SpectatorBytes

Much has been written about the Hulu experience. Since last year, I increasingly have found myself using my laptop on weekends to catch up on my favorite TV shows both on Hulu as well as on the network sites. The experience is particularly enjoyable on Saturday afternoons when College sports dominate TV programming. So, obviously [...]

The Associated Press has been reporting on the box-office success of the Dark Knight (See here). One the most interesting points that the AP made in their coverage is the following: However, the numbers reflect today’s higher admission prices, and “The Dark Knight” will not approach “Star Wars” or “Titanic” in terms of actual number [...]

A few posts back I wrote about the new dynamics of content businesses in a digital world (See here). In recent months, the mantra of “content is king” has returned to the forefront of these businesses as a way to highlight their value. This is not surprising. As distribution outlets proliferate thanks to the digital [...]

The Online Publishers Associate just released a study which concludes that advertisers can boost the effectiveness of their ads by focusing their campaigns on branded content sites. Below are some of the key findings outline in the report (Full report here): – Ads Placed on Content Sites Raise Brand Favorability and Purchase Intent Significantly More [...]

Venture Beat picked an interesting story from Ad Age which outlines the challenges facing the online advertising industry (See Here) which outlines the challenges facing the onlineadvertising industry. Below is one of the most interesting statement’s in the Ad Age piece. “The inconvenient truth is that for all its new-media spin, display advertising is “old” [...]

Years ago, I realized that Google’s search product has become the leading distribution platform for content on the Web. As a website owner or content publisher, one has to optimize its site structure to make sure that Google properly showcase your content when your users are looking for it. If Google does not want to [...]

In January 2007, AOL made a tender offer for Tradedoubler shares at 215 SEK (Sweedish Krona). The total value was $900M. The offer was supported by the board of directors and counted with support from several large shareholders. However, the majority of the shareholder base decided that the offer undervalued the company significantly. AOL pulled [...]

Online Ad optimizer, Pubmatic put out once again their findings about online CPMs (See Here). Pubmatic found that CPMS are stagnant at best on average and dropping across several categories. This research is in line with what most large networks have also reported about their CPMs in the last couple of quarters. The problem is [...]

I recently came across an interview given by former head of Ad Sales Wenda Harris Millard (see Here) which outlines some of the issues that I see in the online ad industry today — particularly around the push to shift “brand” advertising spending to the Internet and away from Television and print. – The online [...]

Today, there was an interesting article on USA Today about the impact of DVRs on TV viewership (See Here). It seems that we have certainly been talking about DVRs and specifically Tivo for quite some time. Yet, as the article indicates, DVRs have yet to reach mainstream; penetration levels are hovering at 23%. This will [...]

Over the past 10 years, there has been much discussion about who will win the battle for the set-top box in the home. Hardware manufacturers, cable operators and telephone companies have invested billions of dollars in becoming the gateway for consumption of digital goods in the home. The market belief has been that whoever controls [...]

The online video revolution has certainly been on its way for quite some time now. YouTube’s skyrocketing audience numbers and overall video streams statistics from the Web indicate that video has become a core element of the Web experience. This trend will expect to continue as increasing number of traditional and new video content producers [...]

Acquisitions have emerged as an essential capability for digital media players to build scale and drive product innovation. The digital media business has become hit-driven and increasingly hyper-competitive. As a result, building a successful Web business is increasingly hard for anyone but particularly for corporate media players. This is leading most media players to rely [...]

The phenomenon of Twitter and Friendfeed seems to have regained momentum over the past couple of weeks. Early adopters are increasingly fascinated with these applications’ ability to broadcast information across the Web to a community of followers. The recent incident involving a US citizen arrested in Egypt, who used Twitter to ask for help, demonstrated [...]

I am increasingly surprised by how many more sites seem to be looking to build audiences through SEM efforts. The concept of using a direct marketing ad unit such as paid search to promote content websites has seemed strange to me. The idea of having to continually advertise to be able to aggregate audiences seems [...]