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U.S. Ad
Market Continues To Recede: Internet, Only Media To Grow
To me, most importantly it's a tool for filmmakers, it's a way to
enhance their ability to tell their stories. If you look over the
last 30 years or so, filmmakers that have embraced and utilized new
technology as it has come along, George
Lucas, Steven Spielberg,
Bob Zemeckis, Jim Cameron, Peter
Jackson, Michael
Bay...they are the filmmakers who've seen technology as an asset.
They have seen over the horizon.
Jeffery Katzenberg
==========================================
Until moments ago (mid-day Jan. 1), when a deal was reached, Fox was
threatening to black out its channels, most notably Fox broadcast, from
Time Warner Cable (TWC) unless TWC anted up a subscriber fee of
reportedly $1 per subscriber per month. Historically,
cable networks such as HBO, Showtime, AMC, etc. got those fees,
but
broadcast networks didn't. They need them now, with ad revenue
shrinking, and customers departing networks in favor of cable channels
-- a multi-decade trend -- and, more recently, video games, Internet TV
sites such as Hulu, unauthorized (pirated) content, and user-generated
content such as on YouTube.
yahoo news Jan 2010
==========================================
Video Store Closed? The Best Way to Rent Now
Blockbuster
(BBI
1) disclosed in an SEC filing
Tuesday that it plans to close 810 to 960 of its stores -- roughly
22% of them -- by
the end of
2010 to cut operating costs and stem losses from unprofitable
locations. The company plans to change or end leases
on another
275 to 300 stores, and convert another 250 to 300 to outlets selling
new and used DVDs. These strategies, are
designed to
save Blockbuster $26 million in working capital, according to
company estimates.
Blockbuster’s announcement and the slow disappearance of local video
stores suggest that in-store DVD rentals could be going
the way of
videocassettes and Betamax. For consumers, the changes could force a
significant shift in how they rent movies.
“It’s only a
matter of time before video is relegated to cyberspace, subscription
services and on-demand cable TV,” says
Christopher
Sharrett, a professor of communication and film studies at Seton
Hall University in South Orange, N.J., who tracks the
movie rental
industry. “Stores don’t want to pay the overhead to have a
substantial inventory [of movie titles].” The closings are
especially
bad news for those who rent infrequently, are technologically
un-savvy or prefer niche genres, he says.
As many
consumers already know, there are plenty of alternatives to driving
to a store to rent a movie – and, for the time being,
there’s
plenty of variation in value and convenience. Here are a few ways
consumers can cope with the Blockbuster closures and
a look at how they
measure up:
==========================================
NEW YORK – For more than 60 years, TV stations have broadcast news,
sports and entertainment for free and made their money by showing
commercials. That might not work much longer.
The business model is unraveling at ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox and the
local stations that carry the networks' programming. Cable TV and
the Web have fractured the audience for free TV and siphoned its ad
dollars. The recession has squeezed advertising further, forcing
broadcasters to accelerate their push for new revenue to pay for
programming.
That will play out in living rooms across the country. The
changes could mean higher cable or satellite TV bills, as the
networks and local stations squeeze more fees from pay-TV providers
such as Comcast
and DirecTV for the right to show
broadcast TV channels in their lineups. The networks might
even ditch free broadcast signals in the next few years. Instead,
they could operate as cable channels — a move that could spell the
end of free TV as Americans have known it since the 1940s.
==========================================
IMS Research's
Market opportunities for Internet
video to the TV study found that
nearly 55 percent of all TV households
in
the Americas will have access to Internet video by the end of 2010,
with 25 percent of these capable of
displaying Internet video on the TV set.
"Now that retailers are actively marketing Internet-enabled
devices, we can expect to see
mass market adoption. As
Blu-ray players
have begun to offer price points that fall below $199, this price
reduction will create a domino effect on other CE device prices.
This has already been observed by actions taken by the
game console
market in Q3 09," said Rebecca Kurlak, an IMS Research
consumer electronics analyst. "We
currently estimate that by the end of 2010, 35 percent of TV
shipments in the Americas will have Internet
connectivity
built-in. It will take about five years for the gap to close between
connected TVs and other devices. Consumers continue to select
devices that offer ease of use, and it just makes it easier for the
consumer to seamlessly search for content on one device. Plus, there
is no additional set up involved, which continues to be a hurdle for
many of the devices on the market."
====================================
Studios Make
Bigger Push for Digital Sales
The Showtime cable-television network has begun selling episodes
of its hit series "Weeds" online, weeks ahead of the DVD release.
The tactic, by "Weeds" producer Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., is
the part of a more aggressive effort Hollywood is taking to boost
online sales of digital movies.
Studios have become bolder in how they push their shows and
movies over digital channels. Earlier this month, Sony Corp.'s Sony
Pictures started making online rentals of its hit movie "Cloudy With
a Chance of Meatballs" available for owners of some Sony TVs and
other devices, well before the film's Jan. 5 release ...
=======================================
72% Of Advertisers See More Digital Spending In 2010
A regional survey of 8,500 senior advertising, marketing and
media executives by Round2 Communications found that 72% predict
they will increase their spending on digital media in the coming
year. Justifying this apportionment, 33.9% said ROI for new media is
"somewhat" better than traditional, and 28.2% said new media's ROI
is "significantly" better.
Along with the good news for digital media, the survey (which
focused on executives from companies headquartered in the Western
U.S.) delivered some bad news for traditional: 86% of the
respondents say they expect their spending on traditional media --
including broadcast TV and radio and print newspapers and magazines
-- to remain even (45.7%) or decline (40.3%) in 2010.
mediapost.com Dec 09
===========================
Mobile-device shipments expected to
nearly double in 5 years
Mobile devices such as cellular handsets, netbooks and cellular modems
will continue to boom for the next five years, according to a study by
ABI Research. The report said that the mobile-device market, estimated
to total 1.2 billion units this year, would hit 2.25 billion by 2014.
==========================
3Q Broadcast TV Revs Plummet Nearly 23%
Overall, broadcast television ad revenues were down 22.6% to $8.8
billion in the third quarter, versus the same time period a year
ago, according to the Television Bureau of Advertising. Local TV
stations slipped 28.1% to $3.1 billion, with network TV off 21.5% to
$4.7 billion. The best news came with syndicated TV, dropping a
modest 7.2% to $1.0 billion.
The period was particularly rough, as compared to the broader
nine-month period in 2009 to date, per TVB. Over this time, network
TV has been down 10.7%, syndicated TV was off 2.8%, and local
broadcast TV plummeted 27.4%. This brings an overall nine-month loss
for broadcast TV to 15.7%, at $28.9 billion. The big three
categories continue to show declines in the third quarter:
automotive, down 49.8%; communications/telecommunications, off
22.3%; and restaurants, cutting back 14.8%.
===========================
Survey says consumers are ready for more
3-D experiences
Half of the participants in a new study about 3-D TV said they were
interested in watching 3-D at home. The study, from Quixel Research,
also found that almost 80% already have watched content in 3-D, that
most would be willing to switch their content provider to get more 3-D
programming and that a majority of consumers are willing to pay for 3-D
glasses.
===============================
As the economy recovers and advertising budgets start to increase in
2010, the ad industry will continue to see a shift in dollars spent
from offline traditional advertising on to online, such as display,
search and rich media.
While that alone might not shake the earth under your feet,
Jeremy Liew, managing director at Lightspeed Venture Partners, a
Menlo Park, Calif. venture capital firm, believes the increase will
create a "double uplift" for online advertising. "It's time we saw
that uplift take effect," he says.
That uplift comes from companies increasing their share of online
advertising in 2009, although overall budgets remained low. That
will change in 2010. Then in 2011 and 2012, the trend will continue
with overall budgets increasing, but more of it will go to online.
==================================
SEOUL (Reuters) - LG Electronics Inc, the world's No. 2 TV brand by
revenue, set an aggressive sales target for 3D televisions, aiming
to build a leadership position in an emerging market where
competition is expected to heat up.
Digital 3D TVs, which use double layered images and special
glasses to trick viewers into seeing 3D, are set to become the next
battlefield for top TV makers, including Samsung Electronics, LG and
Japanese rivals Sony Corp and Panasonic Corp.
LG aimed to sell 400,000 3D TVs in 2010 and 3.4 million in 2011,
the South Korean company said at a news conference on Tuesday.
It plans to unveil a full line-up of 3D TV models with new
technology improvement in the second half of next year, targeting
retail consumers. LG currently offers one 47-inch 3D TV, which is
sold mostly to businesses due to a high price tag.
=======================================Watching online videos on sites like YouTube is more prevalent than the use
of social networking sites -- 46% of adult Internet users are active on such
sites; podcast downloading -- 19% of Internet users do this; and the use of
microblogging sites like Twitter -- 11% of Internet users do this.
