FTC Okays Google DoubleClick Buy

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission will not try to block Google's acquisition of online ad-serving vendor DoubleClick, the agency said Thursday.

The commission voted 4-1 to approve the deal after an eight-month investigation. "After carefully reviewing the evidence, we have concluded that Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick is unlikely to substantially lessen competition," the majority wrote in a statement.

The commission downplayed concerns brought by some privacy groups. Privacy concerns are "not unique to Google and DoubleClick," and "extend to the entire online advertising marketplace," commissioners wrote.

Melancholy End for Think Secret

Apple and Think Secret have settled their lawsuit, reaching an agreement that results in a "positive solution for both sides," though one might question the broader implications. Think Secret has in the past published rumors about upcoming new Apple products, and Apple is a notoriously secretive company in that regard. Apple has sued to force Think Secret to reveal its sources.

As part of the confidential settlement, Think Secret was not forced to reveal the sources of information it published. But part of the agreement also is that Think Secret no longer will be published.

The decision represents a "positive" outcome for Nick Ciarelli, Think Secret's publisher, only to the extent that the financial damage from losing such a lawsuit would have been catastrophic. "Positive" for Apple in that Apple reins in "leakers" and media outlets.

There's nothing wrong with Apple's obsession about secrecy. It's a time-tested and successful "buzz marketing" tactic, and Apple plies it better than any other company. But the "chilling" effect on media is palpable. That isn't to say there are not some circumstances where revealing a source is socially desirable. As a rule, though, lots of "news" that actually is socially desirable is the result of somebody "leaking" something.

It's good that Nick still has a life. It's good that no Apple "leakers" will be prosecuted or "persecuted." I still respect Apple. It's just too bad it had to come to this.

Video Will Not Follow Music Disruption Model

There’s a big difference between the music and the video businesses. Music executives unsuccessfully fought the advent of digital distribution. But media and entertainment industry executives overwhelmingly believe that online distribution of TV shows is an opportunity, not a threat.

Video content creators will embrace online distribution, rather than trying to "kill" or "cripple" it, as music executives did.

Of the 100 executives surveyed recently by Accenture, 70 percent agreed that online distribution of TV shows is more of an opportunity than a threat, given its ability to extend the reach of its programming to a much wider audience at a relatively low cost
compared to traditional broadcasting or physical distribution.

“Technology will continue to alter the distribution landscape, allowing people to access content on their own schedule, wherever they are, in all kinds of ways,” says Leslie Moonves, CBS CEO. “Companies that can combine world-class content with powerful national and local distribution will have the competitive advantage.”

If that is the case, broadband service providers will have some role to play. “We see a big transition moment in the industry,” says Accenture managing consultant consultant Diego Mora Ovideo. “Our telecom clients have many questions about the main battleground.”

“A big question mark is how to change the corporate DNA and business structure to really compete,” he says. In large part, that is because the ecosystem is changing.

“Value is shifting away from simple access,” says Mora Ovideo. And there’s a big shift in Europe that North American carriers will have to confront at some point. “To change their DNA, some are looking at “netco” and “servco” models.

You might call this structural separation or functional separation. Sometimes voluntarily, sometimes involuntarily, telcos are creating distinct organizations to handle retail sales and networks.

“Either there is a formal division into a network business unit and service business units, or sometimes separate organizations are created, without a formal separation of business units, Mora Ovideo says.

“It would be very difficult to think the current business model, skills and mindset will work in the new world,” he adds. Different backgrounds and skills and mindsets are required.

And such reorganizations are being conducted even though the amount of new revenue to be earned from new service offerings is necessarily all that large at the moment. “It isn’t about current volume, but building a position for the future,” he says.

“We must move fast enough o position and have a significant role”, is what service provider execs are saying, he notes. A few leaders like Apple, Nokia, News Corp. and Google are moving very fast, and our clients are moving slower, on purpose, to focus on fixed mobile convergence, substitution and other issues, he says. In the media space, service providers will build partnerships, Mora Ovideo says.

“There’s urgency to act fast,” he says, even though over the next two to three years access will remain the main revenue source.

Some incumbents also are moving to disrupt themselves, accelerating the change, in the voice area. As you would expect, the more aggressive moves often are made by smaller incumbents, who have more to gain from disruptive moves. ‘Absolutely, the weaker incumbents in a market are more likely to launch attacks,” he says.

“In any event, within four or five years, voice will not drive revenue,” he notes.

On the media and content front, 62 percent of executives look to “new platforms” as being the most important key to growth, while 31 percent say “new content” will drive growth, and seven percent say “geographic expansion” is the key growth lever.

Of these new platforms, online and mobile are seen as the key platforms, with a combined 43 percent of execs citing online as most important. Online portals were seen as key by 17 percent of respondents, while 13 percent think social networking sites will be important. About 13 percent think e-commerce sites will be key.

Mobile platforms were seen as key by 17 percent of respondents.

Most think (53 percent) of executives surveyed think “short form content” offers the
largest opportunity for “new content,” with “long form” or “full length” video content (greater than 60 minutes) garnering 11 percent of responses.

Video gaming” was viewed as a key growth area by 13 percent of executives. About 57 percent of respondents think “consumer-based competition” or “user-generated” content is the biggest threat to the media business, while 46 percent also are worried about “piracy or IP theft.”

Still, 68 percent of respondents believe that they will be able to harness user-generated content to create revenue within one to three years.

About 70 percent of respondents also think that social media is a natural evolution of today’s business but will be an evolutionary development. About a quarter of respondents think social media will be “revolutionary” in its impact.

More than 90 percent of the executives said that their companies would become
involved in social media over the next 12 months.

