Author: Serkadis

Google’s acquisition of AdMob last November pulled the mobile advertising industry into the spotlight. Until then it had mostly been seen as the poor relation of Internet advertising in terms of revenue, if not of hype. Yet mobile offers advertisers many attractive possibilities. No other device is as personal, interactive and constantly within reach as a cell phone. And cell phones let advertisers target whole new parameters, such as location and context. So will 2010 be the breakout year for the mobile advertising business?

The Mobile Advertising Ecosystem

Mobile ads can be delivered in the form of messages like SMS and MMS, banner and full-page ads on Mobile Internet sites, mobile search ads, in-application advertising and mobile video. Mobile ad impressions are generally bought at cost per thousand (CPM) or cost per click (CPC). The main measures of success are the number of users reached, click through rate (CTR) and the number of actions — for example, number of downloads — prompted by the ad. SMS and MMS are still considered the most effective advertising channel, with correspondingly higher pricing. Most users will read at least part of an SMS received.

Mobile ad networks distribute mobile ads to publishers like mobile websites, application developers and mobile operators. The cheapest way to advertise is via a blind ad network where advertisers can’t pick specific publishers but can often target by country and content channel. Admob and InMobi fit into this category. Premium ad networks like AOL or Nokia focus on a limited number of prestige publishers like mobile operators and specific big-traffic sites, and the advertiser pays extra to target those sites specifically. Some larger publishers and mobile operators run their own ad platform, like the one supplied by Amsterdam-based startup MADS. There are also many small players who supply niche services. Mobclix, for example, is an ad exchange startup targeting smart phones via multiple ad networks. Finally, there are the publishers themselves such as eBuddy, maker of one of the most popular mobile IM applications.

Where Is the Money?

The US mobile ad market was estimated to be around $416 million in 2009. While the majority of US mobile ad spending still goes to messaging like SMS, spending on applications and search is on the rise. MADS Sales Director Jasper de Vreught says, “We do see a development where the average spend per campaign is significantly increasing. CPC will become more important, whereas in the premium model, CPM is now still the predominant charging model.“

Mobclix supplied me with some data (not shown here) on the highest yielding application categories in October 2009. This data was from 4000+ applications with a 70% reach across iPhones and iPod touches.

The most popular finance applications (the top 100 serving ads) made 4.5 times the average advertising revenue of the top ad-serving applications overall, while social networking applications make 3.9 times the average and education applications 3.7 the average. So if you are a developer trying to make revenue from advertising, social networking looks like a great choice, since it has high ad revenue and fewer competing applications (2,098 as opposed to 17,147 in entertainment) than other categories. Gaming, on the other hand, looks like it is becoming saturated.

The most popular entertainment applications only make 0.8 times the average top applications. Despite very high CTR, utilities were also only making 0.8 times the average in October 2009 because of a lack of high-end advertisers. However, by December 2009 this had increased to 1.7 times the average due to an increase in advertisers focusing on specific types of users and apps.

IM application eBuddy recently started serving mobile ads. According to eBuddy founder Jan-Joost Rueb, “Mobile is rapidly growing even though we started only a few months ago. Mobile advertising revenue is higher than revenue from [eBuddy’s non-ad-supported] pro versions right now. ”

Targeting and Technology

One of the most attractive characteristics of mobile for advertisers is the opportunity for more accurate ad targeting. Typical parameters include carrier, device type and mobile channel, with the possibility to add location, behavioral, and demographic information (the latter often requires user opt in). Frequency of use, reach and usage context are the important factors when inserting ads into applications. However, MADS founder Ashu Mathura contends that current targeting software still only does about 25% of what is needed.

MADs did a H&M campaign in which ads were served to two groups of users: all users, and those who had already clicked on a H&M ad. Unsurprising, the campaign has a much higher response in the second user group. Based on this insight, it might make sense to create a sequence of ads as part of a campaign, where a second ad in the sequence is only served to users who have clicked through the first. I could certainly see myself being interested in ads that remind me when the H&M sale starts and offers a voucher if I make it to the second or third ad. MADS also sees potential in the idea of users opting in for certain types of ads in return for rewards like discounts.

Interesting developments on the technology side include interactive video advertising (introduced last year by Admob) and making greater use of smartphone features such as the accelerometer and camera, such as for augmented reality ads.

Mobile Advertising in 2010

Most players see Google’s Admob acquisition as an endorsement of the mobile ad market in general. InMobi, which is the only ad network to reach profitability other than Admob, thinks that the industry is at the 1.0 stage. According to Anne Frisbee (Head of North America at InMobi), the acquisition has actually occurred “quite early in the evolution of the industry”.

