44 Media & Marketing
CONNECTION
so c i a l me d i a
Facebook
draws 23%
of web ads
Washington Facebook has be-
come an online advertising
magnet, capturing the great-
est number of display ads of
any internet publishing site
in the third quarter, accord-
ing to ComScore.
In the third quarter, Face-
book grabbed 23 per cent of
internet display ads, or 297
billion ad impressions, more
than the combined display
ads on Yahoo, Microsoft,
Fox and Google sites.
But that doesn’t mean
Facebook made the most
money from display ads, the
ComScore report says.
The growth in advertis-
ing shows the value of Fa-
cebook’s social network to
advertisers who want to
tailor ads to users who are
constantly feeding new in-
formation about themselves
to the site. Facebook says
it doesn’t share person-
ally identifiable information
about its users.
Lawmakers have intro-
duced laws that could curb
an advertiser’s ability to
serve up ads based on in-
ternet user activity. (Disclo-
sure: Washington Post Co.
Chairman Donald Graham
is a member of Facebook’s
board.) Facebook ads are
generally cheaper than dis-
play ads sold on traditional
web portals such as Yahoo,
according to Evercore Part-
ners analyst Ken Sena in a
report by Reuters.
One industry source said
Yahoo is known to make
the most from online dis-
play ads. The effective cost
per thousand impressions,
or CPM, for Facebook’s US
display ads is roughly $1
(Dh3.67), compared with
the $3 CPM for display ads
on Yahoo’s family of web-
sites in the United States,
Sena said.
Overall, the online adver-
tising display market is up
22 per cent compared with a
year ago. Jeff Hackett, Com-
Score’s senior vice presi-
dent, said in a news release
that the growth comes from
the ability to target ads.
— Washington Post
On air
Charles ‘Chase’ Carey, president and chief operating officer of News Corp, said he was eager to clear up what he thinks are misperceptions about the
longest blackout for such a large customer group in at least a decade.
News Corp, smarting from TV
blackout, lashes at politicians
government dilly-dallying worsened a preventable situation
New York (Bloomberg) News
Corp’s Chase Carey, the
man who oversaw Fox’s
talks with Cablevision Sys-
tems during a two-week
blackout, has advice for
government officials who
want to keep more TV
channels from going dark:
Stop meddling.
News Corp last month
cut off World Series games
and shows including Glee
to Cablevision's three mil-
lion customers after the
two sides couldn’t agree
on how much Cablevision
should pay Fox.
One problem, Carey said,
was that the government
wasn’t clear about whether
it would intervene, lead-
ing Cablevision to think
it might get better terms
if it held out until the US
weighed in.
“This process would
have been resolved more
easily, more quickly,” said
Carey, chief operating of-
ficer and second-in-com-
mand to Rupert Murdoch.
“I would actually contend
we wouldn’t have gone off
the air at all.”
Consumer wrath
Clashes between media
and cable companies are
on the rise as broadcasters
such as Fox and Walt Dis-
ney’s ABC ask to be paid
for programming that used
to be free. The number of
TV blackouts this year is
the most in at least a dec-
ade, triggering consumer
wrath and lawmaker scru-
tiny.
Carey, 56, spoke dur-
ing an interview at News
Corp’s New York head-
quarters, in a wood-pan-
elled, windowless room
barely large enough for an
oversized conference ta-
ble. He said he was eager to
clear up what he thinks are
misperceptions about the
longest blackout for such a
large customer group in at
least a decade.
“This wasn’t a good expe-
rience,” Carey said. “Every-
body here found this really
painful.”
News Corp, controlled by
Chairman and CEO Mur-
doch, fell 5 cents to $14.28
30815249_2.1
on the Nasdaq Stock Mar-
ket in New York on Tues-
day. Cablevision rose 1 cent
to $29.33 in New York Stock
Exchange composite trad-
ing. News Corp has gained
4.3 per cent this year, while
Cablevision added 38 per
cent.
