A fascinating, research-based look at the impact of social media on businesses and consumers around the world, and what’s in store for the future Social Media. You’ve heard the term, even if you don’t use the tools. But just how big has social media become? Social media has officially surpassed pornography as the top activity on the Internet. People would rather give up their e-mail than their social network. It is so powerful that it is causing a macro shift in the way we live and conduct business.

Brands can now be strengthened or destroyed by the use of social media. Online networking sites are being used as giant, free focus groups. Advertising is less effective at influencing consumers than the opinions of their peers. If you aren’t using social media in your business strategy, you are already behind your competition.

Explores how the concept of “Socialnomics” is changing the way businesses produce, market, and sell, eliminating inefficient marketing and middlemen, and making products easier and cheaper for consumers to obtain.

Learn how successful businesses are connecting with consumers like never before via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites A must-read for anyone wanting to learn about, and harness the power of social media, rather than be squashed by it.

Author Erik Qualman is a former online marketer for several Top 100 brands and the current Global Vice President of Online Marketing for the world’s largest private education firm.

Socialnomics is an essential book for anyone who wants to understand the implications of social media, and how businesses can tap the power of social media to increase their sales, cut their marketing costs, and reach consumers directly.

Through extensive research, Erik Qualman shares statistics explaining just how prevalent social media has become in our business and personal lives:

• Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
• If Facebook were a country it would be the 4th largest in population size
• Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passéIn 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
• 80% of Tweets happen on mobile devices
• 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
• More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook … daily.
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations; only 14% trust advertisements
• The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
SOCIALNOMICS proves that social media is NOT a fad, yet merely a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. Qualman helps to share ideas on how to harness the power of the social sphere to help increase sales, cut marketing costs, and reach consumers directly. Rather than feel overwhelmed and beat by competing companies, SOCIALNOMICS shares the value of becoming part of this socioeconomic revolution.

Key Topics Covered:

• Section One: “World of Mouth”.
• Section Two: Macro Behavioral Shift #1 – Preventative.
• Section Three: Macro Behavioral Shift #2 – Braggadocian.
• Section Four: “Social Media Delivers Obama the White House”.
• Section Five: Socialommerce: Buying the right baby seat.
• Section Six: “Schizophrenia Killer”.
• Section Seven: “Winners and Losers in a 140 character world”.
Erik Qualman is Global Vice President of Online Marketing for EF Education, the world’s largest private educator. Over his fifteen-year career, Qualman has also helped grow the online marketing and e-business functions of Cadillac, AT&T, Yahoo, EarthLink, and Travelzoo. He is a columnist for the Web site Search Engine Watch and SES Magazine. He has been featured on various national radio, television, and Internet outlets.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/5cd901/socialnomics_how

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. – Social media is all the rage. But can marketers take advantage of this growing online trend, and garner actual business for the company? According to a new eye tracking study conducted by Oneupweb, the answer is yes.

“We wanted to know if people actually look at ads when they are on social sites like Facebook and YouTube. Or in the case of Twitter, where will they likely look for those ads when they do begin to appear,” explains Oneupweb CEO and Founder Lisa Wehr. “We found that not only do users spend time viewing paid ads on social networking sites, they often look at these ads before actual search results.”

And that’s not all. Oneupweb’s social media eye tracking study revealed some other surprising statistics about searches conducted on social media sites, including:

* A whopping 65% of participants engaged with sponsored ads within the first 10 seconds of their search.
* Scan paths do not follow the order of the search result positions. Often, sponsored ads were looked at before the third or fourth result.
* There is not a significant difference in fixation duration across the first four results or sponsored ads on both Facebook and YouTube.
* 50% of participants were satisfied with their brand search on Twitter. Many liked that they could find the most current opinions about a product.

So what does it all mean?

“Since search engines became the main way that people conduct searches for businesses, products and information, we’ve been under an assumption that people search a certain way. On search engines, a viewer’s eye starts at the top left hand side of the page, moving downward and slightly to the right,” explains Wehr. “Therefore, they are likely to click on just the first few search results that appear at the top of the page. But this just isn’t the case on social networking sites.”

She goes on to explain that people enter social networking sites with different expectations, and search results are socially generated.

“Search is changing,” says Wehr. “As more people engage with social media, the way they are interacting with brands is being affected and their behavior changes. This eye tracking study proves this.”

