|
"by the time one notices a cultural phenomenon, it has already happened." |
"I READ THE NEWS TODAY... OH BOY! |
George Lucas |
But despite the proliferation
of commercial services like the new Napster, RealNetworks Inc's Rhapsody
and even Apple Computer
Inc's iTunes, Fanning said unauthorized file-sharing was as rampant as
ever.
In launching the new platform,
Snocap, Fanning and co-founders Jordan Mendelson and Ron Conway,
said the company, also named
Snocap, reached a deal for Vivendi Universal SA's Universal Music Group
to license its catalog.
After registering music and
copyright information in Snocap's database, labels and artists can manage
online distribution through
Snocap's copyright management system, which lets them set rules for each
track on a global basis.
Some 27.4 percent of employed
18 to 24-year-olds (both men and women) spend three hours or more per day
on the Internet, and 23.2
percent of employed men 35 to 44 years log three or more hours of Internet
use per day.
Even among older employed
segments (45 years and older), fully one in five (20.7 percent) say they
spend three
or more hours per day on
the Internet while at work."
"The importance of the at-work
audience can't be over emphasized," says Chuck Moran, BURST! Media's market
research manager. "It is
a segment that has money and devotes a significant portion of their total
media usage
to the Internet.
Dec 2004 Yahoo News
The market for scholarly
searching is potentially a desirable one for advertisers. Students generally
fall
within the hard-to-reach
18- to 34-year-old demographic, and purveyors of academic services and
products
may be willing to pay to
market directly to a large population of student researchers and college
faculty.
Paid search aside, the Scholar
platform will likely prove a valuable promotional tool for libraries and
publishers seeking a wider
audience. For most searches, the service turns up only abstracts. Searchers
will therefore likely use
the online interface to discover documents of interest, which must later
be obtained
in their entirety through
a publisher or library. 11/04 google news
A new study conducted for
the American Advertising Federation (AAF) reveals that More than three-
quarters of advertising
leaders now believe that digital video recorders (DVR), which allow viewers
to
skip ads, will have a significant
effect on the landscape of TV advertising, with continued growth of
non-traditional ad formats.
Breaking through clutter,
changing consumer behavior and demonstrating return on investment now
outrank media proliferation
and industry consolidation concerns. The study continues to show a lack
of outright confidence in
the advertising economy, with many citing a slow recovery rate.
Additional findings include:
* There
is rising respect for online advertising, with the majority of respondents
incorporating the
Internet into the general
media mix. This shift shows that online advertising is now considered a
traditional marketing medium.
MediaPost.com Nov. 04
Kayak, founded by former executives from online travel agencies Travelocity,
Expedia, and Orbitz,
launched a travel search engine in beta in September. Unlike online
travel agencies, which provide
airline tickets and hotel reservations to users, Kayak acts as a facilitator
by sending its spider to
about 60 travel-related Web sites, and returning lists of links to
airlines or hotels so that users can
comparison shop. But, rather than make the purchase from Kayak, consumers
must click on the
airline or hotel Web sites to make a purchase.
The deal, which follows on the heels of Yahoo!'s July acquisition of
travel search engine FareChase,
signals a resurgence of interest in search engines focused specifically
on travel, said Forrester
Research vice-president Henry Harteveldt. "You have a very ripe environment
for the next gen-
eration of travel search engine," he said. AOL.com
November
Total online ad spend for 2004 is shaping up to be some $9.4 billion.
In a release made public
in advance of Ad:Tech, eMarketer stated that search marketing spending
will be
approximately $3.9 billion
in 2004, while non-search advertising will come in at around $3.3 billion
(as of
this writing, it was unclear
where the other $2.2 billion will come from).
In the same release, eMarketer says they expect spending to be double for 2005.
These are some big, hefty
numbers. Compared to Robert Cohen's media spending analysis, we're talking
about more spending than
in outdoor, national spot radio, national syndicated TV, or network radio
(individually, not cumulatively)
in 2003. If these numbers are at all accurate, I think that it is
no longer
sensible to use phrases
like "the jury is still out," or "more research is needed," or "testing
still has to be
done" when some marketers
talk about online advertising. It's here to stay and there is no way around
it.
