Only a short time ago, it would have seemed unimaginable that paywalls would be the accepted norm for media sites. But surprisingly, they have finally become accepted as the normal payment model for print publishers looking to make some money on their online content. Readers still complain about them of course, but we understand why they’re there. After all, media companies have to earn revenue off of their digital versions, and paywalls, though not perfect, are the method of choice.

Big newspaper media like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal already charge readers after they’ve viewed a certain amount of articles and The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle recently said they will charge readers for online content as well. Smaller papers are joining the ranks too.

But is the paywall the best way to for media companies to profit on digital? It’s certainly not the only way. Several third-party companies have begun offering online media passes in an attempt to find a different slant on the paywall model, but so far, few are making a big splash. Online media passes allow users to manage multiple digital subscriptions in one place and can offer a new way for media companies to gain revenue from their digital readers, according to Press+, which works with about 400 publishers.

Press+ argues that online media passes offer a way for a publisher to launch a metered subscription model, package web, mobile and tablet content into a single subscription package, boost circulation revenue by offering discounted digital access to print subscribers. Plus, it’s outsourced and doesn’t require the internal IT team’s time and effort.

Though Press+ is seeing some success, goliath Google didn’t fare so well. The company’s One Pass product only lasted about a year and only had two publishers join. In an article on EContent.com, author Alan Mutter said he believes Google’s product didn’t catch on because media companies were worried about what Google could do with their customer data.

However, Press+ argues that its model offers a win for publishers because it opens up new ways to turn a profit while preserving existing advertising revenue and online readers.

Similarly, blogger Andrew Sullivan made a big splash with his move into monthly passes, now offering access to his blog, The Dish, for $2 a month versus just a $20-a-year option. He uses TinyPass, another small company that that helps publishers sell content online. Clearly, online media passes demonstrate that they offer value, but will it be enough to take over paywalls?

Do you think online media passes will ever successfully surpass the paywall model?

Scarborough's newest infographic is particularly useful for digitally-minded yet location-specific media companies and marketers. Specifically, it tells the local story of how online media consumption has evolved over the past few years by identifying the top markets in key areas of online media to paint a picture of national trends.

One interesting nugget of info: Atlanta, Austin, San Francisco and Washington, DC are almost always in the top 10 for every online media activity in every year measured.

The infographic can help media and marketers narrow their focus, using layers of data to reach digital audiences and consumers more efficiently. Download the full infographic here.

Did any of the data surprise you?

We often post interesting insights from our colleagues on the healthcare research side of Kantar Media. Now the healthcare team has some big news.

They’ve just launched their own blog for media companies, marketers and agencies. Posts will focus on the latest research and insights into professional and consumer healthcare media markets.

• Insights into the media usage of consumers and healthcare professionals
• Attitudinal and behavioral findings about brands and media
• Multimedia audience measurement data and ad intelligence
• Comments on related industry news

There will also be white papers, infographics and more. Check it out now and subscribe!

As we’ve shared before, our team always reads industry sites and newsletters to find the latest media trends, news and tips. Here are a few of the online advertising stories that caught our eyes this week. Enjoy!

What Marketers Should Know About Ad Servers – Ad servers are the tools that place advertisements on websites. Sounds simple, but the truth is that without them, the unique capabilities and precision of digital advertising might not exist. So then why do so few marketers understand how ad servers function? Over at iMedia Connection, Eric Picard, CEO of Rare Crowds, shares the basics of the all-important ad server, arguing that better decisions can be made once a marketer has a handle on how this tool works. This is a piece you’ll want to re-read and then bookmark.

Enforcer of the Online Ad Opt-Out - Genie Barton, VP and director of the Council of Better Business Bureaus' online behavioral advertising and mobile marketing initiatives, is the enforcer of the bureaus' Digital Advertising Alliance’s AdChoices program, which requires brands to place a small, triangular blue icon on their ads. When consumers click on the icon, they are sent to a page where they can choose to opt out of targeted ads. In a Q&A with Adweek, Barton discusses online privacy and ad targeting. You’ll want to read what she has to say.

