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.

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

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

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.

Press advertising performed worse than we expected in 2012, with double digit declines both last year and this year now a very real possibility.

Previously resilient areas of the press have weakened. Popular national titles have seen sharp advertising declines, while faltering circulation in celebrity magazines exposes an underlying decline in demand.

Retail and services advertisers continue to pull spend from print, largely in favour of online, though TV is also very resilient. Industry efforts to offset these structural shifts include the development of trading platforms, further consolidation and a number of commercial editorial tactics.

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

A last minute rescue proposition has postponed the threat of Setanta entering into administration by at least another week, subject to meeting its revised payment schedule of sums owing to the Premier League

The profound commercial difficulties experienced by Setanta highlight the weakness of EU efforts to ensure competition in the sale of live televised rights to top UK domestic football and underline the inflated rights costs that would face any other complementary premium pay-TV sports supplier

Setanta’s survival hinges on its ability to negotiate further cuts in its rights payments and persuade investors that it can become profitable by making the necessary revisions to its retail/wholesale business model

Google UK delivered solid performance in Q1, with gross revenues up about 8% YoY to £440 million; however, the huge growth of previous years has ended, due to a combination of recession and growing maturity in search

Key verticals (finance and travel) are being impacted by the downturn, but Google should continue to benefit from the secular shift of advertising to online and increasing advertiser focus on measureable ROI

We now estimate that Google’s UK gross revenues will rise by 4% this year to £1.66 billion, supported by volume growth in search, with little contribution from display and mobile still firmly rooted in the experimental phase

IAB/PwC released figures for 2008 showing that annual spending on internet advertising rose 19.1% to £3.35 billion, accounting for close to 20% of total UK advertising, far higher than in any other major market

The recession started to bite in H2 2008. As budgets are cut, display has been hit harder than search and classified, as a rising share of inventory (almost 50%) is sold by ad networks for discounted CPMs or on a performance-basis

Our revised forecast for internet advertising is for zero growth in 2009, with a low single digit rise in paid search offset by falls in display and classified