To download a copy of the study, entitled Seeing Search Go Social: An Eye Tracking Study on Social Networking Sites, please visit http://bit.ly/zrvlX.

About Oneupweb

Oneupweb has been an innovator in digital marketing for more than a decade, creating integrated online marketing plans that incorporate natural search engine optimization (SEO), paid search marketing (PPC), conversion improvement and analytics, podcast production, social media marketing, online media planning and placement and search marketing consultation for in-house marketing teams. Heralded by an independent research firm for their leadership team, Midwestern work ethic and solid experience in optimizing complicated sites, Oneupweb has been named a Top 20 Search Marketing Agency by Advertising Age for three consecutive years, and CEO Lisa Wehr is recognized as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. The company publishes an award-winning blog entitled StraightUpSearch. Oneupweb is a privately held company located in Traverse City, Michigan. For more information on Oneupweb, please call 231.922.9977, visit OneUpWeb.com or follow them on Twitter @Oneupweb and @LisaWehr.

RESTON, VA – comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, released April 2009 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, showing that U.S. Internet users viewed 16.8 billion online videos during the month, representing an increase of 16 percent versus March. A significant increase in video viewing at YouTube during April contributed to the month’s sizeable gains.

Google Sites Accounts for 41 Percent of U.S. Online Video Market

In April, Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property with 6.8 billion videos viewed (40.7 percent online video market share), a 15-percent increase versus March. YouTube.com accounted for more than 99 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 513 million videos (3.1 percent), followed by Hulu with 397 million (2.4 percent) and Yahoo! Sites with 355 million (2.1 percent).

___________________________________________________________________
Top U.S. Online Video Properties* by Videos Viewed
April 2009

Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore Video Metrix

Property                   Videos           Share (%) of
(000)              Videos

Total Internet           16,785,432             100.0
Google Sites              6,831,957              40.7
Fox Interactive Media       512,872               3.1
Hulu                        396,953               2.4
Yahoo! Sites                355,231               2.1
Viacom Digital              315,177               1.9
Microsoft Sites             288,301               1.7
Turner Network              272,709               1.6
CBS Interactive             202,810               1.2
Disney Online               132,212               0.8
AOL LLC                     121,431               0.7
___________________________________________________________________
*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks.  Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

Google Sites Reaches Record Video Audience

Nearly 152 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 111 videos per viewer in April. Google Sites reached an all-time high of 107.9 million video viewers during the month. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 58.8 million viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites (45.4 million) and Hulu (40.1 million).

___________________________________________________________________

Top U.S. Online Video Properties* by Unique Viewers
April 2009

Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore Video Metrix

Property                  Unique Viewers    Average Videos
(000)         per Viewer

Total Internet                151,652           110.7
Google Sites                  107,877            63.3
Fox Interactive Media          58,849             8.7
Yahoo! Sites                   45,447             7.8
Hulu                           40,110             9.9
CBS Interactive                37,063             5.5
Viacom Digital                 34,587             9.1
Turner Network                 34,215             8.0
Microsoft Sites                31,970             9.0
AOL LLC                        23,744             5.1
FACEBOOK.COM                   13,325             3.3
___________________________________________________________________

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks.  Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

Other notable findings from April 2009 include:

* 78.6 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
* The average online video viewer watched 385 minutes of video, or 6.4 hours.
* 107.1 million viewers watched 6.8 billion videos on YouTube.com (63.5 videos per viewer).
* 49 million viewers watched 387 million videos on MySpace.com (7.9 videos per viewer).
* Hulu accounted for 2.4 percent of videos viewed, but 4.2 percent of all minutes spent watching online video.
* The duration of the average online video was 3.5 minutes.

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

NEW YORK – Tremor Media, the leading online video advertising network and provider of the Acudeo video monetization platform, announced it has reached the highest ranking in terms of premium video views, as well as the number two spot in total video viewers according to comScore’s March Video Metrix Ad Focus report.

With 137M unique Internet users and 57MM unique video viewers in its network, Tremor Media is second only to YouTube in reaching video audiences online and is ranked first in delivering scale against premium, non-UGC content.

As more premium content is being made available online, brands are increasingly moving their broadcast budgets online as well. This migration is expected to accelerate as the upfront unfolds. The comScore report is an important indicator of Tremor Media’s ability to capture even more market share in 2009 as dollars shift from TV to online.