Are Your Online Ads Viewable? - Ad management company DG just released its Global Benchmark Report for 2012, which pushes to make viewability the chief metric for online ads – not clicks. In order for an ad to be counted as viewable, half of its pixels have to be in view for at least one second. Their argument makes a lot of sense and is very convincing. Click here to read more and download the report.

Digital Now Makes Up Bigger Chunk of Agency Budgets - U.S. ad spending grew 4% during the first two months of 2013 vs. that same period in 2012, with digital accounting for the second-largest share of media spending. Digital made up 22% of ad agency buys, according to data from four of the six agency holding companies compiled by the Standard Media Index. Digital media buys also rose 16% during the January and February, with a 23% increase in ad networks and 12% increase in premium display.

What online advertising stories made you click this week?

Here at Kantar Media SRDS, we’re obsessed with all forms of media. That’s why this brand-new infographic from research company Scarborough caught our eye.  It’s the first in a series of analyses about the evolution of cross-platform media consumption over the past decade with data on social, traditional and digital. Here are five things we learned:

1. Social media grew 238% between 2009 and 2012.
2. 42% of U.S. adults agree the Internet is their main source of entertainment.
3. Consumption of media on traditional platforms is declining or flat, but 68% of adults still read a print newspaper.
4. In 2006, 8% of U.S. adults lived in a household that owned a smartphone. That number rose to 44% in 2012.
5. Austin, Texas, has consistently maintained its position in the top three local markets for social media usage in both 2009 and 2012.

You can view these results here or see more in the infographic below.

 

• Click here to listen and subscribe for free in iTunes (Featured by Apple as a "New and Noteworthy" podcast!)
• Click here to download the mp3 of this episode
• Click below to listen in your browser

About Tim Bingaman

About The Media Mic

The Media Mic is an interview series from Kantar Media SRDS with leaders in the media business about the roads they’ve taken, and the stories and people that make up our vibrant industry. Bandwidth and hosting for The Media Mic is provided by Wizzard Media and Libsyn.

While the majority of online publishers, such as ClickZ, allow advertisers to publish sponsored content on their sites coupled with display ads, The Huffington Post offers a much more innovative approach. According to Digiday, the HuffPo’s social marketing team assembles content from the site concerning a topic that relates to the advertising brand or a campaign the brand is running. Then staff curates the content onto a brand-owned news landing page stamped with brand ads. When you click on one of those articles, the ads appear on that page as well, seeming to position the brand as a thought leader around this topic and type of content.

For example, Glad’s sponsored page is all about celebrating everyday heroes that are making small changes and big differences in their community. Articles range from a six-year-old boy who writes a book to raise $30,000 for a friend with a rare disease to a father with advanced lung cancer who does a charity Polar Plunge. When the visitor clicks on these articles, they are taken to the article page jam-packed with Glad ads around its “Small Change. Big Difference” campaign.

This strategy requires a tremendous amount of aggregated content and a focused team of socially-minded people to execute. But for a culturally pervasive and extremely popular site like HuffPo that pushes out content like faster than new YouTube videos popup, it’s entirely possible.

This model appeals to an advertiser and even a site visitor because the brand isn’t writing the articles. Since they are actual news stories around a certain topic, it doesn’t feel like the publisher or the advertiser is trying to completely deceive the users.

Janet Balis, the Huffington Post’s publisher, told Digiday:

“We are empowering brands to take ownership of the real-time stories they want to tell by putting in place the right content strategy, by connecting it deeply to social to maximize earned media, and by strategically aligning content and paid advertising strategies.”

Social is probably one of the most critical components of this branded content strategy because these pages mix together content with sharing. It’s the cycle that never ends. As more users share these articles, there are more site visitors and so those people will be more likely to share the piece, and so on. More visitors to HuffPo and more impressions on these ads equal a win-win for advertiser and publisher.

