About this chart: Source: Kantar Media. Kantar Media analyzes print, radio, TV, internet, cinema, mobile, social media, and outdoor worldwide, and tracks more than 3 million brands. The ten largest magazine advertisers invested a total of $834.5 million in the medium, up 3.4 percent. They accounted for a 17.5 percent share of all magazine ad dollars. CPG marketers claimed five of the ten spots on this list.
Report: Internet Video to Total 62% of All Internet Traffic by 2015
Internet video is now 40 percent of consumer Internet traffic, and will reach 62 percent by the end of 2015, according to the Visual Networking Indexing Forecast from Cisco. The sum of all forms of video (TV, video on demand [VoD], Internet, and P2P) will continue to be approximately 90 percent of global consumer traffic by 2015.
The study also found that internet video to TV tripled in 2010, and will continue to grow at a rapid pace, increasing 17-fold by 2015. Internet video to TV will be over 16 percent of consumer Internet video traffic in 2015, up from 7 percent in 2010. Video-on-demand traffic will triple by 2015. The amount of VoD traffic in 2015 will be equivalent to 3 billion DVDs per month.
Global Internet video traffic surpassed global peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic in 2010, and by 2012 Internet video will account for over 50 percent of consumer Internet traffic. Put another way, it would take more than 5 years to watch the amount of video that will cross global IP networks every second in 2015. Every second, 1 million minutes of video content will cross the network in 2015, according to the report.
Other findings:
- The number of devices connected to IP networks will be twice as high as the global population in 2015. There will be two networked devices per capita in 2015.
- By 2015 the non-PC share of Internet traffic will grow to 15 percent.
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Traffic from wireless devices will exceed traffic from wired devices by 2015. In 2015, wired devices will account for 46 percent of IP traffic, while Wi-Fi and mobile devices will account for 54 percent of IP traffic.
Chart: Outdoor Advertising Expenditures, Q1 2010 v. 2011
About this chart: Source: Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA), May 2011 in association with Kantar Media.
Microsoft Scoops Up Skype for $8.5 Billion
Microsoft Corp. and Skype Global have entered into a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will acquire Internet communications company, Skype, for $8.5 billion in cash from the investor group led by Silver Lake. Skype has 170 million connected users and logged over 207 billion minutes of voice and video conversations in 2010. Skype will support Microsoft devices like Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone and a wide array of Windows devices, and Microsoft will connect Skype users with Lync, Outlook, Xbox Live and other communities. Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms, Microsoft said in its announcement.
Last year, Skype had revenue of $860 million on which it posted an operating profit of $264 million. Overall, it made a small loss of $7 million, and carries a long-term debt of $686 million. This is Skype's second buy-out since forming in 2003. The company was purchasd by eBay in 2005 for $3.1 billion. eBay then sold the majority of its stake in 2009 to a private investment group for $1.2 billion less than it paid, writes wired.com.
Microsoft’s software, Windows Live Messenger, offers free instant messaging, and voice and video chat. It has around 330 million active users, and about around 40 million online at any one moment. Though the Skype userbase is very much smaller than that of Windows Live Messenger, it does have one key difference: about 8 million Skype users pay for the service, according to Wired's report.
Skype delayed plans for an initial public offering expected to raise $1 billion. It has been looking at other options, including tie-ups with Facebook and Google, valued at about $3 billion to $4 billion. The acquisition also gives Microsoft a foothold in the potentially lucrative video-conferencing market as businesses shift to lower-cost ways of communicating, according to Reuters.
For a look at who’s to gain or lose by the deal, Google and Facebook would be the first losers here. Cisco Systems’ Telepresence and its other web communications tools, WebEx and Tandberg, will see additional competition. eBay Inc. is an the immediate winner here in this Skype-Microsoft tie-up, since the company owns close to 30% of Skype after selling its majority interest. $8.5 billion is much higher than what the IPO value was going to be.
