Virgin Media mulls nationwide wi-fi
Virgin Media is mulling the idea of creating a nationwide wi-fi network to compete with rival BT.
It said it had been inspired by cable operators who have launched wi-fi in other countries.
Read more on this here..
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
Industry Head of YouTube Dara Nasr explains why the future of video advertising lies online
Dara Nasr
Industry Head of YouTube.
A third of web traffic is online video and Cisco predicts that this will rise to 90 per cent by 2013 so advertisers are taking notee. Recent IAB figures show that although all online advertising has grown, video is driving this with 82 per cent year on year growth in the first half of 2010.
In the early part of 2005 YouTube was born, a site created for friends to share clips. . From these humble origins, YouTube has grown: users are now watching 2bn streams a day on the site and they are now no longer merely watching clips. There are full-length shows, live concerts and sports events to grab their attention. When Harry Hill or Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge debut their new TV shows, they do so on YouTube.
Like other forms of new media, it has taken advertisers a while to crack online video – but this year there’s evidence that they’ve really cracked it. According to Brand Week in the US, Old Spice’s genius YouTube/Twitter campaign has led to sales of their shower gel doubling. Tippex has produced a global impact from a brilliantly interactive campaign which pushed YouTube to its very limit.
Advertisers keen to embrace online video have a range of options. Virals have been a popular way of creating content and seeding it in the hope that it grows. Great creative can provide fantastic results but recent work from Millward Brown suggests that without proper promotion, most of that video will not succeed, instead getting lost amid the pure volume of YouTube’s content.
Undoubtedly the Video On Demand (VOD) market provides the easiest crossover from TV advertising and this is the largest area within video. Pre-roll advertising is continuing to grow and traditional broadcasters such as ITV and Channel 4 have benefited from this hugely. However, this space is changing. The ads are more interactive, driving consumer engagement or click-through which goes beyond pure TV creative.
Buying models are also evolving, giving the user more control over what they see. In the States, VivaKi have run a research project called The Pool which trialed various VOD ad formats, the most popular being the Ad Selector model where the user chooses one of three ads to watch before the content streams.
Similarly, YouTube are launching a skippable ad test where the user can skip the ad if they choose, and the client only pays if the ad is viewed. Both these new formats are priced on a cost-per-view basis which gives the advertiser the benefit of knowing that the viewer saw the ad because they chose to, rather than the ad being enforced upon them or merely serving as wallpaper. These innovations do not replace the traditional CPM reservation model but sit alongside it and perhaps broaden the appeal of pre-roll advertising to a wider group of clients.
Building on that thought, YouTube’s Promoted Video product launched in the UK in 2009 with the aim of allowing advertisers to keyword-target viewers. Again using a CPC model, this marries the search ad model with video. This has been a huge success in the UK with clients including Honda, O2 and Nokia adopting the format. However, this format is not exclusive to large advertisers. SMEs and start-us are using it very much as an entry point into online video advertising.
There has been no bigger success story than Orabrush, a product developed by a retired doctor to treat bad breath. Initially he could not sell the product to retailers so enlisted marketing students to help. Their research showed that 92 per cent of people would not be interested in the product. However the 8 per cent that would represented a huge opportunity. With their help he created a video for a couple of hundred dollars and promoted it on YouTube. Not the most sexy brand but through clever optimisation and relevant targeting, this video has received over 15m clicks and the company has become a multi-million dollar business.
Video will continue to grow in the future not just in popularity but also accessibility. All smartphones have video streaming functionality and we are seeing that smartphones owners are more engaged with and watch more video than those without the high-end devices. Additionally TV sets are now wifi enabled, and they all come with several video apps, allowing viewers to easily embrace VOD from their TV sets.
Online video goes beyond audio-visual advertising; it combines the breadth and reach of TV with the interactivity, creativity and accountability of online. As a result advertisers are now often putting online video at the heart of their plans and the flexibility around formats and pricing provides them with different opportunities for success.
Dara Nasr
Industry Head of YouTube
Industry Head of YouTube.
A third of web traffic is online video and Cisco predicts that this will rise to 90 per cent by 2013 so advertisers are taking notee. Recent IAB figures show that although all online advertising has grown, video is driving this with 82 per cent year on year growth in the first half of 2010.
In the early part of 2005 YouTube was born, a site created for friends to share clips. . From these humble origins, YouTube has grown: users are now watching 2bn streams a day on the site and they are now no longer merely watching clips. There are full-length shows, live concerts and sports events to grab their attention. When Harry Hill or Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge debut their new TV shows, they do so on YouTube.
Like other forms of new media, it has taken advertisers a while to crack online video – but this year there’s evidence that they’ve really cracked it. According to Brand Week in the US, Old Spice’s genius YouTube/Twitter campaign has led to sales of their shower gel doubling. Tippex has produced a global impact from a brilliantly interactive campaign which pushed YouTube to its very limit.
Advertisers keen to embrace online video have a range of options. Virals have been a popular way of creating content and seeding it in the hope that it grows. Great creative can provide fantastic results but recent work from Millward Brown suggests that without proper promotion, most of that video will not succeed, instead getting lost amid the pure volume of YouTube’s content.
Undoubtedly the Video On Demand (VOD) market provides the easiest crossover from TV advertising and this is the largest area within video. Pre-roll advertising is continuing to grow and traditional broadcasters such as ITV and Channel 4 have benefited from this hugely. However, this space is changing. The ads are more interactive, driving consumer engagement or click-through which goes beyond pure TV creative.
Buying models are also evolving, giving the user more control over what they see. In the States, VivaKi have run a research project called The Pool which trialed various VOD ad formats, the most popular being the Ad Selector model where the user chooses one of three ads to watch before the content streams.
Similarly, YouTube are launching a skippable ad test where the user can skip the ad if they choose, and the client only pays if the ad is viewed. Both these new formats are priced on a cost-per-view basis which gives the advertiser the benefit of knowing that the viewer saw the ad because they chose to, rather than the ad being enforced upon them or merely serving as wallpaper. These innovations do not replace the traditional CPM reservation model but sit alongside it and perhaps broaden the appeal of pre-roll advertising to a wider group of clients.
Building on that thought, YouTube’s Promoted Video product launched in the UK in 2009 with the aim of allowing advertisers to keyword-target viewers. Again using a CPC model, this marries the search ad model with video. This has been a huge success in the UK with clients including Honda, O2 and Nokia adopting the format. However, this format is not exclusive to large advertisers. SMEs and start-us are using it very much as an entry point into online video advertising.
