Difference Between Mobile and Fixed Search? 1 Hour or 1 Week

There's a big difference between mobile search and fixed location search, according to Microsoft, with huge implications for the way mobile marketing campaigns can, and should be crafted.

According to Microsoft, 70 percent of searchers act on mobile search results within one hour of searching.

Online searchers average one week between search and action. That's a hugely important difference.

To the extent that many marketing messages include a "call to action," mobile is about immediacy. One hour or one week: that's the differenc.e

More than a third of interactive marketers say they have implemented or plan to implement
mobile search programs in order to connect with the 28 percent of U.S. online adults already searching on their mobile phones, says Shar VanBoskirk, Forrester Research analyst.

Sprint Doesn't Rule Out Further Clearwire Investment

Clearwire Corp's recent "going concern" notice does not mean that Sprint Nextel Corp and its other partners would not continue to fund the company, Sprint Chief Executive Office Dan Hesse. The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission is required by law, and alerts investors to the fact that Clearwire, absent new funding, will run out of cash within 12 months.

Clearwire, which is 54 percent owned by Sprint, said on Thursday there was substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern due to uncertainty over whether it could raise new funds.

Hesse didn't say specifically whether Sprint was now prepared to inject new funds, but he did note that Sprint has done so in the past.

Sprint says Clearwire crunch doesn't mean no funds | Reuters

Blogging Etiquette, Just for Fun

Standard-Definition TV Still 80% of Viewing

Some might be perplexed to find that about 80 percent of U.S. television viewing is of content in standard definition, not high definition.

Though some 56 percent of U.S. households own HDTV sets, only 13 percent of total day viewing on cable and 19 percent of viewing on broadcast television is “true HD” viewing, which requires an HD television and HD tuner that are tuned to an HD channel.

About 44 percent of homes either do not have an HDTV set or an HD service. Also, because most HDTV-owning homes have at least one non-HDTV set, about a third of total programming is viewed on a standard set.

Even on HD sets, about 20 percent of viewing is through non-HDTV feeds.

None of those statistics should be so surprising, however. Some types of programming, especially sports, really show the value of the higher-definition. But other types of programming, such as news, actually do not provide a similar level of value, one might argue.

Also, not all programming created in standard definition has been up-converted to HDTV format. There are other elements at work, as well. HDTV adds lots of value when a viewer is looking at a large, flat-screen display. The picture clarity is harder to appreciate on a smaller screen, and lots of TV viewing still occurs on smaller screens.

In fact, even beyond that, one can argue that multiple, independent value drivers are at work. Flat screens are attractive to end users for reasons having to do with form factor, irrespective of whether the content is displayed in HD format.

Even the shape of an HDTV receiver, with the different 16:9 aspect ratio, seems to strike most users as better than the 4:3 aspect ratio of a standard definition set. So some value is obtained simply by swapping 4:3 screens for 16:9 screens. Likewise, people prefer bigger screens to smaller screens. Not all those values are always directly linked to HD image resolution.

Then there is the issue of playback peripherals. There still are huge numbers of non-HDTV DVD players in regular use, and image resolution still seems for most people to be quite acceptable. Likewise, digital video recorders similarly add value for reasons having nothing to do with the actual matter of HDTV signal delivery.

HD TVs Now the Majority, but HD Viewing Lags Behind | Nielsen Wire

Publishers to Get 70% of Sales on Kindle

Amazon.com Inc. will start paying publishers 70 percent of the retail revenue for magazine and newspaper sales, after subtracting delivery costs, for each magazine or newspaper sold at its Kindle Store.

The move by Amazon, which takes effect Dec. 1, 2010, comes at a time when newspapers and magazines are increasingly looking at digital platforms like the Kindle and Apple Inc.'s iPad to replace revenue lost to decreasing print ad revenue, and at at time when Amazon wants to ensure it has the broadest support from the print publishing community for its ebook reader.

Publishers to Get 70% of Sales on Kindle - WSJ.com (subscription required)

Enterprise Customers Will Drive LTE Adoption Until 2015

 Worldwide service revenues generated by fourth-generation Long Term Evolution networks are forecast to grow quickly once networks are launched, reaching $100 billion by 2014. Revenues will be driven by laptops, smartphones and other devices, especially high-traffic enterprise subscribers using web, email and video services, say researchers at Juniper Research.

Revenues from consumer users will remain under half of total revenues until at least 2015, Juniper Research says.

About 90 percent of survey respondents believe that today’s pricing models will have to change, as well. That would suggest there is wide understanding of the need for matching consumption with pricing.

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Netflix Hits an Inflection Point

“By every measure, we are now primarily a streaming company that also offers DVD-by-mail,” said Reed Hastings, Netflix co-founder and CEO. That's what you might call an inflection point. Netflix has passed the point where most of its viewing happens by network delivery, not mailing of a DVD.

The percentage of subscribers who watched instantly more than 15 minutes of a TV episode or movie in the third quarter of 2010 was 66 percent compared to 41 percent for the same period of 2009 and 61 percent for the second quarter of 2010. In the fourth quarter, a majority of Netflix subscribers will watch more content streamed from Netflix than delivered on DVD, the company believes.

As with other metrics about video entertainment, observers will ask what it means. Some will say Netflix streaming now represents an alternative to cable TV, for example, while others will maintain it is supplemental viewing that more likely displaces purchases of HBO subscriptions, for example.

What virtually nobody will be able to contest is the fact that Netflix has made a successful transition from a supplier of DVD by mail services to a provider of streaming movie content.

Netflix ended the third quarter of 2010 with approximately 16,933,000 total subscribers, representing 52 percent year-over-year growth from 11,109,000 total subscribers at the end of the third quarter of 2009 and 13 percent sequential growth from 15,001,000 subscribers at the end of the second quarter of 2010.

The net subscriber change in the quarter was an increase of 1,932,000 compared to an increase of 510,000 for the same period of 2009 and an increase of 1,034,000 for the second quarter of 2010.

Gross subscriber additions for the quarter totaled 4,101,000, representing 88 percent year-over-year growth from 2,180,000 gross subscriber additions in the third quarter of 2009 and 34 percent quarter-over-quarter increase from 3,059,000 gross subscriber additions in the second quarter of 2010.

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