Crosseyed And Painless
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Lots of industry M&A, a whole handful of exclusives, a controversial CoolSign post and a lot of interest in our lead up to #DSinvestor in mid October saw this week be one of our busiest ever visitor-wise with yesterday (Tuesday 27th September) becoming our absolute busiest traffic day ever with no less than 4,228 people reading what we had to say.
Let’s for a second put that number in context. First off we need to be honest and say it’s a lot more than we usually get – it’s about 50% higher than the norm as we usually average just over 3,000 visitors a day.
Both our highest and average days compares nicely with the smaller industry shows; the largest of which is probably Screemmediaexpo which had 3,191 visitors (always interesting that 30% of those were from outside the UK) at Earls Court in 2011.
Mind you, even our Twitter following is incredibly healthy (and compares nicely with the shows) with 3,012 followers.
We don’t take our readership for granted and we do understand that having such a large audience puts us in a certain privileged position which brings me to my second point…
Dan Rabinowitz, Chief Financial Officer, Haivision Network Video in an email to us yesterday threatening legal action, we quote “We ask that you retract your statements immediately, otherwise we will use all means available to mitigate the damages you may have caused to our brand and reputation, blah blah blah” described us as ‘the self-proclaimed advocate for this industry‘
If we are ‘advocates’ for the sector then it’s only because we are allowed to critique it. There are far too many consultants and other press-types (with the exception of Mr Haynes I wouldn’t deign to call many of them ‘journalists’) blowing hot-air up where-the-sun-don’t-shine of any company or individual with a press release or new product.
Our business allows us to meet a lot of great people, have a lot of fun and get to travel the world. We want the industry to succeed and prosper for sure but bottom line we want it to be honest (in fact we demand that it is honest).
As other industry folks have pointed out we won’t drink the Kool-Aid unless we believe in what is being said or offered and unfortunately we don’t ‘suffer fools gladly’ either. Whilst the industry is full of a lot of cool, hard-working people and literally loads and loads of great companies there are also a helluva lot of charlatans and ‘pump and dump’ merchants as well.
As we head into a busy October we cannot promise to heed the advice given to us mid-week by Mirko Wicha President and CEO Haivision Network Video who told us “feel free to continue your bad reporting”.
The NUJ Code of Conduct stresses that a Journalist ‘Strives to ensure that information disseminated is honestly conveyed, accurate and fair‘ and just as importantly ‘Differentiates between fact and opinion‘ and as fully paid up members of the National Union of Journalists that is something we hold close to our hearts.
To those of you who don’t want to punch us in the face we look forward to meeting you in New York City in October (we will be there the whole of week beginning Sunday 15th October). To those of you who cannot make any of the events in the Big Apple then we hope that we can count on you to continue reading what we have to offer.
September 28th, 2011 at 13:13 @592
So let me get this straight? one tweet from daily dooh goes to 3,000 people in the industry and can alert them to a blog post, one email from them goes to 7,000
Together, twitter and email and general google search perhaps can result in between 3-4,000 industry people visiting the site.
that’s scary and powerful. I’d say we ought to bring in the monopolies commission
September 28th, 2011 at 13:47 @616
Easy there Admiral McSnarky. It’s actually an OK reach number for an industry blog. I say that because the true “industry” is quite small in comparison to say mobile marketing or digital marketing. As a percentage, the DailyDOOH team is doing well.
September 28th, 2011 at 14:06 @629
Daily dooh gets it wrong occasionally.
We don’t do DOOH trade PR for the very reasons stated so well above – this industry is over saturated with people who claim to be ground breaking when in reality they are not. Most sell so little kit that they put out a press release every time they sell a system or find a new PC to load their software on and class it as a DS player.
I had some sympathy for Mirko UNTIL I read his reply. Mirko, if you are so ground breaking that you are rocking the DS world then Adrian would be printing full editorial on everything you utter.
As for – we’re growing at 50% a year, profitable etc etc. Those of us with real product are all growing at over 50% a year and profitable. Don’t compare yourself against the dross if you want to be taken seriously.
I for one will continue to read the dailydooh if only for the occasional bit of sensational gossip 🙂
September 28th, 2011 at 14:17 @637
Hey Mirko. As a European working in the DOOH industry I find your response so typical of North Americans who struggle to understand the business over this side of the pond. I hope your Euro team use some better tactics when marketing Haivision/CoolSign over here
September 28th, 2011 at 14:42 @654
Oh Mirko, aren’t you a bit of a fusspot and ever so grandiose in your infancy? Seems you have the old habits of Silicon Graphics, another computing industry dinosaur whose fossilised remains are awaiting business school autopsy. And guess what the cause of death was there; opening mouth without thinking, utterances that were crass and simian in their levity. Old chap, Haivision issued a press release on September 6th stating’ Haivision will launch Torpedo at IBC. Does that imply that your torpedo has detonated by hitting your own ship?? Seems so. Calm down and take a nap or chew some tobacco.