Week of January 26, 2009

All Access PMG Trends for 1/30/09: Which Types of Sites Saw the Biggest eCPM Drops?

Friday, January 30, 2009

Yesterday we talked about how bad the picture is for online advertising. PubMatic, an online ad optimization service, showed a 48% drop in eCPM (online cost per thousand) rates from Q4 2007 to Q4 2008. Here's a look at the drops for the largest site categories:

· Sports: $0.40, -8.7%

· Entertainment: $0.38, 40%

· News: $0.34, 36%

· Music: $0.30, -61.5%

· Social networks: $0.20, -54%

Online Ad Rates Plummeting

Thursday, January 29, 2009

The latest numbers from PubMatic, an online ad optimization service, show just how dramatically the online ad space is being affected by the economic downturn. In the fourth quarter of 2008, the average price for remnant ads across all sites was $0.26 per thousand impressions (CPM). This is a 48% reduction from Q4 in 2007 and down a penny from Q3 2008. A penny may not sound like much, but normally there's a big jump in the 4th quarter, due to holiday sales.

Here's the breakdown on how the big categories did:

· Business and Finance: $0.83, -61%

· Technology: $0.59, -41%

· Gaming: $0.51, +31% (the only good news in the report)

Survey Shows Internet Surpasses Newspapers

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

A recent survey from the Pew Research Center shows more people get their news from the Internet than from newspapers. This is the first time that the Internet has passed newspapers in their survey. 40% of those in the December survey indicated that the Internet was their primary source for news, 35% said newspapers, while TV was far and away #1 with 70%. Radio was a distant 4th at 18%

Of course, the web sites that a lot of people turn to for news are often those affiliated with major daily newspapers. It's just that the hard copy circulation is falling dramatically. This is another reason why the news industry in keeping a close eye on recent changes in formatting. The Chicago Tribune has just switched to a new tabloid format for their newsstand copies and The Christian Science Monitor has scrapped its print edition in favor of an online only presence.

More of the future on display at the CES

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

LG was demonstrating their Watch Phone prototypes, combining many of the functions of a normal cellular telephone into a wrist-watch sized unit that shows the time on a watch dial display when it's not going through its various phone menus using the touch-screen. Supposedly due for sale later this year, it weighs 3 ounces & is 2.4" x 1.5" x .5" in size, which is obviously somewhat larger than the typical wrist watch. However, it will have both video chat & text messaging capabilities.

Sony showed an engineering prototype of the first flexible color OLED screen. "Flex OLED" was tiny but actually showed a 3" moving image while being bendable to a radius of 25 mm. One demo of an eventual application of this development was for a notebook PC, which could consist of a single foldable & bendable OLED that would create images for both the display & the keyboard itself.

Nokia had a "research development" but working demonstration of their Local Sensor, consisting of very small low-power wireless tags that would be attached to important possessions. If lost, by using a direction-finding enabled cell phone, they could be found by using the indications of the item's direction & distance, from up to 300 feet away. Perfect for anyone you might know who is continually losing their things!

Future products demoed at CES

Monday, January 26, 2009

Among the astounding products coming "soon" was a 50" plasma display from Panasonic that was only 1/3" thick, with this "world's thinnest plasma TV" expected to become available commercially within one year. Meanwhile, the Z1, a slightly thicker (1") 54" set will be available from Panasonic starting in July. Panasonic also had a prototype 150" plasma, which looked surprisingly clear given its huge size, although the shiny screen surface did create some annoying reflections.

On the LCD side, Samsung showed engineering prototypes using edge-lit LED backlights to display screens of 40", 46" & 55" that were only 1/4 of an inch thick. Meanwhile, Sony & Samsung showed 3D LCD flat-panel displays, using what appeared to be polarized glasses to create images with compelling depth in both movies & video games.

Tomoor, Tommy hadges series on hot products from the CES conculdes with more new procuts that are due out later this year.