Numbers this big don't just
go away, unless of course you are talking about a telecommunication company.
Among the biggest implications
for the online advertising industry is that like it or not, we are becoming
mainstream. We are no longer
outside the umbra of "advertising" at large. We are now a part of it. This
invariably will lead to
many early pioneers and their ideas being co-opted. The now-nearly ubiquitous
talk
of accountability coming
from the heads of the major shops is just one example of this. Their talk
of
consumer control is another.
In what appeared to be the
first arrangement of its kind, Twentieth Century Fox said Wednesday it
would create a unique series
of one-minute dramas based on its hit show "24" exclusively for a new
high-speed wireless service
being offered by Vodafone PLC, the world's biggest cell phone company.
Vodafone will begin offering
the one-minute epidosdes in January in the United Kingdom, coinciding
with the start of the fourth
season of the show on a satellite TV service.
The "mobisodes," as they're
being called, will be introduced later in 2005 in up to 23 more countries
where Vodafone operates,
mainly in Europe, as well as in the United States through the company's
Verizon Wireless joint venture.
The deal is part of a broader agreement between Fox Entertainment
Group and London-based Vodafone
under which Fox, the entertainment unit of Rupert Murdoch's
News Corp., will develop
other programming to be viewed on the phones.
In March, the new Vodafone
service, to be called Vodafone live! with 3G, will also offer trailers
and
clips of movies under a
"Movie of the Month" service, the first one being "Bridget Jones: The Edge
of Reason."
Cell phone operators have
invested heavily to roll out high-speed wireless services, intent on driving
new revenues from Internet
browsing, streaming video and audio, and other forms of media.
mediapost 11/04
Six months ago, Google was intriguing mainly as a financial
phenomenon. Would its initial public
offering come too early? Or too late? Would it succeed, signaling a
broader tech revival? Or would
it fail, deepening the gloom about Internet-based businesses? Today,
Google is still plenty interesting
for financial reasons. In the weeks before its shares first went on
sale in August, disparaging views
about its prospects forced it to lower the target price to $85 a share
from $135. By last week, its
stock had more than doubled, to $190.64, giving it a market capitalization
of $52 billion,
more than Ford and General Motors combined. New
York Times, October 31, 2004
The color model can also be used to display photos, either on its own
screen or on a TV set.
It comes in two capacities: a 40GB model for $499 and a 60GB version
for $599. The screen
is capable of displaying 65,536 colors. "Photos are a lot like
music," iPod unit head Jon Rubinstein
said in an interview. "Everybody loves them, and you've got a lot of
your own content. It's just kind
of a natural (pairing)."
The U2-themed iPod holds 20GB, is black with a red navigation dial on
the face and includes a
facsimile of the band members' signatures on the back. For $349, or
$50 more than the cost of the
regular 20GB iPod, the buyer receives a $50 coupon that can be used
toward purchasing "The
Complete U2" music collection, priced at $149, from Apple's iTunes
store.
Apple said it has started shipping the iPod Photo to stores and that
it is expected to be available
soon, while the U2 iPod is due in mid-November. MediaPost.com
Oct 04
The report, the "Internet Activity Index," compiled using
Nielsen//NetRatings data, found that Internet users
this September spent a greater proportion of their surfing
time--41 percent--visiting online news or entertainment-
related sites such as CNN.com and Windows Media Player,
up from 34.6 percent in September 2003. Surfers
also spent less of their online time--39.8 percent--at
communication-oriented sites, such as Yahoo! Mail, than
last year, when they spent 46 percent of their Internet
time at such sites.
The proportion of time spent at e-commerce sites, such
as eBay, declined slightly--from 15.4 percent last Sept.
to 15.2 percent this September--while the share of time
spent at search sites, such as Google, remained unchanged
at 4 percent. For the study, the Online Publishers Association
looked at 385 news, entertainment, and other
content sites; 240 commerce sites; 62 communications
sites; and 41 search sites.