Jasper de Vreught from MADS says that in the future “there will be a clearer division between two business models: the “long tail model” like AdWords and AdMob, and the “premium model” like Doubleclick and MADS, which are aiming to build a network of premium publishers and attract premium advertisers. MADS’ Mathura also says that while there is a lot of focus on downloaded apps right now, most of this functionality is likely to move into the cloud, and there’ll be a corresponding impact on how advertising is done.

According to eBuddy, the media agencies have still not really embraced mobile and tend to stick to the old and proven formula. Rueb says “It’s important for eBuddy to get the premium advertisers on board. There are too many VAS (value-added services) advertisers like ring tones right now.” Other players say similar things. Advertisers still like to see things like TV spots, which they understand, even though this is often not rational in terms of return on investment. Maybe 2010 will be the year when advertisers start seeing mobile less as an experiment and more as a serious part of their campaigns.

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Looks like the world’s still got appetite for some more pico projectors, as Favi’s releasing a pair some time between late February and early March for prices yet unknown. First is the RIOLED-Q (pictured) which sports a pretty 800 x 600 native resolution at 50 lumens — supposedly the best brightness in class (like the Optoma PK301), along with built-in SD / MMC card reader, battery, three-watt stereo speaker and an ever-so-handy digital keystone correction. Joining the party is the smaller RIOLED-V which is shy about its display specification, but proudly packs a card reader and WiFi to cater its various web apps for YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Yahoo News, Weather, Email, Internet Radio and web browser. Too bad it doesn’t do phone calls.

Favi RIOLED-Q and RIOLED-V pico projectors launched: the future is bright, wireless originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wanda Sykes has suffered a broken foot.

The comedienne and talk show host — who welcomed twins with her partner eight months ago — sustained the injury during production on her FOX late night program, The Wanda Sykes Show, last Thursday, Sykes tells The Insider’s Niecey Nash.

The funnywoman battled through the pain and carried on with the recording. It is not known how Sykes broke her foot.

Hollywood newcomer Gabourey Sidibe has been cast alongside Laura Linney in the new Showtime drama The Big C, the network announced at their Television Critics Association Event in Pasadena Sunday.

The actress, 26, will guest-star as a sassy student named Andrea in the show that stars Linney as a high school teacher who discovers that she has cancer. In clips shown at the event, Gabourey makes sarcastic comments in class and is caught lighting up a cigarette. Showtime has ordered 13 episodes of the series, which will debut this fall.

Gabby is looking forward to next weekend’s Golden Globe Awards, where she’s nominated for Best Actress in a Drama for her role in the box office hit Precious.

Before CES, we asked you to give us your predictions about what you thought would be at CES. The crazier the better, and whoever had the craziest one that came true would win a sweet prize package from SteelSeries. Well! We have a winner. Here it is, and no arguing now…

Pat predicted:

I bet there is a helicopter that can be remote controlled with your phone…(hmmm, amazing!)

Lo and behold, we got all kinds of hands-on with the AR Drone, which has a robust iPhone control interface. I’d say that’s close enough. Our runners-up were both “robo-wife” predictions, but those were at the porn expo so technically not CES. Congrats to the winner, I’ll be contacting you shortly!

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This chart from Calculated Risk shows the decline in jobs as a percentage of the work force at the peak. 

To date in this recession, we’ve lost more than 8 million jobs.  The decline as a percentage of the workforce is the worst since the Great Depression, matching the sharp but short drop in 1948, as the war machine wound down. 

Equally important, the duration of these job losses, as well as the lack of a sharp recovery (at least so far), suggests that the problem will be with us for a long while.  We’re now 24 months into this decline, and we’re still at the bottom.  By this point in most previous recessions, we had already recovered all of the lost jobs.

Here’s Calculated Risk:

This graph shows the job losses from the start of the employment recession, in percentage terms (as opposed to the number of jobs lost). The current employment recession is the worst recession since WWII in percentage terms, and 2nd worst in terms of the unemployment rate (only early ’80s recession with a peak of 10.8 percent was worse).

