companys chief executive officer, said by e-mail. We will inform the market appropriately as soon as decisions are taken.

The new law takes effect in 2016 and gives companies a year to comply.

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Russias CTC Media Drops as Putin Restricts Ownership

MOSCOW In a move that will significantly constrict Russias fast-shrinking space for independent reporting, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday signed into law a measure that will curtail foreign ownership of media outlets in his country.

The decision extends the Kremlins control over some of Russias most prominent independent publications, a few of which have broken news critical of Putin and his allies at a time when tensions between Russia and the West are at their highest level since the Cold War.

The move comes as Russias powerful state-run media has labored round-the-clock to glorify Putin and denigrate groups perceived to be the nations enemies. Leaders of those outlets the sources of news for the vast majority of Russians are unapologetic and open about their efforts as propagandists, a term they use to describe themselves.

Even though Putin long ago consolidated his control over television and many print news outlets, there had been independent options for the smaller set of Russians who sought alternative voices for news, and the Internet was a particularly unregulated space. But over the past year, one news source after another has been blocked, closed or editorially redirected.

The bill quietly signed into law on Wednesday will limit foreign ownership of media assets to 20 percent by the beginning of 2017.

We understand very well that those who own information own the world, lawmaker Vadim Dengin, the author of the bill, said during a parliamentary debate before the law was approved. When foreigners come here to make money and then actively influence the media market and use it for their own benefit, at this moment, I want to say that I am ready to close down Russia and ensure its security.

Dengin, a member of the nationalist LDPR party, said a cold information war was being waged against Russia.

The law deals the sharpest blow to Russias most prominent independent daily newspaper, Vedomosti, which aspires to Western standards of journalism.

Vedomosti is co-owned by a tri-national consortium Dow Jones, the Financial Times Group and Sanoma, a Finnish media company and focuses on business reporting, a sensitive topic given Russias tanking economy and dim prospects for the future. The newspaper has chronicled the troubles of Russias most powerful companies as the economy has slowed and Western sanctions have taken hold.

Our politicians have developed a mania of control, said Tatiana Lysova, Vedomostis editor in chief. We do not report to the Russian authorities, so that is why we are a potential danger in their mind, a potential enemy.

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Russias Putin signs law extending Kremlins grip over media