As 2010 begins, many companies are putting the final touches on where they will allocate their marketing spend for the entire year. Specifically which magazines they will choose to advertise in to grow their 2009 revenue levels to a higher level. Many Fortune 500 companies have chosen to decrease advertising within the African-American demographic as they choose to focus more on their “core” market. This would be a crucial mistake. With President Obama entering his second year in office, the marketability of African Americans in mainstream media is considerably more permissible within the media world. Despite the troubles of many African American magazines such as Vibe (which relaunched after being shutdown) and Ebony/Jet (ad pages decreased by almost 40 percent), now is the perfect time for the respective magazine’s web properties to “pick up the slack”.

To do this, there are a few action steps the majority of the African American magazines must take to catch up with their mainstream competitors and grow their advertising potential:

1. The website of the magazine must be the launching point of all news, video and discussion on any topic relating to the African American community. It is as simple as making the home page as interactive as possible with multiple video widgets, deep photo library and continued discussions throughout every page of the website. Establishing a vibrant community with return visitors is key in attracting the online advertising dollar which will soon outspend traditional advertising dollars. In my opinion,  popular sports magazine Sports Illustrated does a tremendous job with this as well as Black Enterprise.
2. Establish a partnership with Amazon and their Kindle product. This is a hot new way for people to read books and stay current with their magazine subscriptions. The time is now to develop this partnership in order for the African American magazines to get in on the ground level and grow with this very promising piece of technology. Attractive placement within the Amazon store will translate to additional advertising dollars by all types of companies. A partnership should also be grown with whatever product Apple launches
3. Create mobile applications that are mobile versions of the magazine. It is my opinion that mobile apps are the future. The success of both the New York Times mobile app as well as the USA TODAY mobile app are strong indicators of a viable future. As a heavy user of the USA TODAY mobile app, I can confirm there is definite advertising dollars to be made within mobile applications.

Can you think of any other ways African American magazines can use their web properties to grow sagging advertising revenue? Let’s discuss your ideas in the comments.

American Airlines developed BlackAtlas.com in partnership with Burrell Communications and Juxt Interactive and is a “social networking” site that will allow travelers to share travel experiences that may be unique to African-Americans with each other and the community there.  The site’s content will be user generated for the most part however Nelson George will serve as the sites travel expert vlogging and blogging his travel experiences on the site.  Blogalicious had many gems (both hidden and in-your-face) and the video below was one of them.  Venita Griffin the site’s Digital Content Manager does a semi-preview of the site but mainly explains what the site will be and how they will use bloggers to help contribute to the site.

Interesting sell. I got a chance to chat with Venita since initially it appears that BlackAtlas.com is a stand alone social network with yet to connect with other social networking services like Facebook or Twitter.  She assured me the site would connect with those popular services and others in Phase 2.  I reached out to her at a later date to try an get an idea when Phase 2 is slated for but have yet to receive a response.  We’ll update the story as soon as we hear soemthing.  Especially since the offering is indeed interesting but much of it’s success will rely on the integration of those other services regardless of how many bloggers they get to contribute to the sites content.

Since contributors and users will be able to rate/make recommendations, connect with other travelers with similar interests, answer questions based on their personal travel experiences and build travel itineraries based on user recommendations you can see how leveraging a users social graph is critical.

The overall offering as of today (it has yet to launch) seems great.  I’d use it…once they make it talk to other services so that I can share easily with the site.  Avid travelers may find it useful especially when looking for connections to Black culture while traveling.  Burrell’s co-CEO McGhee Williams Ossee elaborates:

“From a Jamaican restaurant in Milan to Santa Monica’s Ink Well Beach, there are uniquely African-American experiences enjoyed by travelers around the world. BlackAtlas.com is a forum that encourages travelers to share these stories and gives them the opportunity to better plan their next trip with a few key activities or places in mind.”

BlackAtlas.com launches tomorrow October 15th and I am SO looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the site too.  Will you use it?

BlackWeb20.com isn’t sponsoring a “bring a buddy” bus trip to this conference and we’re not endorsing it, but have to admit that it is awfully smart. Huh? Watch the promo and take notes. This is our present and in the message conveyed in this video is our future.

Pepsi has been aggressive lately in creating interesting and engaging digital content. The Will.i.am and L.M.F.A.O. collaboration (Pepsi Taps…Digital Remix Project) is one such effort. However, the brand’s latest project gives a major nod to African American women and is inspired by the growing popularity of mommy bloggers.

