Facebook is extending its lead over rival Google in the fast-growing market for mobile display advertising, helping publishers solve the dilemma of mobile content discovery

Facebook’s success with advertisers is enabled by a mobile-centred data platform with unparalleled capabilities to profile users and identify them across devices and online properties

Strategic investments in online video, messaging, and virtual reality all bode well for the future of Facebook’s ad business, although regulatory uncertainty on privacy looms on the horizon

News publishers have emerging opportunities for content distribution due to 1) the transition from desktop to mobile and 2) a renewed interest on the part of tech platforms in news content as a driver of usage

Realising digital advertising revenues is highly challenging for news publishers, who are increasingly focused on long-term membership models; this raises the question of engagement with tech platforms as a means to boost digital advertising and subscriptions

The balance of risks and opportunities of such engagement is not yet clear. With usage flowing to platforms, most major publishers are now taking the position that the loss of control associated with getting on board is a necessary evil

Native advertising is growing sharply as a result of the shift in digital audiences and consumption to mobile devices, where limited screen size and usage modes favour formats that mirror the form or function of the platform and media

Publishers and advertisers are moving rapidly to exploit the opportunity. Publishers see unique native formats as a way to distinguish their ad offering in a highly commoditised internet advertising space, while advertisers and their agencies hope to get more bang for their buck

Between 2015 and 2020, we expect native advertising spend across Western Europe to grow by 156% to €13 billion, representing 52% of internet display and three quarters of net growth in internet display

This year marked the second annual IABUK Digital Upfronts. As well as Facebook, Google/YouTube, Aol, Yahoo!, Twitter, BuzzFeed, Vice and others, several traditional media companies – Sky, The Guardian and Global Radio – participated, reflecting the rising importance of digital media and digital media buyers to their businesses

Many of the pitches were informed by the key shifts in online content: it is increasingly cross platform, driven by mobile devices and focused on video programming, and these formed the main themes of the event

A key piece of context is the rise of social media and the shift to programmatic buying, which continue to driven down pricing for all but the most valuable inventory – audience scale, high value audiences and premium content have never been more essential

Germany remains the second largest market in Europe for the exploitation of composition rights by their authors, with €382 million paid out to them in 2014, up 8% on 2013 (63% share of distributions on average). The German Government intends to secure an even “better balance for authors” in their contracts with music publishers, by allowing the composer to “re-tender” their contracts after five years to secure a better deal

GEMA, the collecting society, has a strong position in Germany and is poised to lead the development of the digital single market for online music services. Together with PRS for Music (UK) and STIM (Sweden), GEMA has formed a joint venture (JV) to offer multi-territory licensing and copyright administration services to services, music publishers and other CMOs, cleared by the EU Commission

Music publisher revenues from domestic collections could rise from €225 million to €247 million from 2014 to 2017, due to a moderate rise in broadcast revenues on the back of the economic recovery, a boost to public performance revenues from a higher live music tariff and flat royalties from recorded music expenditure, as the decline of physical mechanicals is offset by the rise of online royalties

We are seeing a proliferation of news distribution services on social media and technology platforms, as companies like Apple and Facebook look to capture the value of longform professional content.

Facebook’s Instant articles will likely be the most significant distribution mechanism for publishers, allowing Facebook to further position itself as a provider of quality, rather than just user-generated, content.

This is best seen as a trade: news providers’ engaging content for Facebook’s audience reach and data. While concerns about reliance on Facebook and content commoditisation are understandable, these are the inevitable results of user behaviour.

The latest numbers for Q1 2015 show strong device and internet user growth, with more of the population online than ever before, including more than 90% of under-55s. Growth amongst older groups, however, has slowed to a crawl

Participation in online activities is up across the board, but digital media data shows spend on ebooks and digital music struggling, with the latter being heavily impacted by the rise of unlimited streaming models such as Spotify

The story of mobile's surge continues, with almost a half of e-commerce transactions and a third of search and display ad spend now going to mobile. Most of these mobile devices are Android, but iPhone seems to have gained long term share with its larger phones. Google services, however, have cross-platform reach

Prospects for European free-to-air commercial broadcasters are clouded by a weak advertising recovery, decline in TV set viewing by younger age groups and increased competition from pay-TV and international operators.

Growth opportunities are nevertheless to be found in fine tuning families of channels to sustain audience shares, increased production of differentiating original content, wider HD and catch-up programmes distribution and smart pay-TV developments – broadcasters must focus on strengthening the quality gap between the TV set experience and online entertainment.

ITV has shown the greatest increase in profitability, benefitting from its global production strategy. RTL and ProSiebenSat.1 have a modest upside from carriage fees for HD channels but production and pay-TV initiatives have yet to pay off. TF1 and M6 have withdrawn from pay-TV and face regulatory obstacles to launching channels and production investments. Mediaset in Italy should benefit from the ad market stabilising, but risks large pay-TV losses. In Spain, Mediaset and Atresmedia enjoy an ad boom.

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas revealed the ‘next big thing’ for consumers to be products embodying the Internet of Things (IoT), controlled from the smartphone or the vehicle Wearables like fitness bracelets are already selling well in the UK, amongst the largest per capita markets for consumer electronics, and next up is the launch of Apple’s smartwatch Building out the smart home is the focus of the current wave of devices imbedded with sensors on show at CES 2015, with apps developed on platforms supplied by Samsung, Google and Apple

Recently we attended the inaugural IABUK Digital Upfronts, in which 11 digital media companies pitched their wares to advertising agencies and advertisers.

UK growth in internet advertising is now powered by mobile, social and video, and these three areas were the focus of the Upfronts.

The Upfronts are symbolic of the rising importance of digital media in the UK and worldwide; while broadcast television remains the king of brand advertising, marketing and advertising are becoming less TV-centric.