In January 2013, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) cleared Google of anticompetitive practices in its core search and advertising business – a corresponding European antitrust investigation is pending, but looks set to take a (slightly) stricter stance on Google.

The FTC’s closing of the search bias investigation is key to Google’s strategy to integrate and expand its general and vertical search products, such as its e-commerce channels Google Shopping and Google Maps, with direct positive revenue implications.

The European Commission will most likely not impose search bias remedies later this year that significantly impact Google’s current practices, and we therefore have a positive outlook on additional vertical search revenues materialising.

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.

Facebook has strong mobile user and revenue growth, but has not ‘won’ social on mobile as it has on the desktop, and competing services have drawn hundreds of millions of users. It is not yet clear Facebook will win, or even that there will be a single big winner.

In 2003, the Competition Commission imposed the CRR remedy as a condition of the proposed merger of Carlton and Granada to allay advertiser fears that the new ITV plc would use its market power to leverage higher airtime prices on ITV1 CRR made it possible to stop the ITV1 premium from rising and yet the ITV1 premium has risen almost without a blip since 2003. This note asks why The answer it seems has less to do with the negotiating muscle of ITV Sales than with the enduring USP and relative inelasticity of demand for ITV1 airtime and demand elasticity for the rest, while CRR has become increasingly irrelevant

Major European mobile operators were downbeat, with mobile revenue growth in Europe still massively underperforming the US, and their (misplaced in our view) anger at the OTT players being channelled into promoting new mobile OSs to compete with both Apple and Android

Samsung is cementing its dominance, while the other branded players focus on flagship models to try to cut through the noise. Meanwhile the flood of Android from Chinese OEM/ODMs is growing, at increasingly good quality. All other mobile platforms appear increasingly marginal

Superficially the handset industry appears to be stabilising around Apple, Android, and Samsung, plus the Chinese long tail. However, Apple, Google/Moto and perhaps Amazon may well all have disruptive moves planned for this year

Highlights of 2012, which saw double digit EBITA growth for the third year running, included ITV outperformance of the advertising market, strong organic growth in ITV Studios and a large increase in Online, Pay & Interactive revenues The outlook for 2013 suggests that EBITA could see double digit growth for the fourth year running. This is due to a number of factors that may include the bonus of extra NAR as BT launches BT Sport in the summer, arguably the biggest TV media event in recent years For the longer term, two key challenges in the Broadcast & Online sector are the retention of the ITV main channel audience share in an increasingly converged digital landscape and ITV’s ability to grow its online presence and drive new revenue streams

Enders Analysis co-hosted its annual conference, in conjunction with BNP Paribas and Deloitte, in London on 15 January 2013. The event featured talks by 14 of the most influential figures in media and telecoms, and was chaired by Sir Peter Bazalgette. This report provides edited transcripts of the talks given by nine of those speakers: Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP Tim Davie, Acting Director General, BBC Dan Cobley, Managing Director, Google UK & Ireland Michael Tobin, CEO, Telecity Group Liv Garfield, CEO, Openreach Dido Harding, CEO, TalkTalk Group Victor Zhang, CEO, Huawei UK & Ireland Cindy Rose, Executive Director of Digital Entertainment, Virgin Media Q&A: Dido Harding, Victor Zhang and Cindy Rose Ed Richards, CEO, Ofcom

The development of the Digital Britain infrastructure, introduction of tablets, increasing connectivity of TV sets and launch of on demand OTT services over the internet have greatly intensified interest in connected viewing and its impact on the traditional broadcast model No single source of audience measurement for viewing of long- and short- form video content across all screens yet exists, though current market data suggest that connected viewing occupies a c. 8.5% share of total viewing across all screens By 2020, we project the connected viewing share of total viewing across all screens will reach 20%, with tablets being the primary drivers of growth, in part incremental and in part substitutional to viewing to the TV set, where we expect the connected viewing share to remain under 5%

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. In the longer term, Graph Search could become a powerful recommendation engine for certain categories like travel, but its dependence on user data and privacy restrictions are likely to limit its wider utility and revenue potential.

YouTube continues to evolve away from user-generated content with the expansion of its native Original Channels initiative in the US, Europe and Japan

Professional and semi-professional content is key to increasing YouTube’s sellable video inventory, raising advertising yield and attracting brand advertisers

Whilst YouTube is the leading global distribution platform for professional short-form video, it poses little immediate threat to TV viewing or revenues