There has been no bigger success story than Orabrush, a product developed by a retired doctor to treat bad breath. Initially he could not sell the product to retailers so enlisted marketing students to help. Their research showed that 92 per cent of people would not be interested in the product. However the 8 per cent that would represented a huge opportunity. With their help he created a video for a couple of hundred dollars and promoted it on YouTube. Not the most sexy brand but through clever optimisation and relevant targeting, this video has received over 15m clicks and the company has become a multi-million dollar business.
Video will continue to grow in the future not just in popularity but also accessibility. All smartphones have video streaming functionality and we are seeing that smartphones owners are more engaged with and watch more video than those without the high-end devices. Additionally TV sets are now wifi enabled, and they all come with several video apps, allowing viewers to easily embrace VOD from their TV sets.
Online video goes beyond audio-visual advertising; it combines the breadth and reach of TV with the interactivity, creativity and accountability of online. As a result advertisers are now often putting online video at the heart of their plans and the flexibility around formats and pricing provides them with different opportunities for success.
Dara Nasr
Industry Head of YouTube
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
The birth of a UK tech giant
British chip designer ARM will soon be 20 years old. Bill Thompson was there at the start.
During the 1980s I worked at Acorn Computers in Cambridge, helping to develop the in-house engineering systems that were used by designers to create computers like the Archimedes, the popular successor to the BBC Microcomputer that had made Acorn's name during the BBC Computer Literacy project.
The computer on my desk was a BBC Model "B" microcomputer with a whopping 32 kilobytes of memory and, I believe, a 10 megabyte hard drive.
Read more...
During the 1980s I worked at Acorn Computers in Cambridge, helping to develop the in-house engineering systems that were used by designers to create computers like the Archimedes, the popular successor to the BBC Microcomputer that had made Acorn's name during the BBC Computer Literacy project.
The computer on my desk was a BBC Model "B" microcomputer with a whopping 32 kilobytes of memory and, I believe, a 10 megabyte hard drive.
Read more...
Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing's papers auctioned
Alan Turing killed himself after being prosecuted for having a sexual relationship with a manPapers published by World War II codebreaker Alan Turing are expected to fetch about £500,000 at auction later.
The Manchester University scientist, who killed himself in 1954, created a machine at Bletchley Park to crack messages in the German Enigma code.
Last year, the then prime minister Gordon Brown gave him a posthumous apology for the "appalling" treatment he received for being gay.
The documents will go under the hammer at Christie's in London later.
Turing, who has been called the "father of the computer", published only 18 papers in his short career.
He was prosecuted for having a sexual relationship with a man and two years later he committed suicide by biting into an apple which he had laced with cyanide.
He was found dead at his home in Wilmslow, Cheshire, where a plaque has been erected to pay tribute to him.
Turing's Bombe machine is viewed by many as the ancestor of the modern computer Since it was announced that the papers were going to be sold, IT journalist Gareth Halfacree has been trying to raise the cash to buy them and donate them to Bletchley Park Trust in Milton Keynes.
So far he has raised £85,000 having just received a £62,784 donation from Google.
"We are still a bit short of what we need but I still hope that Microsoft or Apple might donate at the last minute," Mr Halfacree said.
Bids for the collection, which contain his first published paper, his pioneering work on artificial intelligence and the very foundations of the digital computer, have to be submitted by 1030 GMT.
They will go under the hammer at 1400 GMT.
Mr Halfacree added: "If we do not raise enough, which is looking increasingly unlikely, I hope whoever buys it donates the papers to Bletchley Park so we can all benefit from them."
He said the money he has raised so far will still go to the trust whether it is used to buy the papers or not.
Viewers May Be Willing to Watch More Ads Online
VIEWERS of television shows on the Web have grown accustomed to 15- and 30-second commercial breaks — a fraction of the time given for commercials on traditional TV. Would they accept TV-style ad loads?
Jack Wakshlag, the chief research officer for Turner Broadcasting, the parent of TNT and TBS.
He says the answer is yes. Research conducted by Turner suggested that programmers could surround the online streams of shows with even more ads than TV broadcasts have.
Regardless of the ad load, Mr. Wakshlag said in an interview, “people will spend approximately the same amount of time watching episodes online.”
The research comes at a pivotal time for programmers like Turner, which would like to extend TV-style ad loads to the Internet. Turner and others are slowly extending their programs to the Internet for existing cable and satellite subscribers only, a concept sometimes called TV Everywhere. Heavier ad loads and restricted access will go a long way toward bringing TV on the computer in line with TV on the living room set.
To conduct the test of online viewers’ behavior, Turner randomly assigned three sets of anonymous visitors to tnt.tv and tbs.com to a specially built video player. There, the first set was shown about a minute of ads an episode; the second was shown 8 to 10 minutes of ads; and the third was shown 16 to 20 minutes.
Viewers of 30-minute TBS sitcoms like “Meet the Browns” watched, on average, 40 percent of the episode, including the ads, if there was one minute of ads and 37 percent of the episode if there were 16 minutes of ads. Viewers of hourlong TNT shows like “Memphis Beat” watched 59 percent of the episode if there were one minute 15 seconds of ads, and 49 percent of the episode if there was 20 minutes of ads.
Mr. Wakshlag’s takeaway was that viewers watched, on average, for the same number of minutes no matter how many ads were embedded within. Indeed, the Turner research highlighted one of the oddities of online TV viewing: viewers often do not watch an entire episode, just as they channel-surf while on the couch.
Turner also found that the commercial retention rate for online video was higher than for traditional television.
Mr. Wakshlag said the research, which was done in concert with Magna Global, affirmed that people would trade ad exposure for access to programming.
The CW network has reached the same conclusions in a real-world test. CW, the home of “Gossip Girl” and “The Vampire Diaries,” announced last spring that it would increase its ad load on cwtv.com, and since then, it has reported gains in video viewing and visitor retention. According to the measurement firm comScore, the Web site averaged 57 minutes of video viewing (a total of ads and content) per visitor in September, up 140 percent from the same month in 2009.
Some in the television industry continue to proselytize for fewer but better ads. Hulu, the dominant Web site for free TV viewing, notes on its Web site that it has about one-fourth the ad load of traditional TV, and that advertisers pay a premium to be in its less cluttered environment.
