(* Source: Leena Rao *)

Brands are engaging in the conversations that are taking place on social media sites now more than ever. But in order to tap into the social conversations that are taking place on the web, brands and agencies need to have a powerful tool to track, measure and engage sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and others. One of the leaders in the social media tracking space, Radian6, is launching a new Engagement Console to streamline this process.

A desktop client built on Adobe AIR, the engagement console lets your both track and engage in the conversation taking place on blogs, videos, forums, boards, Twitter, Flickr, Google Buzz, LinkedIn, Facebook fan pages, public discussion groups, and mainstream news sites. The site also allows for assigning of tasks from within the platform, enabling users to access workflow from within the client.

You can customize a tracking grid of social media sites by breaking out your conversation into stacks by broad or specific topics, tagged customer lists, or even user assignment. Stacks can also be separated out by media type.

Th workflow feature allows you to tag, assign, and route posts to team members, and track the status of the assignments. Any conversations a user engages in, whether it be on Twitter, Facebook or with a co-worker, will be recorded for both the user and the administrator. And of course, the console allows you to Tweet, reply, retweet, and send direct messages, shuffle through user profiles, and follow new contacts right from the platform. Similar to many of the consumer focused social media clients out there, Radian6 allows for unlimited accounts and includes a URL shortener.

With respect to Facebook, the client allows users to respond to status updates, wall posts, comments, and “likes”. Users can also view news feeds for Facebook friends, and see new photos or videos that have been uploaded from within the console. The dashboard also provides analytics from within the console, such as post volume, and engagement stats.

Radian6 has had considerable success in terms of serving big-name clients. The company is currently helping over 10,000 brands track social media sites, including Comcast, MTV, Dell, UPS, GE and Microsoft. And this engagement console has all the bells and whistles to make any brand marketer content. The console, we are told, will be in private beta until April. That being said, there are plenty of other offerings for companies and agencies to track social media and this is a competitive space. Radian6 faces competition from a number of startups including Scout Labs, Visible Measures, Viralheat, HootSuite and PeopleBrowsr.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Ashkan Karbasfrooshan *)

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of posts by guest writer Ashkan Karbasfrooshan. Previously, he wrote about the State of Online Video, and 12 Surprising Things Holding Back Online Video Advertising.  In part 3 today, he examines how videos are found and consumed online. Karbasfrooshan is the founder and CEO of WatchMojo , a producer of premium, informative and entertaining video content. The company’s catalog of 5,000 videos has generated over 110 million streams since 2006.

To try to understand—let alone guess—the future of video advertising, one needs to start by looking at the biggest trend in media over the past few decades.  In November 2006, Bear Stearns Cable and Satellite analyst Spencer Wang published a study called “Why Aggregation & Context and Not (Necessarily) Content are King in Entertainment”.  While Bear Stearns has since been acquired by JP Morgan and is now a mere footnote in business books, the study’s findings are more relevant than ever.  Let’s examine 8 key factors behind online video consumption

Factor 1: Media is Fragmenting

According to a recent NY Times article, in the 1952-53 season, more than 30% of American households watched NBC during prime time, according to Nielsen.  In fact, up until twenty years ago, you could buy a 30-second spot on CBS, NBC or ABC and reach “everyone.”  Today, NBC’s prime time reach is 5%.  Sure, NBC is lagging CBS and ABC, but neither the Tiffany network nor Disney’s counterpart is faring much better.  The secret’s out: fewer people watch TV and teenagers spend every waking minute connected to the Internet, increasingly through the mobile web.

Factor 2: Deportalization is Here to Stay

As the media world becomes fragmented and consumers move online, the Web is following a similar path, known as deportalization: the move away from the dominant portals of old, as social networks gain huge followings and vertical niche sites gain smaller, but more loyal, followings.

Ten years ago, you could buy a banner on MSN, AOL or Yahoo and reach “everyone” on the Web.  Five years ago, you could get the same result by buying a text link through AdWords and reach consumers who were either searching directly on Google.com, or surfing on the countless number of websites that were part of Google’s publisher network through AdSense.

Suffice to say, times have changed.  In fact, less and less often do consumers even seek out content  by actually going to a given site.  To paraphrase Jeff Jarvis, if something is important, it will find me, be it via newsletter, Facebook, Twitter or a shared link in an email.  In fact, Facebook might very well be the last giant Web property and when it launched Facebook Connect, it too began to extend its tentacles across the Web.  Twitter’s growth has maintained thanks to its off-site (API) growth, while YouTube exploded due to its open embeddable nature from the get-go.

However, after YouTube sold to Google for $1.65 billion and the site’s aggregate traffic soared, some video producers tried to find a way to generate an audience—and revenues—outside of YouTube in order to build a legitimate business.  In other words, media is becoming fragmented, the Web is becoming deportalized, and the front line of it all is online video.

Factor 3: Content is Not a Zero-Sum Game

If we return for a second to television, it’s worth noting that with the advent of cable television, as the number of channels rose, so did overall content consumption.

Analogously, as the number of content producers and distribution points increases online, consumption increases exponentially.  For proof, look no further than the recent comScore figures touting over 31 billion videos were viewed in November 2009.

Factor 4: Content is King?

Indeed, to paraphrase Viacom’s Chairman Sumner Redstone: content becomes more important than distribution mechanisms; as new channels of distribution creep up, it is the content that is always going to be necessary, hence the adage “content is king”.  If you fast forward to 2010, it’s true that with all of these social media aggregation and distribution tools, you are seeing media rise to the surface.  No one, after all, cares about the pipes; it’s what flows through the pipes that matters.  The context—Facebook, Twitter, email—in which people are introduced to media and consume it is becoming more important than the content itself.  Content is no longer king, context is.

Factor 5: Demand for Content is Elastic, Supply of Funds is Not

The problem, as you can imagine, is that while it’s perfectly plausible for global advertising to grow, it will not grow fast enough to feed all of the mouths at the creative table.  As “consumer touch points” increase, the number of people that each piece of content reaches becomes smaller at the time of publishing/broadcast but can grow over time.  That’s the theory, anyway.

This is a double-whammy trend.  It is negative because the audience for something (and corresponding revenue) will be less than what the most popular event on television will be, which partially explains the cachet television still has over its online brethren.

But it is also a positive trend in that as a content owner you will be able to derive more revenue over the course of the content’s shelf life.  Don’t get me wrong, syndication on television is an enormous revenue stream, but that is not an option for all programming, whereas online, technically, anything has both a shot at building an audience and having some kind of residual revenue stream.  The problem is that there is no vetting process per se online so the lowest common denominator can be zero.

Factor 6: Chasing Hits Has Proven Futile

Ultimately, overall consumption of media will increase but hits become less frequent and each hit will become more niche.  The stats support this hypothesis, despite YouTube’s aggregate size and macro-level success, each clip’s average viewership shows that regardless of whether the video is user-generated, premium or super-premium (for a definition of the differences click here), on average:

• It will garner 500 views over time
• 25% of those views will come in the first four days and
• by and large, only the first 30 to 60 seconds will be watched.

How can you build a business on that?

Factor 7: Discovery vs. Recovery

Exasperating matters is how content is actually unearthed.  To borrow from John Battelle’s breakdown of search: videos are found via recovery and discovery.

Statistics show that:

• 45% of views come from direct navigation where a user goes to YouTube and searches to “recover” something they have already seen or are actively looking for.  Of course, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and most of those searches are now conducted on YouTube.com, which reinforces the argument that YouTube is now the best Internet M&A of all time.
• The other 55% of the time, users stumble upon a video and “discover” it.  That is right, over half of the time, users land on something randomly.

In other words, while traditional media views the web as a place where pirates turn to to rip off their copyright, the truth is, only half of all of the content consumed is actually searched for, the other half is stumbled upon, meaning you actually have to distribute it widely enough to increase the likelihood that people even notice it, let alone give a damn!

This is why you need both lots of content and a diversity of it.  Indeed, Time.com former Managing Editor Josh Tyrangiel admitted that “long form journalism, a staple of magazines like Time, is not working” online.  The same applies to long form video online, and by extension, on mobile.

Factor 8: Size Matters

So what works?  To gain more insight into that (and to avoid an overly biased outlook), I reached out to Dina Kaplan, who is the COO of blip.tv.  (We use blip.tv’s video player on our web property).  According to Kaplan, a Pyramid of Content is emerging on the Web.

I tend to agree.  Back in February 2007, I wrote an article called “The Commoditization of Distribution and the Scalability of Content”.  In it, I alluded to a rudimentary pyramid with super premium on top, premium in the middle and UGC at the bottom:

It’s certainly not rocket science, and Kaplan and I are not alone in having that view.  She continues: “Hulu is the best-known platform sitting at the top of the pyramid, in terms of hosting and distributing network content.  YouTube, which has long been known for hosting great viral and one-off videos, has owned the bottom of the pyramid.”

The question remains: who will own the middle.  A couple of years ago, YouTube made a move towards “torso content”.  Kaplan’s blip.tv is obviously making a play for the middle, “blip.tv [wants to own] the middle of the content pyramid: the best original shows produced for the Web.  These shows are produced by talented individuals and production companies who are building up loyal audiences for their shows, just as the producers of a traditional TV show would.”

With things like Apple launching the iPad and IPTV gathering steam, Kaplan is confident that “shows will move around from screen to screen and you’ll choose to watch content on whatever screen is most convenient for you at that moment.”

Of course, with Boxee’s struggles to get traditional media on-board, one wonders if new media producers have a golden opportunity to win traditional ad dollars, which dwarf new media dollars by a wide margin.  For all the talk and excitement about online advertising and online video advertising, TV advertising in the US remains a $75 billion industry.

When you realize the dichotomy between the existing business that is Television and the potential that might be Online Video, you realize why the stakes are so high.  Also read:

Part 1: State of Online Video

Part 2: 12 Surprising Things Holding Back Online Video Advertising

Posted by brian tiong at 09:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: InsideFacebook *)

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(* Source: Michael Arrington *)

An interesting article on how this is done.

Michael reports...

Our posts earlier this week about the alarming amount of click fraud at Facebook left more than a few unanswered questions. The problem is real and was confirmed by Facebook. But what wasn’t clear is exactly how or why it was happening. Now, after we’ve interviewed a number of advertisers and fraudsters, we know exactly how and why they are doing it.

First the why. Click fraud is serious business on the big search engine advertising networks because the bad guys can make serious money. Sign up for an Adsense account and put those ads on parked domain names or wherever. Then all you have to do is start clicking those ads like crazy, using bots or cheap labor. The search engines fight this via obvious and not so obvious means, and an arms race begins. To win you need access to a lot of good IP addresses and not get too greedy. And like inflation and the government, a little click fraud is tolerated by Google and others. It keeps the dollars flowing.

But Facebook is a different story. As of now they don’t really have an Adsense equivalent - Some App developers can run Facebook ads for a revenue split, but that’s it. Those guys wouldn’t be able to get away with click fraud for very long because there are too few of them and it’s too easy to monitor spikes in performance.

So what’s the incentive? We’ve spoken to a number of Facebook advertisers who have explained exactly what’s happening - advertisers are clicking on competitor ads to drive up their costs and drive down their ROI. As advertisers leave the system in disgust, prices go down and the people left win.

At least that’s the theory. But what’s really happening is better explained by game theory stuff that we all learned in micro economics courses. The advertisers know they’d all collectively be better off if they didn’t engage in click fraud against each other. But anyone that “does the right thing” is put at a severe disadvantage competitively. So unless and until Facebook can put a stop to this, advertisers argue that they are actually forced to engage in click fraud to have a fighting chance at making any money.

Some of these guys are spending $30,000 a day on ads on Facebook alone (the maximum for self serve advertisers) and put significant capital at risk. They’re not particularly worried about much more than keeping that capital safe, and earning a living.

And for the most part these are affiliate marketers - middleman arbitragers that don’t create or sell products but simply pass leads and orders on to others who monetize users directly. They have to monitor ROI carefully, particularly because they are paying Facebook per click and in turn getting paid for conversions (sales, leads, etc.). Click fraud puts them out of business fast.

Facebook Click Fraud 101:

Here’s how advertisers are engaging in click fraud:

First, its hard to even see the ads in the first place. On search engines they are there on the parked domain page, or you see them when you type in a query. But on Facebook ads are hyper targeted to users based on deep demographic data - like single men who live in San Diego and like the Xbox and U2, for example. If you aren’t a user who fits that description on Facebook, you don’t see the ads.

So the bad guys just create thousands of fake Facebook accounts with a wide variety of demographic information. This sounds like a lot of work, but it’s highly automated. One advertiser told me how he paid $200 to an Indian operation for 2,000 Facebook accounts. Another said the going rate was just $10 per 100 accounts if you supply the unique email accounts. Once the accounts are created, they use software to fill out the varied demographic information, and that software also manages all these accounts.

The fraudster then logs in to Facebook via these accounts and views the ads that are displayed. The right competitive ads come up and Bingo, the software then clicks them. Facebook rules allow an account to click any advertisement up to six times in a 24 hour period, and all those clicks are charged. All you need is a few accounts to view the ads and then click to the max. Facebook even makes it easy to find the ads. They have an “Ad Board” that shows all ads targeted to that user (mine has 15 ads on it).