Young adults continue to lead the adoption curve in online video viewing.
Nine in 10 Internet users ages 18-29 use video-sharing sites, up from 72% one
year ago. On a typical day in 2009, 36% of young adult Internet users watched
video on these sites, compared with just 30% in 2008. Online adults ages 30-49
also showed big gains over the past year; 67% now use video-sharing sites, up
from 57% in 2008. Y ahoo.com 09 news
==========================
Nielsen Tuesday announced a decision and a
plan to formally integrate viewing of online video content into its
national TV ratings, effectively making the Internet a new television
platform as far as the TV advertising marketplace is concerned. Calling
the concept "extended screen" measurement, the move is akin to the
expansion of the TV universe that occurred when Nielsen first began
measuring other TV viewing platforms such as cable TV in the 1980s, or
national syndicated television, unwired TV networks and Hispanic
television as part of a single national TV ratings sample, and the
reports that emanate from it.
======================================
As predicted, now that Vivendi has agreed to sell its 20% stake
in NBC Universal for $5.8 billion, the deal for cable corp. Comcast
to acquire NBC Universal from GE has gone through. Comcast would be
the sixth owner of Universal over the past two decades.
Comcast will pay $13.75 billion for a majority stake in a combined
entertainment entity to be run by NBCU chief Jeff Zucker.
====================================
Digital media business
models are improving for big, traditional media companies as they
learn to adapt, but they are still nowhere near the
golden days of analog media, and may never be again, Jeff Zucker,
CEO of NBC Universal said Monday during an annual briefing to Wall
Street analysts and journalists. "I think we're making progress,"
Zucker said during Monday's session of UBS' Media Week conference in
New York, amending what was perhaps his most famous quote of the
past couple of years: that new digital media models are converting
"analog dollars into digital dimes" for companies like NBC U.
Zucker said it's unlikely that big, legacy media companies such
as NBC U would ever approach the kind of revenues they derived from
analog media models, but he said they are improving their digital
media models, and continuing to "experiment with windows" of
distribution to find ones that are more profitable. Dec 2009
====================================
Facebook has crossed the 100-million-user mark in the
U.S. a week after announcing it had surpassed 350 million members
worldwide. That's a nice round audience figure to present to
advertisers in the market representing the bulk of its revenue.
The social network today hit 100.5 million U.S. users Monday --
up from 98.1 million a week ago, and has averaged a few million new
domestic users over most of the last year, according to Inside
Facebook. That makes the U.S. the first country to reach the 100
million threshold, although 70% of Facebook's monthly active users
live elsewhere.
Last month, comScore estimated Facebook's U.S. audience in
October at 97.4 million unique visitors -- well ahead of the 82.9
million for Fox Interactive Media, whose chief property is MySpace.
Facebook eclipsed its social networking rival in U.S. traffic in
May, according to comScore.
====================================
Ad spending in the U.S. media measured by
TNS Media Intelligence declined 14.7% during the first nine months
of 2009, and the most recent data -- a 15.3% decline during the
third quarter -- suggests that Madison Avenue has yet to pull itself
out of recession. According to TNS MI's estimates, the third quarter
of 2009 marks the sixth consecutive quarter of year-over-year ad
spending declines.
Among the major media, Internet display advertising continues to
be among the only ones showing positive momentum. Online display ad
spending expanded 7.0% during the first nine months, which along
with newspaper FSIs (+3.9%) were the only media to show any
increases this year.
Mediapost.com
December 2009
==================================== Anita
Bezjak: There has been a marked increase in demand for factual
programming but I think that's mainly because 'factual' has
broadened beyond just meaning documentaries. Today genres such as
lifestyle, infotainment, docusoap and game shows all sit under the
fact-ent banner and there's an increasing appetite for programming
where the information or value add is embedded organically. Strong
characters and story lines, authentic scenarios and access all
continue to dominate broadcaster wish lists.
Has the potential for multi-platform distribution of a title
impacted storylines, budgets, etc. in a considerable way? Are you
thinking more of titles that can be spread across platforms or is it
a case of, 'It's nice if it happens, but...'?
Richard Shaw: 360 isn't a passing phenomenon, it's real
and it's going to become more and more important in the future in
the UK. For companies like Lion who have a highly developed digital
component it's central to our development thinking because of who we
work with. We're also regularly handling the digital elements of
commissions where the linear telly is being made by our competitors.
Plus web-native projects are going to blossom in the next few years.
If you don't have multi-channel, multi-platform content at the heart
of your development in the UK you're going to be left behind when it
comes to standing out from the crowd and grabbing a commissioner's
attention. This means web-original content and yes, sometimes it
even impacts what's on screen.
===================================
Web 2.0
Attracts Much More Venture Capital Than Any Other Industry
Martes, 20 octubre 2009
M. AMIGOT, IBLNEWS
Venture capital investing
might be bouncing back, but the latest numbers from Dow
Jones Venture Source are
a bit disappointing. VC invested $5.1 billion in 616 deals
during Q3. That's down 38 percent from the $8.2 billion invested
during the same period last year, a drop anyone would expect.
Looking closer at the numbers, a
good news for our Internet industry. IT, or information
technology, is the top spot when attracting
money. Last year it was overshadowed by health care, but
now leads the VC attention.
And within that IT umbrella, Web 2.0 investments not only are
continuing but in fact they beat traditional software
investments for the first time. VentursSource says Web 2.0 deals
improved 11 percent from last year, for a total of $627 million
in 86 deals.
========================================
No Rest for the Dreary: Newspaper Revs Fall 28%
The economy may have rallied in the
third quarter, but the newspaper industry did not, as total
advertising revenues -- including print and online -- tumbled
28%, from roughly $10.1 billion in the third quarter of 2008 to
about $6.4 billion this year. The third-quarter loss is on par
with first and second-quarter declines of 28.3% and 29%,
respectively.
As in previous quarters, losses were spread evenly across all
the main newspaper advertising categories -- including national,
down 29.8%, retail, down 24%, and classifieds, down 37.9%.
National advertising in particular reached a discouraging
milestone in the third quarter, with total revenues falling
below $1 billion (to $956 million). That's the first time since
the third quarter of 1995.
====================================
During the keynote at OMMA Video in Los Angeles Friday, Ross
Levinsohn, general partner for Fuse Capital, reminisced about a
dinner meeting with executives just four years ago who had hoped
"the whole digital thing would just go away." Advertisers are
starting to spend money across several platforms, including
video.
About 10 million people worldwide watched the U2
concert on YouTube Sunday night, he says.
As media consumption continues to change, Levinsohn predicts
that 2010 will be the year that video breaks through and becomes
part of the mainstream advertising media buy. Supporting the
prediction with stats from YouTube, Hulu, eMarketer, Yankee
Group and others, he says YouTube streams about 1.2 billion
videos per day worldwide. Hulu streams about 488 million monthly
video streams. About 26% of the U.S. Internet audience streamed
a full-length TV show in August. The average consumer watches
about 157 videos per month, he says, citing comScore.
Connected televisions will become the Messiah and push video
over the edge. You will have the ability to sit on the couch and
tap into any content anywhere in the world. More than 30 million
Blu-ray players will be in the market by 2013, as well as 50
million connected televisions, according to the Yankee Group.
|
|
Online distribution pulls ahead of film
Digital disrupts entertainment consumption model
Variety.com Feb 09
The entertainment biz will remember 2008 as the year when
global revenues from digital media exceeded revenue generated by movie theaters
and home video combined. In its "Global Media & Entertainment Market Forecast,
2004 - 2012," London research firm Strategy Analytics reported that online and
mobile channels accounted for $90 billion in worldwide revenues; the global
filmed entertainment market generated $83.1 billion.
"We're starting to see now that digital media is becoming a
significant part of revenue for a lot of companies," says Strategy Analytics
director of digital media research Martin Olausson. "A few years back, everyone
was still discussing whether movies would be distributed online. That's not a
discussion anymore."
Broadband downloading and streaming, terrestrial and cable
video-on-demand (VOD), and mobile platforms are now all ways to watch
entertainment content, from feature films and TV shows to
made-for-Internet/mobile programming.
Strategy Analytics' astonishing numbers imply that digital
distribution may have already won the day. Schaeffler says. "Technology makes digital
distribution very desirable, and the forthcoming generations will demand it."
---------------------------------------------------
Comcast Corp.'s chief operating officer, Steve Burke, issued
a warning to those content providers who sit by idly and complain
about online viewing without doing something to change the TV
business model. "An entire generation is growing up, if we
don't figure out how to change that behavior so it respects
copyright and subscription revenue on the part of distributors,
we're going to wake up and see cord cutting."
He said the current OnDemand Online trial - offering viewers access
to cable channel shows in exchange for identifying themselves as
subscribers - was not an effort to "change the advertising model or
get a minute back from content providers," rather it is a way to
"get in front of the biggest social movement I've ever seen. Online
video consumption is off the charts."