One of Hulu’s principles, as expressed by its chief executive, Jason Kilar, is, “When it comes to the amount of advertising, lighten up.” In an address at the industry conference NewTeeVee Live this month, Mr. Kilar compared the four minutes of ads on the half-hour “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” in the 1950s with the eight minutes of ads when NBC broadcasts “The Office” now, and said, “Where we are today is not the ideal balance.”
Hulu has been at the fore of coming up with ad products that give viewers more options to, for example, select among three types of commercials by a car company. Still, some Hulu users have noticed an uptick in the number of ads being streamed lately, perhaps evincing the complex calculations that are under way in the industry to increase ad loads and, in doing so, increase revenue for media companies.
Asked about the recent uptick in ads, a Hulu spokeswoman reiterated that the site had “less than half” the ads compared with “what is found on traditional TV.” The company said the lighter ad load and the tailoring efforts had “resulted in the advertising spots on Hulu being measured as at least 55 percent more effective than the same ads in traditional channels.”
The ads on Web sites like hulu.com, tbs.com and cwtv.com will continue to be better customized. But if this year’s tests indicate anything, it is that there will also be more of them.
Jack Wakshlag, the chief research officer for Turner Broadcasting, the parent of TNT and TBS.
He says the answer is yes. Research conducted by Turner suggested that programmers could surround the online streams of shows with even more ads than TV broadcasts have.
Regardless of the ad load, Mr. Wakshlag said in an interview, “people will spend approximately the same amount of time watching episodes online.”
The research comes at a pivotal time for programmers like Turner, which would like to extend TV-style ad loads to the Internet. Turner and others are slowly extending their programs to the Internet for existing cable and satellite subscribers only, a concept sometimes called TV Everywhere. Heavier ad loads and restricted access will go a long way toward bringing TV on the computer in line with TV on the living room set.
To conduct the test of online viewers’ behavior, Turner randomly assigned three sets of anonymous visitors to tnt.tv and tbs.com to a specially built video player. There, the first set was shown about a minute of ads an episode; the second was shown 8 to 10 minutes of ads; and the third was shown 16 to 20 minutes.
Viewers of 30-minute TBS sitcoms like “Meet the Browns” watched, on average, 40 percent of the episode, including the ads, if there was one minute of ads and 37 percent of the episode if there were 16 minutes of ads. Viewers of hourlong TNT shows like “Memphis Beat” watched 59 percent of the episode if there were one minute 15 seconds of ads, and 49 percent of the episode if there was 20 minutes of ads.
Mr. Wakshlag’s takeaway was that viewers watched, on average, for the same number of minutes no matter how many ads were embedded within. Indeed, the Turner research highlighted one of the oddities of online TV viewing: viewers often do not watch an entire episode, just as they channel-surf while on the couch.
Turner also found that the commercial retention rate for online video was higher than for traditional television.
Mr. Wakshlag said the research, which was done in concert with Magna Global, affirmed that people would trade ad exposure for access to programming.
The CW network has reached the same conclusions in a real-world test. CW, the home of “Gossip Girl” and “The Vampire Diaries,” announced last spring that it would increase its ad load on cwtv.com, and since then, it has reported gains in video viewing and visitor retention. According to the measurement firm comScore, the Web site averaged 57 minutes of video viewing (a total of ads and content) per visitor in September, up 140 percent from the same month in 2009.
Some in the television industry continue to proselytize for fewer but better ads. Hulu, the dominant Web site for free TV viewing, notes on its Web site that it has about one-fourth the ad load of traditional TV, and that advertisers pay a premium to be in its less cluttered environment.
One of Hulu’s principles, as expressed by its chief executive, Jason Kilar, is, “When it comes to the amount of advertising, lighten up.” In an address at the industry conference NewTeeVee Live this month, Mr. Kilar compared the four minutes of ads on the half-hour “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” in the 1950s with the eight minutes of ads when NBC broadcasts “The Office” now, and said, “Where we are today is not the ideal balance.”
Hulu has been at the fore of coming up with ad products that give viewers more options to, for example, select among three types of commercials by a car company. Still, some Hulu users have noticed an uptick in the number of ads being streamed lately, perhaps evincing the complex calculations that are under way in the industry to increase ad loads and, in doing so, increase revenue for media companies.
Asked about the recent uptick in ads, a Hulu spokeswoman reiterated that the site had “less than half” the ads compared with “what is found on traditional TV.” The company said the lighter ad load and the tailoring efforts had “resulted in the advertising spots on Hulu being measured as at least 55 percent more effective than the same ads in traditional channels.”
The ads on Web sites like hulu.com, tbs.com and cwtv.com will continue to be better customized. But if this year’s tests indicate anything, it is that there will also be more of them.
Digital vaccine needed to fight botnets
The equivalent of a government-backed vaccination scheme is needed to clean up the huge numbers of PCs hijacked by cyber criminals, suggests research.
In Europe, about 5-10% of PCs on broadband net links were hijacked and part of a botnet in 2009, it suggests.
ISPs are key to wresting control of these machines away from criminals, says the Dutch report.
Initiatives in Germany and Australia show how official help can boost efforts to clean up infected machines.
Home invasion
The survey of botnet numbers was carried out in an attempt to understand the scale of the problem and reveal the forces influencing how many PCs on a particular network are hijacked.
Botnets are typically networks of home computers that malicious hackers have managed to hijack by tricking their owners into opening a virus-laden e-mail or visiting a booby-trapped website.
They are then commonly used to pump out spam and attack websites.
It drew up its by analysing a pool of 170 million unique IP addresses culled from a spam trap that amassed more than 109 billion junk mail messages between 2005 and 2009
With 80-90% of all spam being routed through hijacked PCs these IP addresses were a good guide to where infected machines were located, said Professor Michel Van Eeten from the Delft University of Technology who lead the OECD-backed research.
Analysis of this huge corpus of data showed that about 50 ISPs were harbouring around half of all infected machines worldwide. Confirmation of this finding came from other non-spam sources - the 169 million IP addresses that were part of the Conficker botnet and 130 million IP addresses collected by net security watchdog SANS.
Telephone, Eyewire Calling customers to help clean up their PC can be a costly process
The numbers of machines on these networks varied widely, said Professor Van Eeten, but infected rates on individual networks were quite stable over time relative to each other.
What was also clear from the research, he said, was that ISPs were not going to be able to clean up the large numbers of infected machines without some kind of central aid. In Holland, ISPs have dramatically increased their efforts but are still only cleaning up about 10% of infected machines.
