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Cynopsis: DIGITAL

11/18/09

Good morning, it’s Wednesday, November 18, 2009, and this is your first early morning digital briefing.

Mobile advertising start-up AdMob is launching a brand new interactive ad unit designed exclusively for the iPhone. Billed as the first unit to bring true interactivity to mobile video advertising, it accommodates in-player actions that enable users to browse web sites, view additional videos, and respond to polls while the video is playing. The unit will be sold primarily as an interstitial that will automatically play on AT&T’s EDGE or 3G network or via WiFi while a user waits for an application to load. The first ads will start running this week in select apps across AdMob’s iPhone ad network, which claims a footprint of 20 million worldwide unique iPhones and iPod touch users.
 

 
Taking advantage of its sizeable audience within the male demo, Break Media is breaking the news this morning about a number of new premium content partnerships with Sony Music, FEARnet, Babelgum and Blastro. Content from these programming sites chosen for its appeal to the male demo will run on branded channels within the Break environment, curated by the Break staff and promoted by customized preview links on Break.com.
 
AMC‘s new drama The Prisoner has already captured the top spot on the iTunes Season Pass list, reaching the #1 rank on Monday, the day the first episode became available. Although the iTunes ranking list is fluid, AMC shows (along with seasons 1-3 of Mad Men) made up the top 4 spots on times on Tuesday. Apple says more than 50,000 TV episodes are now available for purchase on the iTunes platform.
 
To generate buzz for the season finale of its new acquisition Project Runway, Lifetime Digital is hosting host a live Q&A on Twitter with the show’s three designer finalists this Thursday night, Nov. 19th from 9 to 10 PM ET. Fans can participate by following the tweets of @ProjectRunway and @lifetimetv, who will be moderating the conversation, as well as designer finalists Althea Harper (@altheaharper), Carol Hannah Whitfield (@happilyeverCH) and Irina Shabayeva (@irinashabayeva).
 

 
YouTube is following up on the citizen journalist craze with YouTube Direct, an API tool that media organizations can use to obtain user-generated uploads of newsworthy events such as election coverage, natural disasters, conferences or, if you’re in LA, car chases. News outlets looking for footage on something can post “call for content” videos directly on YouTube, then users can upload videos directly into the application. YouTube says ABC News, Huff Po, Politico, NPR and WHDH-TV/WLVI-TV in Boston have been using the app to collect users generated footage.
 
Popular note-taking service Evernote, which works across multiple platforms including the desktop, web, or mobile announced that it has raised an additional $10 million in Series B funding with participation from prior investors, led by Morgenthaler Ventures.
 
The celebrity blog space got even more crowded with the launch of the young female-targeted HollywoodLife.com, focusing on celebrity and entertainment news as it intersects with lifestyle, health, fashion and beauty. The site, founded by former Cosmo and Us Weekly Editor Bonnie Fuller and Jay Penske, CEO of MMC, has already attracted a descent roster of launch advertisers including Old Navy, Sony Pictures, People’s Choice and WE tv, as well a handful of female-focused content partners including iVillage and AOL Popeater. 
 
Babelgum is teaming with animated print cartoon distributor RingTales to exclusively premiere new installments of Scott Adam’s Dilbert Animated Cartoons and the New Yorker Animated Cartoons, both online and on mobile. The deal follows up on a previous non-exclusive deal to stream the existing library of 450 Dilbert and New Yorker Cartoon animations on the Babelgum platform.
 

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM CYNOPSIS MEDIA

 
A group of 4 boutique New York ad, graphic design and broadcast design agencies – Head Over Heels, Savvy Strategy, gf Creative, and GuestStar – have thrown their hat in the ring to form Digital Marketing Collective. The new partnership is intended to be a one stop shop for advertisers, offering traditional services along with website design and development, mobile marketing, broadcast design, augmented reality app development, gaming and community engagement marketing.
 

 
Reminiscent of many moons ago when the movie studios tried to launch their own pay TV service and suffered from the “too many cooks” syndrome, dominant video streaming portal Hulu is showing signs of discord as its broadcast partners disagree on how to maximize ad revenue while protecting its core content from devaluation, per Mediaweek. Its network partners are accusing Hulu’s sales staff of deliberately selling against network products and promising lower CPMs that can dilute the value of the entire category. Things could get even more rocky if Comcast, which operates the Fancast portal, is successful in buying a controlling share of NBC Universal.
 