Note: The total jobs lost does not include the annual benchmark payroll revision that will be announced on February 5, 2010. The preliminary estimate is for a downward revision of 824,000 jobs – pushing the total jobs lost over 8 million.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• We Didn’t Lose 85,000 Jobs, We Lost 1 Million
• CHART OF THE DAY: How The Government Payroll Replaced Goods-Producing Jobs
• 15 Ways To Blow Your Job Interview

Fergie and Josh Duhamel are making it official — again. The showbiz couple wed for the second time outside of Santa Barbara on Saturday, RadarOnline.com has learned.

The superstars put rumors of infidelity behind them to renew their vows in a romantic beachside setting on the anniversary weekend of their Jan. 10 wedding, the site reported this weekend. Josh, 37, and Fergie, 34, jetted to the Bacara Resort where a mister renewed their vows on a bluff outside the hotel. The private ceremony lasted less than 15 minutes.

“Fergie was crying and seemed very emotional,” a source tells Radar.

The couple tied the knot in Malibu on Jan. 10, 2009.

Last fall, the Transformers actor was accused of cheating on Fergie with stripper Nicole Forrester, who alleged she and Josh engaged in a sexual relationship while he filmed a movie in Atlanta.

The star has vehemently denied the cheating claims.

A BMW 650 carrying actress Lindsay Lohan plowed through a throng of paparazzi, injuring one, around 1 AM Sunday morning.

The incident occurred behind the upscale Hotel Cafe in Hollywood, Los Angeles NBC news affiliate KTLA is reporting.

According to witnesses, after the car in question picked up Lindsay and her assistant, it was reportedly surrounded by members of the papazarri. The unidentified driver then allegedly stepped on the gas before the paparazzos could move aside, hitting one photog and injuring his wrist and leg.

“I was informed by an officer that a vehicle had sped away at a high rate of speed and hit a paparazzi photographer causing an injury to his hand, his wrist,” Sgt. Vasquez told KTLA this afternoon.

Authorities do not consider the case a hit-and-run.

Filed under: Detroit Auto Show, Technology, Ford

2010 is shaping up to be an extremely busy year for Ford’s powertrain engineering and manufacturing teams. By the end of this year, the folks in Dearborn will have launched nine engines and six transmissions that are all-new or substantially redesigned. Several of these combinations have already been revealed over the past month and more will be revealed at tomorrow’s Detroit Auto Show.

On Friday morning, Barb Samardzich, VP of powertrain engineering, ran down the list at a pre-show preview. Three years ago, Ford set about the process of completely revamping its powertrain lineup, and between 2008 and 2013, a total of 60 powertrain combinations will have been introduced globally, with half of those coming by the end of this year. We already knew about the new 1.6-liter inline-four and the six-speed Powershift dual clutch automatic for the Fiesta. The Mustang is getting new V6 and V8 engines that crank up output significantly while reducing fuel consumption.

Samardzich confirmed on Friday that the 3.5-liter Ecoboost V6 will land in the F-150 truck later this year. The list presented also includes the previously-announced 2.0-liter inline-four Ecoboost and a new six-speed automatic transmission for transverse applications.

As we reported earlier today, while no one would get specific about exactly which vehicles these would go into, there were smiles and the usual “not ready to announce anything” when we brought up the new unibody Explorer. When the Explorer America concept debuted at the 2008 Detroit show, there was discussion of 2.0-liter and 3.5-liter Ecoboost engines, and it appears that’s exactly what it will get.

Continue reading Ford launching nine engines and six transmissions by the end of 2010

Ford launching nine engines and six transmissions by the end of 2010 originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 10 Jan 2010 16:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The British tabs called it: Former Deal or No Deal host Howie Mandel will be replacing David Hasselhoff at the judge’s table on America’s Got Talent, NBC Universal Television Entertainment Chairman Jeff Gaspin confirmed on Sunday morning at NBC’s Television Critics Association panel.

The germaphobic star will join stars Piers Morgan and Sharon Osbourne when the show returns for a fifth season this summer. Last Wednesday, Hasselhoff announced his departure from the reality competition, along with plans to start his own TV show.

“”David is leaving America’s Got Talent and, yes, Howie Mandel is replacing him. As you know, Howie was a big part of our schedule for the last several years with ‘Deal or No Deal,’ and we thought he did a phenomenal job,” Jeff told reporters following this morning’s panel. “If you think about an expertise, Howie has had a Las Vegas show for years and he constantly performs in Las Vegas. So we actually though — not only is he a great communicator, but he’s actually an expert.”

Gaspin also confirmed that the network is no longer making new episodes of Deal or No Deal, but the game show is still in syndication.

“We are not doing any more ‘Deals’ for NBC currently,” he explained.