The increasing prevalence of broadband, which makes it
easier to view rich media on content sites, appears to be
fueling the surge in time spent at online news or entertainment
sites, said Michael Zimbalist, president of the
Online Publishers Association. When it comes to e-commerce,
broadband allows people to shop faster online,
so the time they spend at commerce-related sites can
decline even as activity increases. In fact, despite the
decreased share of time spent at e-commerce sites, such
sites accounted for more page views--23 billion--this
September than last year, when they had 21.7 views.
Digital copying and downloading have led to a crisis that is threatening
the $1.25 trillion business
of television, movies, publishing, and software. And, the government
has been much too slow in
addressing these issues, said Bob Wright, chairman of NBC Universal
as he was accepting an
award from The Media Institute, a Washington, D.C. organization.
Wright received the organization's Freedom of Speech Award Wednesday
night. In his overview
of the First Amendment, Wright zeroed in on one particular portion:
Article 1, Section 8 - the
Copyright Clause - which authorizes Congress to grant to "authors and
inventors the exclusive
right to their respective writings and discoveries."
"This is what enables companies like NBC Universal to invest millions
of dollars to transform a
creative idea into a movie or television show," he said. "Today, this
constitutional protection is
under enormous pressure and requires our vigilant attention. I know
that The Media Institute will
be our ally on this issue, too, which is a threat not only to media,
but to a broad cross-section
of U.S. industries and export businesses."
But Wright was not all doom and gloom. He said that while NBC Universal
is eagerly exploring
the depths of new technologies to roll out digital, on-demand services.
He added that he would
like nothing more than to make accessing video as easy as Apple's iPod
has made accessing
music. MediaDailyNews Oct 04
"We will not stop until every San Franciscan has access to free wireless
Internet service," he said
in his annual state of the city address. "These technologies will connect
our residents to the skills
and the jobs of the new economy."
"No San Franciscan should be without a computer and a broadband connection."
He said the city
had already made free WiFi service available at Union Square, a central
shopping and tourist hub,
and would add access to several other sections of the city including
Civic Center around City Hall.
Texas Instruments Inc. today announced development of the wireless industry's
first digital TV
on a single chip for cell phones, code-named "Hollywood."
The chip will receive live digital TV broadcasts at 24 to 30 frames
per second using new television
infrastructure that is being developed for cell phones, doing for cell
phones what HDTV did for
home TVs, TI explained.
"TI´s new Hollywood digital TV chip will combine the two biggest
consumer electronics inventions
of our time -- the television and the cell phone," said Gilles Delfassy,
TI senior VP and general
manager for TI's wireless terminals business unit, in a statement.
"One by one, the industry's most
exciting consumer electronics are being integrated into wireless handsets,
allowing consumers to
get their news and entertainment whenever and wherever they want. With
this new chip on the cell
phone, users will enjoy digital, high-quality TV in real-time."
Well, Yahoo! points out that
Google's market cap isn't four times more in value than Yahoo!'s. Google's
market cap, Yahoo! says,
is, for the moment, about $4 billion more. Google's hovers around $51 billion,
while Yahoo!'s is about
$47 billion. Of course these figures will fluctuate. Google's share price,
Yahoo!
says, is four times more,
but when you calculate total shares outstanding, the market value is not
four
times more. Is that clear?
Basically, while Google's share price is four times more than Yahoo!'s,
its
market value is just $4
billion more, for the moment. Mediapost.com
oct 04
Online product research
by consumers this past year was
responsible for driving
$180.7 billion in offline spending, compared
to $106.5 billion
in direct online consumer spending according to
The American Interactive
Consumer Survey conducted by The
Dieringer Research
Group.
Thomas E. Miller, senior
consultant at The Dieringer Research
Group, said "The new
annual spending data indicate that at least
$1.70 is spent offline
after doing online research for every
consumer dollar spent
directly online. In reality, the offline
spending impact is
far greater because many consumers also go
online to research
financial and insurance products that are not
reflected in the retail
spending total."
According to the new
research, nearly 15% of total U.S. retail
spending (excluding
gasoline, food services and inventories) is
currently influenced
altogether by the Internet, a much higher
ratio than is commonly
cited.