Comcast’s white label online video service provider thePlatform is rolling out a new set of software features geared toward helping programmers prepare for the “TV Everywhere” transition. While large distributors are further along in aligning authentication, billing systems and other back end components, individual cable programmers who want to stream shows on their own sites are finding it tough going, according to thePlatform VP/Marketing Marty Roberts. New tools include an Authentication adapter, allowing programmers to deploy one authentication code that will translate user names and passwords to whatever standard the pay TV provider deploys.
 
iTV vendor FourthWall Media was among the participants in CableLabs‘ Advanced Advertising Interop event held last week in Louisville, Colo. in conjunction with the cable industry’s Canoe initiative. FourthWall Media and VOD specialist Concurrent jointly demonstrated a use case consisting of a voting & polling application on VOD with addressable parameters. In a second use case, the company joined with partners such as BlackArrow to demonstrate dynamic ad insertion into linear programming.
 

 
Illustrating that entertainment continues to be fairly recession proof (remember the boom in Hollywood during the 1930’s?) entertainment-related content subscriptions have remained steady this year despite the recession, according to the NPD Group. What’s more, mobile data plans and other newer kinds of subscription services (Netflix, etc.) have expanded their customer bases:

• overall monthly per-capita entertainment-content subscription spending rose to $115, an increase of 7% from a year ago
• As of August 2009, 81% of U.S. households subscribed to a pay TV service with a similar percentage of households (76%) paying for internet subscriptions.
• 17% percent subscribed to an online music service or satellite radio
• 14% subscribed to online gaming subscription services

 
In an expanded analysis of U.S. search enquires by ComScore for the past 2 months, Google Sites led the search market with 13.5 billion search queries, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.7 billion queries and Microsoft Sites with 1.5 billion searches. Bing experienced the largest growth rate of the top ten expanded search properties with an 8% increase in query volume to more than 1.2 billion searches. Facebook’s search volume dropped precipitously to just 331 million searched in Oct.
 
comScore Expanded Search Query Report ­- October 2009 vs. September 2009
Expanded Search Entity       Search Queries (MM)
                                   Sep-09    Oct-09      % Change
                                                                Oct-09 vs. Sep-09
Total Internet               21,334    22,032          3%
Google Sites                 12,839    13,505          5%
    Google                       9,373     9,788          4%
    YouTube/All Other       3,466     3,717          7%
Yahoo! Sites                   2,692     2,663         -1%
    Yahoo!                       2,668     2,639         -1%
    All Other                         24        24          0%
Microsoft Sites               1,352     1,457          8%
    Bing                          1,156     1,245          8%
    Microsoft/All Other         196       212          8%
Ask Network                      718       730          2%
    ASK.COM                      339       348          3%
    MyWebSearch.com,etc.  379       382          1%
AOL LLC                            625       628          0%
    AOL Search Network      366       359         -2%
    MapQuest/All Other       259       269          4%
eBay                                621       617         -1%
craigslist, inc.                   624       594         -5%
Fox Interactive Media        500       478         -4%
    MySpace Sites              494       472         -4%
    All Other                          6         6           0%
Facebook.com                  384       331        -14%
Amazon Sites                    216       212         -2%
Source: comScore qSearch
 

 
Warner Bros. Digital Distribution introduced the $4.99 “Harry Potter: Spells” app on Apple’s App Store, the first iPhone/iPod Touch app based on the Harry Potter films. Players begin as wizards-in-training with an arsenal of 14 spells and can conjure magic alone or duel others by casting spells from one device to another using Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connections. Players can also post profiles and high scores on Facebook.
 
The UK’s ITV Studios Digital Productions unveiled interactive games for “I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!” for the Sky and Virgin Media‘s interactive red-button platforms.  The games will offer a free point of entry followed by a pay-to-play option for higher level playing.
 

 
Wayne Roche has been appointed Director/Business Development at Cynopsis Media. (A company such as ours can never have enough Wayne’s.) Wayne was Director of Luxury Brand Sales and Sponsorships at The Hollywood Reporter and has held senior management positions at Stagebill Media and Variety Inc. He will be based in the Cynopsis Summit, NJ office, and can be reached via email at [email protected]. Additionally, fearless Mike Farina has been upped to Senior Director/Business Development & Sales at Cynopsis. Mike has been with the company for 12 months and is also based in Summit. He can be reached at [email protected]. Congrats Mike and welcome aboard Wayne!
 