Previously cable operators have played down the extent of cord
cutting and some Wall Street analysts say they've seen little real
evidence of a supposed phenomenon that has subscribers canceling
their cable subscription to watch online for free.
Speaking at the CTAM cable marketing convention in Denver, Colorado
on October 25, Burke described his fears if the industry does not
move ahead to form new
business models. The industry-wide TV Everywhere
authentication project is a way to try to "take the cable industry
and put it ahead of the internet and try to not let it roll ahead of
our industry," he said. Burke also illustrated some frustration
with those in the business who were not lending
a hand.
---------------------------------------------------
MediaVest, which represents clients such as Procter & Gamble,
said it has shifted millions of dollars that were traditionally
earmarked for broadcast TV to online video hub Hulu.com. The
upfront-style deal gives the agency inventory across the site, which
includes clips from "Saturday Night Live," full episodes of cable
and network shows and films.
MediaVest said the deal covers multiple clients, while allowing for
demographic targeting.
The deal also provides MediaVest with opportunities for "custom
research," based on Hulu audience behavior. The agency said this is
intended to provide insight into online video's effectiveness as an
ad medium in general, as well as determining what kinds of messaging
work best for specific user segments.
"Smarter targeting, expanded metrics and the opportunity to test
new ad experiences and their effectiveness -- these are all critical
ingredients for unlocking the full potential of online video and key
drivers of this partnership," says Amanda Richman, executive vice
president of digital operations at MediaVest.
In this case, transferring broadcast dollars to online likely
will not mean lost revenues for major media companies. Co-owners of
Hulu -- NBC Universal, Disney and News Corp. -- also own networks,
so the deal may simply amount to shifting dollars from one division
into another under their corporate umbrellas.
=============================
Online video watching on the rise
South Florida Business Journal
Americans are spending a lot of time watching videos on
their computers.
ComScore,
a Va.-based company that keeps track of the digital world,
found that
U.S.
Internet users viewed 16.8 billion online videos in April,
that’s up 16 percent from March.
Google
sites ranked as the top site for videos, with 6.8 billion
videos viewed.
Fox Interactive Media ranked second, with 513 million
videos, followed by
Hulu,
with 397 million, and
Yahoo,
with 355 million.
Among other findings:
- 78.6 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience
viewed online video.
- The average online video viewer watched 385 minutes,
or 6.4 hours, of video.
- 107.1 million viewers watched 6.8 billion videos on
YouTube.com (63.5 videos per viewer).
- 49 million viewers watched 387 million videos on
MySpace.com (7.9 videos per viewer).
- Hulu accounted for 2.4 percent of videos viewed, but
4.2 percent of all minutes spent watching online video.
- The duration of the average online video was 3.5
minutes.
==================================================
Wal-Mart Scales Back DVD Displays
A recent shift in merchandising strategy by the world's largest
retailer spells more trouble for DVD sales and the entertainment
industry that depends on them for profits. As part of a larger
effort to clean up its aisles and appeal to higher-end shoppers, Wal-Mart
Stores Inc. is doing
away with display cases to promote the latest hot movie titles.
The move comes as major film studios are reeling from declines in
revenue from DVD sales as cash-strapped consumers turn to low-cost
rental services and digital downloads for home movies "We
think the new strategy implies Wal-Mart no longer sees DVDs and Blu-ray
discs as traffic drivers," J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan said.
Studio chiefs dispute that conclusion, noting the importance of DVDs
as a sales category for Wal-Mart, but none would speak publicly for
this story.
Wal-Mart, which accounts for nearly a third of DVD retail sales
in the U.S., didn't respond to inquiries for comment.
The change to its DVD selling strategy is part of a larger
merchandising overhaul the company calls "Project Impact," in which
it has been devoting more shelf space to top-selling products and
cutting back on items that linger. The discount giant also is trying
to spruce up its image and cut back on clutter in its aisles, like
corrugated displays for DVDs, in hopes that it can attract a more
upscale shopper.
As for DVDs, the Digital Entertainment Group estimates that overall
U.S. retail sales fell 13.5% to $5.4 billion during the first half
of 2009. At the same time, DVD rentals rose by 8.3% to $3.4 billion.
Digital sales and rentals from services like Amazon.com Inc.
and Apple Inc.'s
iTunes rose 21% to $968 million.
Video on-demand revenue from pay-TV service providers, like Comcast Corp.,
is also rising. Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury says the company
served 368 million total views on its VOD platform in July, up 11%
from last year.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125470337132563199.html?mod=dist_smartbrief
------------------------------------------------
OUR FILM FESTIVAL ANDTHE AMAZON.COM/WITHOUTABOX/IMDB.COM
CONNECT
Amazon’s IMDB Buys Indie Film Site Withoutabox
The Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), the Web's most comprehensive and authoritative source of information on movies, TV, and celebrities and a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), today announced it has agreed to acquire Without A Box, Inc.withoutabox.com), the worldwide media company dedicated to advancing independent film and connecting artists with audiences.
Co-founded in 2000 by David Straus and Joe Neulight, Withoutabox empowers all stakeholders in the independent film arena, from aspiring and established filmmakers to film festival organizers and audiences. For independent filmmakers, Withoutabox offers a fully integrated service for submitting films to festivals worldwide and promoting these films directly to fans everywhere. For film festival organizers, Withoutabox provides tools to manage and promote film festivals online.
WE
HAVE MEMBERSHIP AND AFFILIATIONS WITH ALL 3 OF THESE BIGGIES...
"TV will be
based on the Internet; it will be an utterly different thing."
Bill Gates told Capitol Hill March 13,
2008
In December 2008, CBS Corp.'s chief executive, Leslie Moonves,
told an investor conference that moving the CBS network to cable would be "a
very interesting proposition." Two days earlier, Jeff Zucker, chief executive of
General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal, warned more broadly that the entire
broadcast-TV model must change. "Otherwise it will be like the newspaper
business or the car business," he told investors.
=============================
Mad Ave. To Wall St.: Things Are Looking Up, Especially For Web,
Cable TV
A survey of big media buyers indicates that their second half ad
spending plans have improved markedly from the first half of the
year, and that online media and cable TV are the major
beneficiaries. The findings, based on a poll of 20 agency media
executives representing $1.6 billion in annual ad spending that was
conducted by the equities research team at J.P. Morgan, projects the
pattern of improvement, and the flow of ad spending share to online
and cable TV, will likely continue through 2010."The biggest
winners in market share shifts have been cable and the Internet,"
the Wall Street analysts wrote. "Although ad spend on broadcast
network TV and cable TV still dominate other forms of advertising at
52.9% of budgets, our media buyers/planners expect the most growth
in cable and Internet spend. Internet ad spend (including search,
display, email, and other forms) in 2010 is expected to account for
29.0% of budgets, respectively, vs. a 25.8% share in 2009. Cable ad
spend is also expected to see upside with ad buyers/planners
expecting to spend 26.2% of their budget there in 2010 vs. 24.5% in
2009. mediapost.com Oct 09
-------------------------------------------
That's because only the device manufacturers have the ability to
tightly integrate mobile social features with a phone's core
communication services including voice, SMS text messaging and an
address book. The potential for social networks in partnering with
phone makers is "enormous," according to Forrester.
"Mobile phones' convenience, improving cameras and location
awareness will make the mobile phone the dominant media creation
device of the future," states the report titled "How Mobile Handsets
Will Deliver 24x7 Social Computing."
The study emphasizes that mobile is not simply a way for social
networks to extend their Internet strategies, but offers unique
features like GPS, touchscreens, video-recording and mexa-pixel
cameras that don't factor in on the PC based-Web.
mediapost.com
===========================
In the last six months, Americans have started watching far more
movies and TV via Internet streaming -
especially young adults aged 18 to 24.
A new
study from
media analysis firm Ipsos
MediaCT finds
that Americans are watching more television and movies via Internet
streaming than ever before—and the numbers have increased radically
in just the last six months. But what's perhaps more surprising is
how young adults have taken to Internet-based vide entertainment:
the study finds that 30 percent of adults aged 18 to 24 have watched
a full length movie online in the last 30 days—and over half (51
percent) have streamed a full-length TV show in the same time
period.
Overall, Ipsos MediaCT found that 26 percent of Americans have
streamed on online television show in the last 30 days, and 14
percent have streamed a full-length movie. Those numbers are more
than double the figures tallied for September 2008. Ipsos attributes
the uptick to the growth of video streaming Web sites, in particular Hulu,
which has made progress in offering free, ad-supported content.
"The digital video revolution is no longer centered on short clips
via YouTube; it is becoming an important distribution channel where
any type of full-length video can be instantly accessed for
immediate consumption without a fee," said Ipsos MediaCT's senior
research manager Brian Pickens, in a statement.