Often the fraudsters have their art down to a science and their software clicks ads so fast and moves on to the next one that it doesn’t even hang around long enough for the underlying URL to resolve. Facebook still sees (and charges for) the click, but the advertiser’s server never registers a page view. That’s what bugs advertisers the most. In our original post we quoted one advertiser who at least wanted to see the traffic from the spam bots: “If I were at least getting bot traffic or something that would be one thing, but right now Facebook is simply stealing 20% of clicks that I paid for, which adds up to thousands of dollars.”

The people we spoke with say they’ve been doing this since last year, and have had almost no account profiles shut down. “Just 2 of my 2,000 accounts were closed” said one source.

How Facebook Is Fighting This:

We’ve spoken to Facebook a number of times this week to understand how they are fighting click fraud. We also wanted to wait on this story until Facebook felt comfortable that we weren’t going to make the situation worse by mapping out how fraud is done.

Facebook says the fraud is now under control. One way they monitor fraud is to view conversions off ad clicks - some ads ink to other Facebook pages where surveys and offers are completed, and Facebook can monitor if a click results in a conversion. Conversion rates have stabilized since the changes they made last Sunday, Facebook tells us, meaning fraud has decreased.

Facebook has told us a few ways that they are combating the fraud. They’ve asked us not to publish all of those methods because fraudsters may have an easier time bypassing the defenses. But we’ve checked with experts who agree that the protections Facebook has put in place make sense.

One thing Facebook is willing to talk about on record is that they are heavily monitoring click rates on ads and flagging accounts that are statistically out of bounds for human review. It doesn’t sound like they intend to close known fraudster accounts down, though. Just keeping an eye on them and reversing any ad clicks may in fact be a smarter way of combating them and gathering more data. I agree.

Advertisers who’ve been affected will have credits applied to their accounts automatically, Facebook says. And they can also contact Facebook directly with concerns.

Some advertisers are saying click fraud rates haven’t declined this week at all, but others are saying they see a significant decline in fraud over the last few days. We’re working with one group who’ve set up test ads to monitor fraud on Facebook as well. As of tonight they are still seeing discrepancies in the number of clicks Facebook says they sent and what their server logs show. So clearly the problem has not been fixed entirely, and it probably never will be. It’s an arms race, but at least Facebook is admitting to the problem, and actively fighting it.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Scott McClelland *)

Jeremiah Owyang from Forester Research in Silicon Valley says...

All Social Networks

Techcrunch has listed out comscore’s numbers across multiple social networks, Sources: Techcrunch via Comscore, Jan 1, 2009

Compete has released stats in Feb, comments by Cnet. Unique Visitors, Total Visitors and rank information. Cnet, Feb 10, 2009

Nielsen Online shows that: Social networks and blogs are now the 4th most popular online activity ahead of personal email, Member communities are visited by 67% of the global online population, time spent is growing at 3 times the overall internet rate, accounting for almost 10% of all internet time, PDF, Nielsen Online, March

Nielsen reports that Social Networks 68% more popular than email 65% (but not by much), Nielsen, Cnet, March 2009

Techcrunch has an interesting application that shows which social networks dominate by country, June 2009

Facebook

Facebook has some very limited stats on their own website, view here, Facebook, often updated

150 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook and almost half of them are using Facebook every day. This includes people in every continent—even Antarctica. If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria. Facebook is used in more than 35 different languages and 170 countries and territories. Source: Mark Zuckerberg, Jan 7, 2009

Facebook has 54.5 million monthly unique visitors, says Comscore, with a growth rate in the U.S. averaged 3.8% per month over the last year. Source, Comscore via Techncrunch, Jan 13, 2009

175mm users, with 600k daily growth of users, with the fastest growing segment “45% of Facebook’s US audience is now 26 years old or older.” Inside Facebook, Feb 15th, 2009.

Compare the dominant Facebook vs MySpace traffic, stickablilty, and engagement, Compete, Feb 27, 2009

Despite those that have over 100 friends, most only communicate with a smaller subset of friends, and the rest is broadcasting to others. Now there’s not enough data presented to see if if content actually can still spread across those that do not interact. Source originally from Facebook’s sociologist, Feb 2009

This graph from Compete data shows Facebook has more users than MySpace, note the ‘crossing of the streams’, Compete, March

Inside Facebook says: “the number of Americans over 35, 45, and 55 on Facebook is growing fast. In the last 60 days alone, the number of people over 35 has nearly doubled. Developers and marketers may want to think about how to serve this group of new users.” Inside Facebook, March

“Women over 55 remain the fastest growing group, and growth among the teen and college-age set has been relatively paltry. In absolute numbers there are now even slightly more members between the ages of 45 and 65 than there are 13-to 17-year-olds.” Wired Magazine, March.

Facebook Ranks as Top Social Networking Site in the Majority of European Countries. Facebook Captures #1 Ranking in Spain for the First Time in February, comScore, April

Facebook dominates US visitors over MySpace: “Facebook pulled in 70.278 million unique visitors in the states, compared to MySpace’s 70.237 million, according to data released by ComScore. That made Facebook the most popular site in the U.S., in terms of visitors. Just a month earlier, Facebook had a little over 67 million U.S. visitors behind MySpace’s 70.9 million.” PC Mag,, June 16

Hi5

60 million reported users, and Hi5 has introduced a gaming component. VentureBeat, Feb 5, 2009

LinkedIn

“the site’s traffic is up in the recession. It hit 36 million members last Monday and is adding them at a rate of about one member per second. According to ComScore, it’s gone from about 3.6 million unique monthly visitors a year ago to 7.7 million today, Adage, March 2

Microsoft: Live, Hotmail, Messenger

Number of active WL IDs: More than 500 million active Windows Live Ids. Number of Hotmail Users: More than 375 million active accounts worldwide. Number of Messenger Users: More than 320 million active accounts worldwide. As told to me by Microsoft in April

MySpace

76 million members in MySpace US, with a U.S. growth rate of 0.8% per month Comscore via Techncrunch, Jan 13, 2009

“The average MySpace user now spends 266 minutes (4.4 hours) on the site every month; a 5% increase over last month and a +31% increase year over year. MySpace says its users spend nearly 100 minutes more per visitor than the closest competitor.” Social media bible (who cites a press release), Feb, 2009

Compare the dominant Facebook vs MySpace traffic, stickablilty, and engagement, (repeated from the Facebook category above) Compete, Feb 27, 2009

Facebook dominates US visitors over MySpace: “Facebook pulled in 70.278 million unique visitors in the states, compared to MySpace’s 70.237 million, according to data released by ComScore. That made Facebook the most popular site in the U.S., in terms of visitors. Just a month earlier, Facebook had a little over 67 million U.S. visitors behind MySpace’s 70.9 million.” PC Mag,, June 16

Twitter
Having spent time with Ev and Biz, they don’t provide a lot of data and certainly not a total user count, as a result, we often have to estimate based on the following sources.

According to Compete, the growth rate for Twitter was 752%, for a total of 4.43 million unique visitors in December 2008, in the start of 2008, Twitter had only around 500,000 unique monthly visitors. Source: Mashable/Compete, Jan 9, 2009

Demographics of Twitter: Lots of stats here: 11% of online adults use Twitter or update their status online

Twitter users are mobile, less tethered by technology, Pew Research, Feb 12

Quantcast data on Twitter indicates that Twitter.com is a top 500 site that reaches over 4.1 million U.S. monthly people. The site attracts a more educated, slightly more female than male, young adult audience. Quantcast, March

Compete shows that Twitter is receiving 8million unique visitors in the month of March 2009. Compete (via Nick) March 10

Comscore data shows that “In February, 4 million people in the U.S. visited the site, up from 2.6 million the month before, according to the latest data from comScore. That represents a 55 percent month-over-month growth rate, compared to 33 percent growth in each of the two months prior.” Comscore, March

Unique visitors to Twitter increased 1,382 percent year-over-year, from 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008 to 7 million in February 2009, making it the fastest growing site in the Member Communities category for the month, Nielsen, March

“Worldwide visitors to Twitter approached 10 million in February, up an impressive 700+% vs. year ago. The past two months alone have seen worldwide visitors climb more than 5 million visitors. U.S. traffic growth has been just as dramatic, with Twitter reaching 4 million visitors in February, up more than 1,000% from a year ago.” Comscore, April

Xing

Xing has 6.5 million users, many of which have paid accounts.

2008 Stats

Need more? I have stats compiled in 2008 for AdultFriendFinder, Bebo, Digg, MySpace, Hi5, and many others.

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(* Source: eMarketer *)

Whe-e-e-ere are you?

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(* Source: Jason Kincaid *)

Jason says...

Earlier this year Pinch Media released a report on the state of the App Store, describing some of the trends it had seen as developers tried to monetize their apps. The verdict: advertising on free applications simply can’t match the payoff from even the least expensive ‘paid’ applications, and would require an unobtainable $8.75 CPM to reach the same income per install.

AdWhirl, the iPhone advertising platform formerly known as Adrollo, begs to differ. Since launching last month, the company has signed on over 10% of the top 50 applications in the App Store and is serving 250 million ad impressions per month. And their data tells a different tale.

According to co-founder Sam Yam, one of the fundamental flaws in the Pinch Media report is that it assumes that applications only show a single ad impression per user interaction (in other words, every time you open a free app, you only see one ad). Yam says that applications actually tend to serve 3-5 impressions each time a customer interacts with them, with even higher figures for some especially engaging applications. And when you divide that $8.75 CPM by 5, things become much more reasonable.

The AdWhirl report, embedded below, says that applications that crack the top 100 in the Free Apps list make $400-$5000 a day - a wide range to be sure, but even at the low end that works out to around $12,000 a month. Among these top apps, AdWhirl is reporting an impressive $1.90 eCPM and 2.6% CTR. And while applications that do reach the peak position in the App Store eventually lose steam, revenue tends to remain consistent over time after the initial dip (see the graph below). Of course, making it to the top of the Free Apps list is easier said than done, and most developers make far less than $400 a day. But the same is true of the vast majority of paid applications too - in fact, there’s actually less competition on the Free side of the store.

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(* Source: eMarketer *)

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Micro-blogging is getting micro-payments. Tinker, the micro-blogging topic tracker from Glam Media which we covered in depth last night, is now live. The service tracks specific topics on both Twitter and Facebook, and allows these “event” streams to be republished as standalone widgets on blogs and other sites across the Web. I’ve embedded an example below showing the subsequent Tweets about our original article.

With the launch, Glam Media is also creating a professional micro-blogging network for journalists and bloggers who want to sign up to cover specific events or topics via Twitter or Facebook. It will be called the Tinker Micro-Bloggers Network. This will be a vetted subset of Tinker users who are advertiser-friendly. Glam is working on a micro-payments system to share revenues with approved micro-bloggers from ads in their associated widgets and Tinker streams.

All existing Glam Media publishers are automatically part of the Tinker Micro-Blogging Network. Glam also hopes to attract professional bloggers and journalists, who are pre-qualified (including any bloggers who are part of other blog advertising networks such as Federated Media, BlogHer, and TotalBeauty). Others can apply to be part of the network as well.

In order to make advertisers more comfortable with the concept of associating their brands with these micro-conversations, Tinker will offer a “safe” mode so that ads never appear near obscenities or specified keywords. Event moderators can also use the filters to block specific keywords or people from appearing in their curated stream.

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Don’t place ads—build brands.

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(* Source: Robin Wauters *)

Robin says...

A study commissioned by NeoEdge Mountain View, CA-based casual gaming advertising network, says (surprise, surprise) that video advertising within online games is more effective than TV advertising. Preliminary results of the study, which will conclude at the end of this month, seem to indicate online gaming audiences are more inclined to remember and positively percieve brands who experiment with pre, mid and post-roll video advertisements inside Web-based games.

Of course, studies ordered by commercial companies with a clear stake in the subject of the research like this one always need to be taken with a grain of salt, but the results are interesting nonetheless, and deserve a closer look. After all, major companies like Google and Sony are eyeing in-game advertising revenues in a big way, and for good reason: depending on which research organization you trust, spending on in-game advertising is supposed to grow to between $732 million and $1.8 billion by 2010, although I personally believe the current economic climate might prevent spending to reach even the more conservative prediction by the end of next year.

For more context: some say in-game advertising will ruin the video game industry altogether, others believe standards will spur industry growth, and a recent article on our sister site Crunchgear (based on another study) suggested gamers don’t have a problem with in-game advertising at all.

Anyway, going back to NeoEdge’s study, which was conducted in conjunction with research agency Frank Magid Associates, this is how they came to their conclusions:

The research goal was to determine both the value of online video advertising inside of casual games and the most efficient use of video advertising in casual games. In partnership with advertiser Zappos.com, casual game players across the NeoEdge Network were intercepted with a survey request after game play. Consumers saw one of ten different online video advertising scenarios, which varied number of ads seen, frequency of ads and additional ad products. Over 2,000 consumers participated in the research study and over 1 million ad impressions were used to conduct the comprehensive research.

According to Vicki Cohen, Executive Vice-President at Frank Magid Associates, the preliminary results show a 5x increase in unaided brand awareness over TV advertising where a game included a Zappos.com ad. Other key findings according to the release: over 80% correctly linked Zappos.com as the advertiser who “allowed them to play the game for free” (who knew gamers were such a grateful lot?), while 56% had a more favorable impression of Zappos.com because of their trade-off of watching an ad for free game play.

I am skeptical that the reported uplift in percentages and absolute numbers can be generalized across all in-game advertising and more extensive research would be welcome for backing up the statement, although I am inclined to believe the notion that in-game advertising is generally more effective than TV advertising.

