Online advertising in the UK, Germany and France proved to be extremely resilient in 2002, despite a difficult advertising environment generally, victim of the soft economic conditions in Europe. Based on interviews with industry players, this report identifies the changing environment for online advertising and prospects for 2003.

Freeview is the most successful Digital Terrestrial Television service in the world. But, despite its success in attracting purchasers, it will not manage to lay the basis for the proposed analogue switch off. Not only is it attracting very small amounts of viewing to its digital channels, it is also not overcoming the resistance of large sections of the UK population to digital television.

This report examines the revenue potential of Direct interactive TV advertising (DiTV) for BSkyB and other UK channels. This advertising format exploits the technology of BSkyB's Digibox to provide the viewer with a means of directly responding to advertising campaigns featured on the television. As the gatekeeper to the Digibox, this report confirms that BSkyB will gain the most from the development of the market for DiTV, collecting up to 80% of the revenue generated.

The long drawn out merger between the two Spanish pay-TV operators will finally be consummated in the next few weeks. As we have seen elsewhere in Europe, competition in pay-TV produces little but red ink. Investors will be pleased that Sogecable and Via Digital are finally combining. We have little doubt that this merger will eventually produce a profitable and successful business. But management appears too optimistic about the likely continuing cash drains as operations are combined and costs reduced over the next two years.

It was just like the old days. Apple started an online music service, which was immediately well received. Steve Jobs proclaimed loudly that the world would never be the same. Investment banks rushed to assert that digital downloading would save the music companies. Truly gargantuan estimates were made of the potential revenue streams. This note looks at the i-Tunes phenomenon.

Part of our regular series on the UK broadband and Internet markets, this note highlights the shifting fortunes of ISPs and cable operators in competing against BT brands on the fast growing residential broadband market.

Digital Bomb lll is our third annual assessment of the global market for digital set-top boxes and associated hardware. So far, our forecasts have been accurate and we continue to see relatively slow growth in the next few years.

Last week’s decision from the Competition Appeal Tribunal was seen as a victory for Freeserve over BT. Does this mean Oftel will have to use a different approach to regulation? Does the decision herald a new era in the regulation of the telecommunications and media industries in the UK? We think not.

Vivendi's only agenda at this time is to effect a disposal of its non-core assets for the best price to reduce debt to manageable levels. This note casts a critical eye on prospects for sale of USA Networks (good), Universal Studios (poor) and VU Games (good), as well as the disposal and valuations for other assets such as Universal Music, Groupe Canal+ and Cegetel/SFR.

Wanadoo reached an important milestone in 2002, reporting its first (very small) positive EBITDA margin on its French Internet business, thanks to broadband-related revenue increases and lower narrowband and broadband access costs. In contrast, losses widened at Wanadoo's Internet properties outside France, in particular Freeserve in the UK and Eresmas is Spain, but these were more than fully offset by profits on the Directories segment. This note looks ahead to 2003, when Wanadoo expects to reach positive EBITDA on the Internet segment as a whole, thanks to continued improvement in France and tightly contained losses at Freeserve and Eresmas.