Weekend Reading - August 15
Friday, August 15th, 2008
NBC unveils measurement of mobile usage at Olympics. According to an article in AdAge, NBC Universal has revealed usage figures for mobile devices and the Olympics. The biggest news from the report is that the Olympics as an event seem to be driving mobile video and mobile news adoption for the masses. According to a spokesperson for NBC, half of the mobile users who are watching video or getting news from their mobiles about the Olympics, are doing so for the first time.
According to the piece, NBC also unveiled a way to measure all viewers across the board [TV, online, web, cable] with something called TAMi, or total audience measurement index, described by AdAge as:
Data capture in rudimentary fashion; the numbers of people watching Olympics content on TV, online, via mobile and through video-on-demand.
The program is still in its early stages and stats won’t be used to sell ad time says NBC – at least not yet. It’s interesting to note that the larger players such as NBC are starting to acknowledge there’s a whole new audience – the mobile consumer - that wasn’t a target even a mere four years ago during the Athens Olympics, and that in response they are starting to develop custom content to meet the needs of mobile users.
MySpace: Not just crappy bands, creepy stalkers and strippers. According to Marketing Charts, MySpace numbers shot through the roof with a record 75.2 million unique US visitors in July 2008, the highest number since its launch in 2004 - and an increase of 2.5 million from the previous month.
MySpace attributes its continued growth to recent changes it has made to its site and its ability to “make money in high interactive spend areas.”
Other positive data included:
- Total minutes spent on MySpace increased to 17.3 billion (a 7% increase month-over-month) while average minutes per visitor decreased for the total Internet
- Visitors each spent nearly 4 hours on MySpace in the month
- Visitors spent nearly three times the amount of total minutes on MySpace than on any of its closest competitors’ sites.
- MySpace total minutes were up 20% compared with the same period last year.
“BRIC” countries bigger fans of mobile entertainment. Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) mobile markets are more into entertainment-theme sites than American and European markets where the draw is information and news, says The Nielsen Company. According to Nielsen, entertainment, gaming, and music websites rank among the top five categories visited in all four BRIC countries, but do not have a place among the top US and Europe rankings.
Email, weather, news and search are the top categories for both American and European mobile Internet users. Nielsen’s research suggests that mobile Internet users across BRIC countries are more reliant on mobile phones to provide them with entertainment content, while users across the United States and Europe view their devices more as a resource for information.
Online video market: Still ready to explode, but when? The worldwide online video market is experiencing dramatic growth, says a new report from In-Stat.
Worldwide online video revenue is expected to eclipse US$4.5 billion by 2012, up from $1.2 billion in 2008, the market research firm says. Purchased/rented videos are expected to offer the most robust growth for online video in the near term, in large part due to an increase in subscription services such as Netflix, which charges a flat monthly fee to deliver an optimal combination of packaged goods and online content that can be viewed on home TV sets. [The report was released before this week’s Netflix snafu.] http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=9676
By 2012, In-Stat forecasts that 90% of US households will have access to broadband, with 94% of these individuals watching online video. On the other hand, they say 54% of respondents of their survey still favor physical discs when purchasing movies or TV shows. The DVD isn’t dead yet, folks!
