Google, Facebook Offer News Sites Lessons on Ad Targeting [Study]

Only three news sites – CNN, Yahoo News and The New York Times – out of 22 appeared to use high levels of ad targeting, according to a Pew Research Center study. In these cases, 45 percent or more of the ads were different from one user to the next.

“By contrast, highly targeted advertising is already a key component of the business model of operations such as Google and Facebook,” the study found.

The study noted that Google had a strong advertising presence on news sites:
A popular style of ad on these sites, accounting for 38% of all ads captured, is the sponsored link box-small boxed-in ads that usually have between three and seven lines of text. On most sites this box is powered by Google.

Three other news sites – CBS, USA Today, and MSNBC – exhibited moderate levels of targeting where between 29 percent and 40 percent of the ads were different across users.
Sites with low levels or no apparent targeting included FoxNews.com, WashingtonPost.com, Time.com, and Newsweek.com.

When researchers revisited the sites in January, they found that two – latimes.com and theatlantic.com – showed slightly higher levels of ad targeting.

By not targeting ads, news sites miss an opportunity to serve up more relevant ads to website visitors; these targeted ads potentially command higher prices and bring more revenue to publishers.
The center, which studied 22 news sites, identified other trends:

• 21 percent of the ads observed in the study were in-house ads, which are ads that sell a news organization’s own products such as subscriptions to print magazines or newspapers.
• 18 percent of the ads were from financial services, more than any other industry sector observed in the study.
• 46 percent of the ads on news sites were static banner ads. The Wall Street Journal had the highest percentage of these ads (100 percent) while the Washington Post relied less on banner ads (18 percent). Instead, Washington Post used sponsored links far more than others, 66 percent.
• 1.3 percent of the ads on news sites studied had stand-alone video ads.
• None of the top stories were in a video format, even on sites linked to television-based legacy media. As a consequence, there were no pre- or post-roll video ads. However, since the study Yahoo News created a content partnership with ABC News that includes plans to feature more video amid Yahoo News’ top news stories.
• Discount or coupon advertising such as Groupon was fairly limited.

For the study, Pew Research analyzed 5,381 advertisements on the main websites and legacy outlets of 22 different news organizations – including national and local newspapers, broadcast, and online media in late June 2011. In January 2012, the researchers revisited the sites to review the levels of ad targeting.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2153189/Google-Facebook-Offer-News-Sites-Lessons-on-Ad-Targeting-Study

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210,000 people face alcohol death risk, warn doctors

Failure to reform alcohol laws could lead to 210,000 preventable deaths in England and Wales in the next 20 years, doctors have warned.

They are putting pressure on the government ahead of its “alcohol strategy” for both countries, expected in the coming months.

Writing in The Lancet, doctors said the UK was at a “potential tipping point”.
Prime Minister David Cameron has already vowed to tackle the “scandal” of drunkenness and alcohol abuse.

The projected mortality figures come from Prof Ian Gilmore, a former president of the Royal College of Physicians, Dr Nick Sheron, from the National Institute for Health Research and members of the British Society of Gastroenterology.

Their figure of 210,000 is a reduction from their previous estimate of 250,000 and represents their “worst-case scenario” of no change to alcohol policy.

“It remains entirely within the power of the UK government to prevent the worst-case scenario of preventable deaths,” they wrote.

The figures for England and Wales suggest 70,000 of the deaths could be from liver disease and the rest from accidents, violence and chronic illnesses such as high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, breast cancer and cancer of the gastrointestinal tract.
‘Tipping point’

They were critical of the “responsibility deal” in England, which are voluntary agreements with the drinks industry on issues such as promotions and labelling.

This was compared to the Scottish government’s approach such as a minimum price per unit of alcohol.

The group said: “We are at a potential tipping point in the UK in taking on the shameful, preventable loss of life caused by alcohol.

“The potential prize of reversing this tragic toll of alcohol-related deaths is there for the taking.”
The Department of Health will publish its alcohol strategy for England later this year.
Selling alcohol below cost price is to be banned in England and Wales from 6 April. However, ministers are expected to go further in the forthcoming strategy, recommending a higher minimum price for drink.

