Mobile music currently accounts for 13 percent of global recorded music revenue. "Alongside online, mobile music is essential to the future of the music industry," says Understanding & Solutions Consultant, David Sidebottom.

"Japan, closely followed by the USA, has the most efficient mobile music landscape: both countries have a concentrated operator base and a large pool of potential subscribers, providing economies of scale for the music companies."

In the fragmented European market, some operators have become less aggressive because they can’t make money directly from selling full track downloads, but that opens the door for third party service providers.

"Looking to emerging markets, mobile could become the number one platform for
music, where packaged CDs haven’t gained traction due to piracy and lack of hardware ownership," said Sidebottom.

"Both China and India are showing large revenue gains, which are being driven by strong mobile subscriber growth and the status associated with music-related personalized mobile products."

A record 126 million users, a 6 percent increase over last year, will make online purchases this holiday season. Retailers will increase their efforts to grab customers attention using a number of tactics with an emphasis on search marketing.

"Over half of online retailers say they will increase efforts with search engines, despite rising costs and some reports of declining ROI. Shoppers can also expect to take advantage of more free shipping offers this year," said Patti Freeman Evans, JupiterResearch Senior Analyst and lead author of the report.

"This enticement will also translate to online retailers with brick-and-mortar stores who will likely to beef up their use of percent-off discounts."

Heavy use of percent-off discounts is expected from computer and consumer electronic sellers. The report points out that only using percent off discounts may not be enough to drive consumer traffic, specifically among those that do not usually shop online during the rest of the year.

"Online retailers have an opportunity to gain market this year because of the resilience of online shoppers, in spite of a relatively soft off-line holiday season," said David Schatsky, President of JupiterResearch. "Aggressive use of cross channel messaging and promotions will be key to capturing undecided customers."

One major trend is that the nation’s leading advertisers are moving more of their budgets from old media to the Internet. More than half of Advertising Age’s "100 Leading National Advertisers" are decreasing their spending on traditional measured media and increasing the amount going to the Internet.

Search, display and classified ads in that order receive the largest share of Internet spending. Paid search’s share of online ad spend will stay in the 40 percent range through 2011. Display ads will generate about 20 percent of Internet ad revenues through the rest of the decade. Classified ads will contribute about 17 percent.

The report says that Internet advertising will not be as much as projected. "Mainly because of the credit crunch and related economic fallout, Internet ad spending will not increase as much in 2007 and 2008 as analysts previously expected. However, reduced spending will be tempered by advertisers buying the low-cost display advertising gobbled up by mortgage companies’ shrinking marketing budgets."

The value of online display advertising in China reached RMB 2.6 billion in Q3, 2007 an increase of 14 percent over Q2.  Total online advertising value for the year to date is RMB 6.6 billion.

The value of online display ads broken down by quarters was RMB 1.7 billion, RMB 2.3 billion and 2.6 billion. The peak for online advertising in China took place in September with RMB 1 billion recorded, the highest in the past nine months.

"The online advertising market in China is booming and catching up fast with advertising in traditional media. Judging by its current growth rate, we anticipate that the year will finish not only achieving double-digit growth in online advertising, but also reaching the
RMB10 billion mark in value terms," said Sail Ma, Analytic & Research Director, Nielsen Online, Greater China and Southeast Asia.

The cumulative number of advertisers for the year to date was 2,661 with 19,049 campaigns. The categories that contributed the most were Automobile, IT/Electronics, FMCG (CPG) and Finance, which accounted for 60 percent of total ad value in the China online market.

"The market will continue to grow, with estimated ad value increasing close to RMB 3 billion as we enter the last quarter of the year, and contributing to an estimated full year spending of RMB 10 billion," Ma said.

Also among them introducing the bill was Olympia Snowe, who last week called for a Network Neutrality hearing, Daniel Inouye, who received her letter, and Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).

The Community Broadband Act treats Internet access as a public utility, and is thought will help improve broadband competition and bolster municipal Wi-fi networks. It will also help ensure those without broadband get high-speed Internet access.

"The Community Broadband Act will provide local governments, schools, nonprofits and disadvantaged communities with faster, cheaper and more reliable broadband service," said Shawn Chang, deputy policy director of Free Press. "With millions still lacking the economic benefits of high-speed Internet, this legislation could not be more critical."

They’re expected to reach 230 million at the end of 2007 (this includes multiple memberships by one person).The money is good and growing.

