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Forecast: Online Will Take More Ad Dollars Than Newspapers By 2015

 

Robert Andrews  -  Dec 8, 2009 7:09 AM ET

Is the upswing in effect? Three industry forecasts are raising their expectations for next year’s ad spend…

Magna Global is predicting a six-percent rise, GroupM just 0.8 percent, and ZenithOptimedia is raising its cross-media global advertising forecast for the first time in 18 months, projecting a 0.9 percent 2010 uplift (up from the previous 0.5 percent growth forecast), buoyed by ongoing internet growth and a TV ad recovery.

The net was the only medium to attract more money in 2009 in Zenith’s figures, though its growth curve is flatter than the early-2000s heyday growth of 40+ percent a year. It’s now on track for more modest but consistent growth pace of 9.5 percent (2010), 12 percent (2011) and 13 percent (2012), in line with that of TV, which will remain the dominant medium.

While those two media will go on attracting more money up to 2012, all others are flat or in decline. Though newspapers now enjoy a 10.9 percent lead over the internet for share of ad dollars, the lead will slim to just 3.8 percent by 2012, when the internet will take 16.2 percent of all spend.

Zenith says: “We expect the internet to overtake newspapers to become the world’s second-largest advertising medium by the time we are half-way through the next decade.”

From Zenith’s forecast: “The downturn has accelerated the structural shift of budgets from traditional media to the internet; in a time when marketing departments have to justify every dollar they spend, the rapid and clear returns offered by internet advertising are more attractive than the longer-term brand-building benefits offered by other media.”

But online’s growth is thanks more to the continuing success of the paid-search model, which attracted 15 percent more money this year and is forecast for the same growth in the next three years, taking 53 percent of all internet spend. Displayadvertising online grew just six percent this year and classifieds just two percent.

—Magna: The most optimistic of the big three ad agency forecasters, Brian Wieser, expects online revenue to reach $60 billion worldwide in 2010, hitting $99 billion by 2015. By that point, online ads will account for 21 percent of all major media spending. Next year, though, that share number will be 16 percent—putting it into perspective, Wieser notes that online’s share was less than 3 percent in 2000. The growth is the result of other media losing share, particularly print, as magazines will have fallen slightly ($40 billion in advertising revenues during 2000, and $35 billion in advertising revenues expected in 2015) and newspapers will be down similarly (from $97 billion in 2000 to $92 billion in 2015).

—GroupM: While talk of even a minimal gains sounds encouraging, any growth in the U.S. and Western Europe will continue to remain fairly weak. The so-called BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia and China) are expected to lead the recovery, according to a report from GroupM Futures Director Adam Smith in London and the agency’s Chief Investment Officer Rino Scanzoni in New York. Total ad spending in the U.S. is expected to fall 8 percent this year followed by an anticipated 4.3 percent drop in 2010, according to the report. 

(via paidContent.org)

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Yahoo, Verizon: Our Spy Capabilities Would ‘Shock’, ‘Confuse’ Consumers -- Wired.com

By Kim Zetter  

December 1, 2009  |  

3:30 pm  |  

Want to know how much phone companies and internet service providers charge to funnel your private communications or records to U.S. law enforcement and spy agencies?

That’s the question muckraker and Indiana University graduate student Christopher Soghoian asked all agencies within the Department of Justice, under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed a few months ago. But before the agencies could provide the data, Verizon and Yahoo intervened and filed an objection on grounds that, among other things, they would be ridiculed and publicly shamed were their surveillance price sheets made public.

Yahoo writes in its 12-page objection letter (.pdf), that if its pricing information were disclosed to Soghoian, he would use it “to ’shame’ Yahoo! and other companies — and to ’shock’ their customers.”

“Therefore, release of Yahoo!’s information is reasonably likely to lead to impairment of its reputation for protection of user privacy and security, which is a competitive disadvantage for technology companies,” the company writes.

“Customers may see a listing of records, information or assistance that is available only to law enforcement,” Verizon writes in its letter, “but call in to Verizon and seek those same services. Such calls would stretch limited resources, especially those that are reserved only for law enforcement emergencies.”Verizon took a different stance. It objected to the release (.pdf) of its Law Enforcement Legal Compliance Guide because it might “confuse” customers and lead them to think that records and surveillance capabilities available only to law enforcement would be available to them as well — resulting in a flood of customer calls to the company asking for trap and trace orders.

