BSkyB to roll out Internet TV service

British Sky Broadcasting will launch a new pay Internet TV service in the first half of this year, going head-to-head with Netflix, Amazon’s LoveFilm and the forthcoming YouView, MediaGuardian reported today.

The new service will compete for the business of nearly 13 million UK households that do not subscribe to its services. The News Corp.-owned broadcaster will offer its content, including Sky Movies, according to the Financial Times.

“When you are trying to sell to people who have already taken a view on pay-TV and have said ‘No thanks’, you can’t keep going back to them with the same proposition,” Jeremy Darroch, BSkyB chief executive, told the FT.

Customers will have the option to pay for monthly, unlimited access to Sky Movies, or rent them one-by-one. They will be able to access the service on any Internet-connected devices, including PCs, televisions, tablets, mobile phones and game consoles, PCMag explained.

Netflix launched streaming video in the UK and Ireland just three weeks ago.

La Tribune sold, ends daily print run

French daily La Tribune published its last daily print edition Monday, Bloomberg reported.

The newspaper has been sold to regional press group France-Economie-Regions and Web group Hi-Media and will begin publishing a weekly edition instead, as well as pushing its website more, according to paidContent. The new owners plan to cut 89 of the publication’s 127 jobs.

FER and Hi-Media bought the struggling newspaper for 150,000 euro, and will invest about seven million euro into the business.

“LaTribune,fr has two million regular visitors. We want to increase this to three million by 2013,” said Jean-Christophe Tortora, head of FER and president of Groupe La Tribune, according to RFI.

La Tribune has been bought and sold by six different owners in its 27 year history. In this latest changeover, it was also bid on by investment fund La Financiere Patrimoniale d’Investissement.

U.S. mobile ad to reach $2.61 billion; Google the driver

U.S. mobile ad spend is forecasted to reach $2.61 billion, according to eMarketer’s latest revision from the previous $1.8 billion, paidContent reported.

The research house pointed out Google’s “exceptional” mobile advertising performance in mobile search advertising and more reliable market data as the drivers for the rise.

In 2011, eMarketer said Google contributed 51.7 percent of all mobile ad revenues, or $750 million, followed by Millennial, with 6.4 percent share or $92.4 million, and Apple’s iAd, with 6.3 percent or $90.9 million, respectively.

In terms of the mobile search category, Google totally dominated it with about 95 percent share of all revenues.

The mobile display ad market is still fragmented - Google made up 24.8 percent , while Apple’s iAd and Millennial Media came close to each other, with 18 percent and 17.7 percent, respectively. “Other” owned the biggest chunk with 39.6 percent.

eMarketer predicted that in 2012, mobile search spending will double to $1.28 billion, from $652.5 million in the previous year. Display will total $861.7 million, up 93.5 percent from 2011, while video will be up to $151.5 million, with a 122 percent jump from the last year.

Image: eMarketer

Future sees success on Newsstand

The iTunes newsstand is helping magazines carve out digital revenue streams. UK magazine publisher Future announced it has made US$1 million in new tablet revenue in just one month following the debut of 65 of its titles on the platform, paidContent reported.

Since the titles were made available on the Newsstand on Sept. 12, the publisher has also gained 75,000 subscriptions; 40 percent of orders are for subscriptions; 4.3 million opt-ins for push messages; 8.5 million free issues given away; and 9.3 million free container apps were downloaded, tablet editor-in-chief Mike Goldsmith said at the UK Association of Online Publishers’ tablet publishing forum in London yesterday, according paidContent.

The company’s print circulation has been in decline, and replacing that lost revenue with digital is a must, Goldsmith said, according to Tab Times.

“The genie is out of the bottle, so we need to embrace it [digital publishing],” he said.

Research: High digital replacement among tablet users

Digital replacement of analogue content among tablet users is now very high, according to a new study by IDG Connect.

Since owning an iPad, 72 percent of the professionals surveyed worldwide said they are buying fewer newspapers, 70 percent are buying fewer books, while 49 percent are buying fewer DVDs.

Among all the regions, Asia and the Middle East lead with the highest rates of replacement – nine, and eight out of ten said they now purchase fewer printed papers, respectively.

“These markets for physical media are already in decline. On this evidence, tablet computing will hasten their demise,” the iPad For Business Survey 2012 pointed out.

“For advertising-funded media (newspapers and magazines), the challenges are particularly substantial. Readers who can afford iPads tend to be more demographically desirable than those who cannot,” mocoNews reported.

