Week of July 27, 2009

Online Advertising Showing Signs of Growth

Friday, July 31, 2009

Online advertising is the one bright spot in the advertising world. All forms of media were off in the first quarter of 2009, but online is the first segment to recover. Since bottoming out at the beginning of the year, online ad rates have gone up 35%. From May to June, the increase was 15%, according to ad-optimization site, Pubmatic. Rates are still not where they were in 2008, but rates have increased every month in 2009.

Disney Plans New Subscription Service

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Disney is reported to be developing a new web-based subscription service to distribute its TV shows, movies, games and other content. Disney, just a few months ago, became the last of the major video content providers to join with Hulu, the ad-supported TV site. Robert Iger, CEO of Disney was recently quoted as saying that Disney is looking at "multiple forms of monetization."

The Set-Top Box Speaks

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The Holy Grail of TV research is set-top box data. Finding out what viewers are interested in and being able to target ads to them based on this data, is what TV execs and marketers crave the most. This would create a sample significantly larger than Nielsen's People Meter sample. Still, the size of the sample is not the issue so much as the statistical validity. In this case, size does not matter.

Nielsen supplements its existing set top box data with its Homescan consumer panel, a groups that tracks its buying habits in addition to is media consumption. This is an idea that Arbitron bought into, with its Project Apollo, which was scrapped last year. Another company, TRA, is also trying to combine ratings data with product purchase info. According to TRA's President, Bill Harvey, TRA wants to supplement existing TV ratings, not replace them.

More on Music's Rising Popularity

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Yesterday we talked about the explosive growth in the number of new releases in the last few years, even as the major record labels continue to hemorrhage money and jettison artist from their rosters. Another indicator of the soaring popularity of music and the exploding growth of non-traditional ways to expose it is the phenomenal increase in music activity on MySpace. Here 's a look at how the number of ban sites hosted on the site has exploded in recent years

* 2005 - 600,000 bands

* 2006 - 3,000,000 band

Music More Popular Than Ever

Monday, July 27, 2009

The last few years may have been disastrous for the record companies, but that hasn't prevented an exponential increase in the number of new album releases each year. According to Nielsen's Soundscan numbers, there were 105,000 new releases in 2008 in the US. That's 4 times as many as were released at the beginning of the decade. Of those, just 6,000 sold 1,000 or more copies. That's just 5.7% of all new releases.

The story is similar around the world. According to a panelist at the recent Musexpo Europe conference in London, the number of new releases in the UK has also increased dramatically in the last few years, up more than 30% since the year 2000. And like everywhere else, the number of releases that qualify as hits continues to drop.