------------------------------------------
Americans are spending a lot of time watching videos
on their computers.
ComScore,
a Va.-based company that keeps track of the digital world, found
that U.S. Internet users
viewed 16.8 billion online videos in April, that’s up 16 percent
from March.
Google
sites ranked as the top site for videos, with 6.8 billion videos
viewed.
Fox Interactive Media ranked second, with 513 million videos,
followed by Hulu,
with 397 million, and
Yahoo,
with 355 million.
Among other findings:
- 78.6 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed
online video.
- The average online video viewer watched 385 minutes, or 6.4
hours, of video.
- 107.1 million viewers watched 6.8 billion videos on
YouTube.com
(63.5 videos per viewer).
- 49 million viewers watched 387 million videos on
MySpace.com
(7.9 videos per viewer).
- Hulu accounted for 2.4 percent of videos viewed, but 4.2
percent of all minutes spent watching online video.
- The duration of the average online video was 3.5 minutes.
------------------------------------
Internet
Protocol-driven television future to leveraging Web services to
better predict or influence actual television viewership is being
considered as a tool...
-----------------------------------
European digital screen base grows by 70% in 2008
Digital cinema is
gaining ground in Europe. According to recent figures provided by
MEDIA Salles, the number of digital screens equipped with DLP Cinema
or Sony 4K technology increased during 2008 by 70% to 1 529
digital screens as of 1 January 2009. The European Audiovisual
Observatory estimates that between 4 and 5% of all European screens
had been converted to digital by the end of 2008. The number of
theatres equipped with at least one digital screen grew to 815
sites, up 48% from 2007.
By the end of
2008 each European digital theatre operated on average 1.9 digital
screens, compared to 1.6 in the previous year. This indicates that
exhibitors are increasingly opting to convert more than one screen
to digital in their theatres in order to enable digital screening
along a film’s commercial life cycle and to guarantee the
flexibility to react to changes in demand.
MEDIA Salles also
reports 3D as a major driver stimulating conversion to digital. This
would appear to be particularly true for Italy where, according to
the local trade press, Journey to the Centre of the Earth opened on
just 42 3D screens in January while Monsters and Aliens was released
on a total of 102 3D screens in April 2009.
SEE MORE
---------------------------------------
According to the latest ChangeWave survey of business
professionals between the ages of 45 and 63 on
TV viewing habits vs. home Internet usage, these
Boomers spend
more free time online than they do watching traditional TV. And, by
a five-to-one margin, Boomers are watching less traditional
television than they did a year ago. Among this group, 62% say it's
because they're not as interested in what's on TV these days, and
another 26% say they're spending more time surfing the web.
Among traditional TV viewers, 20% say they're likely to downgrade
or cancel their
current TV service package in the next 6 months. The
likelihood of canceling is highest among Cable subscribers (22%) and
Satellite subscribers (22%), and lowest among fiber-optic TV
subscribers (7%).
TV Service appears most vulnerable, scoring significantly worse
than any other subscription service, when Boomer respondents were
asked which one paid subscription they'd be most willing to give up.
In addition, according to the study, video-over-the-Internet now
clearly represents a significant threat to traditional TV viewing:
- 69% of Boomers say they've watched video content on their
computer over the past 90 days
- 48% of respondents say they'd be willing to pay a monthly
fee for a Video-over-the-Internet subscription if it provided
the same programming currently available on their TV service
- 79% watch
YouTube.com as the leading online website Boomers use to
watch video
- 39% TV Network Websites
- 16% Hulu.com
- 11% iTunes
------------------------------------
Hulu Eyes More Live Content
Dave Matthews
concert to stream live on June 1
Hulu, home to a growing library of on-demand TV
programming, is seeking to add more live content to its menu.
The site, a joint venture between News Corp, NBC Universal and
Disney, will on June 1 stream a live Dave Mathews Band concert
from the Beacon Theatre in New York from 9:00 -11:30 p.m. EST.
The live-on-the-Web concert is being timed to promote the band’s
upcoming new album Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, which is
scheduled to be released June 2.
The live event represents something of a departure for Hulu,
which primarily offers full episodes of current and classic
network TV shows, along with full-length movies. (The site did
stream President Barack Obama’s inauguration live in January.)
Besides the concert, Hulu will begin offering various Dave
Matthews videos on May 28, as well as the documentary Scenes
from Big Whiskey, which chronicles the making of the band’s new
album. The June 1 concert will also be available to viewers on
demand following the live show.
----------------------------------------
Cable
Curtailers Inclined To Watch Net Video On TV: Survey
Pew
Survey Finds Consumers Who Cut or Cancel Pay TV More Likely to
Connect PC To Television
Todd
Spangler -- Multichannel News,
Americans who have cut back or canceled pay-TV service are more
likely to have "rerouted" online video to TV screens than the
general population, according to a survey by the Pew Research
Center's Internet & American Life Project. Overall, about 35% of
Internet users have watched TV shows or movies online. Of that
group, 23% said they have connected their PC to a TV set to watch it
on a bigger screen (which amounts to about 8% of all Internet
users).
But among consumers who said they have canceled or cut back
pay-TV, 32% have connected their computer to their televisions to
watch Internet video. According to the Pew April survey, 22% of U.S.
adults said they have dropped or cut back TV service in the last 12
months. "As Internet users become accustomed to regular on-demand
video viewing online, many are choosing to watch from the comfort of
their couch," Pew Internet senior research specialist Mary Madden
wrote in a report released Wednesday.
--------------------------------------
Despite the global economic recession's drag on
advertising budgets, the growth in online ad spending appears to be defying
expectations, and is expanding at double-digit rates, according to the latest
quarterly forecast from Publicis' ZenithOptimedia Group. The agency estimates
that Internet ad spending will expand 10.1% in 2009, an increase of more than
1.5 percentage points over its last forecast in April.
"Its familiar virtues of transparency, accountability and flexibility have
proved even more attractive in a recession than ever," the Publicis shop writes
in the new report, released early Monday morning.
Based on current trends, the agency projects Internet ad spending will rise
to $56.8 billion this year, or 12.6% of the global advertising economy. That
means the Internet will pick up more than two points of worldwide advertising
share, this year, and its momentum is only expected to accelerate.
---------------------- --------------
iTunes DIGITAL Sales Lift Three Acts To The
Billboard 200
The first three sales weeks of January yielded a striking trend on
the Billboard 200: Each week, an emerging act's new album charted
based solely on digital sales.
Thanks to favorable home-page exposure at the iTunes Music Store,
free downloads, attractive pricing and a traditionally slow sales
period, up-and-coming acts Erin McCarley, Company of Thieves and the
Boxer Rebellion each debuted on the big chart.
-----------------------------------
Digital video and audio
cables, similar to the ones that already connect TVs to
DVD players, cable boxes and receivers,
will soon come with a new capability: connecting those devices to
the Internet.
Manufacturers said Thursday that version 1.4 of the HDMI
standard, for High-Definition Multimedia Interface, includes a data
networking feature. That means that a set-top box that connects to
the Internet could share its connection with other devices in the
entertainment center, for easier access to Web video, e-mail and
news, says Steve Venuti, president and CEO of HDMI Licensing.
Devices with HDMI 1.4 ports could show up in small numbers before
the holidays, and in larger volumes early next year, the group said.
New cables will be needed to take advantage of the networking
feature.
-----------------------------------------------
News Corp. chairman
Rupert Murdoch said on Thursday that the future of newspapers is
digitalMurdoch, in an interview with the N ews
Corp.-owned Fox Business Network, also said that newspapers, faced
with eroding print advertising revenue and circulation, are going to
have to start charging readers on the Web. The News Corp. chief said
newspapers in the future will continue to make money "from our
readers, from our advertisers (but) the newspapers may look very
different.
"Instead of an analog paper printed on paper you may get it on a
panel which would be mobile, which will receive the whole newspaper
over the air, (and) be updated every hour or two," he said. "You'll
be able to get the guts or the main headlines and alerts and
everything on your Blackberry, on your
palm or whatever, all day long.
--------------------------------------
RAB: Ad Revenues Fall 24% In 1Q
Total radio advertising revenue
declined 24% in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same
period in 2008, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau, which
released the figures Thursday afternoon. Total revenues amounted to
just over $3.4 billion -- a drop of over $1 billion from the first
quarter of last year, when they amounted to about $4.5 billion.
The precipitous drop suggests that further declines are on the
way, as the radio business reels from the same recessionary trends
that are affecting most other parts of the media.
On the positive side, radio's digital revenues are still growing,
increasing 13% in the first quarter to $101 million. But clearly,
digital is still a very small part of radio's bottom line,
representing just 3% of total quarterly revenues.