Other customers, upon seeing the types of surveillance law enforcement can do, might “become unnecessarily afraid that their lines have been tapped or call Verizon to ask if their lines are tapped (a question we cannot answer).”

Verizon does disclose a little tidbit in its letter, saying that the company receives “tens of thousands” of requests annually for customer records and information from law enforcement agencies.

Soghoian filed his records request to discover how much law enforcement agencies — and thus U.S. taxpayers — are paying for spy documents and surveillance services with the aim of trying to deduce from this how often such requests are being made. Soghoian explained his theory on his blog, Slight Paranoia:

In the summer of 2009, I decided to try and follow the money trail in order to determine how often Internet firms were disclosing their customers’ private information to the government. I theorized that if I could obtain the price lists of each ISP, detailing the price for each kind of service, and invoices paid by the various parts of the Federal government, then I might be able to reverse engineer some approximate statistics. In order to obtain these documents, I filed Freedom of Information Act requests with every part of the Department of Justice that I could think of.

The first DoJ agency to respond to his request was the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), which indicated that it had price lists available for Cox Communications, Comcast, Yahoo and Verizon. But because the companies voluntarily provided the price lists to the government, the FOIA allows the companies an opportunity to object to the disclosure of their data under various exemptions. Comcast and Cox were fine with the disclosure, Soghoian reported.

He found that Cox Communications charges $2,500 to fulfill a pen register/trap-and-trace order for 60 days, and $2,000 for each additional 60-day-interval. It charges $3,500 for the first 30 days of a wiretap, and $2,500 for each additional 30 days. Thirty days worth of a customer’s call detail records costs $40.

Comcast’s pricing list, which was already leaked to the internet in 2007, indicated that it charges at least $1,000 for the first month of a wiretap, and $750 per month thereafter.

But Verizon and Yahoo took offense at the request.

Yahoo objected on grounds that its pricing constituted “confidential commercial information” and citedExemption 4 of the Freedom of Information Act and the Trade Secrets Act.

Exemption 4 of the FOIA refers to the disclosure of commercial or financial information that could result in a competitive disadvantage to the company if it were publicly disclosed. The company claims its pricing is derived from labor rates for employees and overhead and, therefore, disclosing the information would provide clues to its operating costs — regardless of whether these same clues are already available in public records, such as those the company files with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company also claims that since Soghoian is trying to determine the actual amounts the Marshals Service paid Yahoo for responding to requests, the price lists are irrelevant, since “there are no standard prices for these transactions.”

But equally important to Yahoo’s objections was the potential for “criticism” and ridicule. Yahoo quoted Soghoian on his blog writing that his aim was to “use this blog to shame the corporations that continue to do harm to user online privacy.”

Yahoo also objected to the disclosure of its letter objecting to the disclosure of pricing information saying that “release of this letter would likely cause substantial competitive harm” to the company. The company added, in a veiled threat, that if the Marshals Service were to show anyone its letter objecting to the disclosure of pricing information, it could “impair the government’s ability to obtain information necessary for making appropriate decisions with regard to future FOIA requests.”

If anyone out there has a copy of Verizon or Yahoo’s law enforcement pricing list and wants to share it, feel free to use our anonymous tip address.

Image: FBI.gov

via www.wired.com

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Emblaze's First Else Unveiled in London Promises to be a Game-Changer? - Engadget

By Richard Lai  posted Nov 24th 2009 8:34PM

Folks, today might be the day when you start to notice how ancient our smartphones have become, even if they only came out in last few months. Blame Else (formerly Emblaze Mobile) for its confusingly-named First Else, a phone "built from scratch" over the last two years and now powered by Access Linux Platform (ALP) 3.0 -- a mobile OS thought to have quietly died out since our last sighting in February. Until today's London launch event, the last we heard of this Israeli company was from October's Access Day in Japan where it previewed the Else Intuition OS, which we like to think of as inspired by Minority Report. While it's still too early to tell whether the First Else -- launching in Q2 next year -- will dodge the path of doom, we were already overwhelmed by the excellence of the device's user experience, both from its presentation and from our exclusive hands-on opportunity. Do read on to find out how Else is doing it right.

