Archive for December 7th, 2007

Entertainment giant the Walt Disney Company on Thursday unveiled a new Web portal aimed at young adults that showcases the media giant’s movie, music, social networking and game offerings. Yesterday’s launch was the UK-version; similar rollouts are scheduled for France, Italy, Spain and German.

The heart of the new site is a feature called Disney Extreme Digital, which allows kids mash-up and share Disney multimedia content with their friends. They can also distribute movie & TV clips, games and messages. Parents will he happy to hear that the site prompts kids to use polite online chat.

The UK Web site will carry advertising and sponsorship links; other revenue will come from premium subscriptions and a shopping section. The site will not initially provide full-length movies, though execs said that feature would be coming some day. - Full Story

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American Airlines, Virgin America and Alaska Airlines will begin offering in-flight Web service over the next few months for approximately $10 per flight. JetBlue Airways will start offering free email and instant messaging on one of its planes this Tuesday.

“In a few years time, if you get on a flight that doesn’t have Internet access, it will be like walking into a hotel room that doesn’t have TV,” says Henry Harteveldt, an analyst with Forrester Research.

Imagine what Web access on airplanes will do: In-flight phone calls via Skype, free entertainment provided by YouTube, MySpace, NBC.com, and hopefully one day, movie studios. The entertainment possibilities are, in fact, endless. The airlines won’t have to cut those entertainment deals any longer. - Full Story

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LONDON — The global ad market will grow by 6.7% next year, compared with 5.3% this year, media agency ZenithOptimedia is predicting.The expansion in ad revenue flies in the face of gloomy economic prospects in Western markets. This is, in part, because developing markets such as China and Russia have taken over as the biggest engines of ad spend growth.

While the housing downturn and credit squeeze will hit property and finance advertising in the U.S., events like the U.S. presidential and congressional elections, the Olympics and the Euro 2008 soccer contest will all help boost the ad market.

By 2010, China is forecast to be the fourth largest global ad market and Russia the sixth.

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YOU DON’T HAVE TO HAVE been in the digital media business for a very long time to realize that we are in a period of extraordinary change. Over the past two years, there have been tectonic shifts in everything from enabling technologies to user behavior to business models to regulatory scrutiny. Two years ago, social networks were emerging ideas. Today they are dominating all others in user growth and engagement. Two years ago Google was an exciting, fast-growing search company that was just starting to really crank up a text ad network. Today, it is a dominating digital media company — with a capital “D” — with a $16 billion annualized revenue run rate and regulators in the U.S. and abroad scrutinizing many of its moves. Two years ago, a widget was what companies in business school case studies made. Today, consumers interact with Web widgets to the tune of billions a day, and they’re starting to show up on mobile devices as well. What is driving these changes? Here are some of the drivers:

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