At the moment, he said, two bottlenecks were preventing ISPs doing more to clean up machines.
The first, he said, was the lack of comprehensive data about the numbers and location of infected machines.
An initiative by the Australian government to pool data on infections and provide it to the nation's ISPs showed how this could be overcome, said Prof Van Eeten.
"The second bottleneck is that it costs money to notify customers and get them to clean up their machine," he said.
"An incoming call is very costly especially as those kinds of calls need experts," he said. "ISPs can completely lose their profit margin on a customer like that."
South Korean and Germany had tackled this problem, he said, by setting up national call centres to which ISPs can refer infected customers where they can get advice about disinfecting their machine. The call centres are publicly funded - though Germany will only pay for its centres temporarily.
"Governments can be very helpful," he said.
Prof Van Eeten said the numbers and prevalence of botnets suggests we should perhaps see them as the modern-day equivalent of the epidemics that struck in Victorian times and prompted the creation of government-backed vaccination schemes.
A similar system delivering a digital vaccine might again be part of the solution, he said.
By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News
In Europe, about 5-10% of PCs on broadband net links were hijacked and part of a botnet in 2009, it suggests.
ISPs are key to wresting control of these machines away from criminals, says the Dutch report.
Initiatives in Germany and Australia show how official help can boost efforts to clean up infected machines.
Home invasion
The survey of botnet numbers was carried out in an attempt to understand the scale of the problem and reveal the forces influencing how many PCs on a particular network are hijacked.
Botnets are typically networks of home computers that malicious hackers have managed to hijack by tricking their owners into opening a virus-laden e-mail or visiting a booby-trapped website.
They are then commonly used to pump out spam and attack websites.
It drew up its by analysing a pool of 170 million unique IP addresses culled from a spam trap that amassed more than 109 billion junk mail messages between 2005 and 2009
With 80-90% of all spam being routed through hijacked PCs these IP addresses were a good guide to where infected machines were located, said Professor Michel Van Eeten from the Delft University of Technology who lead the OECD-backed research.
Analysis of this huge corpus of data showed that about 50 ISPs were harbouring around half of all infected machines worldwide. Confirmation of this finding came from other non-spam sources - the 169 million IP addresses that were part of the Conficker botnet and 130 million IP addresses collected by net security watchdog SANS.
Telephone, Eyewire Calling customers to help clean up their PC can be a costly process
The numbers of machines on these networks varied widely, said Professor Van Eeten, but infected rates on individual networks were quite stable over time relative to each other.
What was also clear from the research, he said, was that ISPs were not going to be able to clean up the large numbers of infected machines without some kind of central aid. In Holland, ISPs have dramatically increased their efforts but are still only cleaning up about 10% of infected machines.
At the moment, he said, two bottlenecks were preventing ISPs doing more to clean up machines.
The first, he said, was the lack of comprehensive data about the numbers and location of infected machines.
An initiative by the Australian government to pool data on infections and provide it to the nation's ISPs showed how this could be overcome, said Prof Van Eeten.
"The second bottleneck is that it costs money to notify customers and get them to clean up their machine," he said.
"An incoming call is very costly especially as those kinds of calls need experts," he said. "ISPs can completely lose their profit margin on a customer like that."
South Korean and Germany had tackled this problem, he said, by setting up national call centres to which ISPs can refer infected customers where they can get advice about disinfecting their machine. The call centres are publicly funded - though Germany will only pay for its centres temporarily.
"Governments can be very helpful," he said.
Prof Van Eeten said the numbers and prevalence of botnets suggests we should perhaps see them as the modern-day equivalent of the epidemics that struck in Victorian times and prompted the creation of government-backed vaccination schemes.
A similar system delivering a digital vaccine might again be part of the solution, he said.
By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News
Monday, 22 November 2010
Have click-through rates stabilized?
Click-through rate declines experienced in 2009 and 2010 seem to have leveled off at 0.09%, according to research from MediaMind. The report also found that users who don't see a large amount of ads are more apt to click through than those who view many ads..
The debate over whether click-through rates capture the full influence of online display advertising continues to remain top-of-mind for ad executives. Most believe this is only a partial measurement of online ad success. And although CTRs have declined steadily for the past few years, online ads continue to have an increasing influence on conversions and sales.
One reason for the debate -- declining CTRs. MediaMind (formerly Eyeblaster) released a study this week suggesting that CTRs have stopped declining, and have leveled off. There are a few explanations for this end to the decline of performance for standard banner ads, according to Ariel Geifman, principal research analyst at MediaMind.
For starters, he says, the industry has found a balance where the growth in the number of impressions does not outpace users' growth in clicks, resulting in an end to the decline of CTRs. Second, advertisers have become more sophisticated in their use of standard banners -- including the use of creative optimization, retargeting and behavioral targeting ads that increase performance.
The findings, released in a Global Benchmark Report, "Standard Banners -Non-Standard Results," suggest that global CTRs stopped declining in 2009 and 2010 and remained fixed at around 0.09%.
The study found that consumers who were exposed to relatively few ads are more likely to have a high CTR compared to those who are exposed to a high number of ads.
Ironically, the main reason for drop in CTR is the success of online display advertising, with the increase in the number of online ad impressions outpacing the rise in clicks by consumers. The CTR is only a partial measure of success -- about 20% of conversions are the result of a click. Advertisers can improve campaign performance with various steps such as targeted content, utilizing large standard banners, use of creative algorithms to boost CTR and retargeting.
Click-through rates have been declining during the past decade, with the greatest decrease of 18% occurring during the financial crisis. Yet in 2009 and 2010, this decline appears to have stopped. Both in 2009 and the first eight months of 2010, average CTRs remained around 0.09%. This indicates that online advertising performance has reached what MediaMind calls "equilibrium."
What caused this decline in CTR in the first place? Evidence shows that the success of online advertising has oddly been the prime cause for the decline in CTR performance, according to the report. As more budgets poured into display, users were exposed to more and more ads. The number of ads a user clicked on did not catch up with the number of ads users viewed, so it reduced the overall CTR.
Research by comScore suggests that two-thirds of Internet users do not click on any display ads during the course of a month, and only 16% of Internet users account for 80% of all clicks. It also indicates that display advertising continues to have an influence on user behavior even at low CTRs.
The debate over whether click-through rates capture the full influence of online display advertising continues to remain top-of-mind for ad executives. Most believe this is only a partial measurement of online ad success. And although CTRs have declined steadily for the past few years, online ads continue to have an increasing influence on conversions and sales.
