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Updated by GIC (Grupo Internet Corporativo at Telefonica SA).
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Nokia has continued its push into the mobile content space via a deal with Italian-based company Buongiorno, which claims to be the world’s largest mobile content group with agreements with over 100 operators worldwide. According to reports, since confirmed by both companies, Nokia will add Buongiorno’s ‘BlinkoGold’ mobile content portal to ten of its handsets, including the N95, N70 and N82, and accessed via Nokia’s ‘Download!’ application. The deal is understood to be a revenue-sharing agreement, which will see both parties receive income from video, music, graphics and games downloaded from the site. According to the Financial Times, the service will initially launch in Italy, followed by Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Austria and France, and then US, China, Russia and Brazil. Nokia has signed similar deals in the last couple of months with operators Orange and T-Mobile.
02-Jun-08, 11:35 LONDON - Online advertising is growing by 40% year on year across Europe, according to research by the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe. In 2007 the European online advertising market was worth €11.2bn (£8.88bn), up from €7.2bn in 2006.
This growth helped Europe close the gap on the US online ad market, which increased by only 26% during the same period to €14.5bn. The research also found that two-thirds (65%), or €7.3bn, of European online ad budgets in 2007 were spent in the big three markets of the UK, Germany and France. However, some of the smaller markets experienced very high growth rates — Greece increased 91%, Spain rose 55% and Slovenia climbed 49%.
Alain Heureux, president of IAB Europe, said: “Despite a slowdown in advertising spend on some traditional media, the rise of online advertising in Europe continues unabated. “Not only is the growth coming from some of the smaller markets which are seeing significant increases in their market value, but also from the more mature countries as companies move their advertising budgets online for the first time.” The sectors investing the most in online advertising in 2007 were Entertainment & Leisure, Telecoms and Finance & Insurance.
Terra Networks and Warner Music announced a partnership to present the DVD release of “Arde el Cielo con Maná”. The exclusive bilingual online programming will provide consumers a unique and unprecedented in-depth artist experience at Terra.com, including contests, photo galleries, community pages, blogs, webisodes of exclusive interviews and much more.
“We are proud to partner with Warner Music in order to offer Maná fans and the online community in general groundbreaking online coverage of one of the best rock bands in the world, Maná and the release of their DVD ‘Arde el Cielo con Maná’,” said Angel Sepúlveda, Executive Director of Programming of Terra Networks USA.
“In this new digital world we need to cater to a consumer that is eager for new content and open to new ways to relate to their favorite bands. I can’t think of a better way to start off this relationship with Terra than with a band like Maná,” said Gabriela Martínez, Vice President of Marketing for Warner Music Latin America.
The initial phase includes the re-launch of the Maná artist page with new videos, photo galleries, bios, trivia and exclusive sneak peaks of the DVD as well as a contest where fans will compete to become the ultimate Maná fan. Terra users will vote to select the top five finalists and the band will select the winner, who will attend the release party and be the “Official Maná Blogger” on the web.
The second phase will include an autographed Gibson guitar giveaway and a behind the scenes with Terra TV Host Luisa Fernanda as Maná, Terra and Warner Music get ready to take-over. Terra and Terra TV editorial teams will provide live minute-by-minute coverage available at http://www.terra.com/musica/artistas/m/mana .
As has been reported and rumored for the last month or so, the much-hyped mobile messaging and community service Twitter is in the process of closing its $15 million round, and the investor is Spark Capital, we have confirmed through sources. Previous investor Union Square Ventures is also re-upping in this round, our sources say. Spark is the digital media-focused investment firm based in Boston, and has invested in companies such as Veoh, Kickapps, NextNewNetworks and others. In total, the company will have raised about $20 million after this round closes.
As we pointed out last week, the new round comes amidst a particularly bad stretch at the company, which has been suffering blackouts on a daily basis as of late. And of course, the business model part of it is still, well, a bit in the future, and more than anything, this new round is about buying the company time to figure out that part.