The study also found
that Internet-influenced offline spending is
now growing faster
than direct online spending.
Internet-influenced
offline sales grew 31% last year and direct
online sales grew
14%, while total U.S. retail spending grew only
5% during the comparable
period.
information utility
is much larger than its role as a direct selling
medium," Miller explained.
The survey also found
that 17% of all U.S. consumers who
opened new financial
service accounts or took out new insurance
policies the past
year used the Internet in their product
decision-making process.
"Those decisions by online consumers
affected literally
billions of dollars in financial services revenues,
making the total dollar
impact of online information far greater
than anyone is talking
about," concluded Miller.
This means that the percentage of U.S.-based surfers who have
access to, and can properly utilize broadband content, is much
higher than we are estimating. With all of these people using more
sophisticated means of Internet access, it's a wonder that we don't
hear more about problems accessing the Web anymore.
NetGear also may develop a card for laptops that would enable mobile
access using Flash-OFDM.
The announcement, planned for Monday, may be a sign that Nextel or
another major cell phone
company is preparing to move beyond trials to full deployment of the
Flarion technology. Yahoo 10/04
"The online travel sector
is becoming increasingly competitive and suppliers ... are mounting a more
aggressive challenge
to the online agencies that initially dominated the marketplace," the report
stated.
The most recent industry
shake-up came last month, when travel and hotel-franchising giant Cendant
Corp. agreed to acquire
online travel company Orbitz for $1.25 billion in cash. Cendant--previously
the
third largest player
in the industry behind Expedia, a unit of InterActive Corp., and Travelocity,
a unit of
Sabre Holdings Corp.--is
now second only to Expedia. Media Daily News 10/04
Personally, I have no
doubt that this is exactly the kind of deal a company like
Sirius needed in order
to build critical mass. With 600,000 subscribers, Sirius
needs an incremental
1 million subscribers to pay for the Stern deal. While this
might seem like a lot,
it requires only a small fraction of Stern's dedicated fan
base to sign up for Sirius.
I think the deal will either make or break Sirius, and I
hope it accelerates consumer
migration to satellite.
I also think this is a
significant milestone for emerging media in general. Radio
seems ready to shrug
off its bandwidth constraints, as television did with the
advent of cable (and,
to a lesser extent, Internet broadcasting). In other words,
whereas radio was limited
somewhat by the constraints of terrestrial broadcasting -
namely, limited bandwidth
within each DMA - it is now taking steps into a world
where the range of available
content isn't limited by the availability of bandwidth.
As with streaming video,
online radio has made somewhat of an impact, but it's
still developing. Years
after Broadcast.com was bought by Yahoo!, online radio is
taking the next steps
in its development. Specialty programming abounds, and
companies like Ronning-Lipset
Radio are aggregating these audiences for
advertisers. Media
Post 10/04
Verizon Wireless is a
joint venture of Verizon (NYSE:VZ - news) and British wireless giant Vodafone
Group. (VOD.L)
Verizon Chairman and Chief Executive Ivan Seidenberg said in a speech to
the U.S.
Telecom Association meeting
that the expansion of Verizon Wireless' broadband service would make
it available to almost
75 million customers. Yahoo.com News oct 04
The stock started at $100.01 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, $15.01 higher
than its $85 initial offering
price. Within a few minutes of trading, Google was at $98.08,
with 5.5 million shares having traded hands.
The IPO price, set late Wednesday through an unorthodox auction that
alienated many on Wall Street,
cleared the way for the stock to start trading under the symbol "GOOG."
Founders Sergey Brin and Larry
Page opened trading on the Nasdaq, though Google didn't begin trading
until midday.
Nasdaq officials said a delay in trading was standard for IPOs, and
added that there were some technical
issues as the Nasdaq matched bid and ask prices in the minutes leading
up to trading.
The $85 initial share price was short of Google's original expectation
of $108 to $135 a share. It also
comes at the lowest end of Google's downward-revised range it made
on Wednesday, when it also
reduced the number of shares to be sold to 19.6 million from 25.7 million
-- a move that was expected
to buoy prices.
