The internet is the UK’s fastest growing advertising medium, with spend rising 41% to £2.02 billion in 2006, and a further 30% rise expected for 2007. Three drivers underpin this growth: more intense use of the internet as broadband connections become standard, very strong growth in e-commerce, which is driving up paid-for search, and improving yields through rich-media formats. These factors will continue to propel growth of internet ad spend in the near future

Canal+ targeted subscription (as opposed to subscriber) growth of 1.3 million by 2010 has a lot of stretch in view of the intense competition from free-to-air (FTA) services and in particular digital terrestrial TV

This update on the prospects for the global recorded music market in the period to 2012 reveals the depth of the industry's woes from steep declines in CD sales in most major markets. Rising sales from downloads and ringtones could stabilise overall sales by 2009 at around $23 billion, far from the peak of $45 billion achieved in 1997. Declining CD volumes are among the principal factors limiting growth of music publisher revenues to a CAGR of 2.2% over 2006-2012, despite continued strong growth of performance revenues from live events and broadcast media, including the internet

The boardroom coup at Scottish Media Group instigated by Hanover has revamped management with the aim of executing a turnaround strategy quickly

The Guardian Media Group (GMG) sale of a minority stake of Trader Media, publisher of AutoTrader, in 2007 is well timed to maximise its price, given the preponderance of downside risks to classified print adverts

The spat between Virgin and Sky over cable carriage of Sky basic channels has generated much blogging, mostly supportive of Virgin, although neither party appears to be gaining from the ‘zero sum game’ dispute

Using a little understood provision of the merger rules, the government has asked Ofcom to take a look at the Sky stake in ITV, just in case the OFT did not come up with the right answer the first time round. As a result of the intervention, Ofcom will decide whether the share purchase reduced the number of separately managed broadcasters in the UK. Since this is almost exactly what the OFT is already doing, it is impossible to see how Ofcom could reach a different conclusion to the OFT. In this sense, the intervention has little point

With 84,000 net pay-TV additions in 2006, Sogecable resumed subscriber growth, but we expect this pace to decline in 2007 unless Sogecable re-positions on basic and expands distribution from satellite to cable and DSL

Set for launch in May/June, the BBC’s iPlayer is a PC-based application offering live and on-demand access to around 3,500 hours of BBC programmes per week via the internet, using peer-to-peer (P2P) and multi-cast technology to overcome cost and bandwidth issues

Virgin Media’s Q4 results were again mixed – increasing competition is continuing to have a significant effect on net additions but, as yet, most higher ARPU customers are staying put, permitting modest revenue growth