Then again, which form of digital advertising isn’t?

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Mike says...

It’s no secret how bad most of the analytics firms are at gathering statistically relevant data about Internet traffic. All of them, Quantcast, Comscore, Hitwise, Compete, Alexa, etc., are flawed in various ways and to various degrees.

But today’s blog post by Hitwise shows just how bad their data really is. They say that Craigslist is now the top searched term on the Internet, taking that honor from MySpace. Facebook is third.

But the real data is out there for the taking. Google Trends shows Google search data, and since Google commands such a large lead in search in most countries, presumably the data is accurate. Google trends shows exactly the opposite data as Hitwise - Facebook is by far the most queried term, followed by MySpace and then Craigslist.

I’m putting my money on Google when it comes to accurate search trends. And if I were Hitwise, I’d make very sure my search data conformed to whatever Google was saying.

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(* Source: Robin Wauters *)

Robin says...

I’m not going to discuss the economic meltdown and its devastating effect on technology companies and internet startups in this post, but rather something that crossed my mind earlier this morning: “Web 2.0″ seems to become more and more a void (and an avoided) term. Of course, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is definitely apparent.

So why do I say it’s fading? For one, because the number of startups that contact us and include the term Web 2.0 in the subject line or message is visibly dropping (and that’s a good thing), and I hardly ever see it mentioned anymore on other technology blogs and news sites either. That’s not really tangible, so I took a look at the number of mentions of the phrase across the web, and they seem to be decreasing significantly, reflecting my feeling on this.

Judging by Google Trends, which shows how often a particular search term is entered relative to the total search volume across various regions of the world (and in various languages), the term started being used at the end of 2004 when Tim O’Reilly organized the first edition of the Web 2.0 Conference. Search queries for the term started picking up in the middle of 2005, when TechCrunch was started - with the tagline “Tracking Web 2.0″ by the way - and the number kept increasing until the end of 2007. After that, the trend is clearly downwards, falling back to the level it reached in early 2006 today. If the trend continues, there should only be a handful of people left who scour search engines for “Web 2.0″ by 2011.

Also noteworthy: take a look at the geographic regions that have generated the highest volumes of worldwide search traffic for the term over the years - it’s Asia, with the top 5 regions being India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malaysia (in that order). Furthermore, Google Trends pegs the number one language in which people search for stuff related to the topic of Web 2.0 to be Russian before English.

And just in case you’re curious: “Web 3.0″ doesn’t seem to picking up much.
Let’s all rejoice.

Google’s “Insights for Search”, a beta service that analyzes a portion of worldwide Google web searches from all Google domains to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you’ve entered - relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time - gives an even better overview:

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(* Source: Valeria Maltoni *)

Valeria says...

I have long believed that dialogue is the art of thinking together - talk changes our lives, it allows us to learn by listening. Customers and communities are changing the nature of marketing and communications through talk, but also through actions. If you're like me, you think that social media = tools and marketing = business.

Since we are in our own right working on changing not just the tactics for the channels but the nature itself of marketing (as currently done), I asked twelve great marketers from my network to share their thoughts on what we'll be working on in 2009.

More than predictions, which is hard to do, we focused on direction. This eBook is the result of our collective energy and execution experience. For a bite-size preview, here's what they say:

• "Basic metrics you can initially use to match up before, during and after sales deltas are frequency, reach, and yield" - Olivier Blanchard, The Brand Builder, @thebrandbuilder

• "There are three imperatives for execution programs in 2009 - start with measurement, create content for the open Web and for mobility" - Matt Dickman, Techno||Marketer, @MattDickman

• "The foundation and core of what social media is, consists of the five C's. Conversation, community, commenting, collaboration and contribution" - Mike Fruchter, My Thoughts on Social Media, @Fruchter
  

• "With social media as a platform for participation, people can behave the way they were hardwired to behave in the first place - humanly, tribally" - Francois Gossieaux, Emergence Marketing, @fgossieaux

• "Social media enhances marketing efforts as an additional indirect communication channel" - Beth Harte, The Harte of Marketing, @BethHarte

• "Companies with greater social intelligence have stronger bonds with employees and customers, and that translates into revenue" - Lois Kelly, Beeline Labs, @LoisKelly

• "Change ensures our own livelihoods - new opportunities and trends to capitalize upon, unique products and profit centers that merit development, robust innovation to leverage"- Christina Kerley, CK Epiphany, @ckepiphany

• "Social media interaction allows us to have… well, interaction with our customers. It lets us see them as people instead of statistics and it lets us hear their voices" - Jennifer Laycock, Search Engine Guide, @JenniferLaycock

• "Goals absolutely must be built on business objectives" - Amber Naslund, Altitude Branding, @AmberCadabra

• "A proper social media education is more than just learning new tools. The most important lesson we can impart is the necessity to think 'humans'"- Connie Reece, Every Dot Connects, @ConnieReece

• "Social media isn't causing problems, but it is revealing them. And the problems aren't new; they've been around for a while" - Mike Wagner, Own Your Brand!, @bigwags

• "The secret of success in social media is a product or a service that people actually like and use" - Alan Wolk, The Toad Stool, @awolk

I pulled together their ideas in this PDF - Marketing in 2009. We'd love to hear your reactions and examples.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Alan H Gerson *)

Good summary from Alan on the elements that an advertising campaign needs in digital today.

Alan says...

The importance of sound creative executions and integrated strategies cannot be overemphasized in today's online ad market. Follow these steps to get on the right track.

1. Capture interest and attention
Advertising is, of course, a specific communication strategy designed to shape consumer action towards, or opinions about, particular products or services. Advertising, like every other communication strategy, will not and cannot work unless it finds an audience and actually delivers its message. We live in an increasingly crowded media environment. The average consumer is exposed to thousands of different advertising messages every week. Many of those messages are repeated with a frequency that deadens the senses. Even finding the right potential customer and placing the advertising message in front of him or her does not guarantee interest or focus on what the ad message is trying to communicate. 

The new media consumers have been taught that they are in charge of what, where, when, and why they will pay attention to an ad message. Nevertheless, capturing interest and focusing attention remains the prerequisite for a successful advertisement.  More

2. Extend engagement
Engagement is a new hot metric. In the battle for the attention of the consumer, "time spent" is a valuable indication of whether the advertising communication has been successful, and delivering an ad impression does not necessarily equate to consumer attention and interest. There are all levels of impressions, but do they communicate in a world where consumers have the ability to scan, fast forward, jump, and abandon content with the touch of a button on myriad of different devices?

Therefore, truly engaging and focusing a consumer on the advertising message is increasingly valuable and effective. Engagement for a significant period of time, especially if that engagement is interactive, clearly indicates that the message has been delivered to a consumer who has -- by the investment of their time and actions -- demonstrated interest and attentiveness.  More

3. Activate toward client goals
Today, even if branding is the main objective, some sort of measurable action by the consumer that can be translated into a concrete return on the advertising investment is almost always a parallel goal.

Every marketer of every brand, product, or service has a hierarchy of real-world results they would like to see from their advertising. This goes beyond metrics and measurement. Ultimately, they want to see sales increase, or product sampling, or store visits, or a consumer database developed from information requests, or promotional registrations. 

Advertising, even brand advertising, needs to be able to multi-task and create real-world results in terms of sales or the establishment of a relationship with/or communication path to a potential consumer. Digital media, messages, and promotions are increasingly being bundled into an integrated marketing, advertising, and promotional strategy that activates a consumer toward specific goals or creates a communication path to a potential consumer for just that reason. 

4. Branding and brand building
All advertising can and should reinforce brand values or brand positioning, even if its primary goal is more directly sales oriented. 

In the digital age, the ability to use websites, microsites, and online promotions -- not only to create sales but to convey information about the company behind the product or service -- makes this a required part of any advertising strategy.

Never before in history have marketers had the tools that can so readily facilitate the ability to provide information in various levels of detail to consumers about their products and services, what they stand for and what they mean for their customers. More

5. Reinforce recall and retention
The multiplicity of channels, messages, and media can make it harder to make advertising messages stand out enough to be remembered or acted upon. Nevertheless, fostering message recall and retention remains a central goal of any advertising campaign.

Digital media and certain technologies provide new and powerful ways to accomplish this goal through their ability to reach consumers where they are, on a variety of platforms, and with messages of different lengths and complexities. Flexibility of approach, use of integrated strategies -- which include traditional media as well as digital platforms -- and creation of different messages that may communicate different pieces of information can all enhance recall and retention. Whether the message is price, value, brand or feature-based, nothing is more important today than the power of communities and the impact of promotions. Today's consumer wants validation and reinforcement from other consumers, and the opinions and testimonials of their peers are more important and impactful than the same words from a company spokesperson or message. More

6. Promote intention to purchase
The marketing chain for most products and services today is complex and multi-channel. Products are offered for sale through retail stores, through networks of distributors, through online stores, and in a variety of both online and offline direct messaging to former or potential customers. Advertising messages, wherever and however they are made or delivered, need to support the communication of product benefits, features, advantages, and uses. Especially in today's economy, they need to support the communication of specific price and value messages and incentive offers. More

7. Build an opt-in and viral database
One key difference between traditional media and digital media is the ability of digital media to readily identify its audience members and establish a two-way communication with willing individuals in that audience. Building a customer database that has fully opted in creates a valuable resource for all companies that can and should be used to inform, reward, thank and re-sell customers, increasing the lifetime value of that customer. Permission-based marketing was one of the first breakthrough concepts in digital marketing, and it remains a very valuable goal of advertising today.

Not only can advertising be used to drive potential customers to registration pages connected to sweepstakes or contest entries or purchase opportunities, but it can also be used to incentivize those customers to "refer a friend," thus building and extending the potential list to persons who might not otherwise have seen or responded to the advertisement. More

8. Create differentiation in the marketplace
Ultimately, the last goal of advertising I want to discuss is differentiation in the marketplace, which is an umbrella principle closely related to No. 1: Capturing interest and attention. 

The importance of sound creative executions, different media channels, and integrated strategies that allow an advertising message or campaign to reach its target audience and capture interest and attention cannot be overemphasized. These elements should be coupled with integrated advertising and marketing approaches that include strong promotional elements and that powerfully position the features, advantages, benefits, and uses of the product or service being advertised.

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(* Source: eMarkerter *)

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(* Source: Marita Scarfi *)

1. Measure Return of Investment Holistically.
Marketers should look at their entire marketing spend--from traditional to online--trying to realize efficiencies and synergies across media, something that's easier to do than ever before. To accomplish this, marketers must gather all data from their past campaigns, including direct, digital, broadcast and print, as well as their website properties, and develop custom media mix models. These models can be used to predict spend needed to accomplish sales goals, and to estimate sales based on certain spend levels and by media type. These models should constantly evolve as more data becomes available.

2. Develop Integrated Campaigns.
As with media spend, campaigns that are developed across multiple media will provide greater return to brands. Integrated campaigns provide a consistent brand experience to the consumer and result in higher brand awareness and sales. Additionally, if creative assets are developed at once for use across media types, the advertiser may be able to leverage campaign development costs.

3. Optimize Your Marketing Campaigns.
Measurement for measurement sake is a lot of time and money spent without a lot of return. It's important to optimize your marketing programs, whether by recalibrating marketing spend by medium based on the results of past and current campaigns or by adjusting the creative units to different spots within the various channels.

4. Balance Creative and Measurement Goals.
Creativity is extremely important in influencing consumers. However, creativity for creativity's sake will not drive optimal results. It's important to strike a balance--to deliver copy or images that elicit a high emotional reaction AND drive sales. Creative that fails to do both, or just fails to drive sales must be changed. It's really that simple.

5. Don't Shy Away From Social Media Platforms.
There is a lot of press around advertisers not realizing the value of social media. However, I would argue that advertisers are not engaging the social media networks in the right way and, in return, probably not measuring it in the right way. Social media is about people being influenced by their friends and family, people they know and trust. Social media users try and buy the products/services recommended by their trusted circles, not those pushed on them by advertisers in the form of apps, ads, videos and corporate-controlled blogs, no matter how well done. And, given the current state of the economy, consumers' reliance on information/recommendations from friends and family will likely grow as consumers must now decide how to spend their increasingly more limited disposable income and credit. Brands can use social networks to influence consumers, and even to drive sales, if they develop the marketing programs that work with, not against, the DNA of social media.

6. Develop Disciplined Innovation.
In a down market, one of the first items cut from marketers' budgets is innovation initiatives, mostly due to a perceived lack of measureable value. Many marketers see innovation initiatives as a sort of indulgence, something in which they can only afford to invest in good times. In these marketers' organizations innovation initiatives are often unstructured such that they invest in a several technologies or programs without any predetermined goals. Success is determined based on what sticks with the consumers. Marketers should take a disciplined approach to innovation--defining measurable goals and metrics from the start. Each initiative should be kept small, prototyped and the results measured against the predetermined goals and metrics.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Trendspotting *)

I'm not big fan of predictions but have a look at what trendspotting is saying about 2009.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Marketing Charts *)

The internet has surpassed all other media except TV as Americans’ main source for national and international news and now rivals TV as the top news outlet for young people, according to research from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Some 40% of Americans say they currently get most of their news about national and international issues from the internet, up from just 24% in September 2007, the study finds. For the first time in a Pew survey, more people say they rely mostly on the internet for news than cite newspapers (35%). Television continues to be cited most frequently as a main source for national and international news, at 70%.

