Murdoch is at it again.

Never one for modesty, the media giant wasn’t shy about trumpeting his latest venture last week, an iPad-only daily newspaper titled, imaginatively enough, The Daily. The interesting thing about the new news toy isn’t that it is exclusive to Apple’s popular instrument. No, what’s intriguing is that it costs money.

The Daily is one of the still-rare e-publications available only by subscription – 99 cents per day for the mildly curious or occasional article hunter, or $39.99 for those who want to take the full splash. This isn’t the first time Murdoch’s erected a paywall – last summer, he built one around his prize British property, storied and popular daily The Times – which is still being um-ed and ah-ed over.

Ever since news outlets started building paywalls, the results have been mixed. Salon became significantly less popular when it introduced a pay-for-content model, winning back readership only after it dismantling its paywall piece by piece (it is now completely free again). Several years ago, the Los Angeles Times asked online visitors to pay $4.95 per month or $39.95 annually to access its CalendarLive entertainment section. Those readers answered by not reading the LA Times; many of them found such content elsewhere, like on the free pages of rival news outlets, proving that consumers are used to getting their content for free.

On the other hand, Murdoch’s The Wall Street Journal has been a huge success in the pay-per-access game ever since introducing its paywall way back in the internet Dark Ages of 1997 (which was, incidentally, long before Murdoch got his hands on the paper). And over in London, The Times Online has built up a relatively modest but sturdy subscriber base. According to the company, there were over 100,000 subscribers to the paywall in December 2010, although this also counts readers who download versions to their Kindles or the paper’s app to their phones. Yet this isn’t a bad result for a system that, at the time, had been in place less than half a year.

It’s early days, still, so it’s hard to gauge how this paywall story will end. But early indications seem to be that it’s going the way traditional media always did – certain publications are finding their subscribers and building what looks to be a sustainable business model, and some aren’t. As ever, it seems that newspaper/magazine readers are willing to pay for their media, but only if it provides value for the information it conveys.

It’ll be interesting to see if The Daily, The Times, and other media outlets with paywalls can deliver that value and keep building a subscriber base that’s not fixated on all-content-for-free.

My free trial expires in two weeks, so I’ll let you know how that goes.

Super Bowl 45, Brought To You By....

Branded content.. Yep, branded content.

That's what you witnessed if you were watching the 45th Super Bowl. And if weren't watching, just exactly what were you doing?

This year's Super Bowl programming was markedly different to last year's, for a number of reasons.

The programming was truly an all-inclusive, inspiring, and uplifting affair. As a relative newcomer to the joys of NFL, I can't compare many previous games. But I can compare the last two.

And this year won hands down.

I started watching the pre-game programming around 1pm, to get "in the mood," accompanied by a light libation (or two) and a bowl of chili…

Good start.

What struck me first was the quality of ads that were targeting viewers like me: newbies, women and non-hardcore fans.

So far, so good.

And then came the Ritz part. Guy Fieri, host of Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives on The Food Network, grilling some sinfully calorific treats, served up by Super Bowl 45 sponsor, Ritz Crackers, at lunchtime just when stomachs were growling.

I couldn’t find the actual segment online, but I did find Guy’s Super Bowl recipe spot on CBS – you can watch it on YouTube here.

Very clever indeed. From a PR perspective, branded content like the Ritz segment is where advertising dollars and consumer engagement are heading this year. Consumers have had it with cheesy ads (pun intended!) and brands get it: instead they are developing "branded" content - the type of which we experienced last night - to engage them and keep them riveted, and, importantly, talking about these brands by the watercooler today, and tomorrow.

According to the Proactive.com blog, “the idea is to listen to online conversations and establish what interests your community. Is there a need for certain information? Can you creatively provide that info in an engaging way? Storytelling in articles, with images and video, is one of the best ways to produce branded content. And that’s a PR skill.”

And then there were the ads, which were dominated by car spots. Some have called it “The Auto Bowl,” because of prevalence of car ads.

FABULOUS:

Doritos - I loved these. The fingersucking and trouser-sniffing scenes were really out there!

Optima - like a mini movie-trailer in a 15 second spot Groupon and Living Social tie even place BMW - Ch-ch-changes VW Passat and Darth Vader Jr.

Snickers

GM does Facebook

4G with Ossie & Bieber

Stella Artois (and I'm not just saying that because Adrian Brody made me cry as well)

Chrysler, Eminem and Detroit - what a great story (and redemption for the dreadful Brisk ad - see below)

BLAH:

Coca Cola

HomeAway.com

Pepsi

CareerBuilder.com

NCL - why did you bother?

