By 2017, about 600 million televisions worldwide will be connected to the Internet, at least according to the Connected TV Forecasts report from Digital TV Research.

At the start of the decade there were an estimated 48 million Internet connected televisions in the United States or 45 percent of the global total. By 2017, it is expected that there will be 147 million Internet connected televisions in the U.S., which will account for 25 percent of the global total. China will have 93 million connected TVs by 2017, up from a mere 2 millio More...

If your sales staff sells traditional media, understanding how paid search works is a big plus. Today, about half of all online ad dollars go to search, so it is important to understand where most of online money now goes.

The first step is for media reps is to ask clients how much of their ad budget goes to search. Many are surprised at how much of the marketing plan goes to a format that started in its current form only 12 years ago—2000 was the year Google first started selling advertising based on keywords.

The year search really broke out was 2008. In that year Google indexed a trillion web pages, but more importantly, More...

After an 11-year stint as Wired's top editor, Chris Anderson is stepping down. According to a memo released late Friday by Condé Nast CEO Charles Townsend, Anderson will leave the magazine, pursuing his "entrepreneurial dream." The announcement comes about 10 days after the publication announced it was increasing its rate base for the 11th consecutive year to 825,000--a bump of 3 percent or 25,000. Bel More...

Two significant industry conferences in the last couple of weeks were dominated by the question of whether print is dead. At the American Magazine Conference two weeks ago, Ben Horowitz, co-founder, Andreessen Horowitz, said this:

“Babies born now will never read anything in print. At the same time, people in their 40s and 50s will never stop reading print. Face the reality that print will eventually go away.”

(You may recall that Mark Andreessen and some college classmates invented the browser that became Netsca More...

I recently had the opportunity to attend an Intel conference where blockbuster film producer, executive and bestselling author Peter Guber spoke. In his speech, Peter emphasized the importance in business of being fully committed to an opportunity, and evoked the metaphor of Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés’ famous order to “burn the boats.” Upon arriving in Mexico and facing the warriors of the entire Aztec nation, Cortés knew the only viable exit strategy was to move forward—as the alternative would have meant utter failure (climbing back in boats an More...

We received this e-mail from the Joss Group on Monday, as the hurricane was about to hit. Not only did they take a shot at our decision to postpone the MediaNext event—we didn't cancel it, we postponed until January—but they also made hurricane jokes.

For the record, Joss Group, here's some of what Hurricane Sandy did:
• Caused 51 deaths.
• Knocked out power for 7.5 million people.
• Caused the cancellation of 16,000 flights.
• Caused unprecedented flooding on New York's 100-plus-year-old subway system More...

Arguably, publishing is quickly heading toward digital dominance. Strategies for the migration are way past overdue. However, some of the strategies that ruled print media are being abandoned for digital media, and that’s a mistake. It still should be about reaching the right customer at the right time with the right message. With digital marketing and the data it generates, publishers can be more accurate about the right time and message. Publishers can use customer information to improve their content and sales quality. Here are four ways to improve yours.

1. Analyze and Optimize Premium Inventory: Digital publishers spend too much time worrying about the valuation of their remnant inventory, who sells it, and More...

Oxford, Mississippi—Magazine publishers from a broad cross section of the industry spent two days presenting their best practices and innovative ideas for an era of transition during the third annual ACT III conference at the University of Mississippi.

Like at the AMC in San Francisco last week, the underlying theme of the event was whether print media's best days are behind it. And if it is, the question was how long the decline will take, and how far down print will go. And like at the AMC, there was no broad agreement. In fact, sa More...

ABM, which is wrapping up its Executive Forum being held in Chicago this week, voted nine new companies into membership at its board of directors meeting Monday.

Media members include Editorial Projects in Education, InsuranceNewsNet.com and new international member Beuth Verlag GmbH.

The association also added six associate members, including Adobe Systems Inc., bXb Online, LiveIntent, MagToGo, Tout and WeiserMazars LLP.

"These new members—ranging from traditional and international media companies to progressive businesses focused on app developmen More...

I got quite a few phone calls this past week from fellow circulators concerning the article that was posted on Audience Development's website last week on action code response rates exceeding direct mail rates.

I am not going to say who called me in this article, let them get their own fame, but the best call was from someone who simply said: “What the hell is an action response code?” Actually she used another word instead of “hell,” but I don’t want to be censored in my first month on this web site.

Some of the figure More...

For their November/December 2012 issue, the editors and creative director at Mother Jones decided to do a split run cover, with a completely different cover story and image for subscribers and newsstand buyers.

Subscribers get “No Way Out,” a long-form investigative piece on solitary confinement in California state prisons written by Shane Bauer, who himself was imprisoned in Iran for 26 months, six in solitary, when he was picked up on the Iraq border in 2009. The cover image is a realistic illustration by Tim O’Brien of a tormented man in a prison cell.

The newsstand cove More...

Getting a name, email address or other contact information can be a very valuable lead for publishers. Yet, in the instant culture of 2012, many users are becoming ever more impatient when presented with a registration form.

According to a new report from Janrain, a company that provides social login technology, among other things, online registration forms are quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Its data, collected from the Pew Internet and Americ More...