One reason for the debate -- declining CTRs. MediaMind (formerly Eyeblaster) released a study this week suggesting that CTRs have stopped declining, and have leveled off. There are a few explanations for this end to the decline of performance for standard banner ads, according to Ariel Geifman, principal research analyst at MediaMind.
For starters, he says, the industry has found a balance where the growth in the number of impressions does not outpace users' growth in clicks, resulting in an end to the decline of CTRs. Second, advertisers have become more sophisticated in their use of standard banners -- including the use of creative optimization, retargeting and behavioral targeting ads that increase performance.
The findings, released in a Global Benchmark Report, "Standard Banners -Non-Standard Results," suggest that global CTRs stopped declining in 2009 and 2010 and remained fixed at around 0.09%.
The study found that consumers who were exposed to relatively few ads are more likely to have a high CTR compared to those who are exposed to a high number of ads.
Ironically, the main reason for drop in CTR is the success of online display advertising, with the increase in the number of online ad impressions outpacing the rise in clicks by consumers. The CTR is only a partial measure of success -- about 20% of conversions are the result of a click. Advertisers can improve campaign performance with various steps such as targeted content, utilizing large standard banners, use of creative algorithms to boost CTR and retargeting.
Click-through rates have been declining during the past decade, with the greatest decrease of 18% occurring during the financial crisis. Yet in 2009 and 2010, this decline appears to have stopped. Both in 2009 and the first eight months of 2010, average CTRs remained around 0.09%. This indicates that online advertising performance has reached what MediaMind calls "equilibrium."
What caused this decline in CTR in the first place? Evidence shows that the success of online advertising has oddly been the prime cause for the decline in CTR performance, according to the report. As more budgets poured into display, users were exposed to more and more ads. The number of ads a user clicked on did not catch up with the number of ads users viewed, so it reduced the overall CTR.
Research by comScore suggests that two-thirds of Internet users do not click on any display ads during the course of a month, and only 16% of Internet users account for 80% of all clicks. It also indicates that display advertising continues to have an influence on user behavior even at low CTRs.
AOL, YouTube and Yahoo! show strength in rich media display ads
For the past few months, AOL (NYSE: AOL), Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) and YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG) have turned to huge takeover ads as a way to attract premium brand dollars as the display market has picked up markedly over last year. Takeover ads or splash pages come in various formats, but most tend to serve as a way to show premium rich media ads. Macquarie analyst Ben Schachter took a look at which sites are using takeovers during the first half of this quarter and found that most are adopted homepage takeovers as part of their display ad strategy.
The one laggard, however, is MSN, which had the lowest amount of takeovers and rich media ads among its chief rivals, suggesting Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) might be having some difficulty selling out its homepage inventory, Schachter found in his study.
When it comes to online brand advertising, size does matter if you’re talking about the potential to drive up premium ad prices, and most media sites have been ramping up their use of huge takeover ads over the past few months. The promise of larger ads, which have been promoted heavily by the Online Publishers Association over the past year, is that it will attract more creativity and place for rich media ads. After all, the static banner ad is the bane of premium publishers, as the format is best used for cheaper, direct response “click here now” types of advertising.
The report doesn’t directly say that the bigger ad units have been driving more revenue, but it’s pretty safe to assume that if companies are able to drive up CPMs, address issues of clutter and reduce their reliance on low performing remnant ads, they should be able to better capitalize on the display ad recovery that is expected to continue into next year.
Oversized/custom ad units accounted for 44 percent of all homepage ad units across Yahoo, AOL, YouTube and MSN during the first half Q4. Just looking at the three portals, takeovers accounted for 26 percent of all homepage ads across the portals up from 18 percent during Q3.
Aggressive adopters: Takeovers made up 23 percent of daily homepage inventory for Yahoo, which has seen its display revenues rise 17 percent in Q3. AOL, which is still getting ready to rollout its Project Devil takeover program, nevertheless had the highest percentage of takeovers with 36 percent of its ads using that format. Along with the residual effects of the ad recovery, AOL used these premium placements to arrest its display declines in the past quarter. The company has attributed those declines to the continuing restructuring of its ad sales and ad placements, and CEO Tim Armstrong has said that that business should rebound before the middle of next year.
Media are main advertisers: Given how much media companies are depending on takeover ads to build up their ad revenues, it’s not too surprising that firms in that space are the most aggressive in using those placements to promote their businesses. Media companies made up 23 percent of the takeover ads placed on the four properties Macquarie looked at. For example, Yahoo struck a pretty big ad deal during Q3 with CBS (NYSE: CBS), which used the takeover format to promote its fall season. Next in line were automotives, which were just under 20 percent, followed by financial services firms at around 12 percent. Health and pharma, retail and telecoms hovered around the 10 percent range. Consumer packaged goods and insurance comprised barely 2 percent of the marketers using takeovers.
All about branding: Much to publishers’ delight, branding was the most popular reason marketers used the takeover ads, though direct response has found a way to use the larger formats as well. Brand ads accounted for 57 percent of takeovers, while 28 percent were devoted to direct response. About 45 percent of the takeover ads presented by MSN were used by direct response. About 15 percent of takeovers were represented by what Macquarie identified as hybrids of both marketing plays.
YouTube is canvas for media: About 55 percent of the homepage ads on YouTube that Macquarie counted came from media companies. All the big names did takeovers, including Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), News Corp. (NSDQ: NWS), NBC Universal (NYSE: GE), as did smaller ones such as Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF). Video game publishers including Activision (NSDQ: ATVI), Electronic Arts (NSDQ: ERTS) and Ubisoft bought homepage inventory in the past two months.
Staci D. Kramer
The one laggard, however, is MSN, which had the lowest amount of takeovers and rich media ads among its chief rivals, suggesting Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) might be having some difficulty selling out its homepage inventory, Schachter found in his study.
When it comes to online brand advertising, size does matter if you’re talking about the potential to drive up premium ad prices, and most media sites have been ramping up their use of huge takeover ads over the past few months. The promise of larger ads, which have been promoted heavily by the Online Publishers Association over the past year, is that it will attract more creativity and place for rich media ads. After all, the static banner ad is the bane of premium publishers, as the format is best used for cheaper, direct response “click here now” types of advertising.
The report doesn’t directly say that the bigger ad units have been driving more revenue, but it’s pretty safe to assume that if companies are able to drive up CPMs, address issues of clutter and reduce their reliance on low performing remnant ads, they should be able to better capitalize on the display ad recovery that is expected to continue into next year.