This guest post was written by Aaron Levie, CEO and co-founder of Box.net. Box.net was founded in 2005 with the goal of helping people and businesses easily access and share information from anywhere. Box.net is now used by millions of individuals, small businesses, and Fortune 500 enterprises worldwide.

Consumers have readily embraced the Cloud in the form of services like Facebook, YouTube and Gmail, but businesses are a different story. While small and medium businesses have been drawn to the cost efficiencies of web-based solutions, the Cloud has thus far hovered on the periphery of mainstream business IT, with many dismissing it as unfeasible on a large scale, or at best, a distant solution. But cloud-based services are about to tip for the enterprise, and quickly.

The coming shift echoes the disruptive transformation of IT in the ’90s, driven by companies like Oracle, Microsoft, Lotus and Sun. Geoffrey Moore, author of “Crossing the Chasm” and “Inside the Tornado,” studied this transition and described the chain of adoption for enterprise technology: innovators are followed by early adopters, visionaries, and finally IT departments. And when enterprise technology hits this latter group, we’re officially in the Tornado.

Well the dust is beginning to swirl once more. Over the next two years, enterprise IT will follow in the footsteps of today’s early adopters and visionaries, finally embracing the Cloud and moving content, applications, and processes to the web. So what are the catalysts for this perfect storm? A combination of maturing platforms, generational and cultural shifts, and compelling economics, making cloud-based solutions the undeniable choice for nearly all future non-core technology purchases.

The platforms are ready

Today’s web-based platforms are finally maturing into real, viable solutions for businesses. They’re not just for small businesses or early adopters. Between Amazon EC2 for infrastructure-as-a-service, Force.com for platform-as-a-service, and Google Apps for software-as-a-service, companies large and small now have enough options to run their entire business in the Cloud. These complementary services can now talk to each other like never before, making it easy for IT administrators to weave connections between web platforms. And unplanned downtime is no longer a valid argument against the Cloud: like most cloud-based offerings, Google guarantees that Google Apps will be available at least 99.9% of the time, and will reimburse customers if this target isn’t met. According to a study by The Radicati Group, companies with onsite email solutions averaged 30-60 minutes of unscheduled downtime and 36-90 minutes of planned downtime per month in 2008. Even after a spat of outages in 2008, Matthew Glotzbach of Google’s Enterprise unit estimated that Google Apps downtime totaled a mere 10-15 minutes per month. Furthermore, cloud vendors front the bill to get the server back online, not your internal IT team.

Make way for new workers and a new way to work

Not only have our applications and platforms changed, so have the people using them. We’re now seeing the newest generation of the “knowledge worker” emerge in the enterprise. The formative years of this generation were spent chatting online, facebooking strangers and friends alike, and maxing out their hard drives with music and movie downloads. Accordingly, these employees are simply not capable of doing more work to find information than performing a Google search (I know, because I am one). They have no patience for convoluted IT policies, limited email storage and siloed data. Cloud-based IT services are the only solutions that can match the experience, efficiency, and access that we get in our personal lives. We’re already seeing companies like Salesforce mimic consumer tools with offerings like Salesforce Chatter. It’s only a matter of time before more vendors catch on that enterprise collaboration should be as easy as social networking, and must likewise take place in the Cloud.

The cloud is cheap

Okay, so we’re almost out of the recession. Companies who hunkered down will soon shift from survival mode to winning back marketshare. But guess whose stock is already at an all-time high? Salesforce. Despite the still-fragile economy, businesses are buying into the cloud, and there’s a lot more room to grow. At the risk of sounding completely obvious, they’re buying these services because they cost so much less to maintain and the barriers to getting started are much lower. And although the economy is showing signs of improvement, the past few years have fundamentally changed the way we think about technology purchases. Higher cost does not necessarily translate to higher quality. Products from behemoth software vendors like Microsoft are not necessarily more reliable. And in the Cloud, substantially fewer people are needed to get started: a medium-sized business five years ago required dedicated personnel, consulting, and redundant infrastructure to deliver corporate email. Today, the point of entry is a credit card transaction, with no infrastructure in sight. The time to transition to cheaper, more manageable platforms is now.

Momentum in the IT department

Managing infrastructure and technology that is not competitively-additive has become competitively-expensive. As we approach the Tornado, IT experts are redefining their roles and priorities from directly maintaining all the “contextual” applications around their business (CRM, email, file servers, search) to honing in on technologies that are core to their company’s performance and competitive advantage. This opens up the IT department to a new world of meaning and purpose. IT will move from a pure systems and process management function to a business success through technology service.