The chief executive of Alcohol Concern, Eric Appleby, said: “What we have to accept is that doing nothing is no longer a responsible option for alcohol policy, and that trying to ‘nudge’ drinking culture through information and persuasion has proved to be little better than doing nothing.
“We can see from the example of other countries that drinking patterns really can change, the challenge is there for the government to start the process now through the alcohol strategy.”
Henry Ashworth, chief executive of the Portman Group, which also represents UK drinks producers, said: “It is really important that we put this report in context.

“The vast majority of people drink responsibly. Painting doomsday scenarios won’t help reduce alcohol misuse and calling for Soviet Union-style population controls cannot do anything but alienate the vast majority of people who already drink within government guidelines.

“We agree with the prime minister that strong partnerships are essential to tackle the minority who use alcohol recklessly and drinks producers are committed to supporting this approach.”

The Public Health Minister, Anne Milton, said: “As the prime minister said earlier this week, we are determined to tackle the scandal of alcohol abuse. People that misuse alcohol endanger their own lives and those of others.

“It costs the NHS £2.7bn per year and in our forthcoming alcohol strategy we will set out our plans on how to deal with the wide range of problems and harms it causes.”

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17073816

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Alastair Campbell on drink: ‘I paid a heavy price’

Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former spokesman, examines the British middle class’s troubled relationship with alcohol and his own long and complicated history with drink.

To read the headlines about Britain’s drink problem, you might think it is largely an issue of teenage binge-drinking in town centres up and down the country.

You would be very wrong. Young people drinking too much is a problem. But it is not the biggest drink problem Britain faces. The real problem comes in the form of our hidden alcoholics.
Back in my hard-drinking days I was one of them – professional, successful on the surface, with a good job, a steady relationship, a mortgage, nice holidays, lots of friends. But I was heading for a very big fall.

The Office for National Statistics tells us that the professional classes are now the most frequent drinkers in the country and that 41% of professional men drink more than the recommended daily limit of three to four units at least once a week. Women are also drinking much more than they used to, with alcoholic liver disease now split evenly between the sexes.

My own drinking reached its peak while I worked in Fleet Street in the 1980s – a time when the pub was an extension of the office.

Anne Robinson, one of my colleagues on the Daily Mirror back then, was one of the many casualties of the hard-drinking culture.

Reflecting back on the days before she too gave it up, Anne said: “It was just a sea of alcohol. If you were editing the paper, people just came in to your office to empty your drinks cabinet.”

Annie has been dry for years. I paid a heavy price for the same sort of lifestyle when my drinking, coupled with depression, triggered a mental breakdown that landed me in hospital.

It forced me to confront my drinking, and by 1986 I’d stopped and started a slow road to recovery.
Since then, even in newspapers, Britain’s boozy workplace culture has largely disappeared.

 24-hour mistake?

Yet, paradoxically, more people are being treated for alcohol problems.

Recent figures show that nearly 9,000 people die each year in the UK from alcohol-related diseases. Perhaps more alarmingly, liver disease in general is the only major cause of death in Britain that is on the rise, year after year – claiming 100 lives every week – whereas mortality for all the smoking diseases is falling dramatically.

Find out more Panorama: Britain’s Hidden Alcoholics BBC One, Monday 20 February at 20:30 GMT Then available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer

That Britain has a problem with drink is highlighted not just by the figures, but by the fact that the government is busy devising a new strategy to address alcohol-related ill-health.

David Cameron has signalled his appetite for reform, including the possibility of minimum pricing as already being taken forward in Scotland, and tougher rules on promotion and marketing. So how did we get here?

Well, as with so much of our recent history, the answer lies in Europe. With closer ties came cheaper travel and a newly developed taste for all things European, wine included.

Then came the booze cruises to France and the birth of a seemingly unquenchable British thirst. Since 1970, our consumption of wine has gone up five-fold, according to the Beer and Pub Association. We now consume 1.6 billion bottles a year (not counting the ones we drink when we go abroad). It has gone from a middle-class luxury to an everyday part of middle-class life.

Anne Robinson remembers a “sea of alcohol” in the newsroom

Though ultimately individuals have to take responsibility for their own relationships with alcohol, governments have to set the framework, which is why the planned new strategy is so important.

I defend virtually everything done by the government I worked for under Tony Blair. I confess however, as he and Tessa Jowell will confirm, that I was never a big fan of the laws to introduce 24-hour licensing, surely one of the factors in the troubled relationship between Brits and booze.

