Online, Mobile Ad Spending Explodes, Threatens Traditional Media?

Some thinking about online advertising spend in 2010 suggests that this year it's going to see serious growth, which is fabulous news for new media. But it's potentially bad news for traditional publishing.
The analysis is coming from ZenithOptimedia, which has been revising its estimates for online advertising spend in 2010 upwards for several months now. Its latest piece of thinking has attracted some attention in the online media itself because it predicts that the spend in 2010 will rise some 13.1% throughout this year, and even zoom upwards another 16.1% in 2011. That figure is an amazing indicator that the economic downturn really is over, as ad spend was one of the big indicators that the recession was biting deep.

Apple Tried To Buy Palm Before HP Won The Bidding War -- And RIM Completely Blew The Deal

The race to buy Palm earlier this year was fast and hot, with the company's bankers contacting 16 companies about the deal, including five serious potential suitors.
HP won the bake-off, acquiring Palm for $1.2 billion in late April.
But other companies involved in the talks included Silicon Valley's increasingly competitive rivals, Apple and Google, as well as BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, we have learned from a source familiar with the negotiations.
According to our discussions with this person:

• Apple was mostly interested in Palm's huge library of intellectual property and patents (450+ patents on file, another 400+ applications on file). And unlike some other bidders, Apple even seemed committed to funding Palm's operations, perhaps to challenge RIM's dominance in the keyboarded segment of the smartphone industry, our source says. (There's a bunch of problems with this idea, such as the idea of Apple supporting two rival app platforms, but that's what this person says.) Ultimately, Apple didn't bid high enough, while HP offered an amount the board couldn't say no to. (Recall that Steve Jobs tried to buy Palm years ago in its first life, too, when it was owned by 3Com.)

• RIM basically had the deal in its hands and "had to work incredibly hard to blow it," our source recalls. RIM initially came in higher than HP, but HP upped its bid, our source says.

• Google, likely interested in Palm's intellectual property, supposedly only wanted it because Google thought Apple might want it. But Google supposedly didn't know Apple was actually bidding for Palm, so it didn't proceed.

• Nokia, bizarrely, wasn't anywhere near the deal. That may prove to be a stupid move, which we'll expand on later.

Oxygen: Women Are Addicted To Facebook, But Unsure Where To Draw The Lines

For a large segment of women, checking Facebook has become a primary part of their morning routine, with the act of scrolling through status updates the first thing they do when waking. In a poll last month of 1,605 U.S. adults who use social media, 34 percent told NBC Universal’s Oxygen Media Facebook comes before brushing their teeth and nearly 40 percent are self-described “Facebook addicts.” The survey also found that 26 percent of women 18- to 34 get up in the middle of the night to read text messages and 37 percent of that group say they have fallen asleep with a PDA in their hands.

Big Potential for In-Store Mobile Marketing

JUNE 30, 2010

Sophisticated apps can make the store experience better than ever

Mobile shopping from in-store is just beginning to achieve its promise. Most shoppers are not yet accustomed to turning on and logging in to a retailer’s mobile app when they enter one of its stores.
Likewise, retailers are just starting to launch mobile commerce offerings, let alone offer capabilities targeted to in-store shoppers.
“Consumers have already demonstrated that they like to research products online before buying them in a store,” said Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report “Mobile Shopping from In-Store: A Potential Game-Changer.” “Until now, researching online and buying in a store have been sequential activities that take place hours, days or even weeks apart. But customers who bring their Web-enabled mobile phones with them into a store can do online research at the point of a purchase decision.”
Multichannel Merchant found in February 2010 that nearly four in five multichannel retailers in the US were not yet using any m-commerce features.

Nokia’s do-good Conspiracy

Nokia has joined forces with Tim Kring, creator of hit TV series Heroes, to launch the Conspiracy For Good campaign. The venture combines Kring’s storytelling with the brand’s Ovi platform to create a dramatic experience using interactive theatre, mobile, alternate reality gaming, music and physical participation to ‘do good in the world’.
Participants enter into the story, which fuses reality with fiction, at the Conspiracy For Good website where they can join like-minded folk to fight for social and environmental justice. They can solve mysteries online, play casual mobile games or be a physical participant in the London events that will take place from mid-July until early August.
Participation on Ovi occurs through a series of existing and yet-to-be-launched apps with casual games such as Exclusion which unlock codes to confidential websites, Ovi Maps for guiding characters through the story, and Ovi Music where hidden info within songs can be deciphered to advance the narrative about CFG’s battle with multinational company Blackwell Briggs.
“I believe that storytelling has the power to create positive change in the world,” says Kring. “Audiences today want to be more involved in stories. Our goal with the Conspiracy For Good is to entice, engage, and inspire the audience to drive real-world change through their participation in a narrative.”
“Conspiracy For Good is Nokia’s most powerful example to date for how content owners can blur the lines between the online and real-world to connect people to change,” says Tero Ojanpera, evp, Nokia.