Source: paidContent.org
OpenSocial gained a new convert today. AOL is officially joining the initiative to standardize social-networking apps, Google VP of Engineering David Glazer announced today at the Google I/O event. Not much more was mentioned. AOL, of course, bought Bebo for $850 million, which is already part of OpenSocial. But Bebo is also integrated with the Facebook platform. So is AOL just hedging its bets in the social network wars? Looks like it. With Facebook planning to open-source its platform, it will be interesting to see if AOL shows up as a partner for fbOpen as well.
A post on the official OpenSocial Blog states that AOL’s first steps will be to implement Gadgets on myAOL.com. The post says that Gadgets should help developers create widgets that can be used on myAOL, as well as the web at large.
Source: TechCrunch
ComScore digs into mobile: It has acquired mobile research firm M:Metrics for $44.3 million in cash, plus about 50,000 comScore (SCOR) options, which will be issued to unvested M:Metrics option holders.
This makes perfect sense: As mobile Web browsing increases, mobile metrics will be increasingly important to comScore’s stats — and its customers. Last summer, comScore rival Nielsen bought M:Metrics rival Telephia.
Source: Silicon Alley Insider
A new report published by
Screen Digest predicts that mobile media ad spending in the US will increase from $88 million in 2008 to $700 million over the next 4 years. The report, titled “
Mobile Media Advertising Opportunities: The Market for Advertising on TV, Video and Games“, also predicts that more developed mobile markets, such as Japan and South Korea, would have higher ad revenues than the US for mobile TV, gaming, UGC and VoD services.
“Data pricing structures, handset and mobile web usability, content quality and the lack of audience metrics to measure effectiveness are preventing mobile advertising from reaching its market potential,” said Julien Theys, who wrote the report for Screen Digest.
To put this in context, one can also look at other forecasts for the US market from eMarketer. These divide mobile advertising according to “messaging”, “display”, and “search”. The mobile media figures represent a portion of the display category.
The report also asked US advertising executives if they were planning to switch some of their online advertising spend onto mobile, 62% of them said not in 2008. Another interesting fact from the report was that only 15% of these advertising executives had already used mobile advertising.
“There remain clear growing pains ahead for mobile advertising,” said John du Pre Gauntt, senior analyst at eMarketer. “There are sticky disagreements concerning mobile customer information among mobile operators, Web portals, brands and agencies. All agree that better contextual targeting (for example, location, time, history) is a prerequisite for mobile advertising to succeed. But how to get there in the short-term remains an open question.”
The company announced the new brand —Microsoft Advertising— on Tuesday (May 20) at advance08, its annual gathering of brands and agency executives being held this week at its Redmond, Wash. campus.
The Microsoft Advertising brand, which will be pushed by the company’s advertiser and publisher solutions (APS) group, includes the ad serving tool Atlas, the ad exchange AdECN, the ad platform adCenter, and the in game ad firm Massive.
Source: Mediaweek
Microsoft has a big announcement today, one that should show the world they’re capable of running a search business even without Yahoo: their Live Search CashBack program will enable you to use special savings “coupons” after you buy stuff you’ve found using Live Search. The detailed explanation of how this works can be found on here; the lowdown is as follows: You search for deals using Live Search; when you find deals with a special coin shaped icon, it means you’ll receive a small amount of money after you’ve bought something. When your balance reaches $5, you can claim your cash.
If this sounds like those special customer cards your local store clerk has been bothering you with, you’re right. Personally, I don’t care for such deals, but I’m sure there are people who enjoy saving a buck here and there. However, there are several of problems with Microsoft’s cashback; after I list them all, many of you will find that the program simply isn’t for you.
Source: Mashable
Napster launches the largest digital rights management-free music store in the world, with six million songs that can be loaded onto just about any digital audio player (a healthy advantage over Amazon’s five-million-track MP3 store). The tracks will still cost 99 cents and albums $10 but Microsoft’s Playsforsure-protected format is no more.
Apple also has cause for concern. Two of its most widely-known competitors now offer DRM-free music the majors won’t let Apple sell without DRM. Apple’s latest figures on the topic (released in October) indicated that it only had two million DRM-free tracks.
Source: Wired