"The good news for Google is that it didn't price below the low end,"
said Tom Taulli, co-founder of
Current Offerings, an IPO research company. "If it had priced below
the low end, maybe there could have
been some selling pressure." Associated
Press 8/18/04
The industry wants to get a sales bounce by
wooing students with steep price cuts, while
universities are eager to strike deals to cut
down on illegal downloading. Roxio's
Napster (news - web sites) has already
been busy making deals with universities.
Now, Seattle-based RealNetworks Inc. is
entering the fray and will offer discounts on
its subscription service through pilot
programs at two U.S. universities. Instead of
ponying up $9.95 monthly to access Real's
streaming-only Rhapsody service,
University of California at Berkeley and
University of Minnesota students will pay
just $2 to $3 a month. They'll still have to
pay download fees to legally keep any of the
service's 700,000 songs, although the
college moves are part of Real's fierce
campaign to take business away from
Apple's iTunes music service. A major
feature of the effort is Real's special price of
49 cents per download through Labor Day;
typically, it charges 79 cents a tune.
DVD should propel Hollywood to another record home-video revenue mark
this year. Purchases and
rentals are expected to hit $37.9 billion, up from $33 billion in 2003.
That DVD is expected to trend
upward for the next five years is good news for Hollywood, which took
a dip at the box office in 2003
to $9.5 billion. USA Today August 04
Although other companies have paid special dividends in the past,
the size of Microsoft's payout
is far and away the largest cash grant in corporate history.
Bill Gates, the company's chairman and largest shareholder, will
receive $3.3 billion of that one-
time dividend. Mr. Gates, already one of the world's richest men,
will also see an extra $180 million
a year from an increase in the quarterly dividends, also announced
yesterday.
While Blockbuster executives have in the past often shrugged off the
competitive threat from Netflix and
the significance of the online rental market in general, Antioco openly
acknowledged its strategic importance
at his company's annual shareholder meeting.
"Two million (customers) have spoken," he said, referring to Netflix's
subscriber base. "We can't continue
to allow our customers to erode away from us. We are not going to ignore
these folks." Reuters 04
Beginning today to coincide with the run-up to the Democratic National
Convention, Comcast's 5.7 million
high-speed Internet subscribers will receive a number of ABC News features,
including live streaming
news and archived versions of its "World News Tonight" and "Nightline"
programs.
Later this year, Comcast will launch an online children's channel that
will offer Disney features such as short
videos and activities as well as discounted rates to Toontown Online,
a multi-player subscription-based
computer game.
Philadelphia-based Comcast, which is the nation's largest cable TV system
with 21.5 million subscribers,
will pay Disney, which owns ABC, an undisclosed amount for the new
content, most of which will be given
to its Internet subscribers at no additional cost. Comcast will share
in any additional revenue Disney earns
by selling subscription services to Comcast users. Washington
Post July 04
The high-speed Internet connection, which AT&T Wireless began selling
Tuesday, is fast enough to enable
a customer to use a cell phone, PDA or laptop computer to receive streaming
audio and video, create and
share video clips, and much more. The technology is already popular
in many foreign markets.
In a first-of-its-kind deal for Apple Computer Inc., the university
will distribute 1,650 iPods for the
pilot program. Duke would not say how much it will pay for each 20-gigabyte
iPod, but said it will
receive a discount from the retail price of $299.
The program fits into university plans to use more technology in teaching,
said Tracy Futhey, Duke's
vice president for information technology.
Since its introduction in 2001, the iPod has taken off as the trendiest
gadget for storing and playing
digital music. IPods can store other kinds of data as well, and Duke
students will receive models
stocked with school-related information, including freshman orientation
details, the academic calendar,
campus tours and even the school's fight song. Yahoo.com
July 04
Driven by demand for replacement PCs from business users, a total of
42.8 million PCs were shipped
worldwide in the second quarter, 13.3 percent more than in the year-earlier
period, Gartner says in a
statement. The growth was in line with expectations, Gartner says.
Apple's adoption of HDV will certainly further this low-cost HD movement.