Balis says:

“There are plenty of people embracing the idea of organic ad placements and intelligent advertorial strategies, but we’re focused on producing content, and connecting to social landscape and be analytical about science that can inform how to make these stories bigger.”

HuffPo offers up an impressive example of online advertising creativity, but for now this model may too challenging for smaller online publishers.

What do you think?

Even though mobile has become the clear medium of choice of Millennials and many other U.S. adults, marketers and advertisers are still apprehensive about launching mobile campaigns for many reasons. They find it hard to measure ROI, there are too many choices, it’s hard to fit mobile into a cohesive digital campaign and perhaps most importantly, there’s no standardization in terms of formats and sizes.

But as we’ve said many times here at the SRDS blog, marketers and agencies must re-evaluate and transform their mobile strategy in 2013 if they want to succeed.

The good news is that Joe Laszlo, Senior Director of the IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, says that the IAB is making strides to ensure that mobile will have more consistent guidelines in 2013.

If you’ve ever planned an online campaign you’ll know that the IAB Ad Unit Guidelines are essential for creating, planning, buying and selling of interactive marketing and advertising. We also recently added ad sizes and formats (IAB-standard and not) to our SRDS.com digital listings.

It’s exciting to see that the IAB is taking the next logical step in digital advertising normalization and attempting to implement standards for both video and mobile.

Last month In February, the IAB and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) released “Mobile Phone Creative Guidelines” for public comment in an attempt to streamline the development of ad units across the industry. And just this week, the IAB revealed five video ad formats that it hopes will eventually become industry standards.

That’s not to say that both initiatives won’t be a major challenge for the organization, but without a doubt the entire online advertising industry, publishers and marketers will be much better off once it’s implemented.   

When you’re in the business of loving media, staying up-to-date with industry news, tips and trends isn’t just optional, it’s a necessary obsession – and a fun one at that!

We thought it would be interesting to poll Kantar Media SRDS employees to find out which e-newsletters and sites make their list of must-reads. While you probably already visit many of these sites, we wager there are at least a few you’ve never heard of—and we love helping you discover new sites. Give them a shot! You never know what new insights you might stumble upon.

1. AAF SmartBrief
2. Ad Age
3. Ad Exhanger
4. Adweek
5. All Things D
6. Art Sobczak's Smart Calling
7. BtoB Magazine
8. Business Insider
9. ClickZ
10. Daily Infographic
11. DM News
12. Editor & Publisher
13. eMarketer Daily
14. Emedia vitals
15. Exchangewire
16. Folio
17. GigaOM
18. HispanicAd Newsletter
19. iMedia Connection
20. I Want Media from AOL
21. Lifehacker
22. LinkedIn Today
23. Mashable
24. Mediabistro
25. Media Daily News
26. Media Life
27. MediaPost
28. MPA Magazine News
29. Multichannel magazine
30. Outsell
31. paidContent from GigaOM
32. Publishing Executive
33. RTB and RTM posts from MediaPost
34. Stack Overflow
35. Target Marketing
36. The Media Briefing
37. TVNewsCheck
38. Web Marketing Association SmartBrief
39. Wooden Horse Magazine Media News
40. TheExcelAddict.com

What other industry websites and newsletters do you read frequently?

Broadcast media buyers and planners use SQAD data for media cost forecasting, specifically to find out what a CPP should be in the upcoming quarter, by market, by daypart.

Cost per Rating Point (CPP) is a metric used to determine the cost of buying ad space to reach 1% of their target audience. It allows media buyers and planners to compare the costs of advertising on different media outlets to determine the most efficient and cost-effective placements.

Here’s where broadcast planners can find this updated information in Kantar Media SRDS:

SQAD Spot Radio Cost-Per-Point Estimates by MSA

Go to the Radio Media database and on the welcome page, click on the SQAD Spot Radio Cost-per-Point Estimates link.  It will pull up a list of PDFs with SQAD data by metro market. The radio CPP data is only available to subscribers of the Radio database.

