Last night’s U.S. gymnastics championships finale averaged 4.5 million total viewers, according to Nielsen overnights. That’s up 10 percent over last year’s 4.1 million, and may be an indication that, with the Beijing Olympics less than a year away, interest may be growing for the sport.
TRAFFIQ Inc., a provider of digital advertising tools, has launched what it claims to be “the only fully open and completely transparent marketplace” that connects buyers and sellers of online media. The Internet Traffic Exchange is a web-based trading platform where media buyers and web publishers can engage with one another directly in a transparent, auction-based bidding environment.
Dow Jones & Co.’s vice president Paul Ingrassia has announced plans to quit after the first of the year, reports Reuters. He claims that his decision is unrelated to Dow Jones’ agreement to sell itself to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., but says rather that he did not see “any role that really excited me” at Dow Jones.
The urge to merge... MTV Networks is abandoning its online music effort Urge. Instead, it plans to work with RealNetworks in the hopes of giving Apple’s iTunes a run for its money. Urge was launched with Microsoft last year, but has struggled to gain market share against iTunes, which accounted for 68 percent of music files legally downloaded from PCs between November 2006 and January 2007. Urge will be merged with RealNetworks’ subscription digital-music service, Rhapsody, and, while the new service, Rhapsody America, will contain some of the features of Urge, the brand itself will die, writes Broadcasting & Cable.
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The Associated Press, NBC Sports and NBC Olympics have reached an agreement through which AP will serve as exclusive agent for the distribution of NBC-produced content, writes MarketingVox.
In the U.S., NBCU holds exclusive broadcast and video rights for the 2008 Olympic Games.
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PC Magazine has launched mobile.pcmag.com, a mobile version of PCMag.com. The mobile offering is included in the PC Magazine Network - which includes PC Magazine, PCMag.com, DL.TV, AppScout, TechnoRide, Smart Device Central and Gearlog.
Magazine publishers are increasing their reliance on verified circulation, or public place copies. While a total of 230 titles reported distributing verified copies in the first half of 2007, compared to 229 titles in the first half of 2006, the actual number of verified magazines has increased, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
In recent months, online players and traditional media companies have launched initiatives that allow for the automation of systems for placing video and audio ads, online and in traditional media. Most recently, Time Warner Cable Media Sales is hoping to help television advertisers shift their ads to the web with the creation of a digital platform created by Live Oak Interactive, MediaPost writes. The service will roll out in two markets come September. Regional and possibly national programs will be available if needs warrant it.
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Some 12.3 million consumers in the United States and Western Europe report accessing a social networking site with their mobile device in June, according to the first measurement by M:Metrics of mobile social networking, writes MarketingCharts (via CNET’s Tech News Blog).
Some 67 percent of the online search population have been driven to search by offline channels - and 39 percent of online searchers who are influenced by offline channels ultimately have ultimately made a purchase - according to a new study conducted by JupiterResearch and sponsored by iProspect, MarketingCharts reports.
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The top-gaining sites in traffic, summer-related growth in movie and travel sites, job-site growth and the top ad networks and properties form the highlights of the comScore Media Metrix monthly analysis of US consumer activity at top online properties for July 2007, reports MarketingCharts.
Another study has been released that claims to show that advertisers who buy branded keywords on search engines are wasting their money, because those ads are being clicked by consumers who are on the way to that advertiser’s site already.
Data from the summer months using the new C3 currency (commercial ratings combined with live-plus-three-day program ratings) may have network and cable executives, as well as media buyers, nibbling their fingernails. Cable executives, in particular, are concerned about how the new ratings will fall out when the fall season is in full swing, writes Mediaweek.
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