“Video is one the few digital segments that continues to accelerate in growth, and Tremor Media is one of the leaders in the space in terms of offering enough scale within the premium content that brand advertisers prefer,” said Deidra Bodkin, VP, Group Media Director and US Ideas Director at ZenithOptimedia. “As video advertising catches up to online video viewers, Tremor is primed for success due to their continuous increase in reach among premium content providers.”

“Brand advertisers want quality video content online and the kind of scale they’re used to getting in broadcast. We deliver on both counts better than anyone in the market,” said Jason Glickman, CEO, Tremor Media. “Our ability to aggregate and target audiences in premium ‘well-lit’ environments is changing advertisers’ perceptions that scale in online video can only found in user-generated content. As the comScore numbers illustrate, scalable, professionally-produced content in online video is now possible.”

In addition to achieving broadcast-scale in digital video, Tremor Media has also seen TV budgets shift online as a result of greater efficiency and flexibility in pricing models as compared to TV.

“Not only are we able to deliver as efficiently as TV, but our flexibility in pricing models including engagement and performance based pricing makes us an attractive alternative to advertisers,” said Randy Kilgore, Tremor Media’s Chief Revenue Officer.

Tremor Media began offering comprehensive reporting of campaign impact and effectiveness metrics from comScore in February and was the first video advertising network to offer GRP reporting. Agencies with brand advertising clients that have been reluctant to dip their toes into digital video because of the fragmented reporting online now have one less barrier to overcome.

“Tremor Media continues to further its investment in research, reporting and insights,” said Anthony Psacharopoulos, SVP Media, comScore. “Through its partnership with comScore, Tremor Media is able to deliver tremendous insight into the effectiveness of campaigns and enable advertisers to evaluate the efficacy of its online video advertising.”

In addition to Tremor Media’s network quality and scale, the company’s Acudeo technology, the leading video monetization solution for publishers, provides further differentiation from other online video networks as an enabler to significant advertiser benefits.

“Because of our Acudeo technology, we are fully integrated into the player environment across hundreds of sites. This means seamless integration with ad servers, accurate delivery, and accountable measurement of ads,” said Glickman. “Our technology is also powering new types of interactive ad formats that enable us to maintain a triangle of benefit to all three constituencies: users, publishers, and advertisers.”

The complete comScore data, with graphs, is available at: www.tremormedia.com/comscore.

About Tremor Media

Tremor Media is the leader in online video, providing advertisers with in-banner and in-stream video advertising opportunities on top-tier publisher sites with a combined 137 million unique visitors per month. Our innovative video ad formats, sophisticated targeting, and industry leading measurement tools enable advertisers to deliver efficient, scalable, and engaging video campaigns with measurable impact.

In addition, Tremor Media provides publishers with a full suite of products and services to monetize streaming video and maximize ROI. Tremor Media’s full service solutions provide the tools for advertisers and publishers to unleash the potential of online video advertising as a powerful interactive medium.

1 comScore Video Metrix Ad Focus March 2009

According to comScore Video Metrix

RESTON, VA – comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released March 2009 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, showing that U.S. Internet users viewed 14.5 billion online videos during the month, representing an increase of 11 percent versus February.

Google Sites Accounts for 41 Percent of U.S. Online Video Market

In March, Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property with 5.9 billion videos viewed (40.9 percent online video market share), with YouTube.com accounting for more than 99 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 437 million videos (3.0 percent), followed by Hulu with 380 million (2.6 percent) and Yahoo! Sites with 335 million (2.3 percent). March represented the first time Hulu has cracked the top three in the ranking of videos viewed.

_____________________________________________________________________
Top U.S. Online Video Properties* by Videos Viewed

March 2009

Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations

Source: comScore Video Metrix

Property                   Videos          Share (%) of
(000)             Videos

Total Internet           14,468,345           100.0

Google Sites              5,919,530            40.9

Fox Interactive Media       437,098             3.0

Hulu                        380,102             2.6

Yahoo! Sites                334,724             2.3

Microsoft Sites             288,239             2.0

Viacom Digital              277,753             1.9

CBS Interactive             191,686             1.3

Turner Network              167,323             1.2

Disney Online               125,248             0.9

AOL LLC                     105,237             0.7
_____________________________________________________________________

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks.  Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

Google Sites Eclipses 100 Million Viewer Threshold Once Again

Nearly 150 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 97 videos per viewer in March. Google Sites eclipsed the 100 million online video viewer threshold once again, after first achieving the milestone in December 2008. Fox Interactive ranked second with 55.2 million viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites (42.5 million) and Hulu (41.6 million).