The format will be
implemented in future versions of Apple products. Customers can
already begin using HDV with
Final Cut Pro today throught third-party products. Below
The Line May 2004
The browser has replaced the encyclopedia," says analyst Kaicad Gotla
of Nielsen/NetRatings.
Yahoo use of its imagsearch technology has grown 18 fold since its
debut in Sept. It is one of
the comnpany's fastest-growing services. Google had more than
12 million people searched
images on Google's service in March. USA Today
May 04
This personals/dating category was the largest, making up almost 30
percent of total online
content spending by U.S. consumers, according to the report, released
this week.
In a distant second place came the business content category, with $334.1
million in spending,
up 14.4 percent from 2002. This includes business news from fee-based
online publications
such as The Wall Street Journal; business research, such as that provided
by eMarketer.com;
investment advice, such as the service from changewave.com; and digital
content used for
business purposes, such as that found at ArtToday.com, according to
the report.
Let the Music Play
The entertainment category--which includes sales of digital music,
multimedia, and other leisure-
related content--placed third, with $214 million, a 6 percent decrease
from 2002. However, the
report states that this result might be misleading, because revenue
generated from applications
that operate independent of browsers--such as the ITunes music store--wasn't
counted.
May 2002 Yahoo.com
AOL has been bleeding subscribers: It lost 2.2 million in 2003.
AOL put a Lavigne concert
on AOL.com for free, hoping people would like what they see and want
to pay for more.
AP May 04
Only five of the Top 10 Movies at the Domestic Box Office
in 2001, 2002, and 2003, less than 20 percent, had excessive or very
graphic sex in them, according to MOVIEGUIDE(R)’s ratings,
but 19, or 63 percent, had either a moral worldview or a Christian
worldview.
Also, the bigger the amount and the stronger the sex and nudity are in a movie, the worse it does at the box office.
In 2003, for example, 78 movies with no sex averaged $37.6
million; 95 movies with implied sex averaged $32.1 million; 71
movies with briefly depicted sex averaged $25 million;
and, 35 movies with extensive, excessive, or graphic sex averaged only
$17.1 million. In 2002, 82 movies with no sex
averaged $44.3 million; 104 movies with implied sex averaged
$23.2 million; 82 movies with briefly depicted sex averaged $20
million; and 31 movies with extensively depicted, excessive,
or graphic sex averaged only $17.7 million.
In 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003, movies with no nudity averaged
$26.6 million, 40.7 million, $35.9 million, and $34.6 million,
respectively, but movies with full male and/or female
nudity averaged $14.5 million, $7.6 million, $9.1 million, and $11.8
million, respectively.
“Clearly, sex does not sell as well as the mass media
wants us to believe,” said Dr. Ted Baehr, chairman of Christian Film &
Television Commission(TM) and publisher of MOVIEGUIDE(R).
Christian
Film & Television Commission(TM)
It is expected that the Google IPO to value the company at $10 to $15
billion. Amazon
and eBay were valued at about $100 billion initially, but they've grown
to $16.6billion
and $44.3 billion, respectvely. USA Today
March 04
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc.
said on Monday it has sold 50 million songs
over the Internet in the 11 months since it launched its iTunes Music
Store, putting it at least
halfway toward its goal for the year. Apple, which charges 99 cents
a song, said it is currently
selling 2.5 million songs per week, which would translate into 130
million songs per year, or
about $130 million in annual revenue.
Rob Schoeben, vice president of applications marketing at Apple, declined
to predict how many
songs iTunes customers will have downloaded for its one-year anniversary
in April but said that
it has continued to steadily increase. For instance, the download rate
was about 1.5 million songs
per week in December.
While the sale of songs is a positive for the company and the industry,
analysts noted it is actually
the music store's effect on Apple's iPod digital music player, more
than the service itself, that has
helped the company's revenues and earnings. The company sold 730,000
iPods in the December
quarter and in February said it had 100,000 orders for its new iPod
mini.
In the fourth quarter, the iPod digital music player accounted for about
13 percent of overall sales.
The Internet Advertising Bureau said last month that U.S. online ad
spending surged 38% in
the fourth quarter vs. the year-ago period, to $2.2 billion. The trade
group says it was the
fastest growth rate of any quarter since it started tracking online
ad sales in 1996, including
the dot-boom years of 1998-2000.