-----------------------------------------------------
Limelight Networks® Acquires Mobility and
Monetization Innovator Kiptronic, Inc.
Tempe, AZ – 21 May 2009 – Limelight Networks, Inc. today
announced the acquisition of Kiptronic, Inc., a privately-held
provider of dynamic solutions for device-optimized content delivery
and monetization.
“A sweeping change in consumer behavior is driving a migration of
media consumption from the PC to a wider variety of
Internet-connected and mobile devices. Today, the distribution and
monetization of content on these devices is complex and difficult to
implement in a scalable fashion. The combination of Limelight
Networks’ distributed computing and delivery platform with
Kiptronic’s device-targeting and dynamic ad insertion technologies
will allow us to provide the world’s largest media and entertainment
companies a streamlined and scalable solution to this problem,” said
Jeff Lunsford, chairman and chief executive officer, Limelight
Networks, Inc. “We look forward to working with the talented
Kiptronic team to bring to market additional innovative solutions
for mobile and connected devices that will benefit our customers and
our ecosystem partners.”
----------------------------------------------------
I Want My Web TV, Customers Say
Internet-enabled TV may be only now coming into its own as a
technology, but customers are already showing a great deal of
interest in such products. That's the conclusion of a study released
this week by the Consumer Electronics Association.
According to the study, titled "Net-Enabled Video: Early Adopters
Only?," 14.5 million consumers are considering purchasing an
Internet-capable TV in the next 12 months. This amounts to "about
half" of the potential audience. "As we saw at the 2009
International CES, Internet-enabled devices are taking the consumer
technology experience to the next level, and nowhere is this more
pronounced than with television," CEA's economist and director of
research, Shawn DuBravac, said as part of the announcement.
"Consumers want more from their TV experience and marrying
traditional television with Internet access is providing the next
frontier of the television experience."
myCEA.CE.org
--------------------------------------------------------
Google challenged by new rival with all the answers - Wolfram Alpha
A revolutionary new search engine that computes answers rather
than pointing to websites will be launched officially today amid
heated talk that it could challenge the might of Google.
Wolfram Alpha, named after Stephen Wolfram, the British-born
computer scientist and inventor behind the project, takes a query
and uses computational power to crunch through huge databases.
The service can compute the distance between two cities, the
population of a country at a specific date and the position of the
Space Shuttle at a given moment. The user does not have to search
through links provided by the engine; the answer comes immediately
and, if appropriate, is accompanied by charts or graphs. What it
does that Google, at the moment, cannot do is provide answers to
questions that have not been answered already.
=========================================
The Sorry State Of Broadband
In 2000, the U.S. ranked 5th worldwide in broadband penetration,
with 2.5 broadband lines per 100 residents. At the time, the No. 1
country was
South Korea, with 8.4% penetration. By 2007, however,
the U.S. had slipped to 22nd place, with 21.5 broadband lines per
100 residents, lagging behind countries such as
Bermuda (36.7), South Korea (30.6) and
Japan (22.5).
Those stats were compiled by Free Press for its new 123-page
report
examining the current state of broadband in the U.S.
Not only do penetration rates lag, but service in America is also
more expensive and slower than in many other countries. The average
U.S. price is $53 per month -- more expensive than in 21 other
countries -- while average advertised download speed is 8.9 Mbps,
slower than 13 others. By comparison,
Finland offers
the cheapest service at $31 a month (with advertised
download speeds of 13 Mbps), while the fastest country is
Japan, with an average advertised downstream of 93.7 Mbps (for $34 a
month).
What accounts for this situation? Free Press says "massive policy
failures" of the last eight years are to blame.
Among others, the broadband advocacy group points to a decision by
regulators (later upheld by the
U.S. Supreme Court)
to classify broadband as an "information service" rather than a
communications service. That move meant that
ISPs no longer had to offer wholesale broadband to
competitors -- which dealt "an immediate blow to third-party ISPs
like Earthlink that relied on reasonable wholesale rates" and
"ensured that U.S. consumers would be at the mercy of a duopoly
marketplace," the report states.
------------------------------------------------------
NEW YORK
Viewers are looking for laughs on their iPhones and
Blackberrys, according to a new study from the Nielsen Co.
Comedy is the top category in mobile video viewing, per the Mobile
Video Report, a quarterly study that measures mobile subscribers who
view TV or video clips on their cell phones, Blackberrys and other
mobile devices. Drawing from a sample of 3,348 viewers,
the report finds that after comedy, weather ranked as the second
highest video category, with sports, music and news/finance filling
out the top five.
Mobile viewing is quickly growing in popularity, with a 20
percent increase in viewership since last quarter’s study. More than
60 percent of those watching video on their mobile devices are below
the age of 35, with 70 percent within the significant 18-49
demographic.
NBC took the top spot in the brand ranking
(with a 40.1 percent share of viewers), followed by Fox (38.3
percent) and
MTV Networks (32.9 percent).
YouTube ranked
fourth in the brand rankings, but came in at the top of the channel
rankings (29.4 percent), followed by the
Weather Channel
(28.9 percent), Fox (27.2 percent) and
Comedy Central (25.8 percent).
Viewers watch mobile
videos for an average 13 sessions each month, at about 15 minutes
per session. Teens under the age of 18 watch significantly more,
averaging 20 minutes
each session for 22 mobile sessions each month.
------------------------------------------------
Social Networking Generates Leads, Closes Sales for
Marketers According to a social media study by Michael Stelzner for the
Social Media Success Summit 2009, 88% of marketers in a recent
survey say they are now using some form of social media to
market their business, though 72% of those using it say they
have only been at it a few months or less.
| Marketer's Use of
Social Media Tools |
| Social Media |
% Respondents Using |
|
Twitter |
86% |
| Blogs |
79 |
|
Linkedin |
78 |
|
Facebook |
77 |
|
YouTube
or other video |
41 |
| Social bookmark sites |
38 |
| Forums |
38 |
|
StumbleUpon |
28 |
|
Digg,
Reddit or similar |
26 |
| FriendFeed |
18 |
| Source: Social
Media
Marketing Industry Report, March 2009 |
Amazon Posts Profit Gains as Offline Rivals Struggle
Amazon.com has joined Apple among the ranks of technology firms
that are still growing robustly despite a shrinking economy.
Amazon, the online retailer based in Seattle, posted
stronger-than-expected earnings during the slow winter months,
attracting cost-conscious consumers with offers of free shipping
and competitive prices for its wide variety of products. Amazon’s net profit rose 24 percent, to $177 million, or 41
cents a share, in the quarter ending March 31, up from $143
million, or 34 cents a share, in the same quarter a year
earlier. The company’s first-quarter revenue climbed 18 percent,
to $4.89 billion, slightly surpassing Wall Street’s
expectations. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters on average had
expected $4.76 billion in revenue.
Some analysts say Amazon has benefited from the downturn,
with struggles at the Borders book chain, the bankruptcy of
Circuit City and turbulence at a rival, eBay, all driving
traffic to Amazon.com. The company said its electronics and
general merchandise sales were up 38 percent, while media sales
rose 7 percent.
“Brick-and-mortar companies are going bankrupt and going out
of business altogether and that is helping Amazon gain market
share,” said Imran Khan, an analyst at JPMorgan.
------------------------------------------
Recession forces new focus
in e-commerce marketing
AP RETAIL WRITER
NEW YORK --
Online retailers are
shifting their marketing from traditional advertising to less
expensive tools like Facebook.com and Twitter and e-mail as they
seek market share or just work to retain customers, according to
an industry study being released Tuesday. Conducted by
Internet analysis firm Forrester Research for Shop.org - the
online arm of the trade group National Retail Federation - the
survey found that merchants believe online business is better
suited to withstand an economic downturn than physical stores or
catalogs, though they acknowledge challenges for both. The
study involved 117 online retailers polled between Feb. 18 and
April 1.
The companies, which Shop.org didn't name, reported scaling
back hiring and their increasingly expensive search marketing
programs, which include paying for top billing in the results
consumers see for their Web searches. Online merchants whose
business is beating expectations will likely fuel much of the
e-commerce investments in the coming months, the survey found.
"Online retailers want ... to be more efficient in getting a
bigger bang for the buck," said Scott Silverman, executive
director of Shop.org. Developing social media marketing requires
some investment in personnel, he said, but many merchants see
big opportunities to spread a positive message about their brand
for relatively low cost.
-----------------------------------------
More People Are
Using PCs to Time-Shift TV, Skip Ads
Mike Vorhaus on
Digital Communications
Published: May 04, 2009
Despite the level of buzz around ad skipping, not everyone owns a
DVR. Our research shows about one-third of online households have a
DVR (or think they do). But almost everyone owns a PC, and most of
those folks are online. So, actually, they do own a DVR, as a PC
with online video serves that purpose for many people. In our most recent Magid Media Futures online national study,
completed in April, we surveyed a national sample of U.S. consumers
and identified a sizable population that watches full-length TV
shows online.