_____________________________________________________________________
Top U.S. Online Video Properties* by Unique Viewers

March 2009

Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations

Source: comScore Video Metrix

Property                   Unique Viewers       Average Videos
(000)              per Viewer

Total Internet                149,410                96.8

Google Sites                  100,382                59.0

Fox Interactive Media          55,156                 7.9

Yahoo! Sites                   42,524                 7.9

Hulu                           41,564                 9.1

CBS Interactive                35,400                 5.4

Microsoft Sites                32,194                 9.0

Viacom Digital                 27,168                10.2

AOL LLC                        22,349                 4.7

Turner Network                 19,644                 8.5

Disney Online                  12,965                 9.7
_____________________________________________________________________

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks.  Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

Other notable findings from March 2009 include:
77.8 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
The average online video viewer watched 327 minutes of video, or nearly 5.5 hours.
99.7 million viewers watched 5.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (59.1 videos per viewer).
47.4 million viewers watched 349 million videos on MySpace.com (7.4 videos per viewer).
Hulu accounted for 2.6 percent of videos viewed, but 4.9 percent of all minutes spent watching online video.
The duration of the average online video was 3.4 minutes.

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – Sprint (NYSE:S), purveyors of America’s most dependable 3G network*, launched a series of customized online ads showcasing the breadth of its Now Network™. These innovative spots feature interactive homepage takeovers tailored to the specific audiences of marquee sites, beginning with Yahoo! today and expanding to AOL, ESPN.com, WSJ.com, People.com, CNET, and YouTube throughout the following week. The campaign also includes custom placements on MySpace, Pandora, Gawker, FoxNews.com and Reuters.com, all of which feature ad banners containing feeds of readership-tailored data from the Sprint Now Network site.

Through a string of online placements, Internet surfers will be encouraged to engage with advertisements that entertain, educate and connect people to what is going on in the world now. For example, YouTube’s homepage takeover will feature a user-generated clock where users can film themselves for three seconds while holding up a pre-assigned number, serving as a digit on the Now Clock. Other notable widgets include a Twitter word search that lets you create your own flock of Twitter birds, Now e-cards that self-destruct after one second, and tiny construction workers chirping on their Nextel Direct Connect phones with a counter showing how many people are using those phones right now.

“These online media partnerships reach audiences with relevant and entertaining information while providing an interactive experience that is unattainable with traditional advertising,” said Mike Goff, vice president of national advertising, Sprint. “In today’s world, you can get virtually anything you want in real time, which is what life on the Sprint Now Network is all about.”

The campaign creative is focused on three themes:

* Entertainment: Music and social networking sites along with search portals will feature data about spray tans, movie tickets, and even the amount of plastic surgeries happening right now, as well as the number of videos uploaded on the Now Network.
* Business: Financial and business news sites will include a Wall Street ticker that displays whether the past minute has been bullish or bearish, facts about the amount of money being spent online, and how many people are checking stocks using their Sprint phones. There is also a visual representation of the cost of living that compares cities – for example, New York to Topeka, Kan.
* Sports: For sports sites, featured data will update visitors on the weather or the cost of a hot dog and a soda at Bristol Motor Speedway, Daytona International Speedway, Heinz Field and Lucas Oil Stadium, and facts about the number of people checking stats on NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile.

Additional campaign elements include added features and functionality to the interactive Sprint Now Network site and an expansive out-of-home initiative rolling out this summer.

The Sprint Now Network is more than just a physical network; it features America’s most dependable 3G network,* the largest push-to-talk community, and the only national carrier to offer wireless 4G services and award-winning phones and devices, including the most-anticipated wireless product of the year – the Palm Pre. Additionally, last April, Sprint revolutionized data plans with an all-inclusive price plan, Simply Everything®, which eliminated the fear of overages. Also, Sprint’s Ready Now in-store customer service shows people one on one how to get the most out of their wireless experience.

ABOUT SPRINT NEXTEL

Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including two wireless networks serving more than 49 million customers at the end of the fourth quarter 2008; industry-leading mobile data services; instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. For more information, visit www.sprint.com.

* “Dependable” is based on independent, third-party drive tests for 3G data connection success, session reliability and signal strength for the top 50 most populous U.S. markets from Jan. 2008 to Feb. 2009. Not all services are available on 3G, and coverage may default to a separate network when 3G is unavailable.