For people under age 30, the internet is now tied with TV as the main source of national and international news. Nearly six-in-ten young Americans (59%) say they get most of their national and international news online, while an identical percentage cites television. In September 2007, twice as many young people said they relied mostly on television for news than mentioned the internet (68% vs. 34%).

The percentage of people younger than 30 citing television as a main news source has declined from 68% in September 2007 to 59% currently. This mirrors a trend seen earlier this year in campaign news consumption, Pew said.

Regarding TV channel selection, the study finds there has been little change in the individual TV news outlets that people rely on for national and international news. Nearly a quarter of the public (23%) says they get most of their news from CNN, while 17% cite Fox News; smaller shares mention other cable and broadcast outlets.

Top News Stories of 2008

While the 2008 presidential campaign attracted high levels of public attention, the economy was the top story of the year in terms of news interest, according to data from Pew’s Weekly News Interest Index. In late September, as the nation’s financial crisis deepened, 70% said they were following news about the economy very closely. This attention ranks among the highest levels of news interest for any story in the past two decades.

News about gas prices - both rising and falling - also attracted considerable public attention. In early June, two-thirds of Americans (66%) said they were tracking news about the rising price of gasoline very closely.  The falling price of gas drew broad interest as well (53% followed it very closely in October).

The congressional debate over legislation to stabilize financial markets also drew extensive interest. In early October, just after President Bush signed the financial rescue measure, 62% followed this story very closely.

Interest in election news remained at historically high levels throughout the lengthy campaign. Interest in the general election peaked in mid-October (at 61%), but approached that level at other points in the campaign. Public interest in the primary campaigns also was higher than during previous primary contests. In mid-February, 44% said they were following news about the candidates for the presidential election very closely.

The war in Iraq was not among this year’s 15 most closely followed news stories, Pew reports. In mid-July, a third of Americans (33%) said they were following news about the current situation and events in Iraq, the highest percentage measured this year. In 2007, interest in news about the war reached 40% in early January, just before President Bush announced his troop surge; the war in Iraq was the sixth-ranked story last year.

In Pew’s final Weekly News Interest Index for 2008, conducted Dec. 15-21, nearly four-in-ten Americans (37%) say they followed news about the Bush administration’s plan to provide emergency loans to US automakers. That is in line with previous measures of public interest in the debate over whether to aid the struggling automakers.

During the same period, three-in-ten (30%) paid very close attention to news about Wall Street investor Bernard Madoff, who allegedly cheated people out of billions of dollars. Nearly as many (28%) tracked news about an Iraqi journalist throwing his shoes at President Bush very closely, and 25% said they followed news about slumping retail sales during the holiday season very closely.

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(* Source: Marketing Charts *)

The growing popularity of interactive tools such as wikis, blogs and social networks is giving customers the ability to engage with firms as never before, and global marketers need to put customers at the center of their operations to respond to this new and challenging reality, according to an study of global CMOs conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by Google.

The report, “Future Tense: The Global CMO” (pdf), finds marketers are increasingly able to reach out to consumers at all points along the value chain, not just at the moment a purchase decision is made. Because of this, global marketing of the future must engage all corporate stakeholders with consistent, constant and accurate messaging. At the same time, it must encourage and be able to respond quickly to customer feedback and involvement, pulling stakeholders closer to the corporate brand.

The report provides the following recommendations based on findings:

Balance global brand awareness with local market relevance: Centralizing global marketing functions, such as advertising development and production, can create economies of scale and save money, but they must be guided by the needs of the local market. At the same time, marketing budgets must be decentralized so that regional directors can make appropriate decisions based on market demands.

Integrate marketing with other corporate communications: Both the interactive nature of Web 2.0 technologies and the transparency of corporate messages among different constituencies require the integration of various forms of marketing and communications. Businesses can no longer segment audiences and messages as if audiences don’t talk to each other.

Adopt new media: Organizations should consider setting aside a specific budget for experimenting with the newest Web 2.0 technologies. The CMO should have the foresight to anticipate how different constituencies will respond to different events, messages and channels, and should be able to deal with the proliferation of new-media tools and expanded audiences.

Develop new skills, capabilities-and partnerships: CMOs must understand the fundamental business model, brand, culture, policies and values of the organization. Equally important in terms of adapting to the evolution of new media are partnerships with vendors whose expertise can be used to take new initiatives to market faster-and more effectively-than a company would on its own.

Champion innovation: The need for greater accountability for marketing expenditure is pushing global companies towards digital marketing campaigns with higher returns than traditional media. The interactive nature of the latest digital-media vehicles provides the opportunity to develop deeper insights into customer dynamics and allows the CMO to become the corporate champion of customer insight.

“The CMO of the future must be the chief proponent of close engagement with customers,” says Nigel Holloway, Director, Americas, Industry and Management Research, at the Economist Intelligence Unit. “Rather than merely pushing out the corporate message to consumers, marketers must draw them in so that they are regarded as helpful participants in the development of the brand.”

 More here

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(* Source: Jim Nail *)

Jim says...

An Ad Age story is headlined "Content Trumps Community" and notes that only 7.5% of consumer time online is spent in community sites like Facebook, MySpace, etc. True enough, but the stats say social networks have less of an issue with the number of users and page view consumption than with their users' fleeting attention.

First, kudos to the Online Publishers Association for recognizing that community is its own category. That alone is a statement about how far "social media" has come in the last couple of years.

I've followed the OPA's Internet Activity Index for several years and I often quote it to show how the Internet is different from other media: other media are 100% about content, but the Internet has always been a balance of content and communications (email and IM), with a healthy dollop of commerce thrown in.

While the Ad Age article implies that the focus and attention paid to social networks is overblown compared to the time spent, I beg to disagree with my friend Ms. Klaasen on these grounds:

• Time spent on social networks is 50% higher than search -- and we all know how big search is.
• Contrary to Ms. Klaassen's observation that social network time is coming primarily from communications, content's share of time dropped 6 percentage points from December to January, making up the bulk of community's 7.5 percentage points. With this drop, content's share of time is lower that it was in January 2007.
• Look also at page views per person: content dropped 225 pages, which suggests that in the reclassification, a number of sites formerly in the content group were moved to community. Communications, meanwhile, had 404 pages, the second highest number in the past 12 months.
• Another interesting angle is that content sites show 480 pages per month per user while community sites show 380 pages. In other words, community sites already have 80% as many places to put ads in front of each user as content sites.
• Only 59.5% of online users used community sites in January, while the other categories ranged from 78% - 93%. Given that these sites are only a couple of years old, that is a healthy number.
• Even more important, and not reflected in any of these numbers, is the degree of influence this time has on users' brand perceptions and purchasing decisions. Word-of-mouth continues to be the leading influence and roughly twice the influence of online ads, which would imply that this 7.5% of time is likely to have disproportionately higher impact than content pages.

I don't think social media's issue is with having sufficient space to sell -- the audience will continue to grow, and if the past is any indication of the future the number of pages per user will grow as well.

I wrote a while ago that social networks have a difficult tightrope to walk, between monetizing their user's attention and alienating those very users.

These numbers also imply that the users' attention is so fleeting (users are cramming 380 pages into about 1/4 the time they spend on content sites) that creating an effective marketing communication/ad format is the real challenge. Like email and IM before it, banners and other display ad formats are probably not the answer; unlike those communications media, word-of-mouth marketing techniques can be employed to involve brands in the conversations taking place.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Michael Arrington *)

Mike says...

Federated Media (our advertising partner) has been experimenting with “conversational marketing” almost since their launch in 2005. Today they are launching a new marketing toolbox for advertisers which gives them tools to track all the ways users interact with these ads.

The goal, says Federated Media, isn’t just to track ad impressions and clicks, but also to look at a new set of metrics like posts, trackbacks, votes, RSS subscriptions, comments, etc, where users somehow interact with the advertisement and talk about it. Hopefully, a conversation occurs between users, the ad publisher and the advertiser, which gives the advertiser’s brand more face time. An old example of this is Hakia’s ad that asks bloggers what better search means. Other examples are here.

The definition of conversational marketing is a little squishy. But the general idea, which Federated Media founder John Battelle writes about in the primer below, is that you as an advertiser figure out which content sites best associate with your brand, and then you grab the leader in that space and pay them to start conversations on your behalf:

Early efforts didn’t pan out so well as authors were accused of conflicts of interest - users didn’t know where editorial stopped and advertorial began. It’s not clear those issues have been resolved, but Federated Media says a proper disclosure policy is the right place to start.

Convinced? It’s certainly controversial, but brands love it because they get a higher return on their advertising investment. That means it’s here to stay.

Posted by brian tiong at 03:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Erick Schonfeld *)

Erick reports...

Three years ago today, Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace and its parent company Intermix for $580 million. That turned out to be money well spent. The last time we ran the numbers, we figured that MySpace alone is worth between $3 billion and $20 billion, depending on how much you value each user. Fox Interactive Media (which is mostly MySpace) accounted for about $850 million in revenues last fiscal year (which ended in June), and is projected to hit $1 billion next year.

It was supposed to hit $1 billion this year, but never mind. Unlike other social networks, MySpace is actually making a profit. The company now employs 1,600 people worldwide, compared to 150 in October, 2005—more than a tenfold increase.

The social network has grown as well. MySpace now has 73 million unique visitors a month in the U.S., according to comScore, compared to 24 million three years ago. (Facebook has 41 million). That means MySpace reaches about 40 percent of the online population, compared to 14 percent three years ago. Those visitors, on average, spend 263 minutes a month each on the site, versus 83 minutes in 2005.

MySpace has definitely evolved since 2005. Just this year it has made major strides in opening up its platform to developers, launching MySpace Music, and pushing new forms of social advertising.

The question is whether rival Facebook can catch up to MySpace in the U.S. (it has already surpassed it worldwide), or whether the two will co-exist and diverge, with MySpace being more music- and media-oreinted and Facebook continuing on its path towards becoming the platform for social software. Of course, MySpace would also like to play that role.

Three years from now, which one will be worth more? And will Rupert Murdoch still be smiling?

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 (* Source: ThreeMinds *)

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(* Source: Paul Isakson *)

I'm been a big fan of Paul for a while now and here is another reason why.  Paul talks about modern brand building is this presentation.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Dean Takahashi *)

Technorati has searched through its own search index of the world’s blogs and released new data on the state of the blogosphere in 17 months. And my, there are a lot of us bloggers out there. It’s time for some serious navel gazing.

Technorati has indexed more than 133 million blogs since 2002. The last report was posted in April 2007. At that point, Technorati reported there were more than 70 million blogs, with 120,000 being created every day. But the creation of new blogs hasn’t necessarily slowed. Rather, Technorati has become better at weeding out inactive or spam blogs and deleted tens of millions of them.

Under Dave Sifry, founder of Technorati, the company had been tracking the blogosphere every six months or so since 2004, when there were less than 2 million. Under new chief executive Richard Jalichandra, the company has taken longer to come up with a new report that documents the state of the blogosphere. And now it has done a formal survey with bloggers for the first time.

“It’s much more interesting to define the active blogosphere now than it is to count the total number of blogs,” Jalichandra said in an interview. “At this point, it’s hard to define what a blog is, given things like Twitter and MySpace blogs.”

Those platforms as well as Facebook blogs aren’t counted in Technorati’s current definition of blogs, but they could be in the future, Jalichandra said.
Technorati is now focused on the activity level and growing influence of blogs. For evidence of the latter, consider that four of the top ten entertainment sites on the web are blogs: OMG, TMZ, Asylum and PerezHilton. Blogs are represented in the top ten web sites across all key media categories.

“Blogs are media,” Jalichandra said. “That is the difference now. They are as relevant as the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. The blogger with 5,000 readers may be just as credible a source of information for those 5,000 people as anyone else.”

The “active blogosphere” is an ecosystem of interconnected bloggers and readers, where journalism and conversation converge. The company collected the data for this year’s report by taking a random sample survey of the more than 1.2 million bloggers registered with Technorati. The survey, conducted by a third party, received 1,300 responses. That’s a statistically random sample, but it’s definitely skewed to serious bloggers, or people who care enough about their blogs to register them with Technorati.

In this latest report, the number of blogs that have updated in the past 30 days drops to 3.5 million. Those who posted in the last week amount to 1.5 million. In the month of June, the number of blogs with an authority rating of 50 or more was 76,000. (The authority rating — a measure of influence– refers to the number of other blogs that have linked to them during the last six months. Nearly half of active blogs have some authority.)

Newspaper journalists are no longer looking down on blogs. About 95 of the top 100 newspapers now have reporter blogs. On average, bloggers cover an average of five different topics within each blog. They use an average of five techniques to drive traffic to their blog and seven different publishing tools.

Technorati indexes just about every blog post that gets published in real time. But it has as good a handle on the state of blogging as any big search company. The report is mostly about ordinary bloggers such as Lori Stewart, a 45-year-old blogger who started a nonprofit group, Toys for Troops, which has sent 10,000 beanie babies to soldiers in Iraq.

During the month of June, Technorati noted that there were always more than 600,000 blog posts each day, with a couple of days surpassing the million-blog mark. On average, bloggers have been writing for about three years. Half of bloggers are on their second blog.

Based on the blogger survey, two-thirds of bloggers are male. About 50 percent are ages 18 to 34. They are more affluent and educated than the general population; about half earn more than $75,000 a year in the U.S. The mean annual revenue from blogging is $6,000. That’s not bad, considering the average investment is only $1,800. And bloggers are earning CPMs (clicks per mil, a measure of ad revenue) that are comparable to large publishers, which earn $3 to $6 CPMs.

