Mobile Advertising Now Getting its Own Budgets

Mobile applications budgets in 2010 moved away from cannibalizing online budgets, accordinhg to Millennial Media. (click on image for larger view)

Budgets designated specifically for app development grew year-over-year, now comprising nearly 25 percent of the overall budget for online projects. At the same time, mobile apps have become a more-important part of the ad impressions and revenue on the Millennial Media ad network as well.

"This year we’ve continued to see applications grow in importance and now represent approximately half of the overall monthly impressions and revenue on our network," says Michael Avon, Millennial Media EVP & Chief Financial Officer.

The number of mobile applications developed by advertisers and marketers in 2010 increased significantly. For example, just four respondents reported they were developing 20 to 50 apps a year, when Millennial Media took its 2009 survey. In the 2010 survey 83 brands reported developing tht many apps.But most respondents reported creating one to five mobile apps over a year's time.

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$6.4 Billion in Q3 2010 Sets New Record for Internet Advertising

U.S. Internet advertising revenues hit $6.4 billion in the third quarter of 2010, representing the highest quarterly result ever for the online advertising industry and a 17% increase from the same period in 2009. The third quarter 2010 revenue estimates were announced today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC US.

$6.4 Billion in Q3 2010 Sets New Record for Internet Advertising Revenues

Mobile Now Meditates the Majority of Digital Experiences

T"he majority of the world's digital experiences now happen through mobile devices linked by wireless networks," says MEX founder Marek Pawlowski.

It is this untethered medium that is defining future trends in user behavior, sweeping away the legacy of interaction methods established for fixed computing scenarios, he argues. In other words, "touch" is emerging as the preferred interface for content consumption, though mice and keyboards still are required for content creation. But since most people primarily consume content, rather than create it, the change suggests a reason why tablet devices have proven they have a new niche in the computing devices market.

Mobile User Experience Trends on the Horizon | UX Magazine

Networks are Difficult, Business Models Stressed, Net Neutrality Makes it Worse

Comcast’s David L. Cohen noted at his Brookings Institution Center for Technology Innovation speech that "the courts … the FCC … and the Congress [are] all valuable institutions filled with capable, conscientious people … but few of them [have] the background to work out consensus on what are essentially complicated technical issues.”

Cohen noted broadband policy is dominated by lawyers and lobbyists, not engineers who know how things really work: “No offense to anyone here,” he said. “I’m a lawyer and have done my share of politics. But that kind of experience doesn’t make me, or anybody else like me, an authority on the Internet."

That is not a call for decision making by technocrats or engineers; simply an acknowledgement that network management is unavoidable when running a network that must take a statistical approach to usage. And all public networks are oversubscribed, intentionally.

That always means there is potential for some actual blocking of access or degradation of service, because no company can afford to build a large network that is engineered to support every conceivable level of demand.

Net Neutrality Is a Bad Marriage of Government, Internet - by Bruce Edward Walker

Wallets don't Crash, Phones Do

Single points of failure always are troublesome, and especially troublesome when any application, device, tool or appliance is used in a "shared" mode. So digital wallets, keys and apps will, when widely used, start to cause new problems when the devices fail for any reason. Keyless door locks are great, unless your key fob has become inoperative. Then you revert to a good, old fashioned key.

We'll eventually discover issues of that sort if any when mobile phones start to assume additional roles in our lives, from payment mechanisms to remote controls of various types. Operating systems and applications crash. Just assume that will happen to any functions provided by the mobile as well. And have backup and redundancy: keys, your wallet and old-fashioned credit cards.

Dean Bubley's Disruptive Wireless: Wallets don't crash

Back to Thin Clients, Again

"X as a Service" models may reduce the workstation to a dumb terminal more and more, we are hearing, again. Call them "thin clients," or "zero clients" or something else, the emergence of cloud computing and web-delivered software is pushing computing to a new architecture that is not a "back to the future" mainframe model, but some new form of highly-distributed, loosely-coupled model that often involves more "assembly" of applications and experiences than simple "invoke and use" models.

One example is each users' experience of "Facebook." My own assembled experience is different from that of every other user, even though we all use the core Facebook app.

For enterprises and business users, the new paradigm means much more concern about data security, availability and "vendor lock-in, though also providing greater ease of management and lower cost.

For communications service providers it means a potentially enhanced role in the ecosystem. For app providers it means faster development, lower selling and distribution costs. Every new business ecosystem requires genuine value for every participant in the ecosystem, and cloud computing is shaping up to be that sort of thing.

The network becomes the computer; Borg versus Enterprise?

4G Could Enable Different Mobile Packaging and Pricing, Verizon Says

When Clearwire launched its services, it suggested it would be able to offer different types of mobile pricing and packaging, including offers that did not rely on monthly subscriptions. Clearwire has done so, with some a la carte plans. But most observers might agree that Clearwire has not disrupted pricing or packaging quite so much as some might have hoped.

Now Verizon executives say they are taking a look at what they might do once the new Long Term Evolution network launches, and among the possible options being looked at are packages that resemble fixed-line broadband plans in some ways, such as charging different prices for plans that feature different typical speeds, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Another potential option: plans that blend speed and transferred megabytes in some way, possibly lower access speeds and bigger buckets of usage, or faster speed and a smaller bucket, for example.

Some of us would like to see the equivalent of broadband "family plans" where a number of devices could share a single broadband bucket, across devices, either "wireless only" or "wireless and fixed line." In a sense, that is how some people use personal 3G or 4G hotspots, for example. But those only work for one user or several users in close proximity. Families will need to use wireless and fixed-line services over a wider area.