Motorola's Xoom - better luck next time

MiniCooper

Xfinity

Mazda – instead of zoom, zoom, zoom, this was yawn, yawn, yawn


STICK HOT PINS IN MY EYES:

Brisk

Anything by GoDaddy

Carmax

Cars.com

Chatter.com

Skechers w Kim Kardashian

I probably missed a few during drink breaks, but you can see all the ad again at www.foxsports.com/ads.

Now, about the half-time show by The Black-Eyed Peas... I'm no music critic, but I know what offends my ears and offend they did on a big a scale. Visually, aurally, their performance was a Texas-sized production but an abysmal spectacle that was a mash-up of 90's songs I'd rather forget, and the most overplayed tracks from the past year or so.

You know you're not impressed by the half time show when you're pining for the next set of commercials. Even Fergie's voice couldn't stop me from getting up for another round of drinks.

But what mustn't be overlooked in all the Super Bowl hyperbole, mega-bucks advertising and TV escapism is the Obama/O'Reilly pre-game interview. Obama, clever, cool and collected as ever, gave a wonderful interview with Fox's Bill O'Reilly. While O'Reilly tried desperately to set and control the tempo, Obama stole the show, disarming his interviewer with factual, honest and on the mark responses.

Go team Obama! Never mind that my team lost.

On Digital Ethics (and Google, Twitter and Egypt)

With the Egyptian “revolution” now a week old, an inevitable note of skepticism has crept in to some of the media coverage. Not about the movement itself; even the most hardened cynic accepts that the time is long overdue for the autocratic regime to exit gracefully (or exit by any means possible, at this stage). Rather, some critics are questioning the seemingly altruistic motives of social media outlets like Twitter, YouTube, which are loudly and publicly providing a forum for Egyptians to inform and vent about current events. This has led to a loaded question – are these entities just exploiting an opportunity for some freebie PR?

The answer to that is yes, and no.

But so what? The Egyptians that post updates have to brave violent regime supporters on a rampage and the risk of arrest simply to get their message heard. They’re far away from caring if someone makes money from the coverage. And why should they? Changing their country for the better is what counts right now.

Also, maybe, just maybe, Google deserves it. The engineers at SayNow, another company now under the tech giant’s umbrella, put in extra man-hours on a super tight deadline to get “Speak to Tweet” built. Speak to Tweet allows people without access to the internet – like in, well, Egypt, where the government has cut ISP service – to dial a phone number, leave a message, and have it digitally morph into a Tweet for broadcasting. To me, that’s a huge positive that helps push along this strong wind of change. Why shouldn’t Google be at least compensated for its efforts?

Fast Company has called into question Google (and Twitter’s ) digital ethics, and whether their motives are pure. Come on people, Google is, after all, a business. It’s in the game to make money. Even the richest media outlets don’t have a limitless pool of resources and cash; any activity they engage in is going to drain both. Isn’t it good, then, that one of those activities Google has chosen to engage in is providing services to those who need them?

And really, that’s what matters right now.

You can read what Jesse Lichtenstein from Slate has to say about this topic as well - http://www.slate.com/id/2283615/?wpisrc=newsletter_tis

Stomping Out The Democracy Stompers, Social Networks Mean That We Can't Be Silenced

The Revolution is happening now, and yes, it is being televised. And Facebooked, and Tweeted, and emailed… Following the recent political unrest in nearby Tunisia, Egyptians are openly into the pro-democracy act - once again - taking to the streets to call for the ouster of autocratic President-for-Life Hosni Mubarak, and in revolt of the corruption in government and suppression in their society. This speaks to the power of smart ideas, particularly good ones – once they catch on, they grow and intensify like a wildfire.

Because standing up for democracy is a very smart idea.

We can thank technology for this, the enabler of information sharing, but at the end of the day, regardless of the medium they are transferred by, it is the ideas that count, and the great ones that take hold and last.

Democracy is so long overdue in this region, a region that has suffered under the leaden boot of autocracy for a much longer time than it should. People were not happy with this arrangement, but what could they do before they had living, viral social networks to voice disdain for their leader or to help organize protests and uprisings?

As in most repressed societies, the only choice for citizens was to keep their collective head down, hope they didn’t get on the bad side of the government, and pray that it would all change one day.

Well, guess what? It seems that one day is here. Encouraged by the impact the Tunisian protests made with the very quick series of resignations in the government, Egyptians are out en masse in the streets pushing their rulers to do the same, with unrest not seen since the bread riots in 1977.

Regardless of the outcome, at the very least, it shows the autocrats that they can’t rule by fiat as easily anymore. The cracks in their calcified and obsolete system are visible to the world.

More to the point, it demonstrates that there’s no stopping an excellent idea, and democracy is one of the very best and longest lasting ever invented by us - and an idea that's now being helped along by a Tweet, a Facebook post - or a million.