Emblaze ELSE unveiled in London, we go hands-on

Built from scratch

As the name suggests, the First Else's main objective is to be different. This may sound like a marketing hype but Emblaze seems serious -- it wanted to create not just another phone, but rather a brand new mobile user experience (especially the ergonomics, aesthetics and the content delivery system) to upstage the iPhone and the latest Android devices, both of which Else considers to be the market leaders. Eldad Eilam, CTO of Else, explained that this required starting from scratch and using custom technology where possible (such as its proprietary graphics engine), while at the same time the technical details are well-packaged so that they don't intimidate the users (but not just by wrapping an aging OS with some fancy skin; yes, we're staring at you, Windows Phone).

Else started with ALP's Linux foundations, and after two years and 33 partner agreements, it unveiled the Else Intuition OS. When asked about other Linux-based platforms like Android and webOS, Eilam expressed little concern. "Android's a game-changer... [but] people need to consider that Android doesn't bring good user experience. Most [manufacturers] have failed. The Droid is improving, has a great infrastructure but they treat Android as just a component." Interestingly, Else didn't comment on webOS -- probably to avoid stirring up Access's bitter memories of Palm, but it could've been just a miss.

"The death of main menu"

While there's some good old Linux doing the donkey work underneath, the First Else's futuristic and intuitive user interface mesmerized us during the presentation and our hands-on, all thanks to "sPlay" -- a right-thumb-controlled, sci-fi-like fan menu interface. Else actually did a live demo on its prototype First Else with no visible glitches, and when we had our hands on the device we got the same great responsiveness. Else CEO Amir Kupervas made a good point about how "smart" phones should actually be adapting to us instead of us having to adapt to cluttered menu systems, which led the to birth of sPlay and the fisheye display which provide minimal but necessary information, while keeping a consistent layout and visual aesthetics across different applications. At the same time, these features are positioned within reach of the right thumb, and sPlay takes it further by letting you easily browse different content by just a simple swipe of the right thumb. Kupervas went as far as saying this single-hand operation is "the death of main menu," mocking most other smartphone platforms. You'll probably appreciate more of what Else is trying to achieve after watching its presentation (followed by its campaign video which is also available at the 'Source' link):

Impressive hardware, interesting service integration

While Else's focus is on the user experience, it hasn't compromised on the hardware front: inside it's got a powerful TI OMAP 3430 processor (as found on the Motorola Droid and Palm Pre), a brilliant 854x480 3.5-inch capacitive LCD touchscreen, a 5-megapixel camera which promises to capture 480p video at 30fps, and a 1450mAh battery which claims to outlast the iPhone 3GS by at least one hour. Oh, we dig the OLED indicators at the top as well, leaving us some useful space on the screen. Details on storage capacity are still vague, but right now Else is only saying anything up to 32GB. There's no word on where the First Else will make its commercial launch -- all we know is that it'll only operate on HSDPA and EDGE (sorry, Verizon fans).

Speaking of carriers, Else is also working on a self-branded media store which will require no credit card details, thus enhancing the "out-of-the-box experience". How will it do that, you say? Well, it'll work very closely with carriers in full partnership, and let them charge you at the end of the month. This isn't totally revolutionary -- with the iPhone it's just a one-off setup on iTunes -- but it's still a nice touch by Else, and we're sure someone out there will appreciate this extra effort to create a seamless user experience. Similarly, Else will be setting up an app store and they'll release an SDK at launch. We've been told that some big names are already working on the first lot of apps -- World of Warcraft was mentioned -- and there'll be an app approval process to ensure that they'll have the same flow as the handset itself. Good for the users, but probably not so good for the developers.