Oversized/custom ad units accounted for 44 percent of all homepage ad units across Yahoo, AOL, YouTube and MSN during the first half Q4. Just looking at the three portals, takeovers accounted for 26 percent of all homepage ads across the portals up from 18 percent during Q3.
Aggressive adopters: Takeovers made up 23 percent of daily homepage inventory for Yahoo, which has seen its display revenues rise 17 percent in Q3. AOL, which is still getting ready to rollout its Project Devil takeover program, nevertheless had the highest percentage of takeovers with 36 percent of its ads using that format. Along with the residual effects of the ad recovery, AOL used these premium placements to arrest its display declines in the past quarter. The company has attributed those declines to the continuing restructuring of its ad sales and ad placements, and CEO Tim Armstrong has said that that business should rebound before the middle of next year.
Media are main advertisers: Given how much media companies are depending on takeover ads to build up their ad revenues, it’s not too surprising that firms in that space are the most aggressive in using those placements to promote their businesses. Media companies made up 23 percent of the takeover ads placed on the four properties Macquarie looked at. For example, Yahoo struck a pretty big ad deal during Q3 with CBS (NYSE: CBS), which used the takeover format to promote its fall season. Next in line were automotives, which were just under 20 percent, followed by financial services firms at around 12 percent. Health and pharma, retail and telecoms hovered around the 10 percent range. Consumer packaged goods and insurance comprised barely 2 percent of the marketers using takeovers.
All about branding: Much to publishers’ delight, branding was the most popular reason marketers used the takeover ads, though direct response has found a way to use the larger formats as well. Brand ads accounted for 57 percent of takeovers, while 28 percent were devoted to direct response. About 45 percent of the takeover ads presented by MSN were used by direct response. About 15 percent of takeovers were represented by what Macquarie identified as hybrids of both marketing plays.
YouTube is canvas for media: About 55 percent of the homepage ads on YouTube that Macquarie counted came from media companies. All the big names did takeovers, including Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), News Corp. (NSDQ: NWS), NBC Universal (NYSE: GE), as did smaller ones such as Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF). Video game publishers including Activision (NSDQ: ATVI), Electronic Arts (NSDQ: ERTS) and Ubisoft bought homepage inventory in the past two months.
Staci D. Kramer
EU grapples with Internet regulations
Europe's effort to regulate online "cookies" is crumbling, exposing how tough it is to curb the practice of tracking Internet users' movements on the Web.
We need a user-friendly solution,' says EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes, left.
.Seeking to be a leader in protecting online privacy, the European Union last year passed a law requiring companies to obtain consent from Web users when tracking files such as cookies are placed on users' computers. Enactment awaits action by member countries.
Now, Internet companies, advertisers, lawmakers, privacy advocates and EU member nations can't agree on the law's meaning. Is it sufficient if users agree to cookies when setting up Web browsers? Is an industry-backed plan acceptable that would let users see—and opt out of—data collected about them? Must placing cookies on a machine depend on the user checking a box each time?
Read more...
We need a user-friendly solution,' says EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes, left.
.Seeking to be a leader in protecting online privacy, the European Union last year passed a law requiring companies to obtain consent from Web users when tracking files such as cookies are placed on users' computers. Enactment awaits action by member countries.
Now, Internet companies, advertisers, lawmakers, privacy advocates and EU member nations can't agree on the law's meaning. Is it sufficient if users agree to cookies when setting up Web browsers? Is an industry-backed plan acceptable that would let users see—and opt out of—data collected about them? Must placing cookies on a machine depend on the user checking a box each time?
Read more...
Friday, 19 November 2010
Some Pushdown Examples from the BBC Website
A Pushdown ad appears on screen as a narrow strip (970 wide by 66 tall), expands for 7 seconds to 970 wide by 418 tall and automatically closes for a 1/24x frequency. Controls allow consumer to open and close unit at any time...
see some of the Pushdown ads.
Cadillac CTS
Mweb South Africa
chanel Bleu
Jaguar
Barclays
Xerox
A Pushdown ad appears on screen as a narrow strip (970 wide by 66 tall), expands for 7 seconds to 970 wide by 418 tall and automatically closes for a 1/24x frequency. Controls allow consumer to open and close unit at any time...
see some of the Pushdown ads.
Cadillac CTS
Mweb South Africa
chanel Bleu
Jaguar
Barclays
Xerox
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
New mobile ad formats pushing capacity of operator networks
This week should see the announcement of the first brands to use iAd in Europe, a format which promises to deliver a smooth and interactive ad experience on mobile devices. After launching in the US over the summer, most agencies have been impressed by the functionality iAd brings to in-app advertising while at the same time being somewhat taken aback by the huge budgets required to be a launch partner. That aside, it will be joining offerings such as YOC’s “Ad Plus” format to push the limits of what can be done with mobile advertising.
However, one of the challenges facing ad networks trying to deliver these formats is that they are at the mercy of the quality of the network signal. If you click on an ad on your PC, it will be a rare occasion that it won’t work perfectly. Do the same on mobile with a rich media ad and users can sometimes find themselves faced with an irritating delay before the content is delivered. It is an issue that can be solved by targeting campaigns so that they are only seen by people accessing the ad via Wi-Fi or 3G but this obviously reduces the potential reach of campaigns. The fact of the matter is that we have now hit a point where slow data speeds are hindering the ability to deliver the very best ad formats. The solution here in the UK will ultimately come in the form of mass 3G handset adoption, a Wi-Fi blanket being placed across cities or better still the roll out of 4G mobile services which can deliver super fast broadband speeds to your handset. Sadly however, the UK is lagging behind the rest of the world in implementing the 4G infrastructure. In the USA Verizon expect to cover 38 cities with LTE (A Mobile Network Technology marketed as 4G) by the end of the year, Sweden expect to have 99% of their population covered by LTE by the end of 2011 and Germany and Denmark are on a similar path. Despite O2 having run a successful trial of 4G in Slough last year, the 4G spectrum auction is a probably a year away meaning services are unlikely to launch in the UK before 2012.
It’s a slightly frustrating situation for all those involved in the mobile ad world but smart work-arounds and more data efficient ways of serving ads will be found before 4G takes off. The incentive for the operators is clear, better speeds will mean more people hitting the mobile web, which in turn leads to M-Commerce really taking off. If Operators then get themselves into a position to allow people to add goods and services to their mobile bill they can take a cut of the transactions or act as a credit card to their subscribers.