Cablevision declined
to make anyone available
for comment. A spokes-
man referred to a confer-
ence call last week, when
Chief Operating Officer
Tom Rutledge said the US
Federal Communications
Commission should pre-
vent broadcasters from
cutting off programming
to obtain negotiating lever-
age.
Senator John Kerry says
Thompson Reuters
joins cloud club with
new application
Eikon being used by 23 partners in the region
By Scott Shuey
Business Features Editor
Dubai Thompson Reuters
has joined the bandwagon
of companies using cloud
computing and social net-
working.
The company’s latest
product, launched in the
Middle East on Sunday at
the Burj Khalifa, is a small
(70MB) downloadable ap-
plication that provides
f inancial information,
videos, trading tools and
other functionality in web-
browser like environment.
Ten-year lifecycle
Allan McNichol, the glo-
bal head of the company’s
Desktop Platform Group
said the product, called
Eikon (pronounced Icon)
was an attempt to simplify
the deployment of Reuters’
software and provide a great
out-of-the-box experience.
“This will keep our best
foot in front of our custom-
ers,” he said.
The application had been
in development for three
I TA LY
Continued advert growth
predicted by Mediaset
Forecast after rise in sales, higher earnings
Milan (Reuters) Italy’s top
commercial broadcaster
Mediaset has forecast con-
tinued growth for the rest
of 2010 after higher adver-
tising sales and the first
quarterly pay-TV operating
profit lifted its nine-month
earnings.
The group, controlled by
Prime Minister Silvio Ber-
lusconi, confirmed its fore-
cast for its Italian advertis-
ing sales to rise nearly five
per cent this year but gave
no precise forecast on 2011.
“Estimates show a poten-
Bloomberg
he plans to introduce a
bill when Congress recon-
venes next week to keep
companies from pulling
signals before regula-
tors check for good-faith
negotiations. The Mas-
sachusetts Democrat is
chairman of the commu-
nications, internet and
technology subcommittee
of the Senate Commerce
Committee, which plans
to hold a hearing on the
issue.
“They’re very high-pro-
file battles because it can
turn into the politicians’
constituents losing their
TV service,” David Joyce,
an analyst with Miller,
Tabak & Co. in New York,
said in an interview.
years and would likely have
a 10-year lifecycle, he added.
No information was re-
leased regarding the invest-
ment Thompson Reuters
made in the software.
Unlike other cloud offers
or other financial informa-
tion found on the Internet,
Eikon will offer exclusive
content, said Basil Moftah,
the company’s head of Rap-
idly Developing economies.
“You can go to Google
and Yahoo and find some
of the same information
there because we give it to
them, but we will also of-
fer our high value content
through Eikon,” he said,
adding that such content
would include data such as
company profiles.
Eikon recently finished
beta-testing, which in-
cluded some firms in the
Middle East. Mofrah says
he expects faster growth in
emerging economies than in
mature economies. A total
of 23 partners and financial
institutions in the Middle
East have signed up and are
currently using Eikon.
tial 2-4 per cent growth for
TV in Italy in 2011. I imag-
ine this range is reliable
but at present we don’t
have visibility to make a
forecast,” Luigi Colombo,
chief executive of its Ital-
ian advertising unit, said
on a conference call.
Mediaset said its pay-
TV unit Mediaset Pre-
mium reached operating
breakeven in the nine
months, which implies a
quarterly profit of around
eight million euros (Dh40.4
million), an analyst said.