Teens: Social Media, Not Email

Some 93 percent of teens use the Internet, and more of them than ever are treating it as a venue for social interaction. Those of you around children and teens know that much of their social life is programmed and scheduled. To a greater extent than used to be the case, their lives are restricted for safety reasons. Social networking is a substitute for "hanging out" in the physical world with friends.

Despite the important of email for adults as a major mode of personal and professional communication, it is not a particularly important part of the teen communications pattern.

Only 14 percent of all teens report sending emails to their friends every day, making it the least popular form of daily social communication on the list researchers at the Pew Internet and American Life Project found.

Even among highly-connected teens who have access to multiple communication modes, just 22 percent say they send email to their friends daily.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that 64 percent of online teens ages 12-17 have participated in one or more among a wide range of content-creating activities on the internet, up from 57 percent of online teens in a similar survey at the end of 2004.

About 39 percent of online teens share their own artistic creations online, such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos, up from 33 percent in 2004.

About 33 percent create or work on Web pages or blogs for others, including those for groups they belong to, friends, or school assignments, basically unchanged from 2004 at 32 percent.

Some 28 percent have created their own online journal or blog, up from 19 percent in 2004. About 27 percent maintain their own personal Web page, up from 22 percent in 2004.

About 26 percent remix content they find online into their own creations, up from 19 percent in 2004.

The percentage of those ages 12-17 who said “yes” to at least one of those five content-creation activities is 64 percent of online teens, or 59 percent of all teens.

It isn't rocket science to suggest that social networking is a fundamental trend, not a fad, as some seem to think.

Mobiles as Lifestyle

It's been a pretty significant year for the U.S. mobile industry and its users. First, a computer and consumer electronics company essentially dictated a new business model and took device usability to a different level.

Second, a shift to mobiles as "lifestyle" devices has accelerated. The expressiveness of design now is as important, if not more important, than device functions and features.

Third, a shift to "open networks" began, and even-faster innovation will be the result.

The lifestyle focus, in turn, will help drive mobile ad spending. That's partly because the mobile Internet is emerging, and partly because video, audio, games and entertainment are a bigger part of the "lifestyle" than the "work" device.

That, in turn, means many more ad-supported features, as is the case for the broader Internet and Web.

First Steps at Sprint

New CEO Dan Hesse says his first priority will be to tackle the customer-service problems and customer defections that have plagued the company in the past year.

An internal Sprint document recently disclosed described the company's "inferior results" in customer service. It pointed out that Sprint resolved just 53 percent of problems on the first call, compared with 71 percent for T-Mobile USA, despite Sprint having nearly three times as many customer service reps.

One would expect no less. Hesse is viewed as a highly-competent manager, and this is the sort of problem a good manager can fix. But later, recall that Hesse was the pioneer of AT&T's "Digital One Rate" plan, which introduced flat-rate pricing to U.S. wireless consumers in the late 1990s. That one move revolutionized mobile pricing in the U.S. market.

Once he gets the churn and customer service problems under control, we'd be watching for more innovation from Sprint than one typically sees.

Media, Voice, Mobile, Broadband Tipping Points

In a historic first, online media companies collectively will sell more ads in local markets this year than such individual hometown media as newspapers, broadcasters and yellow pages, says Borrell Associates. That's a tipping point, a stage of development when critical mass for some new phenomenon is reached.

Five years ago business phone systems hit a tipping point: most new systems were IP-capable. A couple years ago another tipping point was reached and new phone systems mostly are IP-only. These days most new phone sales are for IP systems.

Likewise, Internet usage and access hit similar tipping points earlier this decade. Most people now use the Internet, and that wasn't true 10 years ago. Also, there was a tipping poin when broadband caught and then surpassed dial-up access as the dominant access medium.

Then there was some tipping point reached where access speeds accelerated beyond the "affordable mass access in the hundreds of kilobits per second range" to "affordable mass access in the megabits per second range."

You can see tipping points for text messaging and mobile phone use as well, even though it is only within the last decade that most people started carrying mobile phones and only within the last five years that most younger users began texting heavily, dragging older users along with them.

One watches for tipping points for all sorts of practical reasons, including evidence that it now is time to restructure the way marketing, sales, production, business models, distribution, industrial design, menus and all sorts of very practical things get done.

And the point is that all media are approaching tipping points of their own, and for reasons largely analogous to how communications is changing because of Moore's Law, IP, peer-to-peer, cheap storage, optical fiber, wireless and Web services.

In the newspaper local advertising area, a new tipping point appears to have been reached.

Online-only media companies will have claimed 43.7 percent of the $8.5 billion spent in 2007 on local advertising, usurping the long-time lead of newspapers. While newspapers three years ago controlled 44.1 percent of the local market, they will capture only 33.4 percent of sales this year.

The growth of the online media companies “came mainly at the expense of newspapers and yellow pages publishers,” who have lost a combined 19.6 points of local advertising share in the last three years, says Borrell.

Having spent some time working at newspapers, as well as at publishing companies with multiple products, a concrete way to view tipping points is the impact on structuring of sales forces.

Typically, newspapers and other local media try to build their online businesses by selling new media to their legacy customers. Sometimes they try to use a single sales force to sell online and legacy products. That doesn't work, long term.

In fact, it doesn't quite work even short term, as sales forces direct their behavior to where they can make the most money, and that never is in the emerging businesses.

So one winds up with a strategy akin to launching a Boeing 777 into the air by rolling forward slowly on a long runway. No matter what you do, you crash at the end, because there never is enough runway if you don't get your airspeed up pretty quickly.

Companies that rely on their legacy sales forces to sell the new products--even though it seems logical--will crash their planes at the end of the runway. The only way to succeed is to cut the cord. Build separate sales teams with separate incentive structures; not "converged" sales teams.

One does not "incrementally" jump a very wide ditch. One leaps. One makes it or not. But it can't be done incrementally and slowly.