"The corner's clearly been turned where online ad spending's concerned,"
said IAB President
Greg Stuart. "Consumers and marketers have raced online in a big, big
way."
Newer types of online ads, not the static banner ads that dominated
in the early years, are
leading the surge. One such ad is paid search, in which a company pays
to have an ad or its
Web site link listed prominently on certain Web search results pages.
Also popular are so-called "rich" and streaming ads, which include pop
up ads and "interstitials,"
or ads that appear when going from one Web page to another.
Analysts say such ads get results and will continue to attract big advertisers.
The spending also
seems to be coming at the expense of TV and print ads. The Big 3 broadcast
networks, ABC,
CBS and NBC, reported last month that they had just a 1.5% gain in
prime-time ad sales in the
fourth quarter vs. the year-earlier quarter.
The IAB survey, conducted jointly with PricewaterhouseCoopers, said
U.S. online ad spending
jumped 20% in 2003 to $7.2 billion.
"Paid search right now is at the heart of online ad spending," he said.
"If you compare the first half
of 2003 with the first half of 2002, our figures show paid search grew
even faster, 300%." Why
are paid search ads so popular? "Because it's easy for advertisers
to see a return on their invest-
ment in terms of direct sales (from people visiting their Web sites),"
said Forrester's Nail.
Growth rates for paid search ads, however, are expected to cool this
year. Hallerman expects a
22% increase in 2004 as the niche matures. By
Doug Tsuroka at Yahoo.com
The planned handset will be based around a new chip developed by Samsung
which was
announced this week. The chip includes an Arm processor core and can
decode the satellite
broadcasts as well as functions such as billing for pay-per-view services,
the company says.
The broadcasting service, planned by Mobile Broadcasting in Japan and
TU Media in South
Korea, will offer a number of audio and video channels and is designed
to be received by
portable terminals. Programming line-ups have not yet been announced,
but Japanese
subscribers are expected to be able to access around 70 channels of
entertainment while
those in South Korea should get access to around 40 channels. PC
Feb 2004
Today's high-speed Internet makes it easier to download video.
But most people don't, because they don't
watch movies on PCs, says Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. New
Wi-Fi set-top boxes will make it easy to
send and watch that video via Wi-Fi on any TV in the house he says.
Intel Pres. Paul Otellini demonstrated
a Nikon digital camera that wirelessly sends pictures to a nearby PC.
D-Link also introduced some wireless
security cameras. USA Today 2004
"The company works best — and has revolutionized industries — by challenging
conventional
thinking," said Mary Ann Halford, a media consultant and former News
Corp. executive.
Now, the 72-year-old Murdoch is at it again, betting that he can pull
off a feat nobody else has
managed: to turn satellite television, which currently is watched by
just 20% of American house-
holds, into a medium as common as cable, which is in 70% of homes.
Critics of the deal say those conditions don't go far enough, and some
point to Murdoch's repu-
tation for doing more than just breaking with convention; the Australian-born
entrepreneur also
has a history of breaking the backs of his rivals.
With El Segundo-based DirecTV in his arsenal, Murdoch would become the
only media titan
with satellite, cable and broadcast assets in the U.S. Besides the
Fox television network, News
Corp. owns 20 regional sports channels, 35 TV stations, the Fox News
cable channel, the New
York Post and the 20th Century Fox movie studio.
Yahoo News Dec 2003
The deal may hinge on whether Comcast could get minority investor Echo
Star Communications,
which runs satellite service Dish Network and owns a reported 10 to
12 percent of TechTV, to sell.
Comcast and EchoStar declined to comment on the talks. TechTV and Vulcan
did not return phone
calls Tuesday.
TechTV is available in 40 million homes nationwide and is carried by
all major cable and satellite
operators. But in San Francisco, its hometown, where Comcast is the
carrier, it's only available on
digital cable in upgraded areas The network started in May 1998
as ZDTV and was owned at the
time by computer magazine publisher Ziff Davis. Vulcan bought a one-third
stake for $54 million in
1999, and then bought the rest of the company for $205 million in 2000.