PepsiWeInspire.com is an interactive website and community for African American women that celebrates the bonds between women. And they are bringing the star power to inspire the rest of us to share our stories of beauty, laughter, joy, hope, wisdom and love.

Songstress Keyshia Cole, actresses Raven-Symone and Taraji P. Henson kick off the campaign by sharing stories that tug at the heartstrings as well as provide a forum much like blogging, where any woman can share their own stories. Queen Latifah and other celebrities will be joining the forum in the near future.

Pepsi is utilizing Facebook, ads in Essence and Black Enterprise and they will run spots on BET. PepsiWeInspire.com is a part of a bigger campaign RefreshEverything.com that endeavors to reinvigorate the positive and upbeat messages associated with the cola company.

Nichelle Stephens has been selected as the site community’s editor.

Sony wants you nice and fat. That way you won’t have the strength to get off the couch and do something besides playing video games. No, I’m not a conspiracy theorist (well, maybe a little). Sony just made the announcement that a genius, yet diabolical partnership with popular pizza franchise Papa John’s has been forged. Instead of pausing the game and have pesky verbal contact with another person, gamers can simply, order the itis-inducing food staple via their PlayStation 3. There’s even a special button that takes you to special pizza website on the PS3’s web browser.

The special Papa John’s site includes ads for popular games like LittleBigPlanet and Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time. So order up kiddies and keep playing, because nothing goes together like gaming and indigestion. Why does this remind me of that scene in “The Matrix” when the machines liquidated the dead only to feed them to the live humans through those freaky tubes?  You might want to go a few rounds with Dance Dance Revolution or jump on Wii Fit after all that sedentary non-activity. In the words of Portal, the cinnapie is a lie! You’ve been warned.

Robert Barocci, president and CEO of The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) has announced the appointment of social media trailblazer Lynne d Johnson as senior vice president, social media.

In her new post, Ms. Johnson will focus on content, brand and social media development and strategy, and will spearhead the launch of the ARF Social Media Council, among many other key initiatives.

She comes to the ARF from FastCompany.com, where she served as senior editor/community director, overseeing both content and community functionality, as well as writing the Digital Media Diva blog, covering technology, media, marketing and the entertainment business.  Prior to that, her 10-year history of bringing together communities both online and offline includes similar leadership roles at Vibe and Spin magazines, as well as BlackPlanet.com.  In addition, as a consultant, she has worked with many Web and media properties on content, brand and social media development and strategy.

Disclosure:  Lynne d Johnson is also a supportive and active member of BlackWeb20.com’s advisory board.

It has taken an Ireland-based research firm to draw attention to something that multicultural advertising executives have known for some time: advertisers are pulling money out of traditional and new black media and plowing it into Hispanic ad budgets.

The result could be a double whammy for black media outlets that are already struggling with the overall downturn in the economy.

Research and Markets, based in Dublin, has released a report touting the buying power of African-Americans online. The company pointed to a decline in the so-called “Digital Divide,” noting that nearly one half of the African-American population uses the Internet at least once a month. However, the firm noted that has not stopped advertisers from shifting their ad dollars to the faster growing Hispanic market.

In its report, which is available for a fee, Research and Markets stressed that “the African-American market should not be taken for granted — this audience is known for taking note of advertisers and messages targeted to them, and responding accordingly.”

On its website Research and Markets describes itself as “the leading source for international market research and maket data.” It claims to have provided research data to companies such as Time Warner, Coca-Cola, Citibank and JP Morgan.

Radio One Inc., the largest radio broadcasting company targeting African-American and urban listeners, is busy building audience through another platform — the Internet.

The company has quietly begun relaunching websites at its 53 radio stations. It recently relaunched all of its sites in the Washington D.C. market, including KYSDC.com, MyMajicDC.com, praisedc.com, myspiritdc.com and woldcnews.com. Relaunches in other Radio One markets are to follow.

It’s all a part of Radio One’s desire to develop additional revenue streams. Local radio stations of every type have been hit hard by the recession. Sales from automotive advertising — a staple of radio ad sales — is near historic lows in some markets, and other advertisers have shifted advertising away from radio and onto the Web. By relaunching its web sites, Radio One expects to be in better position to generate more revenue from Internet sales.

The strategy makes sense. The company has stations in key urban areas such as Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Cleveland, Dallas, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.  With the network of stations Radio One will be able to offer major advertisers large, national campaigns featuring both the Web and the radio stations. That could give the company an advantage over some sites that lack the promotional power of a radio partner.