TV Households Cost-Per-Point Levels by DMA

Go to the TV & Cable Media database and on the welcome page, click on the DMA Maps and Profiles link. It will pull up a list of PDFs with SQAD data by DMA. This data is only available to subscribers of the TV & Cable database.

If you’re interested in accessing the Radio or TV/Cable databases, let us know.

Twitter users who access the site primarily on their mobiles use the site more often, interact more by Tweeting and follow more brands, according to a new report from Twitter and Kantar Media Compete.

Other important data points include:

1. Primary mobile users are 86% more likely to be on Twitter several times a day versus the average Twitter user.  
2. Not surprisingly, adults ages 18-34 are 52% more likely to be on Twitter using a mobile device.
3. Primary mobile users engage with Twitter all through the day (see image at the top of the post for more details).

View the full report for more insights, statistics and essential tips for advertisers on how they can take advantage of this important information.

Full disclosure: Compete, like SRDS, is part of Kantar Media.

This week, I had the opportunity to host another Media Mixology event in NYC, bringing together the SRDS community of media buyers and sellers. We networked, enjoyed some hospitality and heard a few insights from industry professionals, Mary Poscik of G2, Kevin Moeller of Media Behavior Institute and Ki Mae Heussner of GigaOm.

This event was actually a make-good because we had to postpone it from November in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. But despite the rescheduling, more than 100 professionals showed.

The discussion centered on the challenges agencies face when integrating emerging media into our clients’ plans, and how agency professionals can be better partners for their clients.

In prepping for the discussion, I was struck by the number of big headlines that have occurred in our industry in the last three months since we postponed. It made me appreciate even more the challenge agencies and marketers face as they try to stay ahead of the consumer’s ever-changing habits.

Across the media research, advertising and technology landscape there have been a number of big headlines:

• In Media Research: Consolidation of audience media measurement firms continues, as Nielsen announced its plans to buy Arbitron and the industry weighs the benefits of single source providers.
• In Technology: The mobile wars continued to escalate with Apple introducing a new iPhone and a mini tablet, Microsoft releasing Surface Pro, Samsung gaining traction with Galaxy, and now RIM is seriously pursuing a comeback with its latest (and strongly reviewed) Blackberry.
• In Digital Media: Facebook has introduced a whole new media: social search. Now there is speculation that they will acquire Atlas ad server technology from Microsoft to help super-size their display ad business.
• And in TV: This time of year, the entire ad industry is watching new campaigns break on the big screen for major events like Golden Globes, the Super Bowl, the Grammys and the Oscars. But how many of us have already seen these ads on the smaller screen? That’s why we also have to watch social media, especially the Twitterverse for analysis and ROI insights. And so not surprisingly, Twitter announces the acquisition of Social TV researcher Blue Fin Labs.

And that’s just the big stuff.

Through all of this, marketers don’t just expect their agency partners to stay on top of news coverage and understand the changing players as well as their new line-up of offerings. No, what marketers really need is help in understanding how their audiences are adopting and using these new technologies and how their behavior is being measured. They are anxiously relying on us to advise them how to participate in this new environment, while still doing our day jobs.

It’s a major opportunity and a reason why we love being part of our dynamic media industry. It’s how each of us keeps learning – and pushing our clients to try new things. And it’s why we all want to come together at these events, share ideas on what’s working, or not, and blow off a little steam.

Thanks to our speakers, Mary, Kevin and Ki Mae. Thanks to our sponsors for making the event possible. Thanks for spending some time talking with me and the SRDS team about your new challenges. Thanks for giving me a reason to stop and reflect on what’s happening so quickly. It’s why we love media.

Thanks to everyone who made this week’s Media Mixology event such a success. More than 100 media planning and buying professionals came out on Fat Tuesday to socialize with representatives from our media company sponsors. They shared ideas, snacked and sipped cocktails in a cool NY lounge.

Our purpose for these after-work gatherings is to bring together the entire SRDS community – the buyers and sellers of advertising – in a relaxed yet chic setting. It’s another way for you to mix fun and networking with media insights and information. At each event, we invite a few thought leaders to share their insights on an important topic.

