Radio’s transition from analogue to digital has been slow, with no switchover date yet in sight 16 years after Digital Audio Broadcasting’s (DAB) commercial launch

Recent initiatives intended to boost DAB are welcome, but most will not be transformatory as they offer little new to the consumer

However, the award of the second national commercial multiplex to Sound Digital with the launch of new, compelling content in 2016 could finally give radio listeners the reason to upgrade and make a case for switchover

During 2014, the PC finally lost its crown as the main device for accessing the internet: for the first time, aggregate usage on mobile devices accounted for more than half of all time spent online.

Two thirds of people now have a smartphone, which is becoming the main method for getting online, while tablet penetration appears to be flattening out and the PC internet audience is in decline.

Mobile monetisation still lags that of the PC but the gap is shrinking: smartphones and tablets generated 40% of e-retail sales in Q4 and across the year ads on mobile devices represented a quarter of internet search and display advertising with further strong growth ahead.

Auto Trader’s long-touted IPO has valued the car sales platform at £2.4bn, 17x EBITDA, matching Zoopla multiples but substantially lower than Rightmove’s 23x Auto Trader is both the most successful print to digital transition – and has also built the widest moat of any specialist classified service – that we have seen, and not just in the UK The near term market for used cars in the UK looks quite buoyant. However, some signs of slowdown in Auto Trader usage and slower longer term growth in the used car market provides some uncertainty further out

Apple has provided more details on its smartwatch range, on sale from April, priced between $350-$17,000 to appeal to a wide range of would-be buyers and initially focusing on enhancing the iPhone through added convenience.

The Watch is likely to develop quickly in the next few years, and has the potential to become an indispensable tool for managing payments, health data and identity, as well as controlling other connected devices.

The company is laying the foundations for Watch to become a must-have device, but the case is still to be made and ultimately its success depends on a number of key groups and factors outside Apple’s control.

Scotland could produce up to 57 SNP MPs (of a total of 59 seats in Scotland), up from 6 in 2010: from “How many seats to the SNP?”, the question now is “Which Scottish seats won’t the SNP win?”

Labour’s losses in Scotland could be more than offset by Con-to-Lab and Lib-to-Lab swings in England, leading to our estimate that Labour and the Conservatives will each garner ~270 seats, well short of the practical majority of 322 seats, producing a hung Parliament as the initial outcome of GE2015

A possible scenario for the emergence of a working government is a Labour minority government sustained by the SNP votes through a ‘confidence and supply’ agreement for major votes and issue-by-issue on other votes, a weak form of government

Although Sky’s bids might be seen as putting its majority ownership of PL rights beyond reach at the next auction in 2018, the contest between Sky and BT is by no means over, raising the question of further inflation of premium sports content as other rights come up for renewal

Sport may have lost much of the importance it once had in generating profits from pay-TV platforms; however, the record bids by Sky leave no doubt as to the continuing importance of premium sports, and especially PL football, in terms of building and retaining overall scale

Through placing less inflated bids than Sky and not winning any extra packages, BT has put itself in a more flexible position with regard to future strategic options, which includes (VULA permitting) competing for televised rights to other premium sports besides football

The record £1,712 million to be spent yearly on live TV rights to the PL from 2016/17, about equal to the entire BBC TV programming budget, has hammered home the continuing importance of premium sports, especially PL football, in cementing scale in pay-TV

Several regulatory processes are still in play that could influence market developments over the next few years. We expect Ofcom’s WMO remedy to continue in close to its present form, while the VULA margin squeeze sets significant restraints on BT Sport over rights payments

Although the Virgin Media complaint to Ofcom has raised genuine competition concerns over the design of the PL auction, which the regulator is investigating, we see little opportunity for significant intervention

New evidence suggests brand owners and agencies have considerably different perceptions of how the digital marketing marketplace is performing.

The timing of these findings is critical, as digital display growth in the UK is far more advanced than in any major advertising market.

One of the perceived risks of a relatively narrow measurement provision is that media context is being diluted, with long term implications for the value of marketing inventory across all media.

Consumer expenditure on recorded music continued its decline in 2014 by about 6% to $18 billion, as purchasing of download-to-own (DTO) albums and singles passed its peak in 2013, adding to the ongoing decline in total sales of CDs that started a decade ago Streaming is now the only growth story left for the industry, and it has a global footprint, being embraced by developed and emerging markets alike, unlike purchasing The US phenomenon of rapidly rising revenues from ad-supported audio streaming services such as Pandora and music video streaming on YouTube is quite unique as other markets currently lack the potential for online advertising

News has entered a new phase, defined by the disruptive forces of mobile, social media and video, effecting rapid changes in consumption and the underlying economics for news businesses: the level of change and innovation is rewiring the structure and financial models for news more quickly than many news providers are able to respond. While charging for news looks to be a successful route for some brands, we note that the scale of charging for the industry is substantially smaller than in print. Apart from this, three models are gathering traction: selling audience engagement; selling news services; and selling news to businesses. Each of these options involves very different strategies and opposing objectives which can only be pursued at the same time by those with the deepest pockets. Everyone else has to choose.