Online Ad Growth Slowed To 11% In 2008 March 30, 2009
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentOnline advertising growth was cut by more than half last year to 10.6% as the recession put the brakes on Internet ad spending after years of eye-popping gains. According to the latest figures released Monday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, online advertising last year reached $23.4 billion, with the fourth-quarter total of $6.1 billion virtually unchanged from each of the four previous quarters. The 2.6% increase in fourth quarter ad revenue compared to a year ago was the smallest since 2002 as the usual holiday season surge in ad spending failed to materialize. The 51% of total online ad dollars spent during the second half of 2008 was also the lowest percentage for the last six months of any year since 2002. Read The Rest—->Online Ad Growth Slowed To 11% In 2008
Report: Mobile Apps Key For Financial Institutions January 23, 2009
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentWith increasing consumer familiarity and growing ease of use, mobile applications for financial services companies–particularly banks–could become the new “killer app” for telecommunications.
The number of people banking through a mobile device could hit half a billion worldwide by 2013, according to ABI Research. “Mobile financial services have the potential to be bigger than mobile TV and premium mobile content in terms of numbers of subscribers,” said Mark Beccue, senior analyst of consumer mobility. “Everybody’s trying to do it, and they’re all scrambling.”
Read The Res—>Report: Mobile Apps Key For Financial Institutions
Digg Sheds 10% Of Workforce In Push For Profitability January 23, 2009
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentSocial news site Digg Thursday confirmed that it plans to lay off 10% of its 75-person workforce as part of wider efforts to make the company profitable in 2009.
The cutbacks come amid slowing audience growth at Digg and the broader pullback in online advertising that has led to staff reductions at hundreds of Internet and high-tech companies in recent months.
Among the steps toward achieving profitability outlined by Digg CEO Jay Adelson on the company blog Thursday were hiring a direct sales team, rolling out new features to expand its user community, building on its “advertising infrastructure” and ad partnership with Microsoft, and maintaining ongoing sponsorship opportunities.
Read The Rest—>Digg Sheds 10% Of Workforce In Push For Profitability
Ailing Economy Could Fuel Online Growth In '09 December 19, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentThe continued growth of new media coupled with the ailing economy spells both opportunity and adversity for the coming year, according to IPG Emerging Media Lab’s team of digital experts.
“We look at this next year as difficult, but filled with opportunities,” said Lori Schwartz, director of the Media Lab, during a press call on Thursday. “Online advertising is expected to grow, because marketers are looking for more accountability.”
That growth, however, also creates new challenges for agencies, as new media and technology companies like Microsoft and Google seek a larger share of online advertising and consumer attention. IPG, for one, plans to work as closely as possible with these potential competitors.
“Rather than approaching it from a fear point of view, we plan to keep our hands in the pie with them,” Schwartz said.
Read The Rest—>Ailing Economy Could Fuel Online Growth In ‘09
Denuo Tool Sheds Light On Moment Of 'Recommendation,' Just One Part Of New VivaKi Social Kit December 19, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentAmong the suite of tools VivaKi has assembled in the new social media “toolkit” it is providing to Publicis agencies and clients are some powerful new planning, buying and campaign management applications that reveal how quickly big agencies are adapting to the new world of Web 3.0 marketing. Among them, is SocialLight, a new tool developed by Publicis’ Denuo unit that enables agencies and advertisers to understand how, when and why someone makes a recommendation about a brand to someone else via online social media. “Not a lot of information exists on the actual moment of recommendation. The actual moment of advocacy for a given brand in a category,” Dan Buczaczer, senior vice president-director of Denuo told a group of Publicis executives crammed into the New York offices of MediaVest Wednesday for an internal debriefing of the new social media tools being collected by the VivaKi Nerve Center.
Maryland Court Weighs Right To Sue Vs. Right To Speak December 11, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentJudges of Maryland’s highest court heard arguments this week about whether courts could order news organizations to reveal the names of people who posted online comments that were critical of a local business owner.
The judges are still considering the case, but at least some of them appeared to be poised to rule that the owner’s right to sue the commenters for defamation outweighs the users’ First Amendment right to speak anonymously.
“If there’s no First Amendment right to slander somebody, you can’t slander someone anonymously,” Judge Joseph F. Murphy Jr. of Maryland’s Court of Appeals said during the argument.
The case stems from comments posted to NewsZap.com, community news sites operated by Independent Newspapers, Inc. In one post, a commenter described a Centreville, Md. Dunkin’ Donuts owned by local business person Zebulon Brodie as “one of the most dirty and unsanitary-looking food-service places I have seen,” according to court papers.
