There is an interesting article by Alain McKenna at Technaute mentionning that high-definition TV might save TQS, a local television station which filed for bankrupcy last month due to “shrunken” advertising revenues.

The theory, which came from its directors, was that high definition will allow pay-per-view, interactive and personalized content. The tv station would then be able to gather additionnal revenues, and also sell them at a higher rate.

It’s amusing to think that changing the physical channel, or medium (here, television), would get them better chances. For me, a media company should focus first and foremost on getting quality content - but cogeco, TQS’s main shareholder, doesn’t seem to make many efforts to get original, innovative, and relevant content. I don’t watch much tv, but everytime I stumble on TQS, they always seem to have old gags or old tv american series, whereas they should have focused on locally-produced, vibrant, even iconoclast shows. I think that as along as you have those, a media company can then focus on the medium to bring this content to as many people as possible.

High-definition TV is a promising technology but it’s no excuse to keep producing lame shows. Even then, when we will reach 2011, iTMS, netflix, amazon and millions of video podcasters would eat TQS’s lunch.

Seeing how Carl Mercier and Mat Balez managed to get on techcrunch and on the frontpage of digg last week, I was curious to see how other startups were doing on blogs.

The following map shows Montréal startups and new websites; with the size showing the total number of trackbacks they had for the last 6 months from the blogosphere, and the color showing the pace at which they are receiving new mentions on blogs, blue being 0 mentions per week and red being 200 mentions per week.

click on the image to get the large version

The data is taken straight from technorati. Furthermore, I distributed each of them according to their target market (if they were targeting the consumer or the entreprise market) and on the other axis, the interactivity and empowerement given to each user, from a list of criterias.

First, one comment: podbean and watchmojo’s size stands out from the graph, but I believe it’s mostly because they have gamed technorati in the past, by producing multiple rss feeds and by automatic generation of links on subdomains which are obviously engineered for Google and search engines like technorati. However, it’s fair to mention that podbean users (podcasters) are also promoting the service by themselves.

That said, one conclusion that I get from this graph is that websites that focus on interactivity/user empowerment do very well on blogs. refactormycode.com, defensio, librivox are getting a lot of traction, and for me, it’s because the users of these services have a very strong feeling of ownership towards the content on each website.

The subject of marketing and promoting services on the web has been for a long time a mystery to me, on how a web destination could suddenly become viral popular and have users promote the services themselves instead of the marketing department pushing it. Seeing this graph, the picture is clearer. The lesson is that it pays to make the user empowered, and second, it pays to be have a strategy for digg and techcrunch.

If you have comments about how to leverage other tools like del.icio.us, stumbleupon, emails, you are more than welcome

Note: i just had an email asking how i put akoha, praized or standoutjobs even though their features are not public yet: they were just put in the middle of the graph

Transcontinental Media is launching the 20th of September a local advertising network, allowing announcers to advertise on Québec-based blogs. The initiative will focus initially on a small subset of bloggers, presented as the 20 most influental blogs in Québec, and will show ads from high-end announcers and from its subsidiary Les Affaires.

The initiative is organized by Guillaume Brunet, although Michel Leblanc presents himself as the father of the idea.

This is a direct result from Yulbiz, a local event started by Michel Leblanc and Philippe Martin, where business bloggers meetup and discuss about their web projects and business issues. Since attendees were also heading communication agencies and media groups, I see this as a natural outcome of Yulbiz, and a proof of the group’s dynamism and success. It is noteworthy that they have also published a book lately on the topic of blogging.

