European mobile service revenue growth remained stuck at zero in Q1, with a heightened impact from the mobile termination rate cuts in Germany and price promotional activity in southern Europe mitigating improving markets in the UK and France

‘More-for-more’ price rises continued both during the quarter and after, and appear to be more widespread than the 2016 increases. This should be driving revenue growth at a healthier rate than zero, and may well do as out-of-bundle revenue declines fade away in significance and regulated MTR and roaming cuts annualise out

On the downside, there remain clear disruptive threats from consolidation in Italy, the potential for improved non-incumbent competitor performance in Germany and Spain, and the potential for further consolidation, with its distinctly mixed blessings for competitors, in the UK and France

Vodafone Europe’s mobile service revenue growth declined again to -1.0% from -0.6% in the previous quarter, but across the core top 4 markets it was essentially flat at -0.8%, and signs are encouraging for it improving next quarter

Contract subscriber share has (at last) stabilised across its top 4 markets, and continuing improvements in NPS suggest that Project Spring investments are finally being reflected in subscriber sentiment

The short-term outlook is positive with both subscriber growth and ARPU looking solid at worst. The longer-term results of market consolidation are the main threat, with powerful competitors potentially being created

Sky delivered 5% year-on-year revenue growth over the first nine months at constant exchange rates, although operating profits fell due to several factors, most notably the massive step-up in UK Premier League TV payments under the new contract

On closer inspection, relatively weak UK & Ireland Q3 revenue growth compared with previous quarters largely reflects one-off special factors 

Otherwise, positive quarters for Sky Germany & Austria and Sky Italy and improving cost efficiencies suggest that the Sky Group remains broadly on track to deliver its Investor Day 2016 guidance objectives

Cross-device identity profiles are used to stitch together fragmenting online ad audiences, but also to enable new links between advertising and marketing, across European markets

This moves value from media itself to understanding each consumer and how they access content and services on proliferating connected devices

By 2020 we predict that 58% of all UK online ad buys by value will make use of high-quality audience IDs, led by the largest advertising platforms but limited by privacy regulation and cost

European mobile service revenue growth was unchanged in Q4 on the previous quarter at -0.1%, tantalisingly close to growth but just held back by renewed mobile termination rate cuts in Germany

‘More-for-more’ tariff changes are becoming increasingly commonplace, as operators increase data bundle sizes to allow for volume demand growth, but nudge up pricing as partial compensation.  This has not yet translated into positive revenue growth across Europe as a whole, but increasingly looks like it will do, with a number of moves made in early 2017

The quarter saw completion of two M&A deals in Spain and Italy with MasMovil completing its acquisition of Yoigo, and H3G Wind completing their joint venture to form Wind Tre. While the former is unlikely to alter the market dynamics much, the latter, resulting in the entry of Iliad in Italy, has the potential to disrupt the pricing dynamic in that market, although ultimately it will be limited by Iliad’s initial MVNO economics and dearth of spectrum

Media reports of ads by top brands appearing next to extremist content on YouTube have surprised advertisers and led to a barrage of criticism from other media companies, agencies and the UK government

Despite several advertisers pausing spend, the revenue impact for Google is likely to be small in the short term – but the debate is a symptom of ongoing tension between “frenemies”: large agencies and Google & Facebook 

By urging Google alone to educate display advertisers and filter campaigns, agencies risk ceding more of their client relationship to the advertising giant, while calls for the platform to make all editorial judgements on political content are inappropriate

Amazon’s marketing services bring in a growing stream of direct, high-margin revenue, but their main role is still in supporting vendor partnerships

Amazon uses customer profile data to profit from its own media and that of others, illustrating the value of a direct customer relationship in online advertising

In the future, Amazon’s moves into video content and voice interfaces are likely to significantly expand ad inventory, but maintaining the trust of shoppers is not straightforward

Vodafone Europe’s mobile service revenue growth worsened to -0.6% from -0.2% in the previous quarter, the first deterioration following at least nine quarters of consecutive improvement, with the UK particularly weak

The company could nonetheless grow profits handsomely if revenue growth stabilises at this level, with more clarity on the medium term prospects for this likely to come with next quarter’s results and guidance for 2017/18

Our main concern continues to be the company’s declining subscriber share, particularly in consolidating markets where its historic advantages of having high market share may be rapidly eroded