According to a new study from The Media Audit/Houston, 27 percent of U.S. adults have visited a TV website in the past 30 days. The study was based on a telephone survey of 118,211 randomly selected adults in 88 markets.
The study found that certain markets received higher penetration. Over half the adult population in Raleigh, Tulsa, Denver, Columbia, Little Rock and Madison visited TV sites. “Generally it is the markets with the highest internet penetration that have the highest percent of TV website visitors,” said Jim Higginbotham, co-founder and head of research for The Media Audit. The largest markets with the highest penetration are Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Detroit and Seattle, the study found.
Bob Jordan, president of the The Media Audit, said, “Television understands the power of the multi-media platform and stations have been putting renewed effort into their websites and it is paying off. He said the 27 percent of all U.S. adults who go online represents 40 percent of total Internet users. “This is a strong testament to the appeal of the local sites,” he said.
But Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates/Williamsburg, VA, the research firm that reported on the growth in local TV online ad revenue earlier this year, thinks The Media Audit’s figures are overstated. “Some TV sites are pretty cool, but not this cool,” he said. “They’re working furiously to develop terrific websites with ‘must-see’ information, but they’re not there yet, which leads me to be highly skeptical of research that says more than one-fourth of adults are going to a local TV website in any given month.” Borrell said other research firms have provided figures closer to nine percent. “I find the lower figures more believable, and frankly more useful to TV stations that want to develop a strategy around reality,” he said.
The figures will help determine the rates local stations charge for the video and other ads that run with their web content.
Supreme Court Allows Multibillion-Dollar Class Action Lawsuit To Proceed Against Meta
The Supreme Court is allowing a multibillion-dollar class action investors' lawsuit to proceed against Facebook parent Meta, stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.
The justices heard arguments in November in Meta's bid to shut down the lawsuit. On Friday, they decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place.
The high court dismissed the company's appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.
Investors allege that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users' personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump 's first successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016.
Inadequacy of the disclosures led to two significant price drops in the price of the company's shares in 2018, after the public learned about the extent of the privacy scandal, the investors say.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company was disappointed by the court's action. "The plaintiff's claims are baseless and we will continue to defend ourselves as this case is considered by the District Court," Stone said in an emailed statement.
Meta already has paid a $5.1 billion fine and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users.
Cambridge Analytica had ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon. It had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million Facebook users. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign.
The lawsuit is one of two high court cases involving class-action lawsuits against tech companies. The justices also are wrestling with whether to shut down a class action against Nvidia.... Read More