Image: Boston Globe via mocoNews

eMarketer: Online ads to outpace print for the first time in 2012

The online ad market in the United States is expected to grow rapidly this year, reaching US$39.5 billion, the latest data from eMarketer shows. Advertising spent on print newspapers and magazines, meanwhile, is expected to be at $33.8 billion, the firm predicts.

This year, online adspend growth is also expected to peak for the six year period ending in 2016, at 23.3 percent. Double-digit growth is expected through 2014, but as the market expands, its capacity for rapid growth slows. The market is expected to be up 7.8 percent in 2016, when it is forecast to reach $62 billion, according to eMarketer.

Advertisers’ comfort level with integrated marketing is greater than ever, and this is helping more advertisers—and more large brands—put a greater share of dollars online,” David Hallerman, eMarketer principal analyst, stated in a press release.

Meanwhile, as online budgets increase, print is expected to go down. Television ad spending, however, is also expected to continue to rise. eMarketer data shows it is likely to increase to $72 billion in 2016, $10 billion more than the online ad market for that year.

Tablet users spend more on e-commerce

Tablet users tend to spend 21 percent more on each e-commerce purchase than non-tablet users, according to the Digital Marketing Insights report by Adobe, Media Post reported.

“The results of this study indicate that tablet devices have become an absolutely critical new sales channel,” Brad Rencher, SVP and general manager of Adobe Digital Marketing Business, said.

The study found that demographics of tablet visitors, for example, higher income, as well as the flexibility of the overall tablet user experience, positively relate to higher tablet visitor profitability.

Tablet visitors are more skewed to males between 18 and 34 years old, and tend to be more affluent than other online shoppers.

Also, tablet users have significantly higher usage rates over the weekend, when people usually have more time to shop online.

Therefore, during the 2011 holiday season and throughout the whole year, tablet visitors spent more per purchase than others who use smartphones, desktops or laptops, Adobe said.

Compared to smartphone pals, tablet visitors spent 54 percent more. They also spent 21 percent more per purchase than desktop and laptop visitors.

Moreover, tablet visitors were about three times more likely to purchase online than smartphone visitors, and were nearly as likely to buy as desktop or laptop visitors.

This Adobe study analyzed 16.2 billion anonymous Web visits of more than 150 top U.S. retailers, Media Post reported.

Image: Adobe

Online piracy bills: Is it media vs. Internet companies?

Websites today took a stand against the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, both making their way through the U.S. Congress. However, many media companies have backed the proposed legislation, including News Corporation, Time Warner, Disney, ABC, CBS and more.

Media companies don’t want their content to be stolen, but Internet companies argue that the bills would be hard to enforce, impact companies’ ability to do business, and would end up stifling innovation and free speech. The Internet blackout, led by online giants Wikipedia and Google, has changed the course of debate, and several lawmakers announced they no longer support the bills.

Content creators have done well in Washington recently, and creating a new law that would “cripple platforms that make it possible for users to link to or generate content of their own” don’t make sense, as current laws “already give the content industry power to have content removed after a site has been notified. And granting the content industry power to have content removed after a site has been notified. And granting the content industry the power to enlist the government's aid in blocking sites is one that authoritarian regimes will celebrate; we, the democratic leader of the developed world, will be no different from them,” Susan Crawford, Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard’s Kennedy School, wrote for The New York Times today.

But not all media executives are convinced. Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corp., took to Twitter to voice his disagreement with those voicing their opposition to the bills.

“Nonsense argument about danger to internet. How about Google, others blocking porn, hate speech, etc? Internet hurt?” he tweeted Tuesday. Today he added “Don't care about people not buying movies, programs or newspapers, just stealing them.”

Murdoch famously blocked Google from featuring content from News International newspapers when they went behind paywalls.

Others believe the fight isn’t just “content” vs. “technology,” Bloomberg reported.

“SOPA makes much more sense if you look at the debate as big companies unwilling to accept change versus the innovative companies and startups that embrace change. And if we accept that startups are created to find new ways to create value for consumers, the debate is actually between the financial interests of "big content" shareholders versus consumer interests at large.”

Mail.Ru launches Twitter rival in Russia

Mail.Ru Group announced on Monday the launch of its own Twitter-like multimedia microblogging service, called Futubra, Ria Novosti reported.

Twitter launched in Russia in April 2011 and currently has about 2 million Russian-speaking users, EContent noted. However, it’s in China that microblogging, especially on the “Chinese Twitter” site Weibo, has really taken hold. In 2011, Weibo’s use was up 296 percent, to 249.9 million, China Internet Network Information Center data shows, according to Reuters.

Internet connections, social media, and now microblogging sites are “usher[ing] in a new era of greater transparency in society, as well as creating a huge new business opportunity” for the firms that run them. If Mail.Ru can mirror the success of sites like Twitter and Weibo, they “could have a hit on their hands,” paidContent pointed out.