Here is the list of the blogs participating:

• Michel Leblanc, who is specialized in marketing and blogging
• Philippe MArtin, social media, blogs and video blogs
• AMM-PCM, a group blog on interactive marketing
• Guillaume Brunet,
• Christian Guy,
• Benoit Descary, focused on new technology and tips
• Stephane Guerin, who blogs about marketing and technology
• Martin Lessard, a blog about Internet culture and society
• ipub.ca.cx, a blog about advertising
• Michael Carpentier, an entrepreneur fron Quebec city
• Vlancom, a blog about advertising and communication
• Yanick Manuri, on online advertising
• Groupe Vectis, on management and marketing
• Alain Theriault, a startup “coach”
• Stephane Hamel, a web analytics blog
• Benjamin Yoskovitz, web entrepreneur
• Geoffroi Garon, Stratégie d’affaires et communauté Web
• Marc Snyder, a blogger in PR and communication
• Yves Williams, a web entrepreneur
• Eric Baillargeon,
• Claude Malaison, on social media
• VC TV, a video blog on startups and entrepreneurship
• and Montreal Tech Watch

I like the fact that it’s local, which means ads are highly relevant to any Montreal Tech Watch reader. Products like Google AdSense are inadequate for bloggers as they were designed mostly for high-trafficked websites. Blogs on the other hand don’t have as much readership, but they are highly focused and influential, which calls for specialized ad networks like this. Transcontinetal Media also want to increase overall readership of the blog network, which left me wondering what they are preparing for the future.

This might be old for some of you, but Jakob Nielsen published a study on banner blindness, which shows that Internet users never look at anything that looks like an advertisement. Eyetracking shows for instance that readers “jump” straigtforward to the content.

In times where advertising budgets are shifting to the web, and where companies and most web startups rely solely on advertising for their revenues, this raises core questions. As marketers and advertising specialists search for more intrusive elaborate ways to get their message in front of the customer’s eyes, internet users fight even more (unconsciously or not) to focus on what they were looking for, i.e. content.

In Montreal, I have been reading Yannick Manuri’s blog, where he asks questions about effectiveness (here here and here). I have talked about the subject to other marketers and most of them think advertising should be blended with content so as to force high click through rates; which I view as a quick fix that will get you shot down by your audience in the long term.

What are the solutions then? I think, first everyone should question how advertising on the web should be done. What we see mostly these days are copy&paste of the messages found on print&TV: ad copy is broadcasted, over and over to the masses. Internet is the only medium which allows one-to-one and personalized communication, and that is not leverage enough actually. Ideally, the message given to each reader should be highly relevant to him/her and his current needs. Second, I think, and this is just a personal opinion, that you can’t build an industry with only advertising. The television industry has done this way for the past half-century, but unlike the web, their content is broadcasted, and most of it entertainement. People now use the web for highly focused tasks, and find information for their work, for events they will attend, communicate with friends&colleagues, etc. Those are needs, and as such, there must and will be a way to monetize it. Saying otherwise doesn’t make sense to me, it would be like, say, goods at the grocery store should be provided for free, and will be supported by advertising.

The book Pourquoi Bloguer dans un contexte d’affaires - or “Why blog in a business context”, has been launched today. It’s the first of its kind and is written by an “A-list” of Québec-based bloggers, namely Claude Malaison, Martin Lessard, Michel Leblanc, Tristan Peloquin, Marie-Chantale Turgeon, Mario Asselin, Sylvain Carle, Philippe Martin, Marc Snyder and Martin Ouellette. Most of them are consultants in new media, and the chapters covers how blogs influence, sell, inform as well as other subjects like networking and videoblogs.

First, as Claude Malaison writes in an insightful post, it’s funny to see actors of “new media” mingle with the old-timers. For him, it looks as though bloggers still need old media, which is somehow true, as it still provides raw information on events where bloggers can’t go (say in parliamants) and, also to reach the general public. However, I would say that is changing quickly, if you think of techcrunch, engadget, or huffingtonpost.

I also had another reaction, which is: there should be a book on “why blogging” first. I am not sure most people in Québec or in Canada get “blogs”. If you convince the general public, if there is a large audience of bloggers who interact, converse, and write about what matters to them, then business people will follow, regardless of their opinion on blogs. I especially like what Marie-Chantale Turgeon is doing with stars-of-the-web, which is a blogging platform launched last year, and her continual advocacy of blogging through her consulting projects.

