The worldwide online market for digital goods will grow amid a state of continuous disruption across all forms of content markets. Fueled by an ever-growing user base, migration from physical formats to digital distribution, and a proliferation of new connected devices, the overall market for digital goods will grow to $36 billion by 2014, up from $16.7 billion in 2009. This report examines the state of paid content and the various monetization and payment models across each of the various digital goods markets. The report examines key players and market dynamics in the film and video, newspaper, online game, music and social networks space relative to their paid content strategies, and includes a revenue forecast of each of these segments relative to the overall paid content market. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Mark Josephson, CEO of hyper-local news aggregator Outside.in, isn’t concerned about AOL pouring $50 million into its Patch.com hyper-local news operation. He says that while they are both going after local advertising, the two services are very different and there’s plenty of room for everyone. Read more »
News consumption has become a fundamentally social experience, and consumers are no longer loyal to a specific site or a specific new outlet, according to a joint research report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Read more »
There’s probably a PhD in economics to be had by anyone who can explain the unusual pricing dynamics of the e-book market. Despite increased retail competition, with Barnes & Noble (BKS), Sony (SNE), Google (GOOG) and now Apple (AAPL) joining market leader Amazon (AMZN), consumer prices ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
One interesting question will be what Fox does about Hulu during any disruption on Time Warner Cable systems as a result of their dispute. Many Fox shows are available on Hulu the day after airing, which means broadband subscribers affected by the blackout could still get ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
As the year winds to a close, GigaOM Pro’s crack team of contributors takes a look back at what went right, what went wrong, and for whom in the world of the NewNet. ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Frequent visitors to the App Store in iTunes will notice a new look for individual apps. Bringing more of the app “above the fold,” the new look gives more real estate to screenshots, allowing all of them to be seen at a glance or just a […] Read more »
Late Friday, French website Nowhereelse.fr posted a YouTube video it claims is footage of the mythical Apple tablet that has long been the source of many a rumor. The video is quite convincing, as you can see for yourself in the embedded clip below: The tablet […] Read more »
As Twitter continues to grow, many of us are using our network of friends as a filter for news. In many cases, those trusted relationships are beginning to displace RSS readers as news aggregation tools. Of the 280 or so people I’m currently following, most are […] Read more »
Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece this week, set out to argue what has been said a million times before: The Internet isn’t killing news. But while he was stating the obvious, some of his points didn’t exactly help Google’s case. Read more »
Digitalsmiths is primarily known for enabling film studios like Warner Bros. to manage and distribute large video files with advanced metadata and search capabilities attached — but that could change with the newest version of its VideoSense platform. That’s because the company has built new clipping […] Read more »
Over the past three years, the Internet has become a major secondary distribution platform for free-to-air broadcast programming. Whether through network programmers’ own sites, such as ABC.com, or through aggregators like Hulu and TV.com, ad-supported broadcast programming today is generally available online shortly after its initial airing at no cost to the user. However, programming such as ESPN, TNT and the Discovery Channel, which originates on pay-TV platforms (i.e. cable, satellite and telco TV services) has been a different story.
Cable system operators and other multichannel video program distributors (MVPDs) are loathe to see the programming for which they are charging subscribers hefty monthly fees made available “over-the-top” without a subscription. Over time, they fear, consumers would be tempted to drop their expensive cable service if they could access their favorite programs online.
Cable networks, for their part, collect hefty fees from MVPDs for the right to retransmit their programming, from a few cents per subscriber per month, to as much as $3.75 per subscriber per month, for the most popular channels like Disney’s ESPN. In aggregate, cable networks collect about $25 billion per year in “affiliate fees” from MVPDs, about the same amount as they generate collectively from advertising sales.
As a result, much of the original programming on pay-TV networks is not currently available online, and that which is often doesn’t appear until well after its original air date. The popularity of portals like Hulu (not to mention illegal sources of TV content), however, has accustomed consumers to expect access to their favorite shows online, putting pressure on the industry to respond. Network programmers and marketers, meanwhile, are also anxious to extend their programming franchises by tapping the broad, online audience.
TV Everywhere, which aims to make subscription programming available online exclusively to current pay-TV subscribers, represents an effort to square that circle. In this report, we look at the players, potential costs, and emerging opportunities of these efforts. Read more »
I spend a lot of time each day communicating with colleagues and clients, by phone, email, on social networks, and via the occasional fax. But when I need to have a short conversation and get an answer right away, instant messaging is hard to beat. Unfortunately, […] Read more »
While all eyes are on the current baseball World Series (go Phils!), professional basketball kicked off a new season earlier this week. What’s a die-hard fan without Picture in Picture to do as our eyeballs compete to watch both sports? Even worse — what if you’re […] Read more »
