Cynopsis: DIGITAL

12/11/09

Good morning, it’s Friday, December 11, 2009, and this is your first early morning digital briefing.

Nielsen Business Media found a buyer for The Hollywood Reporter and 7 related media-themed publications including Billboard, Adweek and Mediaweek. E5 Global Media is the buyer, a new entity formed by equity firm Pluribus Capital Management and financial services firm Guggenheim Partners. Not all of Nielsen’s business pubs are changing hands. Nielsen is shuttering Editor & Publisher and Editorandpublisher.com after 108 years of covering the newspaper and magazine businesses, after a year of great suffering in print media. The company is also ceasing book review title Kirkus Reviews. Lachlan Murdoch, the oldest son of News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch, had been rumored to be among the buyers of the Nielsen books but he was not part of the transaction. 
                                                         

 
Following the entrants of several online music start-ups and the launch of the Vevo this week, Apple is planning a major relaunch of the iTunes storefront predicated upon its acquisition of streaming service La La Media, per the WSJ. The company is considering instituting a remote streaming service, enabling users to access and manage iTunes purchases from cloud-based servers.
 
CBSSports.com and CBS Sports Mobile will provide live streaming webcasts of select CBS Sports broadcasts of NCAA basketball games on CBS, featuring match ups from the Big East, Big Ten and SEC conferences during the 2009-10 season. Coverage on CBSSports.com tips off this Sat., Dec. 12 with the telecast of No. 4 Kentucky at Indiana at 12:00 pm ET.
 

 
YouTube and CNN are accepting video questions from users who want to query movers and shakers at the Climate Debate in Copenhagen, such as former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, journalist Thomas Friedman, U.N. Executive Secretary Yves de Boer and author Bjorn Lomberg. The top questions will be posed to leaders during the debate, which will be streamed live at YouTube.com/cop15 next Tuesday and also projected onto the CO2 Cube, a 3-story art installation now on display in the center of Copenhagen.
 
Meanwhile, YouTube’s “Ask a Laureate,” feature on Nobelprize.org‘s YouTube page allows YouTube users to watch 2006 physics laureate John Mather answer questions about subjects like the Big Bang and the expansion of the universe.
 
After launching services in Spanish and French earlier this year, Twitter has added support for Italian, the company announced yesterday in an Italian-language blog post.
 

 
Mobile ad network Greystripe announced that it is launching ad formats for Android games and applications, offering “droid” developers another opportunity to monetize their creations. The company, whose products include pre-roll, interstitial and post-roll ads, says it has delivered ads into over 300 million ad-supported games and applications on the iPhone and Java platforms to date.
 

 
Brick and mortar DVD rental chain Blockbuster, which entered into a partnership with NCR Corp. to join the kiosk DVD rental business, has effectively expanded its footprint by 1,300 machines as NCR announces the acquisition of DVDPlay. (The acquisition is NCR’s second this year, following the purchase of rental kiosk firm TNR last April.) The deal will grow the Blockbuster Express brand to a total of 3,800 kiosks by the end of the year – still a shadow of market leader Redbox’s penetration. Bellevue, WA-based Coinstar, which operates the Redbox kiosks, announced it has now installed more than 22,210 units after recent roll-outs in 7-Eleven, Kroger and Albertson’s stores.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released its congressionally mandated report, Virtual Worlds and Kids: Mapping the Risks, which examines the incidence of explicit content in online virtual worlds. The FTC surveyed 27 online virtual worlds, including those specifically targeted to young kids, analyzing how easily kids/tweens can access explicit content in virtual worlds and what virtual world operators are doing to prevent minors from accessing that content. The findings of the report reveal that while there is little explicit content on kids-aimed worlds, such content is moderate to heavy on worlds designed for teens and adults. Following up, the FTC suggests that kids and parents become better educated about online virtual worlds and that operators: Use more effective age-screening mechanisms; use or enhance age-segregation techniques; re-examine language filters; provide more guidance to community enforcers in virtual worlds and report violators or potential underage users; and employ a staff of specially trained moderators who are equipped to take swift action against rule violations.
 
KIT Digital has formed an operating joint venture agreement with Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo-based, Latinstock Digital LLC, to jointly market products and services to clients in Latin America and throughout the KIT digital global network. The agreement will initially focus on the territories of Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Chile.
 

 
As brand advertisers pour more into the digital mediums there becomes a need to measure how much bang they are getting for their buck beyond the outdated click-through metric. ComScore is introducing a new set of tools to help clients better measure digital campaign effectiveness, particularly whether or not the intended target was impacted. ComScore’s new “AdEffx” suite includes measurement of:

• campaign delivery from demographic information to buying analysis
• “the lift” in online behaviors over time following the viewing of a marketer’s ad at any web site and in any ad format
• how consumer behaviors change over the course of a campaign
• how consumer attitudes/intentions change over the course of a campaign

 
The online couponing and circular craze, seen in full swing during this year’s Black Friday season, is boosting retail sales across the country, according to a new Borrell & Associates report. Coupon use is up an frothy 36% over last year, and retailers are beginning to increase their use of the internet as a distribution channel, particularly for higher-priced items. While online couponing still accounts for less than 5% of all coupon redemption, internet coupons represent some 20% of the value of those redemptions.
 
Virtual teen world Habbo Hotel introduced a new measurement tool to provide marketers with insight into the level of conversation taking place about their brands in the virtual environment. Recently piloted for MTV International during a campaign to promote the MTV European Music Awards, the “Habble” tool enables marketers to measure mentions of brand names, slogans or key phrases over a defined period, compiling data daily and displaying and analyzing it in a chart that maps peaks of activity. After the campaign commenced in September, Habble showed that conversations around the awards were up by 371% in the UK and 762% in the Netherlands.
 

 
News Corp’s BSkyB is using MPP’s iPay technology to offer a ‘gifting’ facility within its new music streaming and download service, “Sky Songs.” Current Sky customers can choose to gift a subscription of either 1, 3, 6 or 12 months, permitting the recipient to download an album (or 10 tracks) each month for free.
 

 
The newly independent AOL flipped the switch on a newly redesigned homepage yesterday, just as 38-year-old CEO Tim Armstrong rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. (AOL shares fell by 15 cents to $23.52 while former partner Time Warner shares closed up $1.23 to $30.45, in case you’re wondering.) The first thing you might notice is the parade of cutesy images that scroll across the top of the page – feel free to click on images such as the goldfish, butterfly or fuzzy blue monster; they simply change the background image and color palette of the page. The idea is to encourage users to utilize new customization features accessible from the homepage. You can personalize visual themes, links to frequently visited sites, RSS feeds as well as your “MY stuff” dashboard, including mail accounts and content pages. The new interface also allows you to add widgets, a la Netvibes or iGoogle, helping you to follow stock prices, eBay auctions or sports scores. There’s nothing here that hasn’t been developed and perfected by other players, but the new look brings AOL into the 21st Century of web design. It makes sense to develop visual prompts to encourage loyal users left over from the days of dial-up to leave their comfort zone and try new things. The company may also try to get more mileage out that fuzzy blue monster – the big guy was featured in a huge banner that hung outside the New York Stock Exchange in New York yesterday. Cute can be powerful, if there’s great content, design and user interface behind it. But it’s going to take more that cute to turn AOL around at this late date.
 
Later — Wayne
 Wayne Karrfalt for Cynopsis: Digital
12.11.09

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