Audience is backed by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, whose Vulcan Capital is the third largest shareholder in the company (25%). Tallwood Venture Capital holds 32% share and New Enterprise Associates holds 30% share.

You might know Audience as the makers of earSmart, “the world’s most intelligent voice processor.” earSmart technology works to replicate how humans hear, by differentiating different sounds and enhancing voice sounds while keeping background noise in the background.

Basically, earSmart aims to improve mobile conversations in loud places.

earSmart is currently available in over 60 mobile devices, including the HTC Titan, Samsung Galaxy S II, Google Nexus One, and HTC Vivid.

From the S-1 filing:

We were founded in 2000 and initially targeted the rapidly growing mobile device market, including mobile phones, media tablets and mobile PCs. We began production shipments in 2008 and, as of December 31, 2011, had sold over 135 million processors to our OEM customers. In addition to the mobile device market, we believe that our voice and audio technology is applicable to a broad range of other market segments, including automobile infotainment systems, digital cameras, digital televisions, headsets and set top boxes. We outsource the manufacture of our voice and audio processors to independent foundries and use third parties for assembly, packaging, test and logistics. We had total revenue of $2.5 million, $5.7 million, $47.9 million and $79.7 million for 2008, 2009, 2010 and the nine

[Hat Tip to GeekWire]

Joking aside, it looks like a peanut butter/chocolate moment for the world of online audience measurement. The partnership will see comScore combine the data it gets from a 2 million person global panel with Omniture’s–raise pinky to side of mouth–1 trillion quarterly web site transactions. According to the announcement:

This strategic partner relationship blends these two methodologies in a highly automated way to create a unified approach for audience measurement designed to enable publishers to represent themselves in a more comprehensive manner to advertisers, and for advertisers to better optimize their media planning with the benefit of more extensive media reach data.

That’s a fancy way of saying the data is going to be a lot more accurate from here on out. As Josh James, Omniture CEO and co-founder puts it, "With this relationship, Omniture and comScore will enable publishers who have rich, highly targeted audience segments to reliably demonstrate their value to advertisers and also help advertisers find these attractive consumer segments. The combined offering will provide advertisers and publishers with a common currency to measure the value of online audiences across an ever-increasing number of digital channels."

So what does this mean for publishers and advertisers? I like how Scott McDonald, SVP Research, Conde Nast Publications explains how it will help (in theory):

"For more than a decade, we have fretted about – and sometimes quarreled about — the discrepancies between the audience estimates derived from third-party panels like comScore’s and those derived from web site analytics systems like Omniture’s. This collaboration represents the most significant effort to date to harmonize the two approaches and give the industry, at last, a common and convergent set of numbers."

It’s a real kumbaya moment for the measurement world. Now we just need to see if the two ingredients can combine to make something as tasty as a Reese’s cup!

What do you think of this partnership?

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comScore and other online measurement companies are watching videos—I mean, online video audiences—grow and grow. Now Nielsen will use a new “Internet Meter” with its People Meter families to measure online as well as offline TV consumption.

The Internet Meter will measure the “extended screen”—online television from cable companies, such as OnDemand Online from Comcast and TV Everywhere from Time Warner. This type of viewing may have slipped past online measurement companies looking at web-based TV, like from Hulu. Nielsen has worked in online measurement as well, though they don’t say if they’ll be combining Hulu numbers with the online cable numbers.

According to Read Write Web, Hulu has tended to prefer comScore’s measures of its audience, since comScore’s numbers have shown a higher viewership than Nielsen’s. Online measurement is notoriously tricky in this area, since there aren’t set industry standards on how to count audiences, and as always, there can be sampling biases.

RWW says that the Internet Meter might combat inherent problems in sampling—but the Internet Meter will be based on the same statistical principles, which are fairly sound. (Yeah, I know, it doesn’t seem like a small number of people can accurately predict the habits of the general population, and a larger sample usually yields more accurate data, but if people are truly chosen at random, a small sample has a 90-95% chance of accurately reflecting the population, depending on how they do their calculations. </AP stats lesson>)

What do you think? Will this make a difference to online television? Will it affect ad prices online?