In addition to the 53 stations, Radio One owns Giant Magazine a financial stake in  TV One, and a majority stake in Reach Media, Inc., home of the Tom Joyner Morning Show and blackamericaweb.com.

If you’ve installed the latest version of the Firefox (3.0.12), you may have trouble browsing MediaTakeOut.com. Internal pages at MTO, one of the most visited African-American websites online, were blocked by Firefox because malicious software found on some of the sites pages. According to the Google Safe Browsing Report generated by Firefox:

Of the 956 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 110 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2009-07-22, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2009-07-22.

Malicious software includes 20 scripting exploit(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 1 new process(es) on the target machine.

Malicious software is hosted on 4 domain(s), including zbestprice.org/, applepie.gd/, bubbled.cn/.

1 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including lemonia.ws/.

This site was hosted on 1 network(s) including AS36351 (SOFTLAYER).

It looks as if the site works fine on most other browsers (Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer) , but if MediaTakeOut’s readers use Firefox at the same percentage as  Blackweb20.com users (about 25%), MTO could be losing out on a large chuck of traffic.

It’s unclear where the malicious software is originating from or which pages are affected, but my previous experience leads me to believe that the malicious software may be coming from some of the sites advertisements.

You have been laid off from your job. You have had it with corporate America. Now is the perfect time to start your own Internet company, right?

The answer is yes.

And no.

The answer is a resounding yes if you’re interested in starting a home-based Internet business with no full-time employees and a great viral marketing strategy. Of course you’ll also need an outstanding product or service, and that’s often the biggest hurdle in this era of copycat websites. The good news is that with all the free blogging software available and some help from a designer you could quickly be up and running for only a few hundred dollars.

Some of the most popular black-owned gossip and entertainment sites are being run out of basements and bedrooms. Yet some of them are reaping annual advertising sales revenue exceeding six-figures. That’s a nice piece of change for an entrepreneur with a regular 9-5 who sees the website as a lucrative side hustle. After all, multiple revenue streams are definitely a good thing is this day of continued layoffs and restructurings.

On the other hand, think again if you envision yourself instantly building an empire with dozens of employees, sweeping office space and a fat travel budget. For now, at least, those days are over.  These days few venture capitalists are excited about investing in sites whose business model is built around ad sales. The recession and the sheer number of sites competing for ad dollars has pushed down revenues for everybody. Make no mistake, home-based sites with little overhead can still be very profitable. But venture capitalists have no interest in mom and pop operations. Instead, they are all looking to tap into the next Facebook or Google.

Entrepreneurs who are less ambitious than that will find it virtually impossible to attract VC money for the foreseeable future.  According to the National Venture Capital Association, venture capital investment continues to shrink, and is now down to the levels of the early 1990s. That was roughly when I raised $5 million from Tribune Co. to start the original blackvoices.com. Back then if you had a good idea you could raise a million dollars over lunch. Black Voices, Black Planet, BET.com and the ill-fated NetNoir flourished during that period, but in the decade or so since then there has been only one splashy, multimillion dollar investment in the black space — the 2008 launch of RushmoreDrive.com. Unfortunately, RushmoreDrive recently closed, marking what will probably be the last multimillion dollar investment in the black web space for a long while.

We are seeing other closures as well. Barry Diller’s InterActive Corp. yanked funding from RushmoreDrive for poor financial performance, and similar moves are being made in the general market space. Sampa, a Seattle startup catering to families, announced last week that it was shutting down because it wasn’t able to pay its bills. It had raised $1 million in angel funding. TeeBeeDee, a social networking site targeting baby boomers, recently ran out of money after having raised $4.8 million in venture capital money just two years ago. The site is now closed.

Recent misses like TeeBeeDee and Sampa will continue to scare away investors who might have considered investing in niche sites. But again, the news is not all bad. You can still be a success and make some good money if you have a great online idea. Just start on a shoestring and keep it that way until the economy substantially improves. That means no maxing out your credit cards or taking out a second mortgage. As long as you are covering your costs, everything else is gravy, so be sure to follow your passion and have some fun.

Make no mistake: the good times will come back again. The really sharp entrepreneurs are getting their ducks in a row, says Ray Rothrock, a partner in the Silicon Valley-based VC firm, Venrock. Rothrock recently told The New York Times,  “There is no drop-off in the amount of deal flow coming our way. Entrepreneurs look out six, seven, eight years and believe these times will pass.”