This week, Mary Pocsik of G2 and Kevin Moeller of Media Behavior Institute, with industry reporter Ki Mae Huessner of GigaOm moderating, shared how they make decisions about integrating new media into client media plans, what media they have found effective and how they measure success. Mary and Kevin also presented to a Chicago Mixology crowd last fall, and your Chicago colleagues found different takeaways to use with clients.

It was a fun evening, with small conversations dominating. In fact it had such a great flow that a fair number of the group stayed to socialize an extra hour.

We’re getting all the photos ready, and will put up audio from the Chicago event, Mary and Kevin’s presentations and links to a few of Ki Mae’s articles. We’ll keep you posted.

Thanks to our sponsors who make these events possible:

• SaleSpider Media
• American Classifieds / Thrifty Nickel
• Architectural Record
• Bloomberg Businessweek
• The Purple Network
• IEEE Spectrum
• Marketing Profs
• PaidContent / GigaOm

Interested in Kantar Media SRDS hosting a Media Mixology event in your city? Let us know – we’re looking for places we can assemble a good group from both sides of the buy.

In the advertising and media industry, you search for inspiration, creativity and passion. Kantar Media SRDS follows these same values both in our business and when it comes to giving back.

Our employees have been passionate and creative in raising funds for UNICEF, inspired by children less fortunate from across the globe. Through this corporate fundraising initiative, our goal is to help provide hope, opportunities and a brighter future to these children. Over the past two years, Kantar Media SRDS has been an enthusiastic supporter of UNICEF. We are proud to say our employees have embraced this initiative, and have been imaginative and collaborative in our fundraising efforts. 

Last year, we came up with a variety of ideas to encourage teamwork and participation by all employees.  In the first quarter, we collected family recipes from across the business to create and sell the first SRDS Recipe Book. Filled with delicious recipes from many cultures, we were able to raise money while sharing a bit about ourselves with our fellow colleagues.

As the year went out, we held other employee events (which we started referencing as “FUNdraisers”) including a Valentine’s Day cupcake sale, a root beer float event, an ice cream sundae social, a fall bake sale, a Halloween decorating contest and our March Madness basketball toss contest. Some employees chose to contribute through payroll deductions while others donated their spare change in our “Change for Good” tube.

One of our most popular fundraising events was held last summer when we created a Themed Gift Basket Fundraiser & Raffle. Each department was responsible for creating a gift basket tied to a particular theme, such as Summer Fun, BBQ and Italy. The ideas began as simple baskets but eventually exploded into elaborate displays: large buckets filled with folding lawn chairs and summer goodies, an actual barbecue grill bursting with all the necessities for outdoor grilling and a gourmet gift basket stuffed with Italian treats fit for a king! All the items were graciously donated by SRDS employees, who were then given the chance to purchase raffle tickets to win the gift baskets. Everyone got involved and the fundraiser was a big success, but most importantly, all of the proceeds went to UNICEF. 

Our fundraising activities for UNICEF give us a sense of pride and accomplishment here at Kantar Media SRDS. We are able to share our ideas, values and success as a company. 

This year, we’ll be brainstorming new and creative ways to continue with our fundraising efforts. 

Do you have a successful fundraising idea you want to share? Please let us know. We’re open to ideas and we will make sure to give you credit on our next UNICEF blog post.

We’ve got some big news to announce this week that should make finding, considering and understanding media even easier in SRDS.com.

More Media Profiles Everywhere

First up, if a media property listing includes a descriptive profile, that profile now appears in your search results. This means you can quickly scan through multiple listing profiles from one convenient screen to better understand different media before clicking through to get more detail. As an added bonus, users with reporting enabled can now output profile text in a Detailed Report.

We’ve also added about 5,000 new profiles, mostly local digital listings, which should give you richer information to decide which regional sites best fit you and your client’s advertising needs.

