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.

Google TV Explained In 141 Seconds

Google published a video explaining its forthcoming Google TV product earlier today.
The video doesn't tell us much we didn't know already: Google TV, available both from a set-top box and built-in to select televisions from Sony, will provide new ways to search for and record existing television content, as well as allowing people to display online content on their televisions.
The product looks fine, as far as we can tell, but the video itself is pretty underwhelming. It is narrated in a PSA-like monotone, and is thin on detail. As ever with Google, it's difficult to tell whether the company thinks this is an important new business or just another side project.
At least some people think Google is on to something big here. If so, it needs to do a lot more to sell the idea:

Sorry, There's No Way To Save The TV Business

The traditional TV industry--cable companies, networks, and broadcasters--is where the newspaper industry was about five years ago:
In denial.
There are murmurings on the edges about how longstanding business models will come under pressure as Internet distribution takes over.  But, so far, the revenue and profits are hanging in there, so the big TV companies don't really care.
Specifically, the TV industry's attitude is the same as the newspaper industry's attitude was circa 2002-2003: Stop calling us dinosaurs: We get digital; We're growing our digital businesses; We're investing in digital platforms; People still recall ads even when they fast-forward through them on DVRs; There's no substitute for TV ads.  And traditional TV isn't going away: Just look at our revenue and profits!
After saying all this same stuff for years, the newspaper industry figured out the hard way that, eventually, reality intrudes, that you can't stuff the genie back in the bottle.  And over the next 5-10 years, the TV industry will figure this out, too.
Here's the problem in a nutshell:
As with print-based media, Internet-based distribution generates only a tiny fraction of the revenue and profit that today's incumbent cable, broadcast, and satellite distribution models do.  As Internet-based distribution gains steam, therefore, most TV industry incumbents will no longer be able to support their existing cost structures.
Specifically, TV business models for the past half-century, from broadcast to cable to satellite, have been built on the following foundation:

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.