In fact, throughout history they have dealt with the distribution threat in this way, never once seeing the opportunity:

• 1920’s – the record business complained about radio. The argument was because radio is free, you can’t compete with free. No one was ever going to buy music again. WRONG – the music industry boomed!
• 1940’s – movie studios had to divest their distribution channel – they owned over 50% of the movie theaters in the U.S. “It’s all over,” complained the studios. WRONG – the number of screens went from 17,000 in 1948 to 38,000 today.
• 1950’s – broadcast television was free; the threat was cable television. Studios argued that their free TV content couldn’t compete with paid. WRONG – paid TV became a huge source of revenue
• 1970’s – Video Cassette Recorders (VCR’s) were going to be the end of the movie business. The movie businesses and its lobbying arm MPAA fought it with “end of the world” hyperbole. WRONG -  After the VCR was introduced, studio revenues took off like a rocket.  With a new channel of distribution, home movie rentals surpassed movie theater tickets.
• Today it’s the Internet that’s going to put the studios out of business. I dont think this time they will be right!

The reason for the dichotomy in the industry is that it is inherently not about making movies at the top, it is about controlling distribution. The creation of movies is a small part of the machine (and generally an uncontrolled part), the maximizing of profit off the movies they have funded/distributed is the major focus. In a previous blog post discussing how Disney invests more in protecting copyright on mickey muse versus looking for a new product is dangerous to the business as a whole (more lawyers fewer creatives). Interestingly enough, the initial Mickey Mouse character was apparently based on borderline piracy by Walt Disney and his team. According to legend, the early Disney animation team had been hired by looney tunes to design a character for a cartoon movie. Once delivered, a dispute regarding the value of the job and looney tunes hiring some of  Disney’s animators led Walt to change the character marginally and launch mickey mouse.

Its interesting to see how many businesses operate in this way, where the distribution model becomes more important than the product that is being made.

its interesting to see how quickly facebook has climbed and that Yahoo! is still monetizing so effectively per user.

They compare this to the projected twitter revenues, which dont look that big at the moment (compared to the others in this market). however, innovation and new ideas are sure to prevail as new models are created.

but back to the revenue projections. when compared to historic revenue analysis, we can see that Yahoo has been slipping and facebook growing quiet steadily and that compared to search giants google, the ad revenues taken in are small.

more analysis of revenues:

working out how much a visitor is worth

web revenue mechanics to make $10M

the exchangewire article below, or go to their site

I had a stab at estimating the size of the UK ad network market in a previous post. As ad nets are notoriously tight-lipped about revenue numbers, there was very little data to work with. And why should they reveal their annual earnings? It’s not really in their interests afterall. Sure, NMA publishes an annual supplement on the ad net market – but very few of the big players provide hard figures. Better to keep the pubs in the dark for fear of proper debate. The previous ExchangeWire estimates were based on IASH, IAB and industry insider data. But they were out given the absence of IAB data on the size of the UK display market in 2009 – the last post was based on guestimates. Given that the IAB Europe has now released its 2009 online advertising data for the UK and Europe, I am going to have another attempt at putting a figure on the size of the present UK ad network and ad exchange marketplace.

Note that all estimates are based again on data from a number of sources and information gleaned from industry insiders – and as such should not be used to beat your ad net provider up over. All figures are in euros.
The Breakdown Of The 777 Million Euro (£631 Million on today’s exchange rate) UK Display Market. How Much Are Publishers Selling Directly? How Much Run Thorugh Ad Nets And Exchanges?

The Breakdown Of The Ad Network Market – Which Is Estimated By ExchangeWire To Be Around 264 Million Euro (£214 Million on today’s exchange rate). Top Ten Ad Nets Versus The Rest.

Beyond ranting about the obvious (CTR pushes all of the risk onto the publisher and the advertiser can do crappy ads), without a large enough and efficient enough bidding environment aka google, you cannot manage your price point effectively to make it worth your while, reducing your client base significantly. The emergence of click to call from google is another cunning entry into that marketplace, where you can call a company straight from your browser.