This report analyzes the social media market. It defines the market and outlines current initiatives to monetize it. It also presents alternative business models and profiles technology vendors who can facilitate them. The report also provides market forecasts for social networking through 2013.

Social networking is moving to the television, driven by a young audience interested in video features such as multiplayer games, chat, and content discovery. This trend will help increase U.S. ad spending in social media to almost $3 billion by 2013, according to Parks Associates.

The international research firm, in its report Social Media & User-Generated Content, finds over one-fourth of broadband users ages 18-24 are interested in social media features on the TV. Key applications include multiplayer gaming, in-program chat, and “most watched” lists. At the same time, 23% of U.S. broadband households want to view content from sites like YouTube and Flickr on their TVs.

It is forecasted that there will be 95 million social networking users by 2013. This diverse population will have a variety of different needs and wants. For example, threats like the Koobface worm, which targets Facebook users, underscore the need for integrated customer support solutions that can address social networking security issues. Service providers could combine these offerings with their network support services to sell a complete protection package.

This report contains two sections:

* The Bottom Line is a concise, executivelevelsummary of thecurrent state of themarket and theimplications forcompanies doingbusiness in this space.
* The Resource Bookcontains a wealth ofconsumer survey dataand company profiles—a must-have referencefor product/marketplanning.

Social Media & User-generated Content (Q1 09) Key Topics Covered:

THE BOTTOM LINE

1.0 Methodology and Scope
2.0 Current Status of the Social Media Market
3.0 Analysis of the Social Media Value Chain
4.0 Consumers and Social Media
5.0 Analysis of the Social Media Business Models
6.0 U.S. Social Networks User and Ad Revenue Forecast
7.0 Recommendations

THE RESOURCE BOOK

1.0 Consumer Analysis
2.0 Company Profiles

* MySpace
* Facebook Inc.
* YouTube, Inc.
* Veoh Networks, Inc.
* Metacafe
* Dogster Inc.
* TurnHere
* Bunchball
* Slide, Inc.
* Wetpaint.com, Inc.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/f737f6/social_media_use

Is your company taking full advantage of the social media phenomenon? Do you know what is already being said about your company online? How far ahead of you are your competitors with their social media strategies? These are some of the questions that global public relations firm Calysto Communications is asking companies in the communications-technology industry today. Calysto recently launched a new social media marketing practice for companies in the broadcasting, telecommunications and wireless industries.

“An effective social media campaign can have a huge impact on the publicity your brand receives and its success – for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer organizations,” said Laura Borgstede, CEO of Calysto Communications. “With social media, we can create a storm of interest in a story, bring customers to you and help build your brand and sales. As PR professionals, we know how to not only do the research, but also analyze and make strategic recommendations on social media programs.”

The social networking phenomenon is exploding. According to Forrester Research, three in four of U.S. adults who are online now use social media tools to connect with each other, compared to just 56 percent in 2007. And the marketing research firm Netpop estimates that social networking has grown 93 percent since 2006.

As people try to sift through the vast array of news around them, they are moving away from placing their trust solely in “traditional media” and are migrating toward content created by online communities such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, digg, the blogosphere, and more.

Businesses across the globe are beginning to recognize the importance of harnessing this trend as part of their marketing efforts. In fact, 44 percent of Inc. 500 companies now rank social media as “very important” to their business strategy, compared to only 26 percent in 2007, according a study by The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research.

But many companies are still unsure how to effectively use social media to promote their products and services, and that’s where Calysto can help. Calysto has already helped its existing clients implement strategies that allow them to take advantage of the social media phenomenon.

For instance, Calysto has used advanced analytical tools to analyze clients’ web sites and other communications – including press releases, company backgrounders, bylined articles and many other marketing materials that get posted on the Internet — to identify which keywords are attracting traffic and which keywords are not.

Calysto has identified the top blogging sites for several clients and has developed a strategy to get their products noticed by this group. And Calysto has helped one client develop a podcast series that it posted both on its web site and on social media platforms such as YouTube.

Calysto has also recently ramped up its own social media marketing activities. For instance, it recently launched its own blog (http://blog.calysto.com) that discusses trends, editor/analyst moves around the industry and trade shows in the telecommunications, wireless and broadcasting industries. This blog goes a step beyond the company’s popular PRVibes™ newsletter.