Read The Rest—>Maryland Court Weighs Right To Sue Vs. Right To Speak
WPP Tries To Overcome "Digital Myth," Names Eastman Worldwide Digital Director Of JWT December 11, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentWith the pomp and circumstance that it might have announced a new creative director in days of old, one of Madison Avenue’s best known full-service ad agencies, WPP Group’s JWT, this morning announced that David Eastman has been named its worldwide digital director, responsible for the strategic oversight and management of digital advertising campaigns within the agency, and all its subsidiary companies. Eastman, who joins JWT from CEO of rival Omnicom’s Republic Family (formerly Zulu network), had previously been president-CEO of Omnicom’s Agency.com. The appointment comes days after WPP Chairman-CEO Martin Sorrell made an impassioned pitch to Wall Street analysts that WPP, not big rivals like Paris-based Publicis Groupe, is the most forward-thinking, and moving, digital organization on Madison Avenue. “I think there is a little bit of a misunderstanding over our digital businesses,” Sorrell told analysts, investors and journalists attending UBS’ Media Week conference in New York this week. He said that digital marketing services now account for about $2.8 billion of WPP’s revenues, or about “23% of group revenues,” and said that WPP currently is about “three times the size” of its next closest agency competitor – Publicis – in terms of “digital prowess.” He also said that WPP continues to be Google’s largest customer, and currently bills about $900 million in search related advertising through Google, or about “6% of their total revenue.”
Read The Rest—>WPP Tries To Overcome “Digital Myth,” Names Eastman Worldwide Digital Director Of JWT
Sited: NBC Doubles Broadband Video Audience December 11, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentNBC may be concerned about network prime time viewers but not its broadband video audience. The network has doubled its digital audience in just one month. Days after mix reviews concerning Jay Leno’s prime-time move on NBC to a five-day-a-week 10 p.m. time slot, Hulu.com, NBC Universal-News Corp joint Web venture, and its partner sites, doubled their unique U.S. viewers to 24 million in October from its previous month. According to comScore, the Internet research company, Hulu.com served up 235 million video views in October — the sixth-largest online video destination. The Hulu site launched this past March. Hulu-partner sites account for three-quarters of its total video business, while Hulu.com’s business alone amounted to 5.3 million unique visitors in October. Much of Hulu’s gains were from those special Tiny Fey “Saturday Night Live” sketches, her impersonations of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Read The Rest—>Sited: NBC Doubles Broadband Video Audience
Analysts Mixed Over '09 Online Ad Spend Predictions November 19, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentby Gavin O’Malley, Wednesday, Nov 19, 2008 8:00 AM ET “There is definitely a softness in the market that we haven’t seen in years,” said Clark Kokich, CEO of the Microsoft-owned online ad agency Razorfish. “Online ad spends are now a significant part of the media mix, and they’re not going to be immune from scrutiny,” Kokich added. “If consumer spending continues to decline, clients will have to rein in their spending.”
Borrell Associates raised eyebrows recently with its bleak prediction that online ad spending will top out next year. But following a brief radio silence, industry thought leaders are responding–and in some cases, challenging the research firm’s prognosis.
Read The Rest—>Analysts Mixed Over ‘09 Online Ad Spend Predictions
MediaPost Publications – Mindshare Wants A Lotame, And A Lot Of You: Cuts Deal Based On How We Spend Time Online – 11/11/2008 November 11, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentIn a Madison Avenue first, WPP’s Mindshare unit has cut a deal to begin serving ads to social media users based on the time they actually spend engaged on social media sites, and the advertising content surrounding them. The deal, details of which will be announced today with Lotame, the developer of an advanced audience behavior targeting system, is another step by a major agency away from the classic advertising model of placing ads based on the context of media content and instead moving to one based on the context of the audiences consuming it. Lotame, which is a truncation of “local, target and message,” is a scrappy start-up, has won favor with publishers of mid-tier social networks – a grouping just under the Facebooks and Myspaces of the Web 2.0 universe that represents about 50 million unique users – by developing a suite of audience targeting systems enabling agencies and marketers to serve ads to users based on where and when they might be most receptive to an ad for a specific advertising brand.
Read The Rest—>MediaPost Publications – Mindshare Wants A Lotame, And A Lot Of You: Cuts Deal Based On How We Spend Time Online -Online Media Daily 11/11/2008