Thursday, November 11, 2010 GULF NEWS
dokasaki@gulfnews.com
The extinction
timeline
A futurist’s advice: Newspapers will need
to apply existing capabilities in new ways
Stripes indicate that
newspapers will be
extinct in metropolitan
areas before regional Source: Ross Dawson
areas
USA 2017 United Arab Emirates 2030
UK, Iceland 2019 Germany, Estonia 2030
Canada, Norway 2020 Japan, Metro China 2031
Finland, Singapore, Greenland 2021 Hungary, Lithuania 2032
Australia, Hong Kong 2022 Latvia, Metro Mexico 2033
Denmark 2023 Serbia, Saudi Arabia 2034
New Zealand, Spain, Czech, Taiwan 2024 Bulgaria, Chile, Uruguay 2035
Poland, Sweden, Switzerland 2025 Russia, Turkey 2036
South Korea, Metro Russia, Belgium 2026 Metro South Africa, Thailand 2037
Netherlands, Ireland, Metro Brazil, Italy 2027 Mongolia 2038
Austria, Slovakia, Greece, Portugal, U.A.E. 2028 Argentina 2039
France, Israel, Malaysia, Croatia 2029 Rest of the world 2040+
http://www.futureexploration.net/Newspaper_Extinction_Timeline.pdf
By Douglas Okasaki
Senior Designer
A
ccording to the predictions of futurist Ross Daw-
son, we can be guaranteed newspaper jobs in the
UAE until at least 2030. He has created a map to
serve as a timeline of the eventual demise of print me-
dia worldwide. The map indicates newspapers will be
“insignificant” in 52 countries by 2040; in USA the date
is near 2017, it’s 2019 for England, 2034 for Saudi Arabia
and 2040 for India.
In a exclusive interview, Ross answered five questions:
1
In contrast with America, Middle East and
Asia newspapers are still doing good busi-
ness. What’s your opinion about the future for
newspapers in these regions?
As suggested in my Newspaper Extinction Time-
line, there is a wide divergence in the success of news-
papers around the world. In many countries, newspaper
circulation and revenue are increasing. In time, the
same forces that are making newspapers struggle in
countries such as the US and UK will apply, but these
challenges could be many years away.
2 Do you think there a way to revitalise news-
papers and save them from
extinction?
The future of the global economy
will be largely centred on media in the
broadest sense. The media organisa-
tions of today, such as newspapers,
are well positioned to take advantage
of that, in creating and editing con-
tent, and tapping large audienc-
es. The challenge will be to
take existing capabilities
and apply them in new
ways. The path forward
for every newspaper will Ross Dawson is recognised as a
be different. leading futurist, entrepreneur, key-
note speaker, strategy adviser, and
3 Do you still read
newspapers? If so
best-selling author and consult to
leading organisations worldwide
which ones rate as such as Ernst & Young, Macquarie
favourites? Bank, Microsoft, News Corpora-
I never buy newspapers, tion, Procter & Gamble and many
and only read them if others. Ross was recently named by
they are in an airport Digital Media magazine as one of
lounge, coffee shop, or the 40 biggest players in Austral-
hotel. However if they are ia’s digital age.
around, I enjoy reading
many papers, such as New York Times, Financial Times,
or Le Monde.
4
What is your advice for newspapers in regions
like the Middle East and Asia where print me-
dia are still strong?
Many newspapers are threatened today because
they didn’t fundamentally change their business even
when the writing was on the wall years ago. Those
newspapers in parts of the world where the industry
is doing better will in turn hit the wall and collapse in
time if they don’t start changing today. The imperative
is to build new channels, reposition, and shift for the
reality of a changing world.
5
What comes next? After the internet and so-
cial networking, is there anything more to be
discovered in the media world?
Some of the emerging trends in media are reputa-
tion measures for media organisations and individual
journalists, the social curation of news to give insights
that are uniquely relevant to us, building new transac-
tion-based revenue models, and media becoming a real
hub for communities in a way that we still rarely see
today. Media will dominate the economy, and in many
ways be barely recognisable from the industry we see
today.
THE DATE
17
NOVEMBER
UnFriend day
Jimmy Kimmel used last week’s episode of his Jimmy Kimmel Live
show to declare November 17, 2010 National UnFriend Day [NUD] — a
new holiday he hopes will inspire Facebook users to unfriend the social
networking contacts that aren’t real friends. Late night talk show host
Jimmy Kimmel believes Facebook is lessening the meaning of friend-
ship. “NUD is the international day when all Facebook users shall
protect the sacred nature of friendship by cutting out any ‘friend fat’ on
their pages occupied by people who are not truly their friends,” accord-
ing to the show’s website. Source: Mediabistro.com