“According a recent survey of 1,086 professionals by Enquiro, 85% of potential business-to-business buyers agree that online research is important in their purchasing decisions,” said Borgstede. “That’s why having a strategic approach to social media can directly boost a company’s bottom line. Even using the wrong words in your press releases can result in your company name being absent when potential buyers do search online. And that can cost you sales.”

With the launch of its new social media marketing practice, Calysto is now extending its social media services to make them available even to companies that are not clients of Calysto’s existing public relations business.

To make it affordable for businesses in the broadcasting, telecommunications, and wireless industries to “get their feet wet” in the world of social media, Calysto has developed a phased budget program. Companies can start with a baseline program that costs as little as $500 – $1,000 and includes:

1) An analysis of the company’s PR-related search engine optimization (SEO)/keyword strategy;

2) the creation of a blogging strategy, including a “media” list of the top bloggers that your company cannot afford to ignore;

3) and development of a social networking strategy for your marketing department.

Companies can then build on their social media success by adding additional program elements such as: the development of an SEO optimized online media kit; a more in-depth SEO analysis of the Web site and other materials; the development of an RSS syndication strategy; a microblogging strategy for sites such as Twitter; as well as many, many additional programs.

To find out more about the social media phenomenon and how your company can use it to sell products and strengthen its brand, you can download a copy of Calysto’s free white paper, “The Changing Role of Marketing and PR in the New Age of Social Media” by visiting http://www.calysto.com/survey.html.

About Calysto Communications

Founded in 1999, Calysto Communications (www.calysto.com) is a global public relations and social media marketing firm focused solely on the specialized needs of the technology industry in the broadcasting, telecommunications, and wireless sectors. We provide a full suite of services to emerging and established business-to-business and business-to-consumer organizations. Unlike general technology PR firms, Calysto leverages its deep industry knowledge and intimate relationships with market influencers to deliver unmatched industry mindshare, analyst coverage and media publicity to our clients. Our all-senior management team uses a strategy-driven approach proven to help Calysto clients drive sales, create value for shareholders, move toward liquidity or raise overall awareness. Calysto also publishes a free e-newsletter, PR VibesTM (www.prvibes.com), which provides industry players with insight into media and analyst moves around the industry; industry events and tradeshows; and trends in marketing and public relations.

AdSense Video Units were launched October 2007, with quite some bang. The feature allowed English-language AdSense publishers to add video content from YouTube partners to their sites in a customizable player. The video would then display text overlay ads and a companion banner above the video.

It all came to an end on March 27, when an official announcement on the Google AdSense blog informed that:

“As you may know, we frequently review our products and features to ensure their effectiveness. After reviewing our AdSense video units feature, which allows you to show YouTube content and ads on your pages, we’ve found that it hasn’t had the impact we had hoped for. As a result, we’ve decided to retire this feature at the end of April so we can focus our resources on other opportunities to help publishers earn from their sites.

[...] please note that this change won’t affect the availability of other video-related ads options — video ads may appear in your AdSense for content ad units if you’ve opted into image ads, and AdSense for video is still accepting applications from eligible publishers who produce video content.”

Signing up for video units is no longer available to new publishers, and publishers who currently use video units are asked to remove them. Once video units are retired at the end of April, remaining video units in skyscrapers and leaderboards will direct to YouTube.com, while other ad slot sizes will automatically be changed to standard embedded YouTube players displaying top YouTube videos – without generating any revenue, though. Publishers are also advised to change their video units to standard ad units if they have less than 3 such units per page.

There’s no surprise in this announcement, I believe: what originally appeared to be a good idea, was poorly implemented and developed as a product, with little regard to the market conditions and usability. If anything, it’s a surprise that the video units weren’t retired earlier. The remaining question is “What’s next?” – my bet is on the AdSense for feeds product to make a more or less elegant exit.

“Livemercial revolutionized the direct response industry by introducing innovative video and online technologies that generated and converted leads better than anyone in the industry,” said Johnny Mathis, Jr., CEO, Livemercial. “Today, we have changed the industry again by introducing the first direct response platform that integrates the next wave of online engagement – social media marketing.”

The Social Response Pack offers Livemercial clients a turn-key solution for creating branded channels on popular social media sites, including YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Blogger. In addition to establishing brands’ presence on these social media sites, Livemercial will offer clients on-demand support to help cultivate an online community around their products.