More Website Images

Curious about what a website listed in SRDS.com actually looks like? Need a quick glimpse of the environment where your client’s digital ads will appear? First impressions count, and now you can see listed sites without leaving SRDS.com. We’ve added nearly 20,000 website images to digital media listings. Remember to click through to the listing detail to see each one:

We hope you find these enhancements useful, especially the profile changes, which came directly from user requests.  There are many more enhancements to SRDS.com and our digital database coming soon, so keep the input coming and stay tuned for more exciting SRDS news.

If you have any questions or need help using SRDS.com, let us know.

Media buyers/planners and media companies are increasingly promoting the efficiency of the video media kit. In the SRDS planning platform,  you may have noticed that we’ve added more video media kits in the past few months. Here’s why.

Media buyers are often too busy to meet face-to-face with media companies and don’t want to request and read through pages of media kits. A two-minute video media kit trumps a 25-page print media kit every time.

On the media side, companies are increasingly using videos to deliver a consistent, focused message in an engaging and dynamic medium. Brand portfolios are more complex now than ever. Most media brands have multiple formats. There’s a website, an app, a tablet publication and the list goes on and on. With a video media kit, publishers can give a quick topline overview of all their advertising and marketing opportunities. It’s like bringing an editor and publisher on every sales call.

SRDS Video Media Kits work by pulling a media brand’s existing video into a simple interface that appears in their SRDS listing and search results. A brand’s SRDS Video Media Kit can even be used on the brand’s own website and social media channels.

Here are five of our newest video media kits:

1. WNBC NYC
2. Campus Media Group
3. BH&G
4. CRN
5. RMI Direct

Media Companies: Do you have a good video aimed at media buyers you want in your SRDS listing?

If you’re interested in adding this service or other SRDS Marketing Services to your SRDS profile, contact Tara Clifford.

Happy New Year, my friends.

You may remember that last year AMC launched “The Pitch,” a reality show with advertising agencies competing against each other for new business. Despite below average ratings and criticism from critics—as well as those in the ad industry—AMC renewed the series for a second season.

According to Ad Age, “The Pitch” brought in an average of 303,000 viewers per episodes, compared to “Comic Book Men,” a reality show set in Kevin Smith's comic-book shop, which averaged 1.5 million viewers for its first-run episodes. Not too impressive, huh?

Our own Ginny Ewing reviewed the first episode of the Pitch, but the broader world beyond agency and media buffs did not connect with the series as much as AMC execs would have hoped. I bring this up because there is another reality show set to premier with a media component and I wonder if it will also have the challenge of finding an audience.

CBS will launch “The Job,” a new reality game show on February 8 at 8 p.m, according to Fishbowl NY. In each episode, five contestants will compete for a position at a prominent company.

Five out of eight of these positions will be at media companies. Most notably, the second episode will feature five young people vying to become an editorial assistant at Cosmopolitan magazine. Even though the grand prize is the featured job at Cosmo, judges that work for other, related companies can offer contestants a job as well, forcing the competitor to decide whether to take that new job, or continue to compete for the original top job.

As the season goes on, other media companies offering grand prize positions will be:

1. Major League Soccer – The top U.S. professional soccer league.
2. Zynga – A provider of social game services, including “FarmVille” and “Words With Friends.”
3. Gilt – An online shopping site with more than 7 million members.
4. Epic Records - An American record label, owned by Sony Music Entertainment, and headed by executive L.A. Reid.

Here's my point of view:

“The Job” isn’t as niche as “The Pitch,” which limited itself in terms of audience, so it may be able to bring in higher ratings. Because it doesn’t just target media junkies, it may appeal to a wider population. And above, "The Job" will air in the time period of "Undercover Boss," CBS’s other work-related reality show, which may be its saving grace.

I’d like to know what you think out there, folks.

Please share your thoughts on “The Job” below. Would you be interested in appearing on this show? Will you watch it?

(Image Source)

Last Friday, ESPN.com launched its first expansive dynamic display ad and I think it was a success. Unlike static banner ads, which often lack flair, or large obtrusive ads that keep me from content I’m looking for, this new ad appeals because it’s creative, interactive, relevant, doesn’t take over my screen and most importantly, fun.