Wrap-up

There's a lot of potential here and well done to Else for the work so far, but there are still many uncertainties: pricing, availability, carriers, apps, final device specs and, most importantly, usability in the long run. That's a lot of of unanswered questions -- almost enough for us to call this vaporware -- but we're optimistic, as we've actually held and played with a working device in person. We're hoping to hear a lot more about what Else has in store -- until then, we can only drool over this final quickie demonstration. Just remember to wipe up afterwards.

via www.engadget.com

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Toys For Tots Circa 1999 with Elfin Magic

 

In one of the major highlights of his short but colorful 'military career', the Head Elf leads a squad of U.S. Marines into the Heart of a local Toys R Us during the 1999 campaign.

Alice @ 97.3's Vinnie Krackhorne of the "Sarah and Vinnie Morning Show" was on hand to broadcast the festivities.  It took two entire Marine M923s (five-ton transport trucks) to hold the booty collected.  That's alot of Elfin Magic...

Thanks to Lt. General Matthew T. Cooper USMC (Ret.), the then President of the U.S. Marines Toys For Tots Foundation, for the opportunity to serve.

Marine Toys For Tots Foundation
715 Broadway Street, P.O. Box 1947
Quantico VA  22143
+1 (703) 640-9433

 

Soundtrack Info

"Magic Carpet Ride"

From The Second (Steppenwolf, 1968)

Words and music by John Kay and Rushton Moreve

I like to dream yes, yes, right between my sound machine

On a cloud of sound I drift in the night

Any place it goes is right

Goes far, flies near, to the stars away from here

Well, you don't know what we can find

Why don't you come with me little girl

On a magic carpet ride

You don't know what we can see

Why don't you tell your dreams to me

Fantasy will set you free

Close your eyes girl

Look inside girl

Let the sound take you away

Last night I held Aladdin's lamp

And so I wished that I could stay

Before the thing could answer me

Well, someone came and took the lamp away

I looked around, a lousy candle's all I found

Well, you don't know what we can find

Why don't you come with me little girl

On a magic carpet ride

Well, you don't know what we can see

Why don't you tell your dreams to me

Fantasy will set you free

Close your eyes girl

Look inside girl

Let the sound take you away

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BLUE MATTER by IBM - Human Brain Computer Rival May Be Ready By 2019

By Brandon Bailey  

Posted: 11/18/2009 12:01:00 AM PST  

Updated: 11/19/2009 05:01:01 AM PST

By Daniel Terdiman, CNET News.com Thursday, November 19, 2009 10:59 AM

Computers capable of mimicking the human brain's power and efficiency could be just 10 years off, according to a leading researcher at IBM.

In an era when PCs perform like supercomputers, and supercomputers carry out inhuman feats of calculation, some of the brightest minds in Silicon Valley say there are still crucial ways in which a computer can't match the problem-solving abilities of our own brains.

But today, at a supercomputing conference in Portland, Ore., a team of scientists from IBM's Almaden Research Lab and several other Bay Area institutions are planning to announce two developments that could one day lead to a new kind of computer — one that uses specially designed hardware and software to mimic what's inside our heads.

Researchers from IBM and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory say they have performed a computer simulation that matches the scale and complexity of a cat's brain, and project members from IBM and Stanford have developed an algorithm for mapping the human brain at new levels of detail. Eventually, scientists hope that detailed knowledge will help them build a computer that replicates the more complex working of a human brain.

The developments are early milestones on a long road that could one day yield applications for business, science or even the military. Still, veteran computing analyst Rick Doherty at the Envisioneering Group called the scale and significance of their progress "jaw-dropping."

According to the researcher, Dharmendra Modha, the manager of IBM's cognitive computing initiative, scientists from his company and some of the world's most prestigious universities have already managed to simulate the computing complexity of the feline cortex, a feat that could augur a day not too far off when it will be possible to ramp up to what the human brain can accomplish.

The simulation, for example, did not exactly mimic what a real cat does in catching a mouse. But it surpassed earlier efforts that simulated the much simpler brain structure of a creature the size of a mouse.

Researchers used an IBM supercomputer at the Lawrence Livermore Lab to model the movement of data through a structure with 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses, which allowed them to see how information "percolates" through a system that's comparable to a feline cerebral cortex.