I had left Downing Street by the time the law came in, but it had been mooted for some time before and I never really bought the argument that Britain would suddenly become a continental-style drinking nation.

Cheap booze

I think we have always had this tendency, where there is drink, to drink it to excess. Did it make things worse? Was it a mistake?

On the one hand it is quite nice to have a sense of London and other cities being more European in their approach to drink.

But I think it is entirely possible to see a link between increased availability of alcohol and our increased consumption.

Britain is, after all, the nation of the gin epidemic – back in the 18th Century. While in 1914, the government had to bring in the Defence of the Realm Act because our own drinking was deemed a threat to our ability to defend ourselves in war. Health campaigners cite those as the first major British drinking crises. They believe we are now facing the third.

The big shift in recent times has been the rise of drinking at home, which is why the binge-drinking stereotype is neither accurate nor helpful. The issue is largely about price. Pubs charge a lot for a pint. Supermarkets don’t. It is a sad paradox that the decline in pubs has come alongside what seems to be a rise in drinking and alcohol-related problems.

In 1970, 90% of all pints were poured in a pub. Today, it is only 50% – the other half are bought much more cheaply in supermarkets and off-licences.
The government has to do its bit. But in making a film about Britain’s relationship with drink, and in meeting some of the hidden alcoholics, I met people who had each come to their own arrangement with alcohol.

For most, the answer is complete abstinence, or complete loss of control. I too said no for 13 years, but then I started having the odd drink again.

This time, I feel as though I am more in control. To be frank, it would be hard not to be.

Alcohol facts 10m people in England drink more than recommended Daily units men: 3-4 Daily units women: 2-3 New advice is to abstain from alcohol for two days a week Source: Drinkaware

But, having met others as they underwent rehabilitation treatment, I do wonder if I am doing the right thing. Partly I am testing myself, having one or two so I can then enjoy the satisfaction of being able to say “No”.

I also like being able to be “normal” like other social drinkers, just have the odd one and then call it a night.

I cannot say I have not drunk since first falling gently off the wagon in 1999. But I can say I have never been drunk, never had a hangover, never touched spirits and never felt the loss of control that had me hospitalised prior to my 13-year unbroken dry spell.

The psychiatrist who I see for my depression thinks that even occasional drinking on my part is a bad idea, and interestingly, in making a documentary on the subject, I did once again stop drinking altogether, not least perhaps as a result of the tour of Queen Mary’s Hospital anatomy department, where I was shown a few damaged livers.

I do feel that my own relationship with alcohol is more secure.
And while government has a role to play in setting rules and regulations on responsible drinking, on a certain level I think that our connection to alcohol is a deal that each of us has to make with ourselves. I hope this film helps some of Britain’s drinkers to do that.

Panorama: Britain’s Hidden Alcoholics, authored by Alastair Campbell, is on BBC One, Monday, 20 February at 20:30 GMT and then available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_9696000/9696398.stm

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Sony Google TV NSZ-GS7 Coming to the UK

Google TV launched in the US back in 2010 now it’s the UK’s turn, with one of the first products to arrive being the Sony NSZ-GS7

Along with the Sony NSZ-GP9 network Blu-ray player, the Sony NSZ-GS7 Google TV set-top box will be among the first UK products featuring the search engine giant’s TV service ( we still don’t know when the LG Google TV will be arriving).  We were recently treated to a brief demo of the service but it’s only now that we’ve had the chance to get our hands on the box itself and the innovative remote at Sony’s HQ in Tokyo.

The Google TV box can be connected to your TV via HDMI and enables you to watch broadcast TV (via a set-top box), use apps and browse the web, displaying more than one function on the screen at any one time. All TVs in the Sony Bravia range for 2012 will be upgradable to Google TV using the NSZ-GS7 box.

Sony NSZ-GS7 Google TV box: Build

The box itself is very small and compact, sporting a minimalist design, although it’s bigger than the likes of Apple TV. The black chassis sports a textured dimpled design that’s been designed to match the bezel of the EX650 TV range (available in 22, 26, 32 40 and 46-inch screen sizes).

Sony NSZ-GS7 Google TV box: Features

Running Android 3.1 Honeycomb, the NSZ-G37 incorporates Google Search and Chrome for easy web browsing. Bookmarks can be added and it’s also possible to add shortcuts to the homescreen, as you would on an Android phone or tablet. We’re told that the Google TV box will automatically update to Ice Cream Sandwich once it’s available.