This is one banner ad that I had no qualms with clicking. And trust me, that is the first time I’ve ever made that statement about a banner ad.

I first heard about ESPN’s ad from AdWeek, which also notes that the ad could be shared on Facebook and Twitter. Imagine that, an online ad that’s so engaging you’d like to share.

The concept was that the ad asked site visitors to vote on whether Alabama or Notre Dame would win Monday’s BCS national title game. Based on the visitor’s choice, a trailer would appear specific to that team in an attempt to psyche you up for the big match-up.

I didn’t watch the trailer, but the game-like quality to choosing a side was what appealed to me. As one school gathered more votes than the other, the ad would change colors to match that school’s colors. According to AdWeek:

“While ESPN's devoted and focused audience helps to pay for the research and innovation necessary to experiment like this in the digital realm, products like this dynamic wallpaper ad are no doubt enticing for other publishers looking to move beyond the static ad experiences of the past decades.”

Agreed. I’ll be on the look-out for more of these interactive banners.

Publishers & Advertisers: Do you think we’re going to start seeing dynamic banner ads more often on content-driven websites?

Mark and David discuss his pioneering work using database-driven marketing for ad sales and his experience launching the first b-to-b site for professional travel. Along the way they talk about the importance of giving web users what they want, the vital importance of using and understanding third-party web audience metrics and the return of relationship selling.

• Click here to listen and subscribe for free in iTunes (Featured by Apple as a "New and Noteworthy" podcast!)
• Click here to download the mp3 of this episode
• Click below to listen in your browser:.

About Mark Browning

Mark Browning, has 30+ years travel marketing experience, traveling extensively in 45 states, Europe, the Caribbean and attending over 200 travel industry shows. From 1977-1992 Mark's firm represented the South for 13 successful publication launches by major New York and New England based publishers.

In 1993 he launched TRIPsouth, the start of TRIPmedia Group, Inc. He has addressed dozens of groups on travel marketing, and has worked through the U.S. Travel & Tourism Administration to promote inbound tourism to the U.S.A. Mark holds a degree in marketing from Vanderbilt University, was inducted into Who's Who in Advertising in 1990, and was honored with the STS Spirit of Southeast Tourism award in 2000.

He serves on the Board of Directors of the 900-member Southeast Tourism Society, with the House Corporation of his college fraternity, is president of his neighborhood community association, and has co-hosted an annual reunion of Vanderbilt alumni since 2005. Mark lives with his wife of 27+ years in their native North Atlanta. Not surprisingly Mark & Sheala greatly enjoy traveling, especially with their two grown children.

About The Media Mic

The Media Mic is an interview series from Kantar Media SRDS with leaders in the media business about the roads they’ve taken, and the stories and people that make up our vibrant industry. Bandwidth and hosting for The Media Mic is provided by Wizzard Media and Libsyn.

Are you attending Folio's Media Next conference? It begins tomorrow in New York City and ends on Thursday, January 10. We're excited that Steve Davis, SRDS President, will be leading one of the sessions, and we'll also have our own booth.

This year's Folio conference will focus on how digital media and new platforms are affecting the publishing industry. Leading industry experts will show attendees how to keep a finger on the pulse of the current media revolution.

Steve's session is titled Retooling for Growth: How Publishers Are Remaking Their Products and will take place on Wednesday from 4:30-5:15 p.m. He'll be speaking alongside John Whelan, Executive Vice President, Media Division, Summit Business Media, and Bruce Gottlieb, President, National Journal Group.

Here is a little more information on the session: Reinvention is a key to success, but too often, media managers don’t realize their products—magazines, Web sites,  newsletters, commerce, subscriptions, content model, and events—are broken until too late. Sit in for a “been there-done-that” primer on recognizing the warning signs and reinventing for success.

Or if you can't make it to the session, make sure to stop by our the Kantar Media SRDS booth. We hope to see you there!