“We are excited by the opportunity facing Futubra as microblogging is a fast growing segment which fits well into the Mail.Ru Group vision of the growth in Internet communications. Futubra demonstrates Mail.Ru Group’s ongoing commitment to Internet communication platforms, innovation and mobile applications.  The focus in the near term will be product development and the building of new online communities,” Mail.Ru CEO Dmitry Grishin stated.

Image: Futubra.com

Report: Facebook expected to contribute 5% to online ad market in 2012

In the last quarter of 2011, Facebook saw its share of the overall online advertising up to 2.7 percent. Moreover, by the end of 2012, its share could boost up to 5 percent, according to a new report by Efficient Frontier, paidContent reported.

“As marketers improve their ability to acquire and engage Facebook fans, brands will continue to pump new budgets into Facebook to capitalize on the social network’s reach and the amount of time users spend there. The increased spend will help companies improve brand awareness and drive the customer lifecycle amongst fans and non-fans,” the report stated.

Efficient Frontier said this investment in social networks is “additive” to brands’ existing ad budgets and is not cannibalising other digital media platforms.

Also, mobile search made up 7 to 8 percent of all search advertising in the fourth quarter, up greatly from 2 percent in the same period in 2010. The boost was driven by the proliferation of tablets, which account for half of mobile search ad spending now, according to the report.

Overall search spending grew 14 percent in the U.S. and 19 percent in the UK during the fourth quarter, while impression costs for search advertising dropped 5 percent across the board, with more marketers shifting their budgets to the less expensive mobile media, paidContent reported.

Image: blogtipswriter.com via Social Media Magic

Facebook to use personal data for Politico analysis

Facebook combed its users’ private status messages and comments for politically related wording and then gave that information (in statistical form) to Politico, All Things D reported yesterday.

Every post and comment by a U.S. user that mentioned a presidential candidate’s name, whether made privately or publicly, is being “fed through a sentiment analysis tool that spits out anonymized measures of the general U.S. Facebook population,” All Things D explained. Users’ posts and sentiment levels were aggregated by candidate Dec. 12 through Jan. 10.

“So don’t worry: Facebook doesn’t actually care about your private feelings, it just wants to exploit them,” Gawker pointed out.

Politico, meanwhile, calls the measure a “survey” of users. The software being used, called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, also searches for positive words and negative words.

“Social media has forever changed the way candidates campaign for the presidency,” John F. Harris, editor-in-chief of Politico, said in a press release. “Facebook has been instrumental in expanding the political dialogue among voters and we couldn't be more excited about the opportunity to offer our readers a look inside this very telling conversation.”

Image: First data set, via Politico

Microsoft beats Yahoo in U.S. search

Microsoft’s Bing finally beat Yahoo and became the second biggest search engine behind Google during December 2011, according to the latest data by comScore, USA Today reported.

Bing and other Microsoft's web sites had 2.75 billion search requests during December 2011, making it 15.1 percent share of the U.S. search traffic. Yahoo’s search requests totaled 2.65 billion, representing 14.5 percent of the total market.

Google still remained on the top, with 12 billion U.S. requests in December, which equaled a 65.9 percent market share.

Schibsted to buy music streaming service

Norway-based media group Schibsted has made a cash offer for Swedish streaming service Aspiro AB.

The bid of 340 million Swedish crowns (US$49.04 million), or 1.65 crowns per share, is 33 percent more than Aspiro’s closing price of 1.24 crowns yesterday, Reuters reported today.

If the offer is accepted, Schibsted will take control of Aspiro, which delivers music and television streaming services (music is delivered to users under the WiMP brand name), the press release stated.

Aspiro has succeeded at something many publishers want as well – getting users to pay for digital content.

“Together with the management of Aspiro, we are convinced that Schibsted will be able to accelerate Aspiro’s development through our combined experience from online businesses and by utilizing Schibsted’s existing online distribution channels across Europe. We see potential for further value enhancement in Aspiro as part of Schibsted, as we belive that the company is better positioned to grow as part of a larger group. In the future, we may also seek strategic partners to further utilize the potential in WiMP music streaming services,” Schibsted CFO Trond Berger stated in the press release.

Aspiro’s WiMP music streaming service is delivered to telecommunications companies Telenor and Canal and PT in both Denmark and Norway, through Norwegian entertainment seller Platekompaniet, as well as through Portugal’s PT, paidContent reported. The monthly cost for the service is 99 Norwegian crowns ($16.53).