Microsoft co-founder and Chairman of Seattle-based investment firm Vulcan Inc., Paul Allen has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and is undergoing chemotherapy, the company confirmed.
 
The New York Times Co.’s the About Group has named NYTimes digital media veteran Jeff Moriarty as SVP/Product Management, About.com and Digitas marketer Evan Minskoff as VP/Marketing, the About Group. Both senior executives will report directly to Cella Irvine, President and CEO, the About Group in New York.
 
Ad Industry veterans Barry Fischer and Tim Hanlon will join the Leap Media Group‘s Board of Advisors.
 

 
The jury may still be out on whether or not social networking application creators can really break through and generate sizeable (and legitimate) sponsorship revenue but that’s not stopping the Venture Capital community from pouring money into this space. Redwood City-based RockYou, purveyor of apps such as the video sharing app Slide FunSpace, just closed on a staggering $50 million round of Series D funding from returning investor SoftBank, bringing its total raised to $118 million. Meanwhile, Farmville and Mafia Wars creator Zynga, Inc. has raised another $15.18 million from firms such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Institutional Venture Partners, days after its new FishVille game was banned from Facebook for failing to adequately to disclose scammy “Cost Per Action” offers advertised within the app. (Virtual aquarium FishVille has since reappeared on Facebook, where it has attracted some 8.3 million new users in the past week.) If investors are going to get there money’s worth, it would seem that these developers are going to have diversify, such as adding pay-for-play services. RockYou seems to be heading in that direction with this new virtual gifting app on MySpace.

Later — Wayne
 Wayne Karrfalt for Cynopsis: Digital
11.18.09

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Cyn opsis CLASSIFIEDS – For More classifieds, visit the Cynopsis.com classifieds page here    .

JOB OPENING: SYNDICATION PROFESSIONAL/Danny Lipford Media: Exp placing nationally syndicated tv show. Must have established contacts w stations/groups. Some travel. No ad sales. Benefits/Salary/Commission. [email protected] (11/25)

JOB OPENING: SR. COUNSEL, PROGRAMMING, CABLEVISION/NY:Negotiate draft transactions, handle diverse legal programming issues. Needs JD, 6+ yrs relevant inhouse or law firm experience. Apply: [email protected] (11/24)

JOB OPENING: NETWORK SALES/ION Media Networks/NY: Highly motivated and creative network sales acct exec w/ established relationships and proven track record. EOE. Apply to [email protected] (11/24)

JOB OPENING: EP OF DEVELOPMENT to lead new dev dep’t for cable/non-fict/reality. Big ideas, attaching talent, pitching, lots of showrun/EP exprnce a must. We’re moving from docus to reality/non-fiction. [email protected] (11/24)

JOB OPENING: DIR PRGRMNG/HGTV/NY: Mng all aspects of commiss’d shows. Maintains & evolves ongoing series. Showrunning Exp req’d along w/6 yrs cable nets exp in program prod or mngmnt w/sig creative input. www.scrippsnetworks.com #1241 (11/24)

JOB OPENING: DIR AFFILIATE SALES & MARKETING/HALLMARK CHANNEL/NY: Increase distribution for Hallmark Channels; please see full posting and apply at http://www.hallmarkchannel.com/ConsumerWeb/JobOpening/Default.aspx (11/21)

JOB OPENING: MGR DIGITAL ADSALES FINANCE/FNC.com min. 5 yrs ad sales financial exp. Respon. for fin. analysis of digital metrics. Strong business partner exp. Ad Servers/Yield systems req. Res + CL to [email protected]. EOE (11/21)

JOB OPENING: STRATEGIC MKTG MGR/(USA)/NBCU/NY: Devel. & execute revenue generating, multi-platform mktg opportunities for potential & current clients, support USA network’s sales goals. BA 5 yrs exp. www.nbcjobs.com , #1109143 (11/20)

JOB OPENING: DIRECTOR, MARKETING PARTNERSHIPS/Nat’l Geo Channel, DC. Lead/develop promo partnerships. BA & 7yrs exp & cable network pref. Apply www.FoxCareers.com job# FNG17451 (11/20)

JOB OPENING: EXEC PROD/NYC: Proven track rec to lead prod arm of NYC post shop. Resp for successful completion of projs across all mediums. Bring proven leadership skills to all phases of prod thru post. Res: [email protected] (11/19)

INTERNSHIPS – These positions are for credit only – nobody gets paid here. These ads are always posted for free , and students work for school credit only. For more information on the specs for posting an Internship ad, email Trish at [email protected] .