Tue, 16/11/2010
by James Tagg
However, one of the challenges facing ad networks trying to deliver these formats is that they are at the mercy of the quality of the network signal. If you click on an ad on your PC, it will be a rare occasion that it won’t work perfectly. Do the same on mobile with a rich media ad and users can sometimes find themselves faced with an irritating delay before the content is delivered. It is an issue that can be solved by targeting campaigns so that they are only seen by people accessing the ad via Wi-Fi or 3G but this obviously reduces the potential reach of campaigns. The fact of the matter is that we have now hit a point where slow data speeds are hindering the ability to deliver the very best ad formats. The solution here in the UK will ultimately come in the form of mass 3G handset adoption, a Wi-Fi blanket being placed across cities or better still the roll out of 4G mobile services which can deliver super fast broadband speeds to your handset. Sadly however, the UK is lagging behind the rest of the world in implementing the 4G infrastructure. In the USA Verizon expect to cover 38 cities with LTE (A Mobile Network Technology marketed as 4G) by the end of the year, Sweden expect to have 99% of their population covered by LTE by the end of 2011 and Germany and Denmark are on a similar path. Despite O2 having run a successful trial of 4G in Slough last year, the 4G spectrum auction is a probably a year away meaning services are unlikely to launch in the UK before 2012.
It’s a slightly frustrating situation for all those involved in the mobile ad world but smart work-arounds and more data efficient ways of serving ads will be found before 4G takes off. The incentive for the operators is clear, better speeds will mean more people hitting the mobile web, which in turn leads to M-Commerce really taking off. If Operators then get themselves into a position to allow people to add goods and services to their mobile bill they can take a cut of the transactions or act as a credit card to their subscribers.
Tue, 16/11/2010
by James Tagg
Google urges U.S. to treat Internet curbs as trade threat
(Reuters) - Google Inc urged Western nations on Monday to challenge restrictions in China and other countries on the free flow of information over the Internet as a threat to free trade and to negotiate new deals to protect U.S. commercial interests harmed by the practices..
Read more
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Morgan Stanley's Meeker Sees Online Ad Boom
(Bloomberg) — Mary Meeker will predict a $50 billion online advertising boom in an address at the annual Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco today. The Morgan Stanley analyst will say as well that mobile commerce may gain market share faster than traditional online retailing.
Meeker, 51, is back in demand. She was called "Queen of the Net" by Barron's in 1998, only to see her star dim as technology stocks plunged and regulators said securities firms used biased research to lure banking business. These days, investors are scouring her research anew for would-be Web winners.
"We are trying to invest in the kinds of companies she'll mention in her reports," investor Marc Andreessen said in an interview.
Andreessen's venture firm, Andreessen Horowitz LLC, has bought stakes in Meeker-favored companies including Skype Technologies SA and Zynga Game Network Inc.
"She is becoming Mary Meeker 2.0," said Bing Gordon, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Gordon said Meeker's research helped persuade his firm to "do more mobile, bigger and faster." In March, Kleiner Perkins said it will double its iFund to $200 million. The investment pool backs startups that create applications for Apple Inc.'s handheld devices, such as the iPhone and the iPad.
Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, is an investor in Andreessen Horowitz.
Meeker gained renown in the 1990s for predictions on Internet growth and her bullish calls on Web companies, including EBay Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and America Online Inc.
Tech Bust
Then came the dot-com bust in 2000. The Nasdaq lost 78 percent of its value in less than three years. In 2001, Fortune published a story titled, "Where Mary Meeker Went Wrong." In 2003, after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused Morgan Stanley and other financial services firms of skewed analysis, the companies settled for $1.4 billion.
Meeker fared better than analysts such as Henry Blodget, formerly of Merrill Lynch & Co., who was fined and banned for life from the securities industry; the SEC didn't accuse Meeker of wrongdoing. Still, then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who led the probe by state and federal authorities, said Morgan Stanley failed to supervise its analysts, including Meeker, and said the company inadequately managed conflicts of interest between its research and investment-banking divisions.
"She may have a second act, which is never an easy thing to do on Wall Street," said Tom Taulli, an independent researcher on initial public offerings. "But she is going to have to prove herself. And it's very difficult: You are associated with that brand."
Digging for Data
Meeker says the brickbats flung her way haven't altered the way she carries out research. She said Morgan Stanley's "The Internet Report" in 1995 contended that most companies fail.
"To be a successful analyst, one has to dig deep for data," Meeker said in an interview. The report "was thoughtful about the growth of the Internet, yet cautious about investments."
Meeker, a managing director who leads Morgan Stanley's technology research, spends much of her time these days thinking about the Web in the iPhone age. In 2012, smartphone shipments will exceed those of personal computers, she contends.
"It's the fastest-ramping technology transformation the world has ever seen," Meeker said. "I've been of the view for years that the mobile Internet was the next big thing."
U.S. consumers spend 28 percent of their media time online, yet only 13 percent of ad spending goes to the Internet. That creates a $50 billion online advertising "global opportunity," according to a draft of Meeker's Web 2.0 presentation.
Mobile Commerce
Another prediction: Mobile commerce may grab retail spending share "much faster" than traditional e-commerce, she says. That's because wireless connections enable impulse purchases, and location-based services let merchants deliver coupons and offers to users when they're most likely to spend.
Some of Meeker's current thinking was outlined in her Mobile Internet Report, a 424-page tome published last year, the culmination of four years of research.
Yuri Milner, chairman of Russian Internet company Mail.ru Group Ltd., calls it "the best of what's been written in this field." Mail.ru raised $912 million this month on the London Stock Exchange with Morgan Stanley among the arrangers.
Meeker, an Indiana native who graduated from DePauw University and earned an MBA from Cornell University, says she draws on personal experience, as well as data analysis and company research, to form her views..
Scottish 'Epiphany'
She says she had an "epiphany" last year after a three- hour hike on the coast of Scotland, near St. Andrews. A friend who accompanied her on the hike used a Research In Motion Ltd. BlackBerry to snap photos and had posted them to Facebook by the time Meeker returned to her lodging.
"We could get to a point where a very material portion of content on the Internet is created on Facebook with mobile devices," said Meeker, who spends much of her time in New York, and has a home in Woodside, in California's Silicon Valley.
