Facebook display ad volume down in key markets in April
Analysis of comScore data suggests that ad volumes fell in April on Facebook’s PC-based website in the US and UK, which we estimate account for 60% of ad revenue Seasonal effects may account for some of the decline, but increasing pressure on ad performance and pricing, due to the tough economic climate, and slowing growth in PC usage of Facebook are other probable factors As a result we expect Facebook’s ad revenue growth slowdown to continue in Q2, with audience saturation in key internet markets and increasing mobile substitution limiting future growth potential from display advertisin |
Media, Internet |
June 2012 Access this report
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Facebook finally trials social search
Facebook’s announcement of Graph Search, the company’s first move into socially-powered search which now in beta trial in the US, leaves many details unanswered including full launch and monetisation plans. Reliance on user-generated content from Facebook friends limits the usefulness of Graph Search as a conventional search engine and hence its impact on Google and other web search businesses in the near term. |
Media, Internet |
January 2013 Access this report
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Facebook Home and mobile
Facebook has announced Home, an Android app that takes control of your phone, replaces the home screen with your Facebook newsfeed and relegates any competing social services to, it hopes, an afterthought.
At launch, Home will be available to at most 20% of Facebook’s mobile base. It is an interesting tool to lock in core users and drive up their engagement, but can only be part of Facebook’s mobile strategy. |
Media, Mobile, Internet, Technology, Telecoms |
April 2013 Access this report
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Facebook – the only way is mobile
Facebook now has more than one billion users but future commercial success depends on monetising the growing consumption via mobile devices, which are replacing the PC as the main method of access
Facebook’s new mobile ads are newsfeed based Sponsored Stories and Promoted Posts rather than banners; early agency performance feedback is positive
Rapid growth in mobile ads will not be sufficient to offset slowing growth from PC-based advertising in 2012 and 2013, but revenue growth should pick up in 2014 as mobile ad volumes ramp up and other initiatives kick in |
Media, Mobile, Internet, Telecoms |
October 2012 Access this report
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Facebook, Instagram and $1 billion
On 9 April Facebook bought the 547-day-old Instagram for about $1 billion in cash and shares, acquiring 40 million users, strengthening its positioning in mobile and photo sharing and preventing anyone else from buying it first
That Instagram could grow to be so big, so quickly, and with just 13 staff and $7 million of funding shows how precarious Facebook’s market leadership might still be. This is not a one-off – many more companies will use cloud services, mobile and social to achieve similar growth in future |
Media, Internet |
April 2012 Access this report
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Facebook: here, there and everywhere
Facebook Messaging adds email, IM and SMS to Facebook messages. Some portion of the social network’s 600+ million users will switch to Facebook for an all in one text-based communications service
Switchers to Facebook Messaging in the US will reduce the display ad revenues of traditional portals, like Yahoo! and Microsoft, which use such tools to drive traffic
Less affected is Google. Some Gmail users will switch, but Google’s core business model is selling search advertising, where it is not challenged by Facebook (yet) |
Media, Internet, Non-UK Media |
November 2010 Access this report
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Facebook: how to win friends and influence publishers and developers
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has set out a vision of the social network as the hub of a personalised internet based on real identities and connections – the so called ‘Social Graph’, with Facebook providing the infrastructure
Simplified tools for apps and new social plug-ins for third party sites will increase Facebook’s influence both on and off the core platform, but raise some privacy concerns |
Media, Internet |
May 2010 Access this report
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Facebook: increasing mobilisation
Facebook’s audience and engagement continue to rise as a result of the migration to mobile devices – on its current trajectory more people will access the social network via mobile devices than PCs by the end of 2014
The transition to mobile is cannibalising desktop time on Facebook but significantly higher usage on mobile devices and rising mobile ad yield is driving growth in overall consumption and revenue |
Media, Internet |
May 2013 Access this report
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Facebook: the monetisation challenge
Facebook will confirm its status as an internet superpower on 18 May when it goes public at a valuation now expected to be between $93-104 billion
The social network’s revenue fell quarter-on-quarter for the first time in Q1 2012, partly due to seasonal effects, amidst a broader slowdown in annual revenue growth on the shift to mobile consumption
Investor interest is being fuelled less by current performance than longer term potential for growing Facebook’s audience of 901 million and improving monetisation |
Media, Internet |
May 2012 Access this report
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Facebook’s threat to Google
Facebook's audience and consumption growth is now generating substantial and rising display advertising revenue, with consensus estimates of $2 billion in 2010, up 160% YoY, and it will overtake Google on this count this year