The No. 1 reason these people watched TV shows online was to
catch up on shows and shift viewing to a more convenient time. The
only demographic groups that didn't care that much about catching
missed shows were the younger males -- all the other demographic
groups are mostly using online video to catch up or time shift.
Interestingly, another major reason consumers like watching shows
online is that there are fewer and shorter ads. We have confirmed
this in focus groups: Consumers think watching shows online is a
"good deal" in terms of fewer ads.
---------------------------------------------
Disney Buys Into Hulu
Count Disney in. The
Walt Disney Co.
is joining NBC Universal, News Corp. and
Providence Equity Partners as a
joint venture
partner and equity owner of the popular online video
aggregator Hulu.
The agreement is still subject to regulatory review, but once it
closes Disney will have three seats on the Hulu board.
-------------------------------------
MySpace And Fox Launch UReport
News Corp. brethren Fox News and MySpace on Monday co-launched a
citizen journalism platform named uReport through which MySpace
members can upload photos and videos to Fox News from a computer or
mobile device.
With the service, MySpace members can share content with other
members and become "uReporters" by uploading video and photos tagged
by specific categories, including news, entertainment, and politics.
The initiative is designed to create a larger and more engaged
audience for Fox and MySpace, according to Jeff Misenti, Fox News
vice president of digital. "The MySpace uReport community presents
an extraordinary opportunity to expand our network," he said.
Fox plans to feature select content in programming on Fox News
Channel and FoxNews.com, while its editors have full control of the
MySpace-uReport page.
-----------------------------------------
Online Video To Grow 32% In '09
Despite the economic downturn and its
inevitable strains on overall advertising expenditures, online video
is clearly holding up as a beacon of change and growth, according to
an online video forecast released Monday by Magna.
Magna -- a unit of Interpublic's Mediabrands division --
forecasts that the U.S. market for online video will grow by 32%
this year, rising from $531 million in 2008 to $699 million in 2009.
"While these figures represent downward revisions from our
forecast for the sector in the middle of last year -- prior to the
subsequent escalation of the recession -- these gains will likely
outpace growth rates for most other emerging media platforms," said
Brian Wieser, global director of forecasting for Magna, and author
of the report.
In total, by 2011, Magna expects online video to generate
slightly more than $1 billion in net advertising revenues for video
content. This represents a compounded annual growth rate of 36% for
each year between 2006 and 2011.
----------------------------------------
Facebook Now Twice The Size Of MySpace
Facebook is now nearly twice as big as its
closest rival, News Corp.'s MySpace, Michael Arrington reports. In
December, the social networking leader drew 222 million unique
users, according to comScore, at a 10.8% month over month gain. More
than 1 in 5 people who accessed the Internet in December went to
Facebook.
Arrington points out that Facebook now has nearly 100 million more
worldwide users than MySpace, which after adding 4 million new users
in December had 125 million members total. Facebook also had twice
the number of page views in December: 80 billion versus 43 billion
for MySpace. Arrington notes that only six months ago, the companies
were neck-in-neck.
----------------------------------- 
MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe will step down
as chief executive officer of the social- networking Web
site after falling behind rival Facebook Inc. A replacement
wasn’t named. DeWolfe will remain an adviser, Jonathan Miller, the
top digital officer for parent News Corp., said today in a
statement. MySpace President Tom Anderson is in talks with Miller
about a new role.
DeWolfe co-founded MySpace with Anderson in 2003 and ran the
ad-supported company for almost four years under Rupert Murdoch’s
News Corp. Former Facebook Chief Operating Officer Owen Van Natta is
likely to replace DeWolfe, the Wall Street Journal’s All Things D
Web site reported today. Facebook passed MySpace as the top
social-networking site last year.
“I don’t think advertising growth has reached their initial
expectations,” said Michael Morris, a New York-based analyst with
UBS AG. He rates News Corp. stock “neutral” and doesn’t own it. “The
initial hopes of the business probably haven’t been realized.”
April 22 (Bloomberg)
----------------------------------
NBC Universal witnessed
revenue and profitability declines in the first quarter.
Net profits sank 45% to $391 million in the first quarter ending
March 31, from $712 million in the previous period. Revenues slipped
2% to $3.52 billion, from $3.58 billion.
One bright spot: cable revenues at its networks -- USA, SyFy,
CNBC, and MSNBC -- continue to grow at a healthy rate.
"While cable continued to deliver double-digit growth, NBC
Universal had a tougher performance overall, due to a soft
advertising market and fewer major DVD releases compared to a year
ago," said chairman/ CEO Jeff Immelt of General Electric, NBC
Universal's owner, in a release.
------------------------------------
Yahoo has decided to shutter its free
GeoCities Web site hosting service later this year, the company
announced Thursday.
"We have decided to discontinue the process of allowing new
customers to sign up for GeoCities accounts as we focus on helping
our customers explore and build new relationships online in other
ways," Yahoo said in a statement posted on its help page.
The GeoCities help page advises current account users that they
can continue to use the service until the summer. "We'll provide
more details about closing GeoCities and how to save your site data
this summer, and we will update the help center with more details at
that time," the help page states. yahoo.com
Online video continues to
expand -- now up 40% versus the same levels a year ago.
Nielsen Online says March's 9.6 billion streams and 130 million
Web users are a 38.8% hike over March 2008. Total streams for
viewers during March were at an average 74.4 with the total time per
viewer, in terms of minutes, at over three hours per month -- 190.7
minutes.
Nielsen says the total time per viewer in March -- which includes
progressive downloads but excludes video advertising -- was up a big
12.6% versus February. This seems to suggest -- as other research
has found -- that users are watching longer-length videos. YouTube,
the big Internet video site, continues to dwarf the competition in
two big key areas -- 5.5 billion streams and 89.4 million unique
viewers.
Among streams, the next-biggest site after YouTube is hulu.com at
348.5 million. Yahoo comes after that at 231.8 million; Fox
Interaction Media (which includes MySpace)is 207.5 million;
Nickelodeon, 196.1 million; ABC.com, 176.9 million; MSN/Windows
Live, 168.9 million; Turner Sports/Entertainment, 137.6 million;
MTV, 123.8 million; and CNN, 103.5 million.
Among the unique viewers, Yahoo came in second at 24.8 million,
followed by Fox Interactive Media (which includes MySpace) at 14.7
million, and MSN/Windows Live at 12 million. CNN was next at 9.0
million; hulu.com, 8.9 million; ABC.com, 6.9 million; Nickelodeon,
6.4 million; MTV Networks, 6.3 million; and Turner
Sports/Entertainment at 5.8 million.
---------------------------------
HERE GOES BLOCKBUSTER...
Blockbuster Inc.'s auditors believe the Dallas-based movie
rental company might not be generating enough cash to fund its
operations, again raising the possibility Blockbuster might have to
file for bankruptcy reorganization.
In the PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP assessment released as part of
a financial filing, the auditors wrote that Blockbuster's financial
situation raises "substantial doubt about the Company's ability to
continue as a going concern" or viable business. The company had
warned investors last month that auditors were likely to raise those
concerns.
------------------------------------
Google Inc. launched free downloads of licensed
songs in China, while sharing advertising revenue with
major music labels in a market rife with online piracy.
Lee Kai-Fu, president of Google in greater China, said
one reason Google lagged in the mainland search market
was because it did not offer music downloads, the
missing
piece to its strategy in a market where it trails leader
Baidu.com Inc.
"We are offering free, high quality and legal
downloads,"
Lee told reporters. "We were missing one piece ... we
didn't
have music."
The service offers downloads of some 350,000 songs --
from Chinese and foreign artists -- a number that will
rise
to 1.1 million in the coming months, said Gary Chen,
chief
executive of Google's partner www.Top100.cn, a Chinese
music website
co-founded by basketball star Yao Ming.
|
|
-----------------------------------
Everyone On The Planet Tweeting?
Last week we noted that Twitter was going crazy and that we hadn't
even seen March's stats yet. Well now we have. Twitter more than doubled its US unique visitors in March.
That's right. Think back to four long weeks ago when you thought
that Twitter might have peaked and that everyone you knew had jumped
on the bandwagon. Well, now there are twice as many of those people.
9.3 million, in fact.
That means Twitter's growth has accelerated from 33% in January, to
55% in February and now 131% in March. At a growth rate of 131% a
month, literally every single person alive on the planet
will have a Twitter account by the end of this year.