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The growing Twitter audience also attracted the attention of eBay’s lawyers, who last month required Mr. Brewer-Hay to include regulatory disclaimers with certain posts. Some followers think the tougher oversight is squelching Mr. Brewer-Hay’s spontaneous, informal style.
Financial services and insurance companies have long been hampered by what they can and cannot say that would upset the folks at the SEC and for good reason. Considering the state of the financial industry maybe this didn’t even matter.

For consumer companies, however, it’s different. Part of the new world order of hybrid sales / marketing/ PR/ advetising efforts is to create a corporate ‘personality’ that can reach out and appear more human to customers. As a result the can of worms that can be popped open by some innocent enough statements that can create an atmosphere of closeness can quickly cross the line of too much information.

All companies must be aware.

Eighty-one Fortune 500 companies sponsor public blogs, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Chevron Corp. and General Motors Corp., according to the Society for New Communications Research. Of those blogs, 23 link to corporate Twitter accounts.
The concern for all involved is that if there is too much watering down of a message to avoid a potential regulatory misstep the credibility of the effort could be compromised.

The article talks about several companies like Johnson & Johnson, EMC and Cisco that are starting to use blogs and Twitter. In the case of Cisco they are already one lawsuit into the experience. The result of that issue has not been determined yet but the threat of such a circumstance has made some step away completely.

Intel Corp. in May will be among the first companies to allow shareholders to ask questions via the Web and vote online during its annual meeting. But the chip maker avoids blogs and Twitter for investor issues, because it fears violating SEC disclosure rules or inviting public criticism in a company-hosted forum, says Kevin Sellers, vice president of investor relations.

“There’s always going to be a person with an axe to grind,” he says. “Do we really want to sponsor that?”

It’s hard to argue with that thinking since there is so little precedence set it is unlikely that many big players are going to be very experimental and risk being the poster child for a huge social media mistake.

So for the creative types working for these companies it is going to impact how they can work for sure. Mr. Brewer-Hay’s work has changed as a result of the attention the lawyers are giving him. Even his followers have noticed his tweets are less personal and he says he is under more of a microscope than he was before.

So let’s let the lawyer have the last word here since they will likely have it no matter what.

Corporate lawyers say companies should devise a social-media policy before adopting blogs or Twitter. “All of the traditional ways that a company can get in trouble for making public statements” apply to the Web, says Lisa Wood, of Foley Hoag LLP

She urges companies to include the standard disclaimers they use in other communications, as Mr. Brewer-Hay now does. Ms. Wood says companies shouldn’t disclose financial information on Twitter that isn’t available elsewhere, and should make clear that opinions expressed by others in company-sponsored forums — like comments on blogs — don’t represent management’s views.

So the degree that a company gets involved in social media looks like it will depend on its level of tolerance for potential issues. In a world that is looking for any way to make a buck, putting together a lawsuit against any big company for some perceived problem may be more popular than ever. Apparently, transparency in social media will likely be as muted as is allowed by law. So just how transparent can that actually be?

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1. Links

If you provide good, quality content, it is going to attract links period. It is true that this will not always happen without the appropriate attention to site promotion, but once people see your content, they will link to it if it is good. It’s that simple. There are tons of sites dedicated to linking to (what they perceive to be) good content alone. That is their whole purpose.

Look at sites like Drudge Report or Techmeme or even Google News for that matter. While the ways these sites choose what content to display may differ from each other, they are each rooted in what they consider to be valuable content, and everything on these sites links out to other sites. With good content, there is no reason why sites like these (or others depending on your niche) can’t be linking to your content.

When your content generates more links, it is likely to achieve greater visibility right along with them. Whether that be from search engines, blogs, or sites like those mentioned above, more doorways are created for entering your own site. People don’t link to bad content (generally speaking) unless they wish to insult it, or are for some reason misled about what they are linking to.

Sally Falkow of Expansion Plus discusses the importance of top-rated content with Abby Prince in the following video (add to the discussion):

2. Sharing

Links are really just a way that people share content. But there is no question that as an online entity, you have to consider social networks. People love to share content via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. Not to mention the ones that are made specifically for content like Digg and StumbleUpon.