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So Long as Consumers Are Informed, Bit Prioriization is Not a Problem

Consumers should be free to buy, and content providers and Internet access providers should be free to offer, services with varying levels of assured quality, says Ed Vaizey, U.K. Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries.

"The important thing is that ISPs and networks remain free to innovate," Veizy argues. "In doing so they may make mistakes and consumers should have the ability to make them pay for those mistakes."

In other words, the ban on any priorities applied to bits, which network neutrality advocates want, is not a good idea for the United Kingdom and its consumers and providers.

The Open Internet

Video Subs Decline in Third Quarter

Beyond the impact of market share gains and losses among the contestants, it still appears that total subscriptions to multichannel video services fell for the second straight quarter, according to SNL Kagan.

Nobody can say for sure whether the trend is directly related to a sour economy and disruption of housing markets, of the sign of more-consequential change.

SNL Kagan estimates that U.S. cable operators shed about 741,000 basic video customers in the third quarter, the largest single quarterly dip for cable since 1980. Kagan estimated that cable operator market share dropped to 60.3 percent, compared to 62.9 percent in the third quarter of 2009.

Telephone companies added 476,000 customers in the third quarter. 6.4%, Telco market share is steadily rising, up from 4.7 percent in third-quarter 2009 to 6.4 percent in the third quarter of 2010.

The satellite video companies added a net 145,000 subscribers in the third quarter, growing share to 33.2 percent.

SNL Kagan: Video Subs Decline in Q3 - 2010-11-17 16:42:33 | Multichannel News

FCC Chairman Genachowski Says He Still Will Push for Net Neutrality Rules

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski says he still intends to push for network neutrality rules, despite some reading of a speech he made recently to state regulators. That speech was notable for the complete absence of the phrases "network neutrality" and "Title II reclassification."

"That'll happen," Genachowski said of creating net-neutrality rules.

FCC Chairman Genachowski knocks Google, Verizon for slowing net-neutrality efforts - The Hill's Hillicon Valley

Lync Gets Microsoft into Enterprise UC

Microsoft's "Lync" makes Microsoft" a real competitor in the enterprise voice space," says Forrester Research analyst Henry Dewing.

Microsoft Lync early adaptors include Dow Corning, CDW, Nikon and A.T. Kearney, among others.

http://lync.microsoft.com/en-us/launch/Pages/customer-testimonials.aspx

Lync Launches A New Era For Microsoft | Forrester Blogs

Social Network Access a Problem for Smaller Firms

Half of 1,000 businesses surveyed by Webroot in the United States and the United Kingdom report blocking employee access to any social networks. The firms, with 499 employees or fewer, indicate they do so because of the danger of spyware.

But there are other reasons as well. About 42 percent of responding firms say they have implemented an Internet use policy as a result of an employee's inappropriate use of social networking site.

Fully 39 percent of respondents say their firms have an Internet use policy that prohibits employees from visiting Facebook, 30 percent block access to Twitter and 27 percent from video-sharing sites like YouTube.

Some 21 percent allow such access, but only during specific times such as lunch breaks or after work hours.
About 16 percent grant certain departments (marketing, for example) permission to visit specific social networking sites.

More than half of those polled (53 percent) say they are very or extremely concerned about malware infections via social networks.

Two out of five (42 percent) are very or extremely concerned about data leakage through social networking sites.

About 30 percent of respondents say Web-based threats caused the biggest security headache for them in 2010, while12 percent say sensitive company information has been released via their employee's use of social networking sites.

Fully 50 percent of respondents say their firms were victims of a virus or worm; while four in 10 say they experienced a phishing attack this year.

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Has FCC Given Up on Net Neutrality and Common Carrier Regulation of Broadband?

Washington D.C. is a funny place (in the sense of "odd," not "humorous"); always has been. You learn to expect speeches devoid of content and infer what is important by what is not said. A recent speech by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski might be one of those sorts of occurrences.

There was no mention of "network neutrality" or "Title II regulation" of broadband access services. Rather, right out of the gate, there was a focus on "jobs." It might not be significant in a larger policy sense, but it could signal that the ambitious policy agenda has run into a wall. Agree or disagree with the agenda, the speech does not read to me like an indication of continuity.

http://www.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2010/db1115/DOC-302802A1.pdf

Reaching Digital Saturation?

Social networking is a "product" like any other: it has a product adoption curve that eventually will flatten.

At some point, nearly every customer or user who wants that product already uses it. At some point, the people who refuse to use a product are "never nevers."

They never have used or liked a particular product, and never want to use it.

Forrester Research analyst Augie Ray says we already are nearing a point where social networking is going to be mature, in terms of user base. In part, he rests his argument on the fact that social networking takes time, and there's just not enough time for most people to spend time with multiple social networking sites when Facebook, for example, has become so dominant.

Some people might say that is an example of "network effect," where any single network becomes more valuable as additional users are added. But the other potential insight is that many "digital" products reach saturation at levels far from "100 percent."

Apparently, only 71 percent of people use search engines and only 33 percent use instant messaging. One might argue that means there is lots of room to stimulate additional usage. One might also argue that there are some digital products that actually reach saturation at lowish to moderate levels.

The argument Ray makes is that social networking is nearing saturation, though only about 60 percent of people say they participate.

Social Changes "Everything"