WiMP also plans to launch in Ireland and Germany, and had about 350,000 paying users as of September, according to paidContent.

Study: Yahoo and AOL weak on display ad business

Traditional portals, such as Yahoo and AOL, stayed weak on display ad business, while new players, such as YouTube and Amazon stays strong, according to a new study by Macquarie Research, tracking home-page advertising on the major Web portals, Media Post reported.

The study found that Yahoo’s display still underperformed - the use of oversized/custom ad units, which command premium CPMs, dropped to 26 percent of days in the last quarter of 2011, from 32 percent in the previous quarter and 34 percent one year ago. Standard rich media formats comprised the biggest chunk of Yahoo’s home-page ads (44 percent), while regular display ads made up another 30 percent.

Even though Yahoo’s home page sold out a strong 75 percent days in the fourth quarter, the site’s “poor home-page monetization on the key holiday shopping days right around Christmas” is the main concern, said Macquarie analyst Ben Schachter.

AOL had its oversized/custom ads on the home page down to 28 percent of days, compared to 40 percent one year ago. And they didn’t include any of the Project Devil units, which the web site launched last year to help regain momentum in the display category.

While old-line portals continue to lose ground, new rivals and technologies stand out. “We believe that YouTube, Facebook, and increasing mobile Internet access are negatively impacting the position of traditional portal homepages (a theme we expect to continue into 2012),” according to Schachter.

YouTube’s oversized masthead unit sold out 90 percent of days in the last quarter, and the proportion of days with tandem masthead or expandable ads grew to 16 percent from 13 percent in the third quarter and 2 percent in the first quarter. 55 percent of YouTube’s home page ads come from the media industry, which makes the site vulnerable to a dramatic downturn in spending in that sector.

Macquarie just began tracking Amazon in the fourth quarter because the company plans to ramp up its display ad business. Therefore, the type of high-impact brand advertising which other main portals are familiar with is still scarce on Amazon’s home page.

CPG was the most pervasive ad category on the retailer’s site, which made up about 1 quarter of placements, followed by financial services, at 22 percent. Media accounted for 20 percent.

In general, 43 percent of the home-page ads tracked across Yahoo, AOL, MSN, and YouTube were oversized/custom ad units, up from 35 percent in the third quarter, but lower than the 50-percent level one year ago, Media Post reported.

Economist launches tablet-only HTML election app

The Economist has released a new HTML app for tablets, this time about the 2012 U.S. election.

The free Electionism app will include the publication’s content as well as that of D.C. sister publication Roll Call, AdWeek reported today. The Economist famously pulled its app from iTunes in 2011 when it didn’t agree with Apples policies and created its own HTML app instead.

Electionism will also give a space for journalists to share links to what they are reading; a “Latest from Twitter” section that will aggregate noteworthy tweets from candidates, pundits, publications and other sources.

Pressley and the Media Lab, an internal team creating innovative products for The Economist Group titles, created the new app, according to TechCrunch. Because the app is for tablets only, it alerts users of that fact if they try to visit the site from a non-tablet web browser, and then directs them to The Economist’s website.

In November, The Economist announced that more than a million readers access its content via a mobile device monthly, and more than three million of its iOS and Android apps have been downloaded.

BSkyB buys stake in social media platform

BSkyB wants to be a bigger part of its viewers’ use of Facebook and Twitter as they watch TV.

The UK broadcaster has bought a 10 percent stake in an app that “combines social networking, live programme information and real-time viewing figures,” MediaGuardian reported today.

Zeebox, launched by the BBC’s former head of technology, allows users across platforms to see who is watching programmes, as well as interact with status updates and tweets.

The service basically “acts as an online water cooler” around which users can discuss programmes. It also uses tags to enable users to search for topics and shows, and aims to be able to aggregate the data for advertisers and television companies, according to the Register.

Digital music overtakes physical media sales

For the first time, digital downloads were more popular than buying a CD or record in the United States in 2011. Digital music made up 50.3 percent of purchases, up 8.4 percent from the year before, while physical sales were down 5 percent, PCWorld reported today.

Nielsen and Billboard used album sales as their metric, and counted downloads of 10 individual songs as an “album.” When measured this way, overall album sales were up for the first time since 2004.

Digital music consumers tend to buy rock and alternative music genres, with rock albums making up nearly 38.6 million in digital sales, according to Rolling Stone.

In 2011, the top-selling artist was Adele, with more than 5.8 million copies sold across formats (1.8 million digital copies, and more than 5.8 million digital singles of “Rolling in the Deep”).

Image: .KyKy.’s flickr photostream

Millennial Media files for IPO

Millennial Media Inc., the second biggest mobile advertising firm in the U.S., filed for an initial public offering for $75 million, Bloomberg reported.