Jalichandra considers the profitability of blogging as a whole to be an indicator of the strength of the medium. While many pundits have been predicting an over-abundance of blogs, a shake-out, or the collapse of ad revenues, Jalichandra foresees only a growth in blogging as a revenue-generating platform. He notes that a lot of bloggers consider themselves to be professional, but only 28 percent are using display ads. That suggests considerable room for growth in revenues ahead, Jalichandra said.

The profession is becoming more international. Technorati tracked 81 languages and bloggers from 66 countries in June. About 43 percent of those polled were in the U.S., and 72 percent publish in English. About 27 percent blogged in Europe, while 14 percent were in Asia and 7 percent in South America. About 3 percent were in Australia and 1 percent in Africa. They spend 3.5 times as much time on the Internet as they do watching TV.

Among the benefits of blogging: bloggers report high personal satisfaction, career advancement, and receiving publishing or speaking opportunities. About 69 percent of corporate bloggers also identified themselves as personal bloggers, while 65 percent called themselves professional bloggers, the latter meaning they blog about the industry but not as an official spokesperson for the company.

As for brands in the blogosphere, about four out of five bloggers post brand or product reviews. About 37 percent of them do so frequently. About 60 percent blog about company information or gossip that they hear. And about a third of bloggers have been approached to be brand advocates.

More here

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(* Source: eMarketer *)

It's not just the phones.

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(* Source: eMarketer *) 

Google tosses its hat into the Web measurement ring.

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(* Source: Dan Taylor *) 

Just caught up with the launch of Google Trends for Websites which extends the functionality of the original Google Trends (which charts the relative popularity of search terms) to offer site-specific traffic data. Whilst TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb are both rather sniffy about it, citing its partial data-set and lack of coverage for smaller sites, for me it adds a couple of interesting new elements in the form of the 'Also visited' and 'Also searched for' rankings (data which I don't think either Compete or Alexa provide for free).

Thus, the trends page for bbc.co.uk indicates that visitors to the BBC site are also visiting other broadcasters (ITV and Channel 4), middle-class retail outlets (John Lewis and Marks & Spencer) and a range of other, primarily task-oriented, sites (weather, price comparison, concert tickets, motoring and government services/information). It also reveals how popular 'bbc iplayer' has become as a search term.

Google Trends for Websites: bbc.co.uk via kwout

Google Trends for Websites: channel4.com via kwout

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(* Source: Erick Schonfeld *) 

The top 100 advertisers in the U.S., who represent 41 percent of total advertising spending, shifted about $1 billion last year from TV and newspapers to the Web. An analysis from Ad Age shows that overall media spending in “measured” categories (TV, print, radio, Web) by the top 100 advertisers was flat in 2007, with 0.3 percent growth to $61.3 billion. But spending on Web display ads rose 33 percent to $4.2 billion. The article notes:

Put another way, these top-tier marketers increased measured internet spending by $1 billion; slashed newspaper spending by $674 million; and cut TV budgets by $406 million.

This is yet one more piece of evidence that dollars are flowing from traditional media to the Web. The analysis is based on data from TNS Media Intelligence for 2007. TNS only measures display advertising, and not search.

The big question is whether the recession that has already hit some categories of advertising will hit the Web this year. Already, the growth of spending in display advertising slowed overall in the first quarter of 2008. And the Interactive Advertising Bureau showed a slight decline for all Web advertising (including search) to $5.8 billion in the first quarter, from $5.9 billion in the fourth quarter of last year.

Here is a table from Ad Age showing the breakdown in spending for the top 100 advertisers (the $44 billion in “unmeasured spending” includes things like direct marketing, in-store advertising, and other promotions, and is not included in the figures cited above):

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(* Source: Erick Schonfeld *)

Erick says...

Is a picture worth a thousand clicks? You’ve heard of contextual ads triggered by keywords on a Web page. Now, get ready for contextual ads triggered by images on the page. Visual-shopping search engine Like.com is running ads on Facebook that appear to match objects in profile photos.

Notice the ad by Like.com in the lower left for aviator sunglasses in the screen shot shown here, sent to us by TechCrunch reader Luke Bearden? Yup, those look eerily similar to the aviator sunglasses Bearden is wearing in his Facebook photo. Well, at least we know that Like.com’s technology works. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence. (Can someone from Like/Riya let us know which one it is in comments?).

But if this indeed is Like’s image-matching engine at work, is it effective targeting? Bearden thought the ad was “creepy.” And, um, he obviously already owns a pair of aviator sunglasses.

He also obviously likes them enough to feature himself wearing a pair on his Facebook page. And maybe he lost those beloved glasses or they broke since the photo was taken. So I’d say the ad is both effective and creepy.

Would you click on it?

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(* Source: eMarketer *) 

News Corp. will have a full plate of Internet issues to discuss when it releases its quarterly earnings statement today. Foremost will be its plans regarding Yahoo!, and how whatever deal it does or does not do with Yahoo! will impact MySpace and Fox Interactive Media (FIM).

The drumbeat of skepticism over social network advertising has gotten louder in recent months. Much of the focus has been on MySpace, the US leader with a 41.5% share of US visits to social networking and community sites in March, according to Hitwise.

FIM reorganized its ad sales group in early April, leading to the departure of sales chief Michael Barrett. At the same time, news leaked that FIM might come up $100 million short of achieving the $1-billion fiscal 2008 revenue target set by News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch last June. (News Corp.'s fiscal year ends June 30.)

Financial analysts and the media have assumed that blame for the shortfall lies with MySpace, FIM's flagship, but FIM manages 12 other Internet properties, including IGN, FoxSports.com, RottenTomatoes.com and AmericanIdol.com. AmericanIdol.com will no doubt show strong revenues since the hot TV show is currently on-air. The smaller properties may not have fared as well and could very well take some of the blame.

eMarketer estimated last December that US marketers would spend $850 million to advertise on MySpace in calendar year 2008. Facebook is projected to reach $305 million in US revenue this year.

Even if MySpace does come up short of revenue goals, that should not sound the death knell for social network marketing. The conversation between brands and consumers has only just begun, and the advertising experimentation will continue.

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(* Source: Compete *)

The song remains the same at the top of the Video rankings in March: YouTube continues to outpace the market, growing 7.8% while the video viewing sessions across the web grew only 2.3%.

Meanwhile Veoh narrowly maintained its spot in the Top 10, with phenomenal 23.8% monthly growth, edging out CBS Interactive by a very thin margin. The CBS Interactive division includes Sportsline.com, which scored a 154% gain as the prime spot for watching live streaming March Madness games.

Meanwhile Joost, which is backed by CBS, presented the games as a live streaming “experiment.” While Joost works via client, the March Madness offering did not bring much in the way of new visitors to the site to download the player.

Advertisers placed $545 million on TV for the 2008 NCAA Tournament, according to TNS, but just a tiny fraction of that followed online. With 8.5 million consumers watching next-day tournament highlights and interacting with NCAA Basketball content on the web, there was a huge opportunity to reach March Madness fans and perhaps to do it with more efficient media buys.

We used Compete’s BehaviorMatch, which can be customized for any demographic or behavioral segment, to call out the top video sites for March Madness fans.

While Sportsline came out on top in terms of Composition, predictably, some unexpected sports video sites like Runners World and The Golf Channel also scored high. Meanwhile, the largest sites like YouTube and MySpace aggregated the most eyeballs but had the worst Composition scores.

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(* Source: Michael Arrington *) 

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Morgan Stanley’s Internet Trends report from last month takes a big turn from previous reports - the focus is nearly 100% on social applications and how they are taking over the Internet (Yahoo apparently read it). Key takeaways:

• YouTube + Facebook page views > Google or Yahoo page views (and may be bigger than both combined)
• 6/10 top internet sites are social (youtube, live.com, facebook, hi5, wikipedia, orkut); none were on the list in 2005
• YouTube has 258 million users, 50% visit weekly or more
• >50% of Facebook users log in daily, 95% of Facebook users have used at least one third party application
• Skype revenue is $1.67/user/year, up 9% Y/Y
• 14 million photos uploaded daily on Facebook
• Google + Yahoo = 61% of U.S. Online Ad Revenue
• Google: $4.4b ad revenue in Q4, paid out $1.4 billion to partners
• Yahoo: $1.6 billion in ad revenue in Q4, paid out $429 million to partners

More here 

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(* Source: Sam Flemming *) 

Sam says on his iMedia article...

As the global internet community is striving towards a more connected online landscape, China's new media is already showing signs of the 'future'.

In its recently published report "The Connected Agency", Forrester suggests that the agency of the future will be a "connected agency", which should have "a deep understanding of consumer communities, helping brands create and nurture connections, deliver targeted, on-demand messages, and network for talent and insights."

While the Forrester report does not cover China, the need for agencies to help brands connect is more urgent with an online consumer community landscape that is more active, more complex and overall more evolved than the West. The state of China's online landscape is indeed so. For the country, the internet has always been social, and internet communities have always existed in the mainstream. In short, in China, the 'future' is happening now.  

Unfortunately, in contrast to the greater presence and impact of online communities in China, it seems that agencies here are arguably less prepared and less knowledgeable than their Western counterparts. As a result, you often find agencies recommending copy & paste internet word-of-mouth (IWOM) strategies from the West that at best have little impact.

Before taking action, it's important for brands to have an understanding of the different types of communities. Let's take a quick review of the current Chinese internet word of mouth IWOM landscape to understand where brands have opportunities to connect with communities.
 
BBS as the core of the social Chinese internet
BBS, or topic-based online bulletin board systems, serve as the online nation's "water cooler" for every kind of situation and topic imaginable. While bulletin boards in the West have existed for years, in China, they have not only been in existence for sometime, they actually dominate with 35.5 percent of the 210 million Chinese netizens who use BBS on a regular basis. Most importantly for brands, there are active product communities for almost every category including automobile, mobile phone, parenting and cosmetics. Taking just automobile alone, we see over five million messages per month coming from communities built around specific car models that include detailed product feedback as well as queries related to customer service. In China, BBS communities are the first place to look for active, mainstream and influential consumer communities.

Blogs as diaries
Blogging is absolutely popular, with 23.5 percent of Chinese netizens using blogs regularly. However, blogs, for the most part, serve as personal diaries for individuals (not "power influencers").

Portals have blog "circles" around certain categories, but it would be a stretch to call these circles "communities." Microblogging (such as Twitter- type applications) is beginning to take off with sites like fanfou and jiwai, but has yet to hit critical mass. While there are notable exceptions for some categories, including technology, for the most part, blogs generally have incidental product mention with no real community.

QQ as an ecosystem
Over 80 percent of netizens use IM, with Qzone and QQ groups covering over 70 percent share. QQ is for all practical purposes a social nework service (SNS). Compared to Facebook, it has 50 percent more active social network users. Most importantly, QQ has proved itself to be a capable partner for brands, leveraging its platform for massive reach, even if not deep engagement. An obvious example of that is Coke's iCoke platform.
 
SNS has not achieved much traction -- yet
While SNS has yet to gain traction in China, Xiaonei is the SNS to watch as it burrows into the university mindscape to provide an alternative to local university BBS. Xiaonei will need to differentiate itself in order to stand out among booming QQ and BBS, and gain attention from those using the Chinese "social" internet.

Q&A communities serving info seekers
Baidu's "I Know" question and answer community, along with Sina's I-Ask, and Tianya's Wenda, has fuelled a segment that has not really taken off in the West. Brands like KFC are beginning to sponsor certain topics as a way to connect with targeted communities and it is worth exploring this hot area.

The many emerging others
Online communities that support product feedback and other consumer discussions already exist within BBS. We are now seeing new sites and applications which are trying to create better platforms for these communities. Dianping is a restaurant review site which will likely morph into a more successful Yelp. Douban is a music and book review community that fulfills the same need as Amazon reviews. Wodeyichu is a community site that leverages netizens' propensity to show off their new purchases with pictures; Meeli takes this a step further as a site where netizens list their purchases, with pictures and pricing. These platforms are emerging and are enjoying varying degrees of traction.

Of course, awareness of the communities is just the beginning. How to meaningfully connect with, support and participate is the next and most difficult step. Navigating partners and strategies within such a varied, vibrant and complex IWOM media landscape is arguably more difficult than in the West even as the opportunity is more compelling.

Take Ford Focus for example: every month, there are over 150,000 messages around the car on automobile BBS communities. How can Ford be a part of these communities? Is it welcome? How can they join the conversation? In which communities are they being discussed? Are there other communities beyond auto BBS communities that might be relevant? To be a truly connected agency in China will require a different mindset that includes actually listening to and understanding local Chinese communities, not just knowing about them and treating them like a new media.

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(* Source: Larry Dignan *)

Larry says... 

Enterprise 2.0 will become a $4.6 billion industry by 2013 and social networking tools will garner the bulk of the money, according to a report by Forrester Research.

The report, released on Monday and penned by Forrester analyst G. Oliver Young, shows a few notable trends that are worth diving into. Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb first detailed the report. Here are the charts that jumped out for me.

That chart is basically the opposite of what I would have expected. Enterprise 2.0 (all resources) should appeal more to small to medium sized businesses as it may lower implementation costs and provide other productivity enhancements. Instead more than half of these smaller businesses aren’t even considering enterprise 2.0 apps while the giants are diving in head first.