For example, my friend’s Facebook App that took two weeks to build recently sold for $25k. And marketers who are savvy are getting a lot of press for their social networking presence. There is a lot of money and creativity being exchanged. “Revenues from social-networking services should reach $965 million, growing to $2.4 billion by 2012, writes MarketingCharts.”

In Datamonitor’s report called, The Future of Social Networking: understanding market strategic and technological developments they say that the most participation this year is happening in Asia Pacific, then Europe, the Middle East and Africa. North America is third on the list.

MySpace dominates in the US by a long shot. According to this data MySpace has over half of the social media memberships in the United States, followed by:

• Facebook: 18.2 percent
• Google’s YouTube and Orkut: a combined 7.6 percent
• Flickr 7.1 percent

Remember the data is in terms of memberships not traffic. Still, it’s surprising to see just how far behind Facebook is in this measurement.

Comments

• filter link juice to your mother brand site, which is especially useful for temporal news or in categories where link building is tough
• create additional ad inventory that sells at the premium CPM rate of your core brand (see also: Extending the Reach / Circulation of a Web Based Content Site & Ad Network)
• extend to new markets without requiring you to risk tarnishing your main brand

There are many ways to extend, including

• subdomains (eBay is the master of subdomains)
• related brand sites (US News & World Report launched RankingsAndReviews.com, which touches virtually every high paying category)
• editorial channels tracking the marketplace of your main brand (Yahoo! Buzz published a blog post titled "About That Ringtone")
• sites owned by fake affiliates that you claim no ownership of (use affiliate software to track your sister sites and remove blame from your company)

What tips to do you have for extending your reach while protecting your brand?

Comments

Google Shares Reach Record High

Google shares were up as much as $17.08, or 3 percent, to $584.35 during trading and online travel site Expedia saw its shares rise a $1.60 or 5 percent, to $33.48 during trading.

Google is currently being reviewed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to determine if its purchase of online advertising company DoubleClick for $3.1 billion violates antitrust law. Google competitors including Microsoft have raised questions about the purchase.

eBay saw its shares increase as well on Monday, breaking a 52-week high of $39.54 it set Thursday, rising 89 cents, or 2.3 percent, to $39.91 during trading.

eBay announced Monday that Niklas Zennstrom, CEO and co-founder of VoIP phone service Skype would be stepping down and would become a non-executive chairman on the Skype board.

Here is how the major Internet companies did in trading yesterday according to the AP:

Google Inc. gained $15.28, or 2.7 percent, to $582.55.

Yahoo Inc. rose 20 cents to $27.04.

Expedia Inc. gained $1.56, or 4.9 percent, to $33.44.

Amazon.com Inc. increased by 26 cents to $93.41.

EBay Inc. added 64 cents to $39.66.

IAC/InterActiveCorp rose 33 cents to $30.

Local Online Advertising To Reach $7.8 Billion

The pressure to put more local dollars online is building, according to eMarketer’s report "Local Online Advertising: Measuring the Market." As more people are going online to locate a business instead of using a phonebook, U.S. small and midsize businesses are likely to follow.

"As audiences continue migrating to the Web and away from traditional local media such as newspapers and radio, it’s only a matter of time before online local ad spend catches up with today’s reality," says David Hallerman, senior analyst and author of the report.

 Because of this, through 2011, spending for local online advertising will grow at a faster rate than either national advertising or total online advertising, according to the report. This growth will create greater competition from portals, search engines, newspapers, TV stations and local directory listings.

Local and national businesses advertising in local markets will spend $2.9 billion in 2007, with that number reaching $7.8 billion in 2011.

"People want to watch films they’ve downloaded on their large screen televisions and home entertainment systems," said Arash Amel, Screen Digest senior analyst. 

"To do that, they need a device which can link their broadband connection to the TV," Mr. Amel said. "It will take time to reach a wider market penetration with these new devices, and we believe that this will start to become more mainstream beyond 2011."

Screen Digest estimates that studio wholesale prices on movie downloads to service providers are from 70 percent to 105 percent of what consumers pay.

 This makes movie downloads a low-margin business. While Apple has promoted music downloading to sell iPods, so may other hardware makers benefit from movie downloads as much as studios.

Other projections of U.S. movie download revenues include an AccuStream iMedia Research study that put the 2007 figures at $60 million, and an Emerging Media Dynamics estimate that says revenues of $534 million in 2010, up form $37 million in 2005.