The box has 4GB of built-in storage, although this is just for software updates and apps, and not for storing content. The NSZ-G37 supports both HD and 3D content.

Sony NSZ-G37: Remote

The Sony Google TV remote certainly looks impressive, and is different to Sony’s US Google TV remote. Along with a backlit QWERTY keyboard, it offers a touchpad (including pinch zoom for web browsing) and 3-axis motion control and can also be used as universal remote for basic functions on the latest Sony TVs.

Powered by two AA batteries, the remote fits neatly in the hand for one-handed control, while flipping the remote over to use the QWERTY keyboard is better suited to two-handed use (the QWERTY buttons won’t work while you’re holding the remote the other way up, so there’s no need to worry about pressing them accidentally). There’s also a mic input to enable voice search, although voice recognition is currently only available on the Sony NSZ-GP9 Blu-ray player.

You’ll also be able to perform basic functions on the both the NSZ-G37 and the NSZ-GP9 Blu-ray player, using the latest Bravia remote controls.

Sony NSZ-GS7 Google TV box: Apps

Unlike the first generation of Google TVs, the Sony Google TV box will offer full access to the Android market, including a selection of TV-optimized apps. We’re told told that the there should be a substantial selection of TV-centric apps available at launch as they’re actually relatively easy to put together.

For apps that already exist for other Android platforms, most of the work is already done – developers merely need to port them across with larger images and text to fit the TV screen, and they don’t need to worry about touchscreen functionality and for tablet developers – the apps are already TV-friendly 16:9.

We don’t know exactly which apps will be available at launch, but the boffins at Sony told us to expect apps from “all the big content providers”.

There will also be integration for games across different devices, both Android and Apple iOS, and you’ll also be able to ‘throw’ the website on your mobile device to your TV and vice versa.

Sony NSZ-GS7: Verdict

On first impressions, the Sony NSZ-GS7 Google TV box itself fits in well with Sony’s design theme, so it’ll match any other Sony AV kit nicely. The remote is extremely impressive, as the designers have clearly had to cram a hell of a lot of functions into a relatively small device.

Overall, the Google TV experience appeared to be simple and zippy, much like the slick interfaces that we’ve become used to seeing on tablets, rather than the somewhat clunky internet TV options that have appeared over the last few years, so we look forward to seeing Sony’s Google TV offering when it’s fully operational (we’ve been told that the products will launch in the summer).

Although we managed to get our mitts on the product for a limited amount of time, we haven’t been able to give it a full run-through so stay tuned for a full review.

Sony NSZ-GS7 Google TV box: Summer 2012

Sony NSZ-GS7 Google TV box: TBC

Source: http://www.t3.com/reviews/sony-google-tv-nsz-gs7-review

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Latitude Leaderboard: Does Google Want to Be the New Foursquare?

Image via CrunchBase

Google is expanding its reach across social media — first with Google+, now with Leaderboard, a new feature allowing users to earn points for checking in to a location via GoogleLatitude.
Last week, Google launched an updated version of Google Maps for Android, equipped with the new feature similar to Foursquare.

The company hasn’t officially said it wants to compete against Foursquare. Leaderboard’s addition to Google Latitude has been kept hush-hush. Google doesn’t even list Leaderboard as being a new feature on the Android Google Maps update. It only says it fixed bugs and has “improved battery performance for Latitude and Location History users.” Leaderboard is only available on the latest version of Google Maps, and not everyone has access to the feature yet.

We tested the new version of Google Maps with the Latitude Leaderboards on an Android smartphone. It is only accessible after a user checks in somewhere using Google Latitude. Maps users can share their location — as they have for the past year — with Google’s Latitude app. After check-in, the user earns points and is navigated to the Leaderboard page, which ranks the user and his or her Google+ friends. There is also a global page that ranks all users based on points from check-ins. The person with the most points earns a crown above his or her No. 1 ranking. Leaderboard doesn’t have a mayor, like Foursquare.

Do you use check-in apps? Would you leave Foursquare for Google’s Latitude Leaderboard?

Graphic courtesy of Engadget
Source: http://mashable.com/2012/02/19/google-latitude-leaderboards/

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