In fact, you might as well give readers an easy way to share your content by offering social links within it. RSS feeds are typically a good idea too. This is just one more doorway for people to get to your content, and an ongoing one at that, should they stay subscribed to you feeds (they will also keep your brand fresh in readers’ minds). Then There’s the fact that feed readers often offer their own sharing features leading to even more opportunities for more people to see your work.

These things are the word-of-mouth of the online world. There’s no reason to rule out word-of-mouth in the physical world either. For example, I might tell my mother-in-law that I read this fascinating article on WebProNews today, and she might say something like, "Hmmm, what is this WebProNews? That sounds like something that I would be interested in. I should check that out. What’s the URL for that?"

But again, if your content sucks, nobody is going to share it unless they intend to insult it. This brings me to the next reason why content should be a priority, and that is…

3. Reputation

If people are out there insulting your content, your brand’s reputation will only be damaged. Remember, word-of-mouth works both ways. This is one reason why reputation management is so important. It’s not just about your own personal reputation, it’s about that of your entire business.

Creating good content establishes credibility. When someone views your content and learns something from it or likes what they see, they will (if even on a small scale) develop some amount of trust toward you (and potentially your brand) as a credible source for information within your niche of expertise.

4. Audience

The more linking and sharing of your content, the more your audience is likely to grow. Isn’t this reason enough to make your content good? When you develop a positive reputation online, that in itself tends to snowball as well. People throw your name around a lot, and you can even become something of a mini-celebrity. Then people will be inclined to check out your content based on name recognition alone. People will see your name referenced frequently, and want to know what you’re all about. If your content is good and appealing to them, they’ll keep reading it and share your content with others.

5. Money

In the end, it is truly money, which we all seek is it not? It’s not all that matters, but in the business world, it’s a pretty good chunk of what matters. That’s why we’re all in it. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be businesses. We’d be non-profit organizations.

Well, when you have an established audience and a good reputation, the amount of revenue your business brings in is likely to increase.  If your business plan entails selling ad space, there’s nothing advertisers like better than getting their messages out to large numbers of targeted people (in this case, your audience). And there’s nobody that customers like to buy goods and services from (particularly online) than a business with a good, solid reputation. And both your audience and your reputation can be boosted incredibly by the quality of the content you offer the general public.

I’m not giving away trade secrets here. I’m not selling anything other than common sense. I know this isn’t groundbreaking advice. Yet nearly every day, I see people trying to earn a living online using wretched content, and they’re (possibly even unknowingly) only hurting their chances of doing so.

Content can be the road to riches or the path to poverty. That is why if you’re trying to run an online business, it must be a priority.

Lynette at the MIndless Babble Blog says that based on the Technorati numbers, blogging should be a part of every business’s marketing or PR strategy:

• 46% of all bloggers are professional bloggers. This may mean that they’re writing a corporate blog, or simply writing about the industry that their company is in, while not necessarily mentioning their company at all.
• This equates to just over 84.5 million bloggers that are, in essence, business bloggers. If your company doesn’t have some kind of blog presence, that’s potentially 84.5 million businesses ahead of you when it comes to reaching your target audience.
• Online sales in 2007 totaled $260 billion. Blogs are known to increase awareness of new products and offers from companies. Less than half are utilizing this, which means that 1 out of 2 companies are losing a large part of $260 billion dollars of online income.

If your company is still wondering whether to blog or not to blog, take a deeper look at the data in the State of the Blogosphere. And take a look at your industry and your competitors.  What are they doing?

Of course not every one of the 84.5 million businesses that are blogging are your competitors.  But some of them probably are. Using a cost effective PR like a corporate blog can pay big dividends, if it is done right.

At the very least you must be tapped into the blogosphere and listening to the voices that matter to your  business.

Comments

Nielsen//NetRatings released its data for November, revealing both the top parent companies and the top brands.

Microsoft hauled in an audience of 121.295 million visitors, who spent an average of 2 hours and 6 minutes. Google served 120.348 million visitors, who spent an average of 1 hour and 38 minutes.