“Many of the products our clients offer are perfectly suited for social media,” said Peter Altieri, Livemercial COO. “Products like Spacebags, Alteril and Zorbeez often develop phenomenally passionate fans who want to share their stories with like-minded people. With SRP, we are offering an easy, low-risk way for our clients to connect these fans to online communities that grow organically through user-generated content.”

Research continues to prove the powerful influence of social media content on buying behavior and conversion, such as:

* According to Jupiter Research, social network users are three times more likely to trust peer opinions over advertising when making purchasing decisions
* According to BuzzAgent, one word-of-mouth conversation has the impact of 200 TV ads
* According to Marketing Sherpa, 87 percent of people trust a friend’s recommendation over a review by a critic

“With SRP, we can help our clients connect with the power of social media as part of an integrated marketing solution,” says Altieri. “As such, clients can leverage Livemercial analytics and performance tracking across all online channels, enabling the adjustment of marketing focus and messages in real-time – as well as tracking the return on investment for each online channel.”

The SRP platform is the latest addition to Livemercial’s online direct response marketing tools, which are used by the leading product marketers, innovators and brands. Other Livemercial innovations include a high-performance research and development solution called LiveLabs, which provides industry-leading campaign analysis models to design and deliver high-conversion direct response campaigns. LiveEye offers the industry’s first complete fraud and trademark protection service.

“We are extremely excited to introduce SRP, and believe that social media marketing is a perfect complement to our direct response services,” said Mathis. “We founded Livemercial with a mission to help inventors, entrepreneurs and companies bring new products to market as quickly, and as cost-effectively, as possible. Six years later, we have successfully combined the best direct marketing techniques with the latest online technologies. I expect that SRP will extend our success, and our lead in the industry, for many years to come.”

About Livemercial

Founded in 2002, Livemercial pioneered and is the largest provider of “instant on” streaming video for email, pop-ups, banners and direct response websites. The company leads the direct response industry in single product sales, utilizing cutting-edge technologies, social media and e-commerce solutions to design, deploy and manage strategic online marketing campaigns including email procurement, banner and pop-up placement, search engine optimization and contextual marketing.

PARIS, France, March 12, 2009 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore Video Metrix service, indicating that 27.1 million French Internet users viewed a video online in January 2009, up 16 percent versus the previous year.

Google Sites Most Popular Online Video Destination in France

Driven by the popularity of YouTube.com (which accounted for 97 percent of all videos viewed on the property), Google Sites grew 25 percent versus year ago to further solidify its position as the leading online video viewing property in France, attracting 15.2  million viewers in January 2009. French video site Dailymotion.com ranked second with 11.5 million viewers, up 14 percent versus year ago, followed by Microsoft Sites (5 million viewers), Groupe TF1 (4.8 million viewers) and Orange Sites (4.4 million viewers). Each of the top ten online video properties achieved positive growth during the past year, with four out of ten more than doubling their video-viewing audience.

____________________________________________________________________

Top French Online Video Properties

Ranked by Total Unique Viewers (000)*
January 2009 vs. January 2008
Total France – Age 15+, Home & Work Locations**
Source: comScore Video Metrix
____________________________________________________________________

Property                          Jan-08     Jan-09       % Change

Total Internet : Total Audience   23,243     27,074            16%

Google Sites                      12,181     15,166            25%

Dailymotion.com                   10,041     11,478            14%

Microsoft Sites                    4,176      4,972            19%

Groupe TF1                         4,231      4,795            13%

Orange Sites                       1,439      4,370           204%

France Televisions Interactive     1,031      3,378           228%

AOL LLC                            1,619      3,320           105%

AlloCine Sites                     2,275      2,680            18%

Kewego                             2,093      2,591            24%

Megavideo.com                        755      2,362           213%

____________________________________________________________________

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

**Excludes Internet activity from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

French Online Video Viewers Watched Three Videos per Day in January 2009

The 27.1 million online video viewers in France watched a total of 2.5 billion videos in January, an average of 92.9 videos per viewer, or approximately three videos per day.  Google Sites led the pack with 31 percent of all videos viewed, followed by Dailymotion.com (9.8 percent) Megavideo.com (2.8 percent), and AOL LLC (2.7 percent).

_______________________________________________________________________

Top French Online Video Properties

Ranked by Total Videos Viewed*

January 2009

Total France – Age 15+, Home & Work Locations**

Source: comScore Video Metrix

_______