Impression based advertising is already leaps and bounds ahead of our traditional ad measurement models (did you really see all the ads in the paper?) so why does the ad publishing industry now focus on even more complications in this regard? I think share of voice is the next important premium metric to really focus on and reducing ad spots per page but increasing their size the BIG next step… why?

move away from acquisition to branding based advertising
provide better impact for advertisers, less cluttered experience for viewers
increase scarcity, increase value

while patents are important, they are a single barrier to entry and not always a very effective one. defending innovation has a lot to do with successful commercialization and business level barriers too.

you can read more on the topic
- would reducing copyright periods change anything
patent wars

Most importantly, it is the beginning of the end of TV channels, where programs are shown at specific times as dictated by their potential popularity to the largest audience (i.e. prime time) vs as what you feel like watching when you feel like watching it. With TV as the primary conduit for culture in many households, the social impact of unstructured programming could dramatically change what we talk about and what we have in common. Will people naturally all choose similar programs due to word of mouth or will a greater amount of diversity enter into the fiber of our culture brought on by wider choice.

On demand viewing of everything from series to movies will be possible without the hassle of having to connect your PC/apple TV/x box to your actual TV. While this is a low technology hurdle, it has limited uptake significantly (as have low bandwidth in countries like SA). This means that TV viewing time is now effectively shared with Internet streaming time. The folks at SABC/eTV and any other TV station shouldn’t be too happy about this, as it is literally indicates the end of their businesses over the next 15 years due to an onslaught of competition from every corner of the globe. As most of their hit shows are international anyway, why would you wait an extra year before watching the latest episode of a series, if you can see it in real time over the internet?

The creation of content will also impact the basis of the media business, its revenue models and employment models. TV will become much more measurable for advertisers. No longer will they need to use statistic estimates of who watches what program but will know in real time the programs success. It will also enable advertisers to start targeting in a far more granular level, and not targeting key programs or timeslots but rather demographics, which is what they are looking for in the first place. This will mean lower advertising revenues as TV finds a new way to monetize this format change. These revenues have traditionally been used to pay for local content to be created, as commissioned by the major TV channels. Without flush channel operators who will fund our emerging TV industry, or will the ability to flight your own content create a blossoming of production companies who will survive based on the merit of their offering.

There will be greater choice for consumers and more access for movie/documentary and series makers who will no longer compete for single slots on a TV schedule. . This transition won’t happen without pain and a complete rethinking of the TV content paradigm. What makes a good program or story telling on an interactive TV platform? Who makes this type of content and how is it financed? Will ad based funding still be a significant component or will consumers be more actively involved by subscribing to their favorite content as they do with multi-player games?

More questions than answers as we step boldly into a new communication paradigm.

while the apple stock seems to have tanked by 7% , showing investor nervousness – does this mean that apple’s great product innovation is based purely on one person? While Jobs’s management style has often been quoted as being obsessed about quality and user experience – will those attitudes disappear once he is gone? has ne built them into apples DNA (as cook claims) or will something better come out as the culture naturally evolves?

Steve’s first act when he took over control again at Apple was to kill the breadth of the product range and focus it on a few core areas. this can only be undertaken by strong leaders and in essence defines how successful the innovation is due to its focus. Will cook have the ability to manage innovation so effectively so that “less” can be done rather than more which is often to output of a creative culture.

basic facts:
most people still havent used mobile internet, of the 54% that have seen mobile advertising, 84% has been via sms, 9% via MMS and 7% from mobile internet

facebook usage is dominant with 81% subscribed versus 65% to mxit and 24% to twitter
21% of users have downloaded ringtones, 20% have downloaded a full track while only 8% have streamed radio and 3% streamed video.

this is the link to the report

mobile reasearch on south african market