SFGate.com
Dec. 2003
"I don't think we can look at the old models of how we made money in
the past and say we can
duplicate them in the new world; that's not going to work," said Courtney
Holt, head of new
media and strategic marketing at Interscope A&M Geffen Records.
Associated Press Dec. 2003
"Unfortunately, we didn't settle everything, but one has to be realistic.
We're probably at 98
percent," said Furrer, director of Switzerland's Federal Office of
Communications. Negotiators
will meet again Tuesday, on the eve of the three-day World Summit on
the Information Society,
he told reporters. The negotiators, meeting for the fifth
round of talks already this year, have
been trying to draft documents for the nearly 60 heads of state or
government expected in Geneva.
Key decisions about controlling the Internet's core systems remain with
the U.S. government and
a private, U.S.-based organization of technical and business experts
known as the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Number, or ICANN Associated
Press December 2003
The question is whether auctions will become part of the day-in-day-out
concert-going
experience. LA Times Nov.
2003
Sony and Bertelsmann on Thursday announced a nonbinding letter of intent
to negotiate exclusively
with each other in the weeks ahead to create a jointly-owned firm,
to be called Sony BMG. No cash
would be exchanged to complete the deal, which is expected to occur
within two months, according to
a press release from BMG and Sony. The new company would claim
roughly 25 percent of global music
sales, placing it just behind industry front-runner, Vivendi's Universal
Music Group, which had roughly
25.9 percent of the world market share, according to last year's music
sales. AP Nov 2003
"The record industry has always been more about vibe and hype," said
Jeremy Welt, head of new media for
Maverick Records in Los Angeles. "For the first time, we're making
decisions based on what consumers
are doing and saying as opposed to just looking at radio charts." Yahoo
News Nov 03
Wippit's chief executive and founder, Paul Myers, told The Associated
Press that his company
signed a deal last month with EMI, whose artists range from the Rolling
Stones to Coldplay. Wippit
distributes authorized copies of songs on its file-sharing network,
allowing subscribers to download
an unlimited number of tracks for an annual fee of $49, or $6.50 a
month.
Consumers can burn the songs onto CDs, transfer them to portable music
players supporting
Windows Media Audio or store them on a computer. Customers keep the
music even after their
subscription ends, Myers added. A Wippit user gets a license
for each track downloaded. Myers
said the user can download the same track onto different computers
by entering the license details
each time, but cannot share the track with other users or convert the
music file into MP3 format.
Fri Oct 24 Associated Press
| T-Mobile rings up free concert evening--
T-Mobile is launched a night of free concerts that took place simultaneously in five cities. Concerts were free but you had to go to websites Aol.com TMobole.com or to get the tickets and the concerts were webcast free on both Internet sites. Sept. 2003 |
CD Dangles Carats--
Interscope Records is about to launch an ad campaign that will turn
the forthcoming
release into a kind of lottery...The Vivendi Universal-owned label
is hiding "golden tickets"
in albums and consumers who buy the CD containing a ticket get a diamond
laden G-Unit
medallion valued at $12,500. The promotion represents the latest
gambit by major record
companies to appeal directly to consumers, rather than route marketing
dollars through retail
so as to booster their losses from people going to the Internet. AP
Oct. 03
While Internet penetration has already reached 59% of US households,
broadband will be in over one-fifth
(22%) of US homes this year, rising to one-third (32.2%) by 2005, according
to eMarketer's new Broad-
band Worldwide report. "If that isn't a big enough audience to sustain
an innovative online content sector, I
don't know what is," says Senior Analyst Ben Macklin. So where is this
content sector?
"Still gun-shy from the dot-com crash and continuing economic uncertainty,
telecom, media and marketing
companies are understandably hesitant to fully embrace the broadband
concept," says Macklin. "The
countries and companies that realize the full potential of widespread
broadband will surge ahead in the next
decade. It's now time to take the Net to the next level."
AOL has committed $35 million to a branding campaign for broadband,
and it is finally focusing on de-
livering the content that can drive broadband subscriptions."
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