Yahoo and Time Warner were close behind with 112.9 million and 103.8 million visitors respectively, with visitors spending 3 hours and 11 minutes at Yahoo and 3 hours 48 minutes at Time Warner properties.

News Corp. came in a distant fifth place with 73 million visitors, but visitors nearly matched, assumedly thanks to MySpace, Microsoft visitors time spent with 2 hours and 5 minutes a piece.

The bottom five of the top ten included eBay, InteractiveCorp, Amazon, Wikimedia, and the New York Times Company.

The top ten individual brands based on unique audience were Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, MSN/Windows Live, AOL, Fox Interactive Media, YouTube, eBay, Amazon, and Wikipedia.     
 

I was honored to be at the same desk as Harry Fuller. Who’s he? He ran the local TV news station (CBS’s KPIX) for decades. When he started in the TV business it was all black and white and there were only four channels in the San Francisco market. His thoughts on the new TV were surprising.

But he wasn’t the only one — also on the panel was a guy who works for Switzerland’s public TV station, an executive from Logitech, an expert with virtual worlds, and a research engineer for SRI, the folks who brought us the mouse. Sorry for the audio. TV 2.0 has bad audio. Yikes.

In the video I made the point that on the Internet it is going to be very hard to get a big audience. That brings about an interesting discussion at about minute 53 into this video.

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"One of the most alarming trends we found on the Internet recently is what we call ‘narrowcasting’," said Gabriel Weimann, professor of communications at the University of Haifa in Israel which monitors 5,800 militant Web sites.

Weimann said terrorist’s goal is not to reach the largest Internet audience but to slice the audience into segments and target each with specific tactics. "Terrorists are using the Internet to focus on children, very young children, to attract young people to the ideology and later to the way of terrorism."

"When they target children, they do everything any commercial advertiser would do. They use comic books, storytelling, graphics, movies, competitions, prize-winning and so on," Weimann added.

Weimann said al Qaeda was focusing on women by using an online manual displayed in pink, which educates them in the roles of a female suicide bomber.

On how to combat such tactics Mohamed Bin Ali, an expert from Singapore said," It is important to produce counter-Web sites. If they produce one Web site, we need another Web site to counter that."

Johnny Ryan of the Institute of European Affairs in Dublin said governments did not have the resources and online skills to counter the battle on the Web. He said community and religious leaders, scholars and the public should fill that role.

"If there are fallacies in the simple narrative of ‘the West has been against Islam for hundreds of years’ then you have to educate the public. And it is the public on the Internet who should then counter the message," he said.

The European Commission has proposed that its member states should make it a criminal offense to encourage terrorism over the Internet or to use it for militant recruitment and training.

Counter-terrorism official in the United States say that freedom of speech laws prevent them from closing down such sites and point out that they would surface in another place. Also having the sites open allows security officials to monitor the sites so they get insight into what the groups are thinking.

Weimann said different sites require different strategies. He said some sites should be monitored, some should be hacked because they teach how to use weapons and explosives, and some should be blocked.

Russia had the fastest growing online audience increasing 23 percent to 14.6 million unique visitors, Spain trailed with 14.5 million unique visitors, growing 18 percent and Ireland grew 16 percent gaining 1.5 million unique visitors, comScore reports.

Germany had the largest online audience with 33.2 million unique visitors. The UK was close behind with 32.2 million. The two together accounted for 29 percent of the total European online audience. Europe’s third largest online country France, was the fourth fastest growing with a 14 percent gain reaching 27.3 million unique visitors in September.

The Netherlands had the highest Internet adoption with 82 percent of the country’s population age 15 or older online in September. After the Netherlands, adoption rates were highest in the Nordic region, where the Internet was accessed by 73 percent of the total population of Sweden, 72 percent of Denmark and Norway, and 66 percent of the Finnish population.

"Many countries in Europe are still demonstrating robust growth in Internet usage," said Bob Ivins, comScore EVP of International Markets.

"And given the relatively low Internet penetration in several major European countries, there is plenty of upside in the European market. Russia, with only 12 percent of its population online, appears poised for substantial growth."