MediaBizBuzz.com For October 15, 2007

Originally published on October 15, 2007

Fasten Your Seatbelts. It's Gonna Be a Bumpy Ride. This week will see the shake out of some winners and losers. How will Nielsen's C3 go over? Will AOL do right by its employees? What ARE viewers doing with their DVRs? And since when do men like gossip?
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Exclusive to JackMyers.com!
Ad Spending In Cinemas Up 15% For 2006.

Today The Cinema Advertising Council, a national non-profit trade association, released its report on cinema ad revenues reporting that industry revenues among members grew by 15% to $455,661,000 in 2006.

In September Jack Myers Media Business Report forecast growth in nontraditional media projecting cinema advertising growth for 2007 at 15%, 2008 growth at 17.5% and 2009 growth at 12.5%.

President and chairman Clifford E. Marks noted, "Marketers are looking for new, highly-effective, targeted opportunities to engage harder to reach consumer audiences that are increasingly migrating away from traditional media platforms. […] A majority of these marketers who were only experimenting with cinema three or four years ago, are now demanding that their agencies make our industry’s platform a ‘must buy.’"


You've Got Pink Slips!
Speculation is rife that AOL will announce massive layoffs this coming Tuesday. HR heads here (Lance Miyamoto, head of global HR) and abroad have quit rather than be the bearer of these untimely tidings. Best, most up-to-date coverage appears to be on Silicon Alley Insider. Follow breaking developmentshere.

Nielsen On The Hot Seat: As Commercial Minutes (C3) data is due out this week, there's good and bad news. The good: MediaWeek carried word of Carat's white paper supporting C3 as "currently the best option available."  The bad: Results of an industry audit to accredit the initiative have been delayed until January.

Just Who Is Time-Shifting?
Silicon Alley Insider covers a DVR study by Liechtman Research Group. Their bottom line: DVR users watched recorded television a sixth of the time, thus only 3% of the overall population is time-shifting.  Or... you might consider TiVo's Stop || Watch findings. According to TiVo's VP and General Manager Todd Juenger, "two-thirds of viewing during premiere week was done on a time-shifted basis." For your consideration: Perhaps TiVo subscribers have different viewing habits than generic DVR users?


According to TechCrunch, The Clock Is Ticking For Joost. Based on whatyou ask? With the imminent release of Adobe's new Flash player enhancement, "the quality of streaming video on the Web will roughly double at current bandwidth." What might keep Joost in play? Its relationships and user experience.

Piper Jaffray Goes Back to School. Its bi-annaul survey of high school students samples 800 students at 11 high schools. C|net's coverage of the study is a bit fast and loose. Tom Krazit reckons: "Eighty-two percent of students are downloading music, and almost two-thirds of those who obtained music online did it through a file-sharing service, according to Piper. That's down somewhat from two years ago, when 80 percent of students obtained online music through P2P networks."  I don't. These are self-reports during a time of RIAA crackdowns. I would venture to say that lyingabout illegal downloading and downloading itself is on the upswing.

Google Doesn't Advertise. Hardly.
The Nugget from AP:
"While major rivals like Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. pour more than 20 percent of their annual revenue into sales and marketing, Google devoted 8 percent of its revenue to the category in 2006, spending a total of $849.5 million. Microsoft spent $11.5 billion on marketing and sales in its last fiscal year, while Yahoo spent $1.3 billion. On advertising and promotions alone, Google spent $188 million in 2006 -- roughly the same amount Microsoft spends every two months."

Monday Morning Quarterbacking:

While it appears that theNFL network can't get full carriage from TimeWarner, Cablevision or The Fans,TMZ Gets Testosterone. The month-old entertainment juggernaut counts men among 41.8% of its viewers. Guess Britney's good for something.