----------------------------------
The Internet has surpassed newspapers as
the main source for national and international news for Americans, according to
a new survey. Forty percent said they get most of their news from the
Internet, up from 24 percent in September 2007, and more than the 35 percent who
cited newspapers as their main news source. AFP Dec. 2008
Online retailer
Amazon.com Inc on Friday
reported its best holiday sales season yet, even as sales and traffic at U.S.
store chains were the weakest in decades, sending its shares up nearly 4
percent. 12/27/08
Best Buy, the largest US consumer electronics retailer,
will launch an investment fund managed by former and current
News Corp internet veterans that will focus on digital media as
it seeks to expand beyond brick and mortar stores. The
retailer, which invested $2.1bn to launch a joint venture with
the UK’s Carphone Warehouse last year, purchased the Napster
online music subscription service in 2008 for $121m and aims to
invest deeper into the music, video, games and “personal media
management” businesses. “Best Buy has connectivity to hardware
and software manufacturers, (Hollywood) studios, DVDs and cell
phones,” said Ross Levinsohn, a partner at Velocity Interactive
Group, the venture capital firm that will help manage the new
fund.“When you think about the breadth in how they touch
consumers, their interest in digital media makes sense,” Mr
Levinsohn said.
--------------------------------------
Viewers 35+ Drive Long-Form Video Streaming
According to
Nielsen Online,
YouTube
continued to rank as the No. 1 video Web brand with 5.5 billion
total streams in April. Meanwhile, Hulu continued its explosive
growth, increasing 490 percent in total streams year-over-year,
from 63.2 million in April 2008 to 373.3 million in April 2009,
making it the fastest growing brand among the top 10
Jon Gibs, vice president, media & analytics, Nielsen Online,
said "Historically short form, clip-length video has ruled
streaming on the Web... Hulu, along with pure-play providers...
have spent the past two years trying to convince consumers that
the Internet can be a good place to watch full length
programming... April's strong showings... suggest that
consumers are beginning to listen."
------------------------------------------------------
February
U.S. television stations will complete their transition to an all
digital system. And with the transition comes great potential to increase
breadth and capacity of program and service offerings. Broadcasters, advertisers and programmers across all platforms are scrambling
to figure out
how their business will change on February 17, 2009. With this the Digital
Film Festival we will take you there.
---------------------------------------------------
ONLINE ADVERTISING
AD BIZ POISED TO ENTER NEW
FRONTIER--Advertising dollars that routinely would have gone to
broadcast TV in years past
are now going to cable and interactive television, the Internet and even
non-traditional approaches
like event marketing and public relations. "Cable was just coming
out, you
didn't have the Internet--today,
it's very, very difficult because the audience is so fragmented you can't
gather a large number of
bodies easily," said Burtch Drake, president of the American Assoc. of
Advertising Agencies.
And a move towards branded entertainment and product placement is the
industry's way of finding
new approaches to reach consumers...Media Vest's Desmond seea a new
landscape beginning to take
hold within the next 18 to 36 months. "The reality is that consumers
or
strategically based planning
decisions are going to do more to change the traditional TV marketplace
than anything we've seen
in the last 20 years," she said. New technologies like the Internet,
video on
demand and digital video
recorders are changing the TV business every day.
Shoot
Magazine 10/07
Not
surprising the Internet is seen as the bright light in this ultimately
mediocre advertising forecast. While newspapers, magazines and radio
advertising are expected to lose share, "Worldwide Internet ad spending
will climb to $44.6 billion from about $36 billion, increasing its share
of the market to 9.4% from 8.1%," according to the ZenithOptimedia
report.
Dec 07
www.mediapost.com
--------------------------------------------------------------
TV stations could see tougher times
if one research company's advice is heeded. BIGresearch, a Worthington,
Ohio-based consumer research company, says top automotive advertisers are
spending too much on TV compared to the influence that TV has with its
consumers. It says 17% to 18% of consumers are influenced by TV marketing--but
in aggregate, automotive makers spend 40% of their media on TV.
For example, Ford Motor had 41% of its media budget going to TV, according to
the researcher, with 18% of its consumers influenced by TV. All other media
spending figures show that Ford under-spends, compared to their influence.
BIGresearch says 16.5% of Ford's customers are influenced by newspapers, but
that Ford only spends 5.9% of its media on newspapers. With the Internet, 8.4% of Ford's consumers are swayed by Internet sites--but
Ford only gives that media 3.9% of its media dollars. Radio brings 6.7%
influence, but 1.5% of media spend. Outdoor sits at a 12% influence rate, but
Ford only gives it 1% of budget.
===============================================
The Internet
has opened up what is being called “The Wild Wild West” of TV and movies
again. It's almost like
the old hay-day of movie studios where anything goes. For all of us who
missed our chance the first
time around, by not being financially conscious of the possibilities, the
Internet reminds all of
us that everyday there are new possibilities and new opportunities.
Simply stated,
the Internet is the biggest business in the history of the world. It's
bigger than the movie
business, television
business, and record and radio business, and it is growing faster than
any of the
above and is
creating a paradigm shift in the way that people are entertained, the way they buy their
entertainment,
and purchase goods and services. Man is experiencing a cultural and
economic para-
digm shift.
History will continue to be written for then next few years. Now
that the dust has settled
on the Internet
front, we are seeing another huge growth period, especially in the online
music, film and
the purchasing
of these mediums go to the Internet in mass with pay per view, VOD, streaming,
and more.
WITH OUR
SPONSORSHIP PROGRAM
YOU CREATE
A RELATIONSHIP ECONOMY
Social media and
online communities are transforming traditional business functions, from
marketing and human resources to technical support. Through
user-generated content tools and engaging in conversations with their
people - employees, customers, partners, and prospects - companies are
learning that they can drive innovation, build brand awareness, and
energize their audiences and ultimately improve retention, revenue, and
their bottom line.
As you will see from the websites above in the
PRDFF INTERNETWORK,
many that are the top in social networking, we have established links
and pages with these, with each week the InterNetworking will
grow and grow. You
will be connected to a virtual world through network identities, groups,
and connections
to others.
BIG
+ FOR OUR SPONSORS IS THE FACTS
REGARDING DOCUMENTARIES:
VARITY MAGAZINE SAYS: The Film Festival
Summit has seen its attendance double every year
as orgs look to cash in on the festival
craze. The stakes are high and the payoff can be big.
Toronto's
Piers Handling says, "The festival brings
the kind of spending to the city of Toronto that is only bested by
Christmas."
HOLLYWOOD
REPORTER--REPORTS "DOCUMENTARIES HOT ITEMS AT SUNDANCE"
This years documentary
slate at the Sundance Festival, was according to many veteran attendees,
on of the strongest in
recent memory...This years edition of the country's premier festival of indepen-
dent film will be
remembered for documentaries, most of which will sind up on television in the
next
12 to 18 months.
USA TODAY REPORTS-- It is clear that Docs
are big, Documentaries that came out on DVD are
beginning to show up in theaters.
Hollywood is taking notice, and studios are scouring film festivals
for documentaries with breakout potential.
"Documentaries have arrived as a potent MOVIE force.
USA TODAY--There's definitely a sea of
change afoot both in the music and film industry. there may be
two parallel phenomena, but they are working
together very well...the reason is simple, audiences are
starved for quality music...Bob Smeaton,
director of FESTIVAL EXPRESS and THE BEATLES
ANTHOLOGY, If music lovers miss a film
in the theaters, and so many don't even make it there, he
says, they can still buy the DVD and get the
full length version in surround sound on home theater unit."
MUSICAL DOCUMENTARIES: A CRESCENDO OF FILMS, DVDs
THE SURGE OF INTEREST IN
DOCUMENTARY FILMS HAS TAKEN A TUNEFUL
TWIST AS FILMS ABOUT MUSICIANS
AS DIVERSE AS JANIS JOPLIN AND JQAY
ZARRIVE ON MOVIE SCREENS
AND ON DVD TO INCREASING ATTENTION FROM
MOVIE AND MUSIC FANS ALIKE...
MARCH 2008, BILLBOARD MAGAZINE HAD
SIX MOVIE SOUNDTRACKS IN THE
TOP 30 OF THE BILLBOARD TOP 200 Retreating somewhat from
earlier optimistic predictions, newspaper publishers and analysts now
say next year will probably be just as tough for the troubled industry
as 2007. With shareholders staking their hopes on a turnaround in 2008,
this is bad news for newspaper stocks--and may also torpedo major deals
like the planned buyout of
Tribune Co. by real estate billionaire Sam Zell.
Among Teens, a Content Creation Revolution
San Francisco Chronicle
Social networking sites are inciting more teens to create content
online. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, nearly
two-thirds of online teens have created something, from personal Web
pages to online videos. The study credits social networks like
MySpace and
Facebook with furthering the trend. More than half of the
survey's respondents said they have a social networking profile.