SPRING INTERNSHIP CREDITS ONLY: MKTG INTERN/Smithsonian Channel/NYC: Min 12-15 hrs/wk, Must be JR/SR, Projects incl Copywriting, Rsrch, Sales Support, Social Mktg. Mgrs provide guidance. http://www.sho.com/site/about/careers.do . The Job ID is 2556BR (11/24)

SPRING INTERNSHIPS CREDIT ONLY: Rock Ridge Music/Newark NJ: call tour promoters & retail stores, work directly w/RRM staff & artists, Internet promo/research, computer savvy, familiar w/social networking sites [email protected] (11/20)

SITUATION WANTED ADS, POSTED BY THOSE LOOKING TO BE HIRED …  There is no charge for placing your Situation Wanted ad … for more information contact Trish Pihonak at [email protected]

SITUATION WANTED: PRODUCER/WRITER/DIRECTOR (NY) Ultra-creative, award winning, all formats, all genres, all major networks and major cable. Fast, frugal and fun! [email protected] (11/25)

SITUATION WANTED: MARKETING, SALES, BUS DEV, STRATEGY, REV GEN, ROI, CHANNELS, MATRIX MGT., BRANDING, ADVERTS, COMM (NYC)+25 yrs mgt/hands-on. LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/ellencrich Email: [email protected] (11/24)

SITUATION WANTED: EIC/LINE PRODUCER with 10+ yrs exp. Variety, Docu-Reality, Game Show, Scripted, Live, Competition- Mngd biz of Prod. Co’s. for major TV & cable nets. MM/EPB budgets, union&non [email protected] (11/24)

SITUATION WANTED: RESEARCH DIR/STRATEGIST – See what 20+ yrs media, Nielsen, Hisp, research, sales, presentation experience can do for you.Email: [email protected] (11/24)

SITUATION WANTED: 20+ yrs. experience in TV Broadcasting & Cable ACCOUNTING/FINANCE. Seeking FT/PT or Temp-to-Perm position: [email protected] (11/24)

SITUATION WANTED: DESIGN, ILLUSTRATION & ART DIRECTION (NYC)20 years experience working concept through completion. Portfolio: www.baerdavis.com Email: [email protected] (11/21)

SITUATION WANTED: DESIGN, ILLUSTRATION, WEBSITE, VIDEO EDITING & ART DIRECTION (LA) Extensive industry experience.  Portfolio: http://www.unlaccess.com / Email: [email protected] (11/21)

SITUATION WANTED: EXPERIENCED FINANCIAL AND TURNAROUND EXECUTIVE – Over 20 years experience. Seeks challenging situation at broadcast/internet/print media company. [email protected] (11/20)

SITUATION WANTED: PRODUCER/WRITER/EDITOR(LA)10+ yrs in news, reality, features, docs, clip shows w/ ESPN, HBO, E! Ent., NFL Net, TruTV. Field and story producer, final cut/avid exp, great w/ deadlines & talent [email protected] (11/20)

SITUATION WANTED:CONTRACT MANAGER/ADMINISTRATOR: 10 yrs exp.in Contract/Sales Admin: avails, reporting, etc.; looking to work out of home office, or in the NY area. Contact e-mail: [email protected] (11/20)

SITUATION WANTED:CAMERA OPERATOR/LA Based… MTV, TRUTV, ABC, Watch my reel at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxsrcWAvvKw. Contact email: [email protected] (11/20)

SITUATION WANTED: BIZ & LEGAL AFFAIRS ATTY: seeks studio position/10+ yrs exp/new media, content licensing, IP, rights mgt, use of name & likeness/ [email protected] (11/20)

SITUATION WANTED: MARKETING MANAGER/LA with exp in independent film, home entertainment, television and entertainment partnerships seeks opportunity to make a difference for the right company. Email for resume. [email protected] (11/20)

SITUATION WANTED:  EIC/Line Prod/Dir.Ops. 10+yrs Versed in: live, synd, news, reality, lg. event sports & Ent. Budgeting Lg & sm. Exc. org. skills, Movie Magic, & union contracts.  At ease in fast paced control room envir. [email protected] (11/19)

E-mail [email protected] or call Trish Pihonak at 203.926.9878 for rates and specs for Job Openings.

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