What Goes Up Must Come Down / MediaPost

The Council of PR Firms is really upbeat about where our industry is heading this year. I could feel the optimism leaping from its recent quarterly survey, wherein over 80% of the companies polled said their final 2010 revenues exceeded the figures of the previous year. Even better, almost 60% of respondents expected PR budgets to be higher in 2011, with just 2% thinking that they will decline.

Why? New clients are coming through the gate. Another figure well in positive territory was the 56% of respondents opining that new business prospects were stronger than at the same time the previous year.

Well, duh. 2009 was a real crapper of a year, so comparing bad and worse doesn't reveal a totally accurate picture.

I don't want to be the Cassandra on the catwalk here and say that bad times are going to creep back and bite us. On the contrary, I'm thrilled about the council's news and think those optimistic projections are terrific for our industry. Positive vibes are contagious. Those delicate green shoots we waited for to sprout last year have now grown into bushes (well, knee-high little ones, at any rate). Clients did return in 2010, and although they weren't spending as much as they were previously, at least they were spending. At the same time, those new accounts -- that 56% of respondents are excited about -- started to emerge.

Budgets are rising; skepticism is melting. Hooray for that.

Continue reading here.

SKINNING ADVERTISERS, SELECTIVE CENSORSHIP AND BLACK KETTLES

Like Mark Twain’s favorite inevitabilities (death and taxes), grass-roots censorship seems to be something we’re stuck with. Thanks to the efforts of the innocuously-named Parents Television Council, big-name advertisers like Taco Bell, H&R Block and Wrigley have pulled ad their spots from MTV’s controversial new program Skins. We’ll save the discussion about why H&R Block would advertise during young adult programming for another time.

The advertisers were shocked – gasp, horror, faint! (because of course they had no idea about where their ad dollars where going) when they discovered that Skins depicts teenagers having several varieties of sex (jealousy perhaps?) and drug consumption, and withdrew their commercials accordingly. I’ll leave aside the question of why anyone, in our theoretically enlightened modern era, should be so surprised that teenagers engage in this behavior. After all, the United States has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the industrialized world. I’ll also sweep past the disturbing idea that major corporations with huge ad budgets and resources can be so easily cowed and spineless.

I’ll blow past these, because the really irritating element of the PTC’s push is its hypocrisy and ugly, self-righteous moralizing. They are defining moral-threatening content on their own, extremely narrow basis; essentially, it’s the sex and drugs that bother them. However, fast food outlets and manufacturers of harmful, sugar-packed drinks can target teenagers and children in their spots, and that’s fine? America has the most serious childhood obesity problem, sorry not problem – epidemic - and that kind of highly-targeted advertising is one of the causes of it. Excessive consumption of fat and sugar-laden food and sodas has a direct and proven effect on this nation’s health, as opposed to some underage nudity or fake pill-popping. It’s a shame the PTC isn’t particularly keen on addressing that much more pressing problem.

And, like any sort of censorship effort, the PTC’s push aims to kill the patient instead of simply removing the appendix. If content is so ugly and offensive, anyone can exercise their rights as a consumer and a citizen of democracy and CHANGE THE CHANNEL. No one is forcing anyone to watch. If enough people channel-flip away from Skins, the advertising will melt away in a hurry, so mission accomplished. The wider American viewing public should vote with their remote controls whether the show should be broadcast, not a heavy-handed reactionary group like the PTC.

What’s your view? Is the Parents Television Council right to pressure advertisers to drop Skins and sweep these issues under the front mat so that the county can continue with its sex-ed programs that teach children abstinence and produce the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the world?

I think this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, don’t you?

Read more about this in The Huffington Post: Is It MTV's Job to Raise Our Children?

One More Message And Your Brain Might Explode

As you're reading this email/tweet/Facebook post or RSS feed there's every likelihood that your brain may just explode...

Look at the latest numbers released on THE BIG THINK - http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/01/by-the-numbers-internet-2010/

* 107 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2010.
* 294 billion – Average number of email messages per day.
* 1.88 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
* 480 million – New email users since the year before.
* 89.1% – The share of emails that were spam.
* 262 billion – The number of spam emails per day (assuming 89% are spam).
* 1.97 billion – Internet users worldwide (June 2010).
* 14% – Increase in Internet users since the previous year.
* 152 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
* 25 billion – Number of sent tweets on Twitter in 2010
* 175 million – People on Twitter as of September 2010
* 600 million – People on Facebook at the end of 2010.
* 20 million – The number of Facebook apps installed each day.
* 7.7 million – People following @ladygaga (Lady Gaga, Twitter’s most followed user).
Oooooh. That last one was a little sad.

Now, I realize I’m adding to these numbers and the information overload – I'm just curious to see if your brain really would explode.

If so, have the nurse shoot me an email, or you can fill out my brief questionnaire on SurveyMonkey. I'm baking a pie chart.