The work is part of a federally funded effort to study what's known as cognitive computing, starting with what IBM project manager Dharmendra Modha calls "reverse-engineering the human brain," or designing a new computer by first getting a better understanding of how the brain works.

"The brain is amazing," said Modha, a computer scientist who can wax poetic about the capabilities of human gray matter. "The brain has awe-inspiring capabilities. It can react or interact with complex, real-world environments, in a context-dependent way. And yet it consumes less power than a light bulb and it occupies less space than a two-liter bottle of soda."

A key difference between human brains and traditional computers, Modha says, is that current computers are designed on a model that differentiates between processing and storing data, which can lead to a lag in updating information. The brain works on a more complex physical structure that can integrate and react to a constant stream of sights, sounds and other sensory information.

"The data can be very ambiguous. When we see a friend's face in a crowd," Modha said, "she could be wearing a red sweater or a blue dress, or her hair could be styled differently, but we're able to get to the fundamental essence of the pattern and recognize this is our friend."

Modha imagines a cognitive computer that could analyze a flood of constantly updated data from trading floors, banking institutions and even real estate markets around the world — sorting through the noise to identify key trends and their consequences. Or one that could evaluate pollution, weather and ocean data from real-time sensors around the world, to monitor global water supplies.

"As our digital and physical worlds collide, there is a tsunami of information," Modha said. "There is a need for a new kind of intelligence that can sort through, prioritize and extract the most important information, much like how the brain deals with sight, sounds, tastes, touch and smell."

A cognitive computer might also help soldiers analyze and react to chaotic events on a battlefield. The research is the result of a $5 million grant from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which also funded the forerunner of the Internet. But like that earlier work, scientists say the study of cognitive computing could lead in many unexpected directions.

Stanford psychology professor Brian Wandell, who studies neuroscience, was on the team that developed a new algorithm for interpreting data from a kind of noninvasive brain scan. Using supercomputers, the team has used that data to measure and map the structure of axons, or thin white threads that help carry brain signals.

Understanding these structures could lead to better knowledge of conditions such as multiple sclerosis or autism, Wandell said.

"When you see how something is laid out, you get insights about how something actually functions," he added. "So seeing the wiring diagram of the brain will be helpful for understanding how the brain functions."

Last year, IBM and five universities were awarded a DARPA contract to work on a cognitive computing project aimed at eventually achieving that goal. Just a year later, Modha said, his team, working in conjunction with the universities' scientists, have achieved two major milestones.

The first was a real-time cortical simulation that achieved more than 1 billion spiking neurons, as well as 10 trillion individual learning synapses. According to Modha, that exceeds what a cat's cortex is capable of.

Second, the scientists created a fresh algorithm they are calling BlueMatter that is aimed at spelling out the connections between all the human brain's cortical and sub-cortical locations. That mapping is a critical step, Modha suggested, for a true understanding of how the brain communicates and processes information.

The human brain, Modha said, is fundamentally different from today's computers in power and size, and he and the many scientists he is working with are eager to learn from the brain how to build new kinds of computing architectures. Part of the reason, he added, is that as our world gets more and more complex, a "tsunami" of data is being produced and analyzing those data demands "a new kind of cognitive system, a brain-like system, to make sense of it."

To achieve the goal, Modha and his fellow scientists are combining supercomputing, neuroscience, and nanotechnology research to demonstrate what is possible. The work they have done has progressed in just a year from the granting of the DARPA contract to today's achievements.

Modha said that examples of what could be done with computers working at this scale are realistic analysis of the world's water supply systems, or financial systems. The idea is to detect causality behind phenomena, and to make those connections quickly and effortlessly, the way the human brain works. Writing such a program using today's computers would be impossible, he said, but these future computers would be able to quickly distill answers to these kinds of enormous problems.

There is no promise, of course, that Modha and his colleagues will be able to advance the difference between the power of the cat and human cortexes in the next decade. After all, there is a difference of a factor of 20 between the two. But, he sounded optimistic that a decade is a realistic goal.

But, regardless of the timing, the aim is clear: reverse-engineer the human brain and learn its computational algorithms. And then deploy them in a bid to solve some of the world's most complicated computing problems.

( via San Jose Mercury News  via ZDNet Asia )

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