Forrester defines Enterprise 2.0 as the corporate version of Web 2.0. Here’s the research firm’s definition:

In Forrester’s view, the key hallmark of Web 2.0 is efficiency for end users, and the ultimate goal is to use technology like Ajax, rich Internet applications, blogs, wikis, and social networks to foster productive, advantageous behavior among employees, customers, partners, and other networks such as Social Computing, the Information Workplace, and collective intelligence.

Meanwhile social networking will be the biggest priority followed by mashups by 2013.

The top spending categories aren’t all that surprising. For instance, social networking is a decent substitute for knowledge management applications, a category that companies haven’t quite cracked. In other words, social networking could yield ROI. Mashups could also deliver faster time to market and it doesn’t hurt that giants like IBM are pushing them.

Other key takeaways:

Web 2.0 tools and technologies focus on worker productivity and collaboration. Offerings like those from BEA Systems, IBM, and Microsoft and from pure-play vendors like Awareness, NewsGator Technologies, and Six Apart all factor into the enterprise Web 2.0 space.

Podcasting will the smallest enterprise 2.0 market with $273 million in projected spending by 2013.

Enterprise 2.0 apps will never see a blank IT slate: Legacy applications rule. Forrester writes:

Across the board, Web 2.0 tools enter a crowded space full of legacy software and processes that are difficult to displace and with which Web 2.0 software must integrate to be fully effective. Integration with lightweight applications like email and Excel, as well as heavier applications like Web content management suites, campaign management software, portal software, and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, must all be addressed over time.

Business units will drive enterprise 2.0 adoption. The IT department remains an obstacle due to slim budgets and the need to maintain legacy hardware and software infrastructure.

Enterprise 2.0 companies (right) will struggle to make deliver big profits. Why? Workers (and consumers) are used to free apps. “The starting point has been set at free, and buyers will always have the option to try to exploit a free consumer-class service to solve an enterprise problem if the entry price gets too high,” says Forrester. If that scenario plays out you really have to wonder how enterprise 2.0 will generate $4.3 billion in spending by 2013.

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(* Source: Aki Spicer *)

Aki gives a a good perspective on this topic. Read on...

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(* Source: eMarketer *)
 

(* Source: eMarketer *) 

Are mobile marketers moving ahead or merely spinning their wheels?

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(* Source: eMarketer *) 

Big spenders may be in the minority.

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(* Source: Erik Schonfeld *)

An excellent overview on the web today.

Erik says...

Today more than ever, the Web is a global game. Below are charts from a new State of the Internet report from comScore that paints a picture of global competition on the Web.

In 1996, two thirds of all people online (66 percent) lived in the U.S. By last October, that had completely flipped, with 77 percent of the online population living in the rest of the world and only 23 percent in the U.S. The U.S. still has the largest total number of Web surfers (162 million a month), but China is catching up fast (with 96 million):

In China, homegrown sites such as TenCent, Baidu and Sina all reach more native Web surfers than Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo:

In fact, the leading Websites in many big markets such as Russia, Japan, and South Korea tend to be homegrown as well:

Social networks are the fastest-growing category of sites (nearly 60 percent annually), but they still lag in terms of penetration (less than 40 percent) behind photo sites, entertainment sites, search, and portals:

The fastest growing of all social networks, of course, has been Facebook, which jumped from the second pack to where it is now running neck-and-neck with MySpace:

Drilling down into search, Google still dominates with 62 percent share worldwide:

And it dominates search even more in other countries than it does in the U.S., where it only commands a 53 percent market share (compared to above 90 percent in parts of Europe and Latin America):

Looking at the efficiency of its search ads, Google puts up an ad against only about half of its searches, whereas Yahoo puts up an ad 75 percent of the time. Yet for those searches where an ad is shown, Google gets 0.24 paid click per search compared to 0.18 for Yahoo and 0.14 for Microsoft. (Search advertising on AOL and Ask are also powered by Google and they show the same or better clickthrough rates).

For display ads, Yahoo and MySpace control the most market share, with 19 and 15 percent each, respectively. (Microsoft comes in a distant third with 6.6 percent):

The report also gives an estimate of the unduplicated reach of Microsoft and Yahoo. A combined Microsoft-Yahoo would have 173 million unique visitors a month across the globe, a 10 percent share of all page views, 32 percent share of search, and 24 percent share of display ads:

Both Microsoft and Yahoo each have about 260 million Webmail users (with duplication), with Google’s Gmail bringing up third place with 87 million (no wonder Google execs keep bringing up market concentration concerns in relation to mail and instant messaging):

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(* Source: Henry Blogget *)

Henry says...
 

For the past few quarters, we've analyzed the amazing rate at which advertising spending is moving online. Now we're able to look at full-year 2007.

Specifically, we analyzed the change in US advertising revenue at 17 major media companies from 2006 and 2007. The companies included Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), Time Warner (TWX), Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIAB), CBS (CBS), and Clear Channel (CCO). The companies span all the major advertising sectors: Online, TV, Print, Radio, and Outdoor.

Highlights:

• Total US ad revenue across all 17 companies grew 9% from 2006 to 2007, from $53 billion to $58 billion

• Online ad revenue grew 28%, from $14 billion to $18 billion.

• Offline grew only 3%, from $39.5 billion to 40.6 billion. This was helped significantly by the inclusion of affiliate fees and (and global revenue) at CBS, Viacom, and News Corp.

• Online ad revenue grew by $4 billion.

• Offline ad revenue--in all other media--grew by $1 billion.

So advertising revenue is flowing online at a frantic rate. That's the whole story? No. Let's look at how that online revenue breaks down.

• Online ad revenue grew 28%, or $4 billion.

• Online ad revenue at Google grew 44%, or $2.7 billion.

• Online ad revenue at Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL grew only 15%, or $1.3 billion.

• Google captured 2X as much revenue as its closest three competitors combined.

It is true that perhaps a third of Google's growth came from AdSense revenue, which is placed on third-party sites--so other companies are benefiting from this growth. But the growth on Google's properties alone still vastly exceeded the growth on AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

Another fun stat:

• The year-over-year growth of revenue on Google.com (US)--approximately $2 billion--was more than twice as much the growth of ad revenue in all of the offline media companies in this sample combined. This is such an amazing fact that it bears repeating: A single media property, Google.com (US), grew by $2 billion. All the offline media properties owned by the 13 offline media companies above, meanwhile--all of them--grew by about $1 billion.

For supporting details, please see our SAI Advertising Share Shift spreadsheet.  TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld runs some cool graphics on the numbers.

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(* Source: eMarketer *) 

Just what is "age-appropriate"?

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(* Source: eMarketer *) 

Pow! Bam! Whap! Watch out! Here comes a hot new ad space!

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(* Source: Mark Hefflinger *) 

Internet advertising revenues from 2007 are expected to come in at $21.1 billion, in a year that saw record revenue levels in all four quarters that propelled the market up 25% over 2006's record $16.9 billion, according to data from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Still, the gain of $4.2 billion in revenue in 2007 was still less than the $4.3 billion in growth, and 35% revenue increase registered between 2005 and 2006.

The report estimates that fourth quarter 2007 Internet ad revenues reached a record $5.9 billion -- a 13% increase over the third quarter of 2007 and 24% increase over the fourth quarter of 2006.

"The continued record growth evidences the importance and uniqueness of interactive media to both consumers and the marketers that are trying to reach them," said David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

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(* Source: eMarketer *) 

Coming soon to a screen near you: Convergence.

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(* Source: eMarketer *)

(* Source: Tangos *) 

Tangos reports... 

According to the latest report by China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC), at the end of June 2007, Chinese Internet users has reached 162 million, which means an increase of 25 million in last six months, the biggest half-yearly increase ever. But it may because CNNIC report change the definition of Internet users, in all previous reports, Internet user means Chinese citizen aged 6 and above who averagely use the Internet at least one hour per week. However, in its latest report, Internet users are Chinese citizens aged 6 and above who use the Internet in last half year.

The following are my quick thoughts on the latest report:

• Mobile Internet will become more and more important, over 44 million users use mobile handsets to access Internet, an increase of 27 million (159%) in last six months.
• Over half of all Internet users(51.2%) are under age 25. The Internet penetration rate for users aged between 18 to 24 is 43.4%. Internet has become their lifestyle, that’s also part of the reasons that QQ and 51.com are so popular in China.
• The percentage of Internet users with high school education or below increased from 48.2% in half year ago to 56.1%. The percentage of users with an income below 1000 yuan increased from 47.6% to 51.7%. You need to understand these group of young users to become leading player in China’s Internet market.
• Over 37% users, increased from 32.3%, access Internet in Internet cafe. It is said that 51.com is very popular among Internet Cafe users
• IM is more important in China than email for communication. More netizens use IM than email (69.8% vs. 55.4%), while over 90% Internet users use email in US. IM usage rate is even higher (74.6%) among users under age 25, while the email usage rate is only 46.6% among them.
• Online entertainment demand is the most important demand among Chinese yougsters(under age 25), with 91.4% of them used online music, 79.6%% used online movies, and 67.1% played online games.

Well, from this data, you may find the characteristics of Chinese Internet is quite different from those of US, you should study the report in detail to understand Chinese Internet users better. The full report in PDF file can be downloaded (English version report) here.

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(* Source: eMarketer *) 

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(* Source: eMarketer *) 

So far, widgets and applications are garnering far more attention than actual ad dollars. Although consumers are increasingly using them, eMarketer estimates that US companies will spend only $40 million in 2008 to create, promote and distribute widgets, up from $15 million in 2007.

The Web Widgets and Applications report tracks the trends that are driving this unique and intriguing, but not yet lucrative, area of Internet development.

Widgets are popping up everywhere online. Since Facebook opened up to third-party applications in May 2007, nearly 15,000 applications have been developed. Overall, some 100,000 developers are working on widgets and applications worldwide.

Widgets are new, hot and fun. But there are already raising concerns, including “application burnout,” measurement difficulties, distribution challenges and deceptive techniques used by some widget developers to increase their installation rate.

The widget and application business can really grow—it has some growing up to do.

More here 

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(* Source: eMarketer *) 

Either way, marketers are getting prepared.

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(* Source: eMarketer *) 

The unbiased opinion is trusted around the globe.

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(* Source: eMarketer *) 

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(* Source: eMarketer *) 

“But if social network marketing delivers on its promise of peer recommendations the flow of advertising dollars will turn into a flood,”  I like that word flood and it's not just online youth that are engaged.  Most people I know on Myspace/ Facebook are in their 30s. 

How much can social networks net?

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(* Source: Caroline Middlebroke *)

Thanks for sharing your internet marketing FREE booklist, Caroline.

1. Adsense Arbitrage, Brad Callen, 40 pages
2. Authority Black Book, Jack Humphrey, 64 pages
3. Bending the Web, Jack Humphrey, 30 pages
4. Blog Profits Blueprint, Yaro Starak, 55 pages
5. Buying and Selling Domains for Profit, Joel Comm, 33 pages
6. Google Adwords Made Easy, Brad Callen, 85 pages
7. Instant List Profits, Fabio Marciano, 126 pages
8. Internet Business Manifesto, Richard Schefren, 29 pages
9. Keyword Research Guide, Wordtracker, 52 pages
10. Killer Flagship Content, Chris Garret, 17 pages
11. Marketing Pilgrim Essays, Various Authors, 163 pages
12. Marketing Wisdom for 2007, Marketing Sherpa, 56 pages
13. Social Media Daily, Michelle Macphearson, 26 pages
14. Teaching Sells, Brian & Tony Clark, 22 pages
15. The IM-Myth, Russel Brunson, 44pages
16. The Internet Money Tree, Joel Comm, 15 pages
17. The Resource Report, Mike Filsaime, 37 pages
18. Your Online Money Factory, Kevin Riley, 23 pages
19. Warrior Tips v3, Various Authors, 133 pages
20. Web Traffic Orgasm: A Case Study, Dean Hunt, 20 pages
21. Zero Dollars, a Little Talent, and 30 Days, Jennifer Laycock, 143 pages

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(* Source: Techcrunch *)

I've been using results from Alexa for yonks... if this post is right, then maybe some caution should be exercised. Be warned. 

Amazon’s Alexa traffic reporting service has little credibility left among people who follow traffic trends. Most analytics services, like Comscore, don’t measure small sites well, but they tend to get it right for the larger sites. Alexa seems to get everything wrong, no matter how large or small the site.

Example: In August Alexa said that YouTube passed Google itself in total page views. They were wrong, but their data continues to perpetuate this alternate reality.

Now, another embarrassing error. Alexa says that Facebook, on a steady growth curve for the last two years, now has a larger audience than MySpace. This isn’t as ridiculous as the YouTube/Google error, but it’s still way off. Comscore says that worldwide MySpace uniques are 109 million/month, whereas Facebook is at 86 million. Compete.com, which measures traffic using similar techniques as Alexa, stills says that MySpace is larger than Facebook.

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(* Source: Techcrunch *) 

Casual gaming is getting bigger everytime I look at it.  Here is another article... 

Nick Gonzalez says...

Casual gaming is a big business. A video games analyst at IDC, Schelley Olhava, estimated 2.6 million casual games were purchased ($52.7 million) last year. But in game advertising firm NeoEdge says they can triple the revenue of these games by serving ads instead of charging. Their rich media ads are served as pre-roll, post-roll, or interstitial advertisements in games. Today they’ve taken the system, Neo ARM, out of private beta and opened it to all developers.