YouTube Founders Buy Tap11 | Comcast Adds Mobile WiFi to Xfinity Internet 2go
- YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who bought Delicious from Yahoo late last month, have now purchased Tap11, a startup that helps businesses “monitor, engage, and measure the impact” of their presence on Twitter and Facebook. The company’s platform includes ways for businesses to see detailed analytics about their social media posts and compare themselves to competitors, writes paidcontent.org. It’s unclear what exactly Hurley and Chen have in mind for Tap11, which will, along with Delicious, be part of AVOS, the new internet company they have started.
Reuters: Facebook and Google in Discussions for Skype
Facebook and Google are separately discussing deal options with Skype after the video conferencing service delayed its initial public offering, Reuters reports. Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has gone so far as to discuss the option of buying Skype outright or forming a joint venture. Securing Skype as a partner would expand Facebook's user base, according to sources, and help it grow in international markets where Skype is popular, and give its half-billion users another reason to remain active and connected to its online community.
Google has also held early talks for a joint venture with Skype. Skype is reported to be in discussions with other companies, as well. A Skype deal could be valued at $3 billion to $4 billion, and Skype's IPO is expected to raise about $1 billion, insiders suggest. Although an IPO is still in the cards for the second half of 2011. If it goes through, a Skype IPO would be one of the most hotly anticipated debuts by a U.S. technology company this year.
Analysts say a tie-up between Facebook and Skype would make more sense than one with Google, which already has a similar service -- Google Voice.
iPhone Boosts Verizon in Q1 | comScore Launches Total Universe | T-Mobile Unveils Bobsled
- Verizon Communications reported triple earnings for Q1 2011, attributed to taxes decreases and new customers onboard with the introduction of Apple iPhone. Net income rose to $1.44 billion; net income a year earlier was $443 million. The company sold 2.2 million iPhones since the device, which lets users surf the Web, download games and send e-mail, went on sale in February. Verizon won 906,000 wireless contract customers in the quarter. FiOS added 207,000 Web subscribers and 192,000 video users in the quarter, according to The Washington Post.
Tagger Up! Win a Pepsi while Watching MLB | AT&T Holds its iPhone Own
- The TV check-in app IntoNow has teamed up with Pepsi to award TV viewers with a coupon for a free Pepsi Max. The first 50,000 users who tag the Pepsi Max commercial during Major League Baseball games will receive a coupon for a free 20-ounce bottle, reports lostremote.com. The IntoNow TV check-in app recognizes the audio signature on the TV and then tags whatever is on, for either live or on-demand programming. In this relationship, Pepsi Max can be certain that users were playing the commercial in order to win.
Comcast Xfinity Internet Handles 4GB Downloads in 5 Minutes, includes WiFi
Comcast has launched an ultra-fast Xfinity Internet speed tier, Extreme 105, which is now available to more than 40 million homes in major markets, including San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Chicago, Miami, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and much of Boston. High-definition movies, 4GB worth, will download in 5 minutes, while a standard-definition TV show, about 300 MB, will download in 20 seconds, according to the company statement. The service has an 10 Mbps upload speed. In addition, the service comes with a wireless home networking gateway that turns an entire house into its own WiFi hotspot The package costs $105 per month for 12 months, when included in the Triple Play bundle, and there are a number of other pricing schemes.
Google Offers $900 Million for Nortel’s Suite of Telecom Patents
Nortel Networks Corporation announced a stalking horse asset sale agreement with Google for the sale of all of Nortel’s remaining patents and patent applications for a cash purchase price of US$900 million, according to a company statement. The agreement includes the planned sale of approximately 6,000 patents and patent applications spanning wireless, wireless 4G, data networking, optical, voice, internet, service provider, semiconductors and other patent portfolios. The patent portfolio includes nearly every aspect of telecommunications and additional markets as well, including Internet search and social networking. "This is an unprecedented opportunity to acquire one of the most extensive and compelling patent portfolios to ever come on the market", said George Riedel, Chief Strategy Officer and President of Business Units, Nortel. "We look forward to what we hope will be a robust auction, following the requisite court approvals, currently expected to be held in June 2011". The stalking horse asset sale agreement sets up bidding procedures for an auction that allows other qualified bidders to submit higher or otherwise better offers.