How do we know this is happening? IT decision-makers are starting to knock on the doors of Google, Amazon, Salesforce and Box.net. Box’s 10 largest sales in 2009 were made with IT managers at organizations you’d recognize. The common thread linking these IT buyers? In our case, they want to move toward Cloud Content Management, in lieu of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on traditional ECM. This comes from awareness that their role is not about being bogged down in server administration, storage limitations and downtime, but rather about finding best-of-breed technology to solve their company’s issues and enhance their business, quickly. Imagine a world where IT is defined as a means to increase margin through people and process productivity gains, rather than an expense to the organization.

Ok, so what’s holding us back?

There is no question that Security concerns and a fear of relinquishing control of data and applications are still holding back adoption of cloud technologies in the enterprise. The interconnectedness of our web identities, and especially our reliance on email as a primary authentication provider, limits the level of security possible for web-based software today. We saw an example of this with Twitter’s leaks from Google Docs. But traditional IT has never been fully secure either, and Cloud IT providers have a number of mechanisms at their disposal to improve lock-down procedures on all fronts – plus, their business survival hinges on reliability and security. Between two-factor authentication, centralized network and hardware security, and other standards now being implemented by cloud providers, I think we’ll see the Cloud as being more secure in aggregate than traditional IT.

Vendors of cloud-based services are aggressively tackling security concerns as a final hurdle, and thanks to maturing platforms, a new generation of knowledge workers and compelling pricing, the Tornado is already gathering momentum. Many concede that the Cloud is indeed coming to business, but see it as a distant solution, perhaps five or ten years off. But the Tornado-like transformation of Enterprise IT will soon be upon us. And once adopted, the Cloud is inherently scalable. Internal infrastructure can take months to set up, but cloud solutions can be online within hours. Traditional platforms require ongoing maintenance and tedious administration and training, but web-based platforms can (and should!) be as end-user friendly as their consumer-focused counterparts. And because cloud-based platforms can be woven together, it’s no longer about forcing your business to fit a one-sized-fits-all solution, but rather designing a solution to fit your business.

Most businesses have spent the past few years in survival mode, trying to minimize losses and weather the recession. The coming Tornado will be game-changing for those who dive in early, and devastating for companies that continue to resist. Once the Cloud tips for enterprise IT, the whirlwind of adoption will be impressive. We should see major surges of implementation in 2010, with the Tornado in full force in 2011. And unlike the storm Geoffrey Moore detailed in the 1990s, the drivers of this fast-approaching disruption won’t be the behemoths Oracle, Microsoft, Lotus and Sun. They’re too bogged down by rigid ecosystems and product upgrade commitments. Rather, it’s a new generation of cutting-edge, nimble software companies that are disrupting the current order and leading the charge into the storm. A storm that is bringing unprecedented change to IT and competitive advantage to early adopters, ultimately redefining the role of Enterprise IT itself.

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After just four months on the air, Leno’s primetime experiment has come to an end. The Jay Leno Show is officially leaving its 10 PM time slot on February 12, NBC Universal Television Entertainment Chairman Jeff Gaspin confirmed on Sunday morning.

NBC said on Sunday that it was abandoning its cost-cutting prime time experiment with talk show host Jay Leno, and “going back to basics.” The NBC will drop its low-rated Leno next month, but sto keep both Leno and his Tonight Show successor Conan O’Brien on its late-night roster.

“I can confirm what many of you are reporting, starting February 12, ‘The Jay Leno Show’ will no longer air at 10 PM,” Gaspin told reporters at NBC’s Television Critics Association session in Pasadena.

Gaspin confirmed the network wants to make Leno shorter and air it at 11:35 PM, with The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien at 12:05 AM and Late Night With Jimmy Fallon at 1:05 AM. But the deal is not done.

“As much as I’d like to tell you we have a done deal, that’s not true. The talks are still ongoing,” he explained. “My goal right now is to keep Jay, Conan and Jimmy as part of our late-night lineup. As much as I’d like to tell you we have a done deal, we know that’s not true.”

Gaspin said the network had come under pressure from its local affiliates who complained audiences had dropped for their lucrative late news broadcasts because of the poor audiences for “The Jay Leno Show

He added, “Both Jay and Conan and Jimmy were incredibly gracious and professional and they all said they understood the situation that I was in. Beyond that was a private conversation.”

Gaspin told reporters that the talk show hosts “have the weekend to think about” the proposed change before talks resume on Monday.