I haven’t read the book though and those are my first reactions. Hope someone will come up with it at the next web dev book club.

Tourisme Montréal has just launched 2 new websites to attract english-speaking tourists to Montréal.

The first one is play-montreal, which is a podcast about Montreal culture and events.

The second one is a blog, I found my montreal. You can submit there a post, with your story and pictures, and write what you think of Montréal (check the NEW POST button)

I really like those website’s overall designs - not only the graphical design, but how they present their topics and features. Knowing too well communication agencies in Montréal, I would have expected flash websites and fancy graphics void of content. Now, it’s the first time I see the governement of Canada and Québec sponsoring a blog, which spoils it a bit, because when visitors will notice that, there is no way they will think that it is an authentic blog by an authentic Montréaler who do it for the love of the city and not for the love of $$$. I don’t expect either visitors to subscribe to these blogs and podcasts — unless they manage to get exclusives and first-class content.

Footer of the new websites

Still, I like their initiative. I hope more public and parapublic organizations will follow the path.

Roberto Rocha reports about TD Canada Trust and RBC’s efforts to lure attract young consumers in facebook.

The group has already 3415 members, and supposedly let users to share money tips and learn about their finance options. In essence, it’s great marketing, as fall session is starting next week for college students. But see this screenshot to judge by yourself

Apparently, designers were told to put the green color and TD’s logo in every space avalaible. I couldn’t resist the tempation to show you this video

Make the logo bigger!

In other related news, Sylvain Carle is setting up FaceBookCampMontreal this week, thursday or friday. There is already a facebook group setup for the event.

Skooiz, a Montreal internet company which provides search engine optimization / search engine marketing (SEO / SEM) services, has just acquired Mastodonte.

Mastodonte is also a consulting company, in email marketing and related services. It also owns toutacoup and wannawin , which gets 9 millions page views monthly.

I am using this opportunity to ask readers a question. Who thinks here that SEO is a big deal when launching a website? It always seems to me as the black area of Internet Entrepreneurship, where you meet of lot of con artists. (like SEOMoz, the current superstar, charging $1000 per hour to their clients. yes, you read it right, one thousand dollars per hour)

I came across a study from XitiMonitor, a company providing Internet traffic monitoring services, which shows how consumers use the web for each month. It is noteworthy that XitiMonitor is a french company, and have no activities whatsoever in Montreal, but they do however track Internet traffic globally, and I am sure this will interest anyone having a worldwide Internet audience or planning to launch a web startup soon.

The data is compiled from their 2002 to 2006 database, and show that Internet usage is at its lowest in the summer, especially august. In the other hand, if you plan to launch a website, it’s best to do it in January, or in March.

I wouldn’t be suprised that data for Québec and Canada would show even more differences between the summer and the winter (I am sure you know why) .

preview of CakeMail

The Code Kitchen has entered in beta this week for CakeMail, and from what I’ve seen, it’s a solid product. They previously demo’ed Cake in BarCamp2Montreal, where the team said they were targeting agencies, who would then resell it to their customers, making it the first white-label email platform.

I went through the beta. First, the registration email was ironically flagged as spam, which should be the last thing to happen to a newsletter platform. It also lacked any info about the pricing, and I haven’t been able to customize the interface as it was advertised, or get to an option to white-label it. Now, a comparison with Campaign Monitor is due, which is actually the standard for newsletters. I found Cake was much easier to use, the process of creating and sending a mailing is much more logical than Campaign Monitor’s crowded interface and options. And I would say I will be using for current projects instead of CampaignMonitor, if it’s priced right. You can also go try CakeMail.

As an aside, I met yesterday Francois Lane, who founded the company, and he said there was also a lot of work done in internationalization, and they are looking to spin off the localization application for CakeMail as a separate product as well.