The IPO may price the company at $700 million to $1 billion, according to a person with knowledge of the matter in May.

Millennial provides solutions for advertisers to reach mobile devices such as smartphones. Evan against the strong competition from Google and Apple, it has carved out a niche and been gaining market share by serving ads to other manufacturers’ phones and offering an alternative to larger ad networks, Bloomberg reported.

According to IDC, the mobile advertising industry in the country led by Google with 24 percent in end 2011, while Millennial made up 17 percent of the market. Apple was projected to contribute another 15 percent.

Image: The Baltimore Sun

E-book ventures launch and expand in the New Year

The e-book business is growing rapidly, with new ventures being launched and established ones seeing impressive growth.

E-reader sales increased across the U.S. over the holidays, with Amazon selling millions of Kindles in a week; Barnes & Noble seeing its Nook business increase 70 percent; and Kobo customer sign-ups increasing 10 times, Mediabistro reported.

New ventures are on the horizon as well. Former Seattle Post-Intelligencer chief Michelle Nicolosi is launching her own e-book publishing business, called Working Press, Geek Wire reported today. Working Press will “edit, format, publish, distribute and market the work of journalists and other established writers.”

Established bookseller Barnes & Noble announced it may spin off its Nook business from the rest of the company, paidContent reported today. The Nook branch is expected to reach US$1.5 billion in 2012.

“We see substantial value in what we’ve built with our Nook business in only two years, and we believe it’s the right time to investigate our options to unlock that value,” said B&N CEO William Lynch.

Meanwhile, Nintendo is reportedly developing an e-book platform for distributing game guides, digital magazines and more, Slash Gear reported.

Image: CNN Money Tech Tumblr

Trinity Mirror buys e-mail and mobile company

As part of its digital strategy, UK news publisher Trinity Mirror has bought e-mail and mobile communications company Communicator Corp for £8 million in cash, MediaGuardian reported today.

Chief Executive Sly Bailey announced the company’s new digital strategy in March last year. The plans include offering advertisers services traditionally provided by marketing agencies.

“Increasingly we’re seeing that, in addition to print and website advertising, clients want help in areas such as website design, search engine optimisation, e-mail marketing, social media and web analytics. The addition of Communicator Corp to our stable of digital assets will enhance our offering and complement the digital marketing services currently offered by Rippleffect,” Bailey said, according to a press release.

Communicator reported revenues of £3.5 million and an operating profit of £1 million in the year ending March 31, 2011, the company. The group has clients including Adidas, All Saints, Best Western and also Trinity Mirror’s own digital recruitment operation.

USA Today launches Kindle Fire app

A string of publishers are beginning to launch apps custom built for the Kindle Fire. The latest is USA Today, paidContent reported.

“Part of USA Today’s mobile strategy is to be the first news source on emerging technologies. We develop and design our apps for each specific device to provide the optimum experience to our customers,” president and publisher David Hunke stated in a press release.

The Gannett Co. Inc.-owned flagship touts the Kindle Fire app as providing “eye catching photos while delivering” the news in a “convenient interactive package designed to take advantage of Kindle Fire’s seven inch color touch screen.”

So far, the number of people using the device has been enough to “convince several publishers” to create a Kindle Fire app to reach those using Android on Amazon devices. However, not every publisher has the resources to develop an app for every platform.

Growth of online TV viewing slows in UK, mobile rises

Online TV viewing in the UK is growing in a slower pace, according to a new study by Barb, Media Guardian reported.

The biannual study of about 4,000 viewers showed that almost 15 percent watched TV on a PC, laptop or tablet computer during November 2011, up only 0.5 percent year-overon-year.

The figure in November 2009 was 11.2 percent, and increased 14.4 percent the next year.

According to Barb, the "plateau" could be caused by the rise in digital set-top boxes and the rising popularity of catch-up services on Internet connected TVs, such as Sky+ and Virgin TV On Demand, Media Guardian reported.

On the other hand, viewing on mobile devices kept on rising. Almost 3 percent of respondents said they have watched TV on their mobile phones during the tracking period in 2011, up from 1.9 percent in November 2010 and 1.1 percent in the same period two years ago.

Among all the age groups of mobile TV viewers, the biggest growth went to those between 15 to 34 - 9.8 percent had watched TV on their handheld devices in November 2011, compared to 5.8 percent in the previous year.

Overall, 36.2 percent of all adults claimed to have watched TV on their PC, laptop or tablet computers in November 2011, up 5.1 percent year-over-year.

Image: Darren Hauck for The New York Times