Another realization came during a recent plane ride between Washington and New York. In an informal survey of fellow first- class passengers, Meeker found four iPad tablet computers, including her own, and surmised that business users are adopting the iPad more quickly than she had expected. Besides the iPad, Meeker also boasts a Macintosh, two PCs that run Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system, an iPhone, an Amazon Kindle e- reader, and several iPod music players.
Executives of companies covered by Meeker say her research is as probing now as it was more than a decade ago.
3 a.m. Calls
Ken Goldman was chief financial officer of Excite At Home Corp., a Redwood City, California-based Internet-service provider Meeker covered. He recalls receiving phone calls at home at midnight from Meeker in New York, where it was 3 a.m.
"I used to dread those calls, actually," he said. "It was never a 10-minute call; it lasted 45 minutes to an hour."
Goldman now is CFO of security software maker Fortinet Inc., which went public last year with Morgan Stanley as an underwriter.
This year marks the seventh-straight year Meeker is speaking at the Web 2.0 conference. She packs a lot into her 10- minute presentation, said John Battelle, executive producer of the Web 2.0 Summit. Last year, she plowed through 75 slides in the time most presenters to cover a dozen, he said.
"The funny thing about Mary is, every year, she tries to deliver more slides in the same amount of time," Battelle said. "She may have mellowed a little bit over the years, but not much."
Meeker, 51, is back in demand. She was called "Queen of the Net" by Barron's in 1998, only to see her star dim as technology stocks plunged and regulators said securities firms used biased research to lure banking business. These days, investors are scouring her research anew for would-be Web winners.
"We are trying to invest in the kinds of companies she'll mention in her reports," investor Marc Andreessen said in an interview.
Andreessen's venture firm, Andreessen Horowitz LLC, has bought stakes in Meeker-favored companies including Skype Technologies SA and Zynga Game Network Inc.
"She is becoming Mary Meeker 2.0," said Bing Gordon, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Gordon said Meeker's research helped persuade his firm to "do more mobile, bigger and faster." In March, Kleiner Perkins said it will double its iFund to $200 million. The investment pool backs startups that create applications for Apple Inc.'s handheld devices, such as the iPhone and the iPad.
Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, is an investor in Andreessen Horowitz.
Meeker gained renown in the 1990s for predictions on Internet growth and her bullish calls on Web companies, including EBay Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and America Online Inc.
Tech Bust
Then came the dot-com bust in 2000. The Nasdaq lost 78 percent of its value in less than three years. In 2001, Fortune published a story titled, "Where Mary Meeker Went Wrong." In 2003, after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused Morgan Stanley and other financial services firms of skewed analysis, the companies settled for $1.4 billion.
Meeker fared better than analysts such as Henry Blodget, formerly of Merrill Lynch & Co., who was fined and banned for life from the securities industry; the SEC didn't accuse Meeker of wrongdoing. Still, then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who led the probe by state and federal authorities, said Morgan Stanley failed to supervise its analysts, including Meeker, and said the company inadequately managed conflicts of interest between its research and investment-banking divisions.
"She may have a second act, which is never an easy thing to do on Wall Street," said Tom Taulli, an independent researcher on initial public offerings. "But she is going to have to prove herself. And it's very difficult: You are associated with that brand."
Digging for Data
Meeker says the brickbats flung her way haven't altered the way she carries out research. She said Morgan Stanley's "The Internet Report" in 1995 contended that most companies fail.
"To be a successful analyst, one has to dig deep for data," Meeker said in an interview. The report "was thoughtful about the growth of the Internet, yet cautious about investments."
Meeker, a managing director who leads Morgan Stanley's technology research, spends much of her time these days thinking about the Web in the iPhone age. In 2012, smartphone shipments will exceed those of personal computers, she contends.
"It's the fastest-ramping technology transformation the world has ever seen," Meeker said. "I've been of the view for years that the mobile Internet was the next big thing."
U.S. consumers spend 28 percent of their media time online, yet only 13 percent of ad spending goes to the Internet. That creates a $50 billion online advertising "global opportunity," according to a draft of Meeker's Web 2.0 presentation.
Mobile Commerce
Another prediction: Mobile commerce may grab retail spending share "much faster" than traditional e-commerce, she says. That's because wireless connections enable impulse purchases, and location-based services let merchants deliver coupons and offers to users when they're most likely to spend.
Some of Meeker's current thinking was outlined in her Mobile Internet Report, a 424-page tome published last year, the culmination of four years of research.
Yuri Milner, chairman of Russian Internet company Mail.ru Group Ltd., calls it "the best of what's been written in this field." Mail.ru raised $912 million this month on the London Stock Exchange with Morgan Stanley among the arrangers.
Meeker, an Indiana native who graduated from DePauw University and earned an MBA from Cornell University, says she draws on personal experience, as well as data analysis and company research, to form her views..
Scottish 'Epiphany'
She says she had an "epiphany" last year after a three- hour hike on the coast of Scotland, near St. Andrews. A friend who accompanied her on the hike used a Research In Motion Ltd. BlackBerry to snap photos and had posted them to Facebook by the time Meeker returned to her lodging.
"We could get to a point where a very material portion of content on the Internet is created on Facebook with mobile devices," said Meeker, who spends much of her time in New York, and has a home in Woodside, in California's Silicon Valley.
Another realization came during a recent plane ride between Washington and New York. In an informal survey of fellow first- class passengers, Meeker found four iPad tablet computers, including her own, and surmised that business users are adopting the iPad more quickly than she had expected. Besides the iPad, Meeker also boasts a Macintosh, two PCs that run Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system, an iPhone, an Amazon Kindle e- reader, and several iPod music players.
Executives of companies covered by Meeker say her research is as probing now as it was more than a decade ago.
3 a.m. Calls
Ken Goldman was chief financial officer of Excite At Home Corp., a Redwood City, California-based Internet-service provider Meeker covered. He recalls receiving phone calls at home at midnight from Meeker in New York, where it was 3 a.m.
"I used to dread those calls, actually," he said. "It was never a 10-minute call; it lasted 45 minutes to an hour."
Goldman now is CFO of security software maker Fortinet Inc., which went public last year with Morgan Stanley as an underwriter.
This year marks the seventh-straight year Meeker is speaking at the Web 2.0 conference. She packs a lot into her 10- minute presentation, said John Battelle, executive producer of the Web 2.0 Summit. Last year, she plowed through 75 slides in the time most presenters to cover a dozen, he said.
"The funny thing about Mary is, every year, she tries to deliver more slides in the same amount of time," Battelle said. "She may have mellowed a little bit over the years, but not much."
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