MochiAds is another casual gaming advertising system we’ve covered in the past. Unlike MochiAds, NeoEdge doesn’t rely on developers to insert ads through a self-serve toolkit, but instead adds the advertising code to a developer’s game themselves (a potential bottleneck). Revenue from the ads are split about 50-50. NeoEdge says they can integrate with more formats than just flash games (i.e. download games), although flash appears to be format affecting most developers. Their system delivers the ads dynamically from their servers over the internet, making it possible to target ads based on demographic info provided by publishers.

But 100% free doesn’t seem to be the whole story. Long before social networks casual gaming sites discovered the value of micro-transactions. King.com collected $27 million from gaming micro-transactions last year. Nexon made $250 million in revenue in 2005, mostly through micro-transaction game upgrades. Kongregate is launching their own micro transaction system for game developers as well. A blended monetization model between ads and micro-transactions seems the best strategy for getting the most money out of visitors.

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(* Source: Adam Ostrow *)

I've been hearing how Facebook is about to catch Myspace.  Have a look at these latest numbers from comScore. 

(* Source: IAB.net *) 

Industry Maintains Record-breaking Trend; 2007 Q3 Revenues Up Over 25% from 2006 Q3

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) today announced that Internet advertising revenues exceeded $5.2 billion for the third quarter of 2007, representing yet another historic high for a quarter and a $1.1 billion increase, or 25.3 percent, over Q3 2006. The results, published in the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, are nearly 3 percent higher than Q2 2007, itself the last record-setting quarter. All three quarters in 2007 have set new highs—Q1 at $4.9 billion, Q2 at $5.1 billion, and now Q3 at $5.2 billon. Revenues for the first nine months of 2007 totaled $15.2 billion, up nearly 26 percent over the $12.1 billion recorded during the first nine months of 2006.

"The continued robust growth of the industry indicates that marketers increasingly understand and appreciate the benefits of interactive advertising," said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB.

"Marketers large and small have come to accept digital media as the fulcrum of any marketing strategy."

"Internet advertising revenues are on an annual run-rate exceeding $20 billion, further demonstrating the industry has truly come into its own," said Peter Petrusky, director, Entertainment, Media & Communications Practice, PricewaterhouseCoopers. "The emergence of new platforms, including broadband video, rich Internet applications, mobile, and social media promise to deliver new benefits for consumers, and create exciting new venues for marketers to realize value in digital media."

"The results of the survey continue to underscore the value that interactive advertising brings to the marketplace, as marketers and agencies build on established guidelines and best practices to control costs and maximize returns from their growing interactive budgets," added David Silverman, partner, Assurance, PricewaterhouseCoopers.

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(* Source: Duncan Riley *) 

Duncan says... 

IBM released an interesting new report earlier this week that predicts the end of advertising as we know it within 5 years.

To quote IBM

Traditional advertising players risk major revenue declines as budgets shift rapidly to new, interactive formats, which are expected to grow at nearly five times that of traditional advertising.

To survive in this new reality, broadcasters must change their mass audience mind-set to cater to niche consumer segments, and distributors need to deliver targeted, interactive advertising for a range of multimedia devices. Advertising agencies must experiment creatively, become brokers of consumer insights, and guide allocation of advertising dollars amid exploding choices. All players must adapt to a world where advertising inventory is increasingly bought and sold in open exchanges vs. traditional channels…

The report observes four change drivers tipping the advertising industry balance of power:”

• Control of attention,

• Creativity,

• Measurement, and

• Advertising inventories

Consumers’ attention has shifted, with personal Internet time rivaling TV time. Consumers have tired of interruption advertising, and are increasingly in control of how they interact, filter, distribute, and consume their content, and associated advertising messages. IBM’s survey findings demonstrated that half of DVR owners watch 50 percent or more of programming on re-play, and that traditional video advertising doesn’t translate online: 40 percent of respondents found ads during an online video segment more annoying than any other format.

Amateurs and semi-professionals are increasingly creating low cost advertising content that threatens to bypass creative agencies, while publishers and broadcasters are broadening their own creative roles. Advertisers are demanding accountability and more specific individual consumer measurements across advertising platforms. Self-service advertising exchanges are attracting revenues that were once exclusively sold through proprietary channels or transactions.

The Full report here (pdf) makes for interesting reading, particularly for anyone working in an advertising related business. A lot of it states what many of us already know, but it doesn’t hurt to have this validated in writing.

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(* Source: Fred Wilson *)

What is this Facebook Ad system is what i'm hearing a lot of these days.  Here is a Fred, a VC commenting on it from his personal view. 

Thanks to everyone who commented and emailed me after my post yesterday afternoon. I am indeed dense. The social advertising system on Facebook is up and running, I just couldn't find it.

Here is my ad. It took me all of a minute or two to create it. I am targeting it at facebook users who have an interest in technology. If you click on the ad, you go to the Union Square Ventures facebook page. I am paying $0.10 for each click and have a cap of $10/day. That is similar to the rates I pay on Google adwords for my avc blog ads.

Just to be clear, I don't really see the value in running Facebook ads for the Union Square Ventures page on Facebook or Google ads for my blog. But I don't understand technology by reading about it. I understand technology by using it.

Facebook says that there are 17,291,140 people who will see ads on Facebook. The only targeting they apply to get that number is 18 years and older. That's an interesting number in its own right.

When you add targeting, the number of people you'll reach goes down. I added the keyword technology to my campaign and the size of the audience I can reach dropped to 32,140 people. That's way less than the number of unique visitors that this blog sees every month.

I wonder how the keywords are mapped to pages. I just added the word technology to my personal interests in my profile to see if that would target my ad to me. It did not.

You can also use a Facebook ad to send traffic to pages outside of Facebook. I am going to set up an identical ad to see how that performs versus driving traffic to Facebook pages.

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(* Source : Mashable *)

Sean P. Aune says : 

Think the music industry is dying, and that it’s time to go independent? Or have you always favored smaller, independent record companies over huge bureaucratic institutions? Don’t worry, even if you don’t have dozens of spin doctors working for you, you can still promote your indie band online. We’ve got 25+ tools to help you do just that.

AmieStreet.com - A social network and music marketplace for indie artists. They give the artists 70% of the sale.

AnyGig.com - A place for musicians to get listed for small gigs, or find venues to play at.

Artistopia.com - An online venue for performers to give themselves an online presence with a profile and display their work.

BandBuzz.com - A social network where artists can set up a profile, upload their music and get reviewed and recommended by users.

BandChemistry.com - A site for musicians to find new members for their group or form a whole new band.

Bandwagon.co.uk - A social network for lovers of indie music where the bands can sell mobile content such as ringtones and wallpapers.

ChampionSound.com - Free mailing list manager for artists, promoters, and venues.

Elisteningpost.com - A way for musicians to upload their music and sell it just about anywhere they want such as MySpace and Facebook.

FireGigs.com - A site with the aim of promoting unsigned bands by arranging to get their music to be played in the background at cafes, coffee shops and more. Also promote you through a Facebook app and MySpace widget.

Fuzz.com - Lets performers upload their music sell it, as well as manage mailing lists and more.

HumbleVoice.com - A place for all types of independent artists, including musicians, to upload their work and promote it.

iJamr.com - Indie musicians upload their music and bloggers can display your songs on their sites for free, and if a sale is made, they blogger gets a cut.

Indistr.com - A company letting independent artists sell their music directly to the public and the musicians receive 75% of the sale.

mTraks.com - An online marketplace and network for indie artists to promote and sell their music.

Mubito.com - Allows you to set up a band website easily and sell MP3s. Two levels of stores with one of them being free.

Musicane.com - Promote and sell your music and ringtones.

MusicNation.com - A community of musician profile pages that engage regularly in competition for various prizes.

Panjea.com - Bring all yourclips from the web together and put them in to one player so they take up less space on your page, so you can promote all your music easily.

PocketFuzz.com - A place for musicians to sell ringtones of their works and notify their fans of news via mobiles.

Popfolio.net - A music widget provider for blogs that lets independent musicians upload their songs for inclusion, and possible sales.

PumpAudio.com - A service for indie artists to get their music licensed for television and film.

Ripple9.com - A site to help bands promote themselves on mobile devices to their fans. New sign-ups are frozen while they are being purchased by Google.

Scriggleit.com - Software you can use on a laptop at your merchandise table so people can sign up for your mailing list.

SessionSound.com - A site for independent musicians to try to stay indie by selling their music online.

Sonicbids.com - Allows you to construct a low cost electronic press kit that can be constantly updated so the recipients always get the latest version.

Unsigned.com - A site for unsigned bands to put up a profile page and host a playlist of MP3s to attract new listeners.

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(* Source : Techcrunch *)

Erick Schonfeld says : 

Facebook just got a whole lot friendlier for music artists. With the launch of Facebook Ads, it is welcoming bands and musicians to set up their own public Facebook pages where members can sign up as fans. Alas, there will be no standalone Facebook Music service. Instead, Facebook is treating music artists just like any other brands, which can also set up their own Facebook pages, collect fans, and market to them directly.

Yet, when it comes to music artists, one of Facebook’s most popular application developers, iLike, is doing the exact same thing. Already, any band or musician can create an iLike artist page on Facebook that includes their most popular songs (filtered by what your friends like), upcoming concert dates (click on a date and see if any of your friends are going), an artist blog called iCast, related artists, and a Fan Wall where Facebook members can leave notes. In fact, half-a-million have done so. And starting today, iLike will create duplicate versions of these marketing pages for them that work with Facebook’s new brand destination pages. Right out of the gate, iLike will generate 160,000 pre-populated artists pages that the musicians or the labels themselves can modify, or leave as is.

So if you are a music artist, you now have to make a decision: Do you go with the iLike page as your main Facebook page (and take advantage of the nearly 10 million members who use the iLike app), or do you go with your own advertiser page on Facebook? Case in point: the new Facebook page for 50 Cent (shown left) had only three fans when it first went up just after midnight, compared to 1.2 million fans on his iLike page on Facebook.

Well, it turns out that iLike does not care which page artists choose to call their home. Any widget on the iLike artist page—popular songs, upcoming concerts, the iCast blog, even the iLike button—can be plopped into a Facebook artist page (also known as a canvas page). And every link in each of those widgets takes you back to the Facebook application pages that iLike controls.

This is not an unintended consequence. I asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg yesterday about the potential here for Facebook to be competing with its own app developers. He responded, “What is the effect on app developers if we are making it possible for bands to have music pages? It increases distribution because your app can be on that page.”

Fair enough. But where does that leave Facebook in the fight for the hearts and marketing dollars of the struggling music industry? Already, I like iLike’s chances in this battle. But it doesn’t end within the confines of Facebook.

More here 

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(* Source : Wired *)

Jenna Wortham says :

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(* Source : Virtual World News *)

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(* Source : Walstreet Journal *)

A feel-good film about a girl from the Chinese countryside who moves to the big city to discover love, blogging and Starbucks will premier this month in an unusual venue: Shanghai's subway.

"A Sunny Day," is scheduled to play exclusively on thousands of high-tech flat screen monitors on Shanghai's subway cars and station platforms.

Girl meets boy and Starbucks in 'A Sunny Day,' to be shown in installments

Tailored for an audience of 2.2 million who cram onto China's biggest underground railway each day, the full-length feature film will be shown in daily segments of a few minutes each over 40 weekdays, soap-opera style. Subtitles in Chinese will help commuters follow the dialogue over the subway noise, and multiple daily rebroadcasts and tie-ins on the Internet are designed to ensure no one misses any of the cliffhangers.

Instead of an ordinary film, the so-called "subopera" is a blend of drama and advertising. A venture between Starbucks Coffee Co. and PepsiCo Inc. financed and helped produce the drama as part of a campaign that kicks off today in Shanghai to introduce bottled frappuccino drinks to the Chinese market.

"It's quite unique and demonstrates a departure from conventional marketing," says Howard Schultz, Starbucks chairman. The coffee company hasn't traditionally advertised, Mr. Schultz says, adding that a soap opera can be effective since it creates "real entertainment for our customers and along the way there is a complementary message." PepsiCo, which will bottle and distribute the Starbucks-branded drinks, referred questions to Starbucks

The film has a clear commercial bent. In some shots, the mermaid from the Starbucks logo gets as much face-time as the movie's big turnstile draw, Huang Xiao Ming, a 29-year-old pop star who is so well known he is sometimes called China's Justin Timberlake.

Still, "A Sunny Day" is no infomercial. Mr. Huang's character "CC" is a struggling musician who strums his guitar for coins in the subway, and falls for big-hearted Sunny, who is trying to get over the death of a boyfriend and fit into a new job.

During the shooting on a recent Sunday, as a gaggle of teenage women sneaked onto the set, Mr. Huang described the subway a "fashionable, very modern" venue that will appeal to a trendy audience.

Subways around the world have long featured visual distractions. A century ago, platforms were showcases for art, like the swank metro stations in Paris. In the 1970s, spray paint enlivened the dank and dangerous New York subway, and in the 1980s, the late Keith Haring helped make graffiti a respected art form with projects like "Studio in the Subway."

This year, the Berlin subway's 1.5 million daily passengers were the judges in a weeklong festival of 90-second, silent films called "Going Underground."

Advertisers are also pressing beneath the streets. Sidetrack Technologies Inc. of Winnipeg and New York-based Submedia LLC place light-board advertising in subway tunnels in several cities around the world, giving riders the motion-picture like effect of seeing a flipbook.