The social network's growing position as the centre of the internet experience is enabling it to become a platform for other services, such as e-commerce, making it an increasing strategic threat to Google, as well as other players in the digital media |
Media, Internet |
May 2011 Access this report
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First BT PL, now BT top drawer rugby
BT’s acquisition of Premiership Rugby rights underlines its intentions to create a solid premium sports channel with expected launch in summer 2013
BT’s entry into the sports arena is part of a wider TV platform/content strategy that embraces the launch of a much enlarged basic channel offer, integration with YouView and fibre roll-out
Although expected to post significant losses on its sports channels over the next three years, BT’s commitment appears long term |
Media, TV, Fixed line, Internet, Telecoms |
September 2012 Access this report
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Free’s TV Perso: another first for Iliad
True to its reputation for innovation, France’s No. 2 ISP Free has launched TV Perso, a user-generated video-on-demand service, to its 1.5 million TV-over-DSL subscribers. Users will contribute uploads, emulating YouTube’s popular web-based model, as well as live broadcasts |
Media, TV, Internet, Non-UK Media |
July 2007 Access this report
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French anti-piracy law clears another hurdle
France’s Council of State gave the green light to the draft law on ‘Creation and the Internet’, to combat internet piracy of content. If it completes the final hurdle of adoption by the Parliament, most likely in the autumn, France could become the first country to adopt a three-strikes rule to disconnect file-sharers |
Media, Internet, Non-UK Media |
June 2008 Access this report
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Frenzied innovation: the iPad and print publishers
The iPad is a beautiful device that offers new ways to consume and interact with content. It takes ideas that have been discussed for decades and turns them into a (fairly) practical consumer product
The iPad poses huge challenges for print publishers, since it
has the potential both to unlock the benefits of digital for them, but also to remove
the last remaining advantages of their physical products |
Media, Press, Internet |
April 2010 Access this report
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From Kangaroo to Marquis in a hop?
Kangaroo, the BBC/ITV/Channel 4 VOD project, looks unlikely to see the light of day any time soon, based on the Competition Commission’s (CC) provisional findings announced on 3rd December
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Media, TV, Internet |
December 2008 Access this report
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Future for online news: digital services
Digital disruption is causing the decline and fall of print media, but the new online landscape is not settled. Not all newspapers will survive the transition to digital
So far, most newspaper brands (at least in the UK) have chosen to remain free online, relying on advertising revenue. Recent announcements at the Telegraph Media Group, News International and elsewhere indicate this is changing
While a handful of global news sites that achieve huge scale could remain free, many services will have to charge consumers for access |
Media, Press, Internet |
April 2013 Access this report
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Future for online news: regulation?
The phone hacking scandal showed the necessary ingredients for journalistic abuses to occur. In a world of online news, greater commercial pressures mean that, if anything, they will increase
The internet will also diminish plurality among major news providers and make abuses harder to correct, increasing the need to prevent them in the first place
It is often argued that attempts to regulate the internet will either fail or be actively harmful. We argue that regulation focused on major online news providers could be a limited success |
Media, Press, Internet |
April 2013 Access this report
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Google eBooks: Good news for publishers
Google has launched a dedicated ebooks store in the US, with support from 4,000 publishers, providing an ecommerce platform for independent book retailers
Google’s aim is not revenue from ebooks, though the market is attractive: we estimate ebooks will be 5% of the US books market in 2010 ($1bn) and could grow to perhaps half of all book sales within the next five years
Like Amazon and Apple, Google is using ebooks to support its broader strategy, driving search traffic and building an ecommerce platform. Revenue from ebooks is less important than supporting these objectives |
Media, Internet, Technology |
December 2010 Access this report
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Google has launched Google Instant
Google’s new Google Instant displays and updates results in real time as users type in queries, shaving an estimated 2-5 seconds off the average 9 seconds taken to carry out a search
Available in the US and UK now and key European markets shortly with other territories and mobile to follow in 2011, Instant will help Google to differentiate its search engine in an increasingly competitive market |
Media, Internet |
September 2010 Access this report
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Google Q4 results – raising forecasts
Google’s UK gross revenue rose 18% YoY in Q4 to £550 million (excluding estimated hedging gains), with bad weather and the impending VAT rise helping to deliver better than expected performance
The company’s core search business continues to be a key driver and beneficiary of the growth in consumer e-commerce, which we project will increase by 20% in 2011, compared to 4-5% for retail sales (excluding fuels) |
Media, Internet |
January 2011 Access this report
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