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As mobile phones offer more and more information - news, video clips, music downloads - finding what you’re seeking can be a challenge, writes CNET News.
Only about 15 percent of U.S. wireless subscribers downloaded some type of multimedia content during the three-month period that ended in July, according to mobile tracking firm M:Metrics, and the Yankee Group points out that only about 18 percent of wireless users in the U.S. have even tried surfing the mobile internet.
While many reasons could be behind the low numbers, some experts believe that people can’t find the content they’re looking for quickly enough. Now, companies like Google and Yahoo, as well as start-ups like InfoSpace, JumpTap and Medio, are developing search tools to gather available content, but creating search technology poses challenges - smaller screens, tiny keypads and a user’s impatience to wait for downloads and scroll through pages of search results among them.
But the biggest challenge may be finding an appropriate business model for the mobile operators.
Currently, most operators offer subscribers a menu filled with the carriers’ own content, usually supplied through deals with TV networks, record labels and the like. Carriers generate revenue by charging for subscriptions. And when carriers do allow subscribers to leave their own menu in order to surf the mobile internet, most still control access to outside content.
“At the end of the day, the carriers make the business decisions. Some will continue to be very restrictive and others will be more open to accommodating outside content and outside brands,” Iain Gillott, an analyst with iGillott Research, is quoted as saying.
TargetSpot has acquired online streaming ad rep firm Ronning Lipset Radio in a move that will form the largest audio advertising network and streamline the buying of online radio spots, the companies say.
TargetSpot is an online system for creating,…
FT Group, publisher of the Financial Times, saw total revenue leap 11% for the first nine months of 2008. Circulation and ad revenue grew, as did revenue from interactive data.
Ad revenue was up 1% over the first nine months…
Location-based services that allow marketers to connect with consumers wherever they are have long been considered the ideal in advertising. eMarketer is predicting that the opportunity will grow significantly in coming years, with the number of consumers using such services…
Comedy Central is building on the success of its two wildly popular fake-news programs, The Colbert Report and The Daily Show, adding a show called Chocolate News.
The new show will star David Alan Grier as the pompous host of…
Prices of list rentals are declining across the board and – for the first time ever - show a downward trend in every B2C and B2B category tracked, according to Worldata’s Fall 2008 List Price Index (see table), writes MarketingCharts.
Permission-based email…
Custom publications are being increasingly produced by specialty editors and designers (73%) rather than by those in communications roles, according to a study conducted by the Custom Publishing Council (CPC) in cooperation with Publications Management, writes MarketingCharts.
The survey, “Staffing and Compensation:…