China's $20 billion advertising industry is increasingly adopting the global trend toward marketing disguised as entertainment. In addition to Hollywood-style product placements in TV shows and movies, a rapidly expanding segment is directed at an emerging middle class during the workday hours with slickly crafted TV-style ads in taxis, airplanes and even elevators.

More here 

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(* Source : NextGreatThing *)

Allison says :

Artists and labels have been exploring different ways to market and monetize their music beyond MySpace. We just heard that Sony BMG is going to be selling J Lo’s latest album, Brave, on a fancy wooden flash drive (for $70!!) Meanwhile, artists are dropping their labels like bad habits. AmieStreet, MOG, Pure Volume, Indistr, Sellaband, Navio, Roadsound, iFanz, RCRDLBL, iMeem, Popfolio… These are just a few sites out of hundreds they can use to do promotion, distribution, and sales. In addition to the bands we mentioned last week, even the Oldies are going new media; the Eagles, Joni Mitchell and now Aretha Franklin have all dropped their labels to try the digital model.

The next frontier is the handset. Mozes has taken a step there by enabling bands to text fans updates and messages. The real application, though, will be mobile social networking sites, like the newly launched KylieKonnect for Australian singer Kylie Minogue. The dot mobi site (www.kyliekonnect.com redirects to ourtribe.mobi) lets fans blog, communicate with other users and upload images and video all via mobile phone. There is a Kylie’s own blog, a newsfeed and place to buy Monogued-up wallpapers and ringtones. The site, set up by New Visions Mobile, will allow Kylie’s fans to establish a closer connection with her (or the illusion of one), and she will likely profit off it through site sales. Unfortunately for fans, Mashable reports that you seem to need a European-based mobile number to register, just going to show that this sort of technology not as widely embraced (and developed) in the U.S. as it is in Europe, Australia, and Asia.

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(* Source : Kristen Nicole *)

Radiohead blew us away with the “donated” sales revenue from its last album “In Rainbows.” The band offered the music for free, and let fans choose how much they’d pay, almost as a tip for the album. What comScore found was that 62% of global users chose not to pay for the album at all.

What’s equally as interesting is the fact that international fans were less likely to pay than US fans. You’d have to do a fairly extensive study to figure out why this may be the case, considering variables such as the native country of the band, the amount of disposable income per capita in various countries around the world, the musical preferences of countries’ citizens, the prevalence of P2P networks as legal options in other countries, etc. So there’s really not much to say in regards to these stats for Radiohead’s album at this particular point.

But what is another topic of conversation is something we’ve touched on in previous coverage of Radiohead’s flip of the script: is this an anomaly and how can regular musicians replicate such success? I’ve said my two cents on the matter–it’s currently rather difficult to make a killing on album sales in the same manner that Radiohead has done, if you don’t already have the fan base. The music industry knows this and may use it to its full advantage.

Radiohead used to be part of the music industry’s machine. Having now cut out the middle man, the band offers content direct to the fans. So with the music industry now looking for ways in which to continually make the same amount of money it raked in during its peak years, I wouldn’t be surprised if Radiohead gets sued.

It was that industry machine that enabled Radiohead to garner such a large fan base, right? So now that the band has kicked the middle man to the curb, the middle man may still want a cut of current sales. While the music industry is still boo-hooing about the decline of sales and the slower adoption of current legal trends, it still has a machine to run. In order to close that gap between previous power and current influence, it will have to find better, more cost-efficient ways in which to advertise artists, and market them across the web.

We’ve seen some pretty under-handed effects arise from this kind of pressure (that means you, Marie Digby), but the evolution will go on, and balance out at some point. As we all know, advertising isn’t going anywhere. The music industry will just need to continue to shift its approach. So will we still have artists able to gain major traction without the music industry’s machine? We won’t have to. The machine will just be better operated.

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(* Source : Virtual World News *)

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(* Source : Tameka Kee *)

THE HUMANE SOCIETY OF THE United States (HSUS) has partnered with Makena Technologies to launch an interactive campaign at There.com. HSUS will use branded virtual and real world merchandise, as well as live events to raise awareness and funds in the fight against animal cruelty.

The effort is a departure from HSUS' typical marketing campaigns, which are geared toward the 50+ demographic. By establishing a presence in There.com, the organization is aiming squarely at the 20- to-30-year-old market.

There.com members can purchase HSUS merchandise for their avatars--and even acquire the corresponding real-life version at the HSUS storefront, connecting real merchandise to virtual sales.

"We are always looking for new ways to celebrate animals and confront cruelty; and working with There.com to take animal protection into the virtual world reaches a new audience with a message of compassion," said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States.

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(* Source : Timesonline *)

Nigel Kendall says :

The video games industry was told yesterday: “Television used to be accused of corrupting the youth of today. Now you are.”

David Mitchell, the TV comedian, was talking to 750 representatives of the industry at the 25th Golden Joystick Awards, which are decided by public vote. In that quarter of a century, Mitchell observed, video games have gone from “being a few dots dancing around a TV screen to a full-on film that you are in”.

Generations of creative Britons who once dreamt of making films and cracking Hollywood are now just as likely to seek fame and fortune in the video games industry.

Tom Dowding, 25, is a graduate in computer science from Bristol University. He has been playing games since he was 10 and last year set up Mobile Pie, a developer of games for mobile phones. His efforts were rewarded at the Golden Joysticks with a prize of £2,500 and a work placement with Electronic Arts, one of the world’s biggest video game developers. Mr Dowding’s winning game is called Let It Grow.

“You install it on your mobile phone, then, using your phone camera, you nurture it and make it grow,” he said. “Then you post your growing flower on Facebook.” He has licensed the game to a distributor.

For many would-be developers, mobile phones offer a way of making games and minimising expense on programming. A leading game, such as the recent Halo 3, can cost $70 million (£34 million) to develop and a mobile game a fraction of that. The possible rewards are vast. Halo 3 outstripped many blockbuster films in the week that it went on the market, generating sales of $300 million.

Video games have quietly overtaken older entertainment forms such as films and popular music. According to the latest figures from Elspa, the industry body, game software sales in Britain for the first half of 2007 were £519 million, 17 per cent more than in the corresponding period of 2006.

More here 

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(* Source : Timesonline *)

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(* Source : Kristen Nicole *)

PanRaven has teamed up with Universal Mowtown Records to create a promotional story for Nelly, who’s getting ready to release his first album in 3 years, “Brass Knuckles.” You may remember that PanRaven is an online tool for creating stories, similar to scrap-booking services like ScrapBlog.

With this particular partnership, a story of Nelly’s filming of the video for his most recent Single “Wadsyaname” is being published on PanRaven’s website, as well as Nelly’s website and MySpace profile. PanRaven is also promoting the story through its Facebook application. The story contains exclusive, behind the scenes footage from the filming of a music video.

And in an effort to encourage users to virally spread this promotion, PanRaven and Universal are holding a contest. The person that spreads the promotion the furthest and widest across the web will win a trip to a future filming session of a Nelly video. The runner-up gets some autograhped merchandise. Not too shabby, as far as prizes go. Kanye West, 50 Cent and Bruce Springsteen have all held similar promotions on MySpace in recent weeks.

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(* Source : Mashable *)

Kristen Nicole says :

MyItThings, which is a user-generated lifestyle magazine of sorts, will soon be offering a widget for your Wish List and Virtual Closet, which can be placed on other websites, blogs and social networking profiles, like MySpace and Facebook. A few of these widgets are holiday-themed, so MyItThings is taking advantage of the holiday season and letting you spread some Christmas cheer (i.e. your gift list).

The new widget is powered by Clearspring,so you know there are easy sharing options, including embed code for a variety of social networks and blogging platforms. Wishpot and Glimpse have similar wishlists and widget-sharing options as well.

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(* Source : Brian Hiatt *)

The two biggest music releases of the year aren't albums: They're video games. Inside the fight for number one.

Guitar Hero may well be this decade's biggest rock & roll phenomenon. Guitar Hero I and II have grossed $360 million since the first game came out in 2005 -- vastly more than any album released in the same period. And the games -- in which players re-create songs' guitar parts by pushing buttons that correspond to notes and chords while hitting a "strum bar" in rhythm -- have inspired kids by the millions to memorize the intricacies of "Free Bird" and "War Pigs." One measure of the games' clout: MTV purchased Harmonix for $175 million last year, and video-game giant Activision paid $99.9 million to acquire RedOctane, the company that owns the Guitar Hero name and manufactured the game's guitar- shaped controllers.

With MTV and Activision unwilling or unable to collaborate, the franchise's future has split in two: Activision's Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock -- a straightforward sequel with a few twists, including a new "battle mode" -- hits stores October 28th, while Harmonix's Rock Band -- which adds drums and vocals to the formula -- comes out November 23rd. Analysts say that the market is big enough for both games to succeed (music games represent about eight percent of the U.S. video-game market, according to the research group NPD) -- so their near-simultaneous releases could become the music event of the year.

More here 

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(* Source : David Radd

Hang out and rock out online

Harmonix and MTV Games today revealed the details for Rockband.com. The site will launch on November 20 simultaneously with the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game and will feature band pages, classifieds, leaderboards, blogs, forums and more. San Francisco-based Mekanism was tapped to build the social networking site.

"Rockband .com blurs the lines between fantasy and reality," said Melissa Macaulay, Producer of Rockband.com, Harmonix. "The site allows you to hype your in-game band's accomplishments, while providing a forum to meet other real-life people and potential band mates who share your musical tastes."

"We see Rockband.com as a true extension of the Rock Band world. It will be an awesome way to meet new people who have similar musical tastes," said Josh Randall, Creative Director for Harmonix. "With Rockband.com players will be able to come together and express themselves in a collaborative manner, which is what playing music is all about."

"We are designing Rockband.com as an online home for your band, and as a creative platform for living out your rock and roll fantasy," said Pete Caban, partner at SF-based digital studio Mekanism. "The b ands and rockers that you can create in Rock Band are insanely unique, and it's going to be fascinating to watch this community come to life."

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(* Source : Adam Ostrow *)

MySpace is set to launch a new casual games area on the site early next year, reports The Wall Street Journal. The games will be provided by Oberon Media, a company that specializes in developing private label gaming sites for major Internet brands including Yahoo and Microsoft.

Overall, it’s not an unexpected move from MySpace, who has arranged similar deals with other companies to power different sections of the site, such as Simply Hired for MySpace Jobs.

With other recently launched sections including News, Sports, and Weather, it’s clear that MySpace is taking a very 90s approach to development, looking to turn its social network into a portal in hopes of keeping people on the site as long as possible. However, the completely stagnant News area and poor integration of other new features raises some questions as to whether this strategy has any chance of working.

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(* Source : Virtual World News *)

"People have been ignoring the fact that there are 12 other virtual worlds out there that have hundreds of thousands of visitors," says Jonathan Nelson, special adviser to Omnicom CEO John Wren. "My bet is this stuff is here to stay." Omnicom recently took a significant stake in Millions of Us, and the Wall Street Journal story gives a fair amount of time to Millions of Us projects. The main point, and one that  developers like Millions of Us have been touting for a while now, is that virtual worlds are prime for advertising, but Second Life isn't the only or even the best option out there. Based on Comscore figures for the month of September, Second Life ranked at the bottom of 12 worlds in numbers of unique visitors. And, yes, the number (235,000 for last month) is drawn from users accessing the software for the world, not just visiting the website. Even the rapidly declining Millsberry.com--down 17% from last year, but still at #5--saw 2.5 million unique users.  Webkinz led the pack with 6 million unique users. [via WSJ.com]

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(* Source : Newsweek *)

Brian Braiker says :

Photo illustration: Newsweek.com; photos: istockphoto.com

 

Fighting for members, MySpace tries to outcool Facebook

Do you Facebook or MySpace? Increasingly, membership in one social network does not necessarily rule out the appeal of belonging to the other. Of course, each company wants you visit their site more often than the other (if not exclusively)—all the more reason to differentiate. To that end, MySpace, the 800-pound News Corp.—owned gorilla, made three major announcements this week—two of which served to underscore a deepening fundamental difference in philosophy from its closest rival, Facebook. "MySpace is Hollywood and Facebook is Silicon Valley," says David Card, a senior analyst for Jupiter Research. Or you could put it this way: MySpace is glam; Facebook is geek. Not that there's anything wrong with either.

MySpace announced Tuesday that it has forged a splashy licensing agreement with Sony BMG—the world's second largest label—for access to streaming videos, music and other content. The partnership calls for the social-networking giant and the music studio to share advertising revenue. And in a bid to conquer the social-networking world beyond U.S. borders, MySpace will soon be offering its 110 million active monthly users free voice chats via a new partnership with Skype (220 million strong, mostly outside of the States). In a new service called MySpace IM with Skype, the Internet phone company will enhance the MySpace instant messaging service with new free VoIP capabilities starting November. (The companies will split the revenue, but specifics of the arrangement were not disclosed.)

These moves stand in direct contrast to Facebook, which instead of teaming with major media players to build services for its network of 47 million active users, allows third-party developers to build applications. A staggering 6,000 applications have been built for Facebook just this year. "We are not a media company," Mark Zuckerberg, the wunderkind brains behind Facebook, announced at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this week. Analysts are inclined to agree. "I think there's a core philosophical difference, but [it's] the same revenue engine at the end," says Jupiter's Card. That engine, of course, is advertising. But with its Skype and Sony BMG announcements, original programming and hosting concert tours, MySpace seems to be morphing into an entertainment portal where everyone is in your extended network (and a potential audience member).

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