More
Gray, More Affluent, More Internet ShoppingIn the more than
80 metropolitan markets surveyed by Media Audit, a recent study shows
that those who are over age 50 with incomes of $50,000 or more (the
"graying and affluent") have increased from 17.0 million in 2004 to 22.3
million during the past five years. Collectively, the markets surveyed
have an adult population of approximately 142 million.
Bob Jordan, president of International Demographics, producer of The
Media Audit, said "Since 2004 the percentage of ‘graying and affluent'
households has increased from 13.1 percent to 15.7 percent of all
households in the markets (surveyed)... (and) this group is very rapidly
embracing the internet as a shopping medium."
In the prior survey, 50.2 percent had made at least one purchase on
the internet during the previous 12 months. In the latest survey, that
50.2 percent increased to 65.6 percent.
According to Jordan, "The baby-boomers, born between 1946 and 1964,
began impacting this segment of the population in 1996, and their impact
will continue to be felt through 2014."
USA Today in Feb. reported, "In tough times, nostalgia for rosier
days seems to be driving a consumer appetite for retro products and
design...Familiar is cozy, warm and enveloping. And it's working better than anything else right now."
Levi, Coca-Cola, Kodak, Volkswagen and many other brands are using nostalgia to market.
"A lot of brands are going back to their roots," says Karen Marderosian, marketing director
of Volkswagen, North America.
As we blaze at warp speed
into
The Information
Age the way that we are entertained and the way we
live and purchase goods
and services are changing right before our eyes, marketing and merchandising
can be a very exciting and
profitable game. We are actually experiencing a
paradigm
shift, while
it is
taking place, a very unique
wave to ride...edge to cut, future to create. It is what dreams are
made of,
or that spark that men like
Albert Einstein and Thomas A. Edison might have had some flash upon and
chance to ride as they created
inventions that would also change mankind before their eyes. It is
said
that there are a new breed
of producers that are right now be working in their garage and soon they
will
own and run the new entertainment
networks.
The
downside. "The retail stores and traditional distributors are on a path
to destruction," Leigh
says.
"The concept of a prepackaged CD is as dead as Gen. Custer."
LA Times reports
DVD sales can mint studios more money from a film's DVD release
than they do from the
box
office. Warner Bros. Home Video Chief, Warren Lieberfarb, says, "DVD
is the largest source of additional
revenue and profit ever created in entertainment in such a short period
of time." DVDs are
now being shipped
by studios at about twice last years pace. The
DVD explosion is so profitable it has
become one of the few
bright spots for the media industry,
and at the same time the VOD (video on demand), downloads and the
mass migration of the market to
watch movies on your computer, tv via the Internet,
And at the same time the
Internet is evolving, while it is evolving, the paradigm shift is
shifting even more and
at a faster rate than any thing
in the past years we have been seeing the Internet change the music
industry,
news papers, travel agencies,
magazine industry and now the movie and television business will never
be the same... USA Today reports,
"Emerging technology has deeply rattled lots of business models and whole indust-
ries over the
centuries. Electricity doused a booming kerosene business for lamps.
Cars overran the
buggy business.
Digital cameras is doing the same to film. Before television took
America by storm in
the 1940s, consumers
had to pay for their visual entertainment...Just like personal computers
in the
past decade,
TV sets whooshed into the market, bringing new, mind-blowing electronic
capabilities into
homes.
Before TV, people had to pay for visual entertainment. As with file
sharing and music, advert-
ising-supported
TV allowed people to suddenly see news and entertainment for free.
Weekly atten-
dance at movie
theaters dived from 80 million in 1946 to 12 million by 1972, according
to The American
Film Industry
The
number of films made dropped from 445 a year in the 1940s to 150 in the
1970s. The
studio system
fell apart. Not until the 1990s--and ironically, the boom in income
from video rentals--did
the movie industry
truly recover from the blow of massively free entertainment. In other
words, it took
Hollywood almost
50 years to figure out how to deal with TV.
Amazon.com shipped
out more than a million copies of the new Harry Potter book, making that
day
the largest
distribution day of a single item in e-commerce history. More than
760,000 advance copies
were ordered
from Amazon.com's U.S. Web site, up from 350,000 for "Goblet," and orders
on its over-
seas Web sites
brought the total to more than 1.3 million.
News reports
indicate that Federal Express is experiencing a huge rise in the value
of its company
stock as a direct
result of commerce on the Internet. Powerful corporations like AT&T,
Disney, General
Electric, Microsoft,
MCA Universal, Sony, Time Warner and IBM are investing billions of
dollars into
the Internet.
Reports indicate that there were more millionaires under thirty created
on the Internet
than through
all other areas of business combined throughout the entire economic history
of this
country.
Amazon.com has the corporate wealth of Texaco Oil Corp.
The next big
shift will occur when the vast majority of consumers no longer need computers
to go on-
line and this
is taking place now with mobile, the iphone and the Internet, of course. Barbara Walters
asked Mr. Eisner of Disney
a couple years back, "What is the
future?" Eisner said, "The Internet,
and the merging of the
computer and the television."
A shift that
we are seeing is that the Internet companies are becoming bigger and with
more capitol
than the television
and movie companies. While at the same time we are seeing the entertainment
business shift
gears and now target hundreds of millions of dollars even billions of dollars
into the
Internet.
Just because Hollywood has not figured the Internet out does not mean it
is not happening
"Bigger than
Dallas," as ole J.R. would say.
THE WRITING IS ON THE WALL...OR THE SCREEN ON THE WALL
Consumers Who Watch TV Online More Engaged
Than TV-Set Watchers, Simmons Finds
by
Mark Walsh, Monday, Dec 24, 2007 7:00 AM ET
CONSUMERS ARE
47% MORE ENGAGED in ads that run with television programs that
they view online than those watched on a TV set, according to new
research findings. A cross-media study by Simmons, a unit of Experian
Research Services, also found that viewers are 25% more engaged in the
content of TV shows that they watch online than on a TV.
Newspapers And Local Home Magazines Losing
Real Estate Advertising To Web
According to a new release from Borrell Associates, real estate
agents, who initially tried to appease home sellers by advertising more
on traditional channels, this year cut their print budgets and pushed
more money into the Web. Total ad spending on real estate has declined 3
percent this year, while spending on the online segment has grown 25.8
percent, hitting $2.6 billion. Borrell projects online
real estate advertising to grow at 12.4 percent next year while
total
real estate advertising continues to compress. In three years,
says the report, agents and brokers will be spending more ad dollars
with online media than with the newspaper.
Red Ink Forecast For Newspapers Next Year
Retreating somewhat from earlier optimistic predictions, newspaper
publishers and analysts now say next year will probably be just as tough
for the troubled industry as 2007. With shareholders staking their hopes
on a turnaround in 2008, this is bad news for newspaper stocks--and may
also torpedo major deals like the planned buyout of
Tribune Co. by real estate billionaire Sam Zell.
Our
Digital Film Festival and the Branding you will receive via the new
multiplatform
avenues of
the Internet and the Digital Age are not presented every day now...
don't miss
getting your BRAND in our Brand-Wagon...
DISNEY TAKES BIG PLUNGE INTO
ONLINE VIDEO...They are headed into the production of
shorts, VOD, and creating
short form shows for the Internet.
Los Angeles Leads Nation in HD-Capable Homes
Nielsen Co. said Tuesday that 13.7% of TV households in the U.S. are
equipped with an HDTV and HD tuner capable of receiving signals in HD,
while 11.3% are equipped with an HD television and HD tuner and receive
at least one HD network or station.
Los Angeles has the highest penetration of HD-capable homes, or
20.4%, and New York has the highest penetration of HD-receivable homes,
17.5%.
"The only
way to succeed in the burgeoning world of scripted broadband
entertainment is to
embrace a
new economic paradigm that has virtually nothing to do with the fat cat
ways of
Hollywood"...Eisner is testing the 'quality on a shoestring' model via
Vuguru...one of his
new
projects was launched on Myspace, cost $2,300 to produce each 90 seconds
episode. Michael Eisner
“We are seeing profound changes in
consumer behavior and we need to re-engineer our
business models,” he
said. “But change often needs a catalyst. Last November we got one.” Jeff Zucker
GET ON BOARD NOW AND RIDE THE INTERNETWORK OF
SITES FOR SIX MONTHS
PRE
FESTIVAL AND 3 MONTH POST FESTIVAL. MAKE NOTE OF THIS!!!!!!
YOU ARE
GETTING 9 MONTHS OF LOCAL, NATIONAL AND WORLD WIDE
ONLINE ADVERTISING...
NOT TO MENTION THE ASSOCIATION WITH SUCH A CLASSIC
AND CUTTING EDGE
EVENT, CONTENT FOR YOU SITES VISITORS.
PASO DIGITAL FILM FESTIVAL
Buffalo Benford Productions, LLC
Paso Robles and Hollywood, California
805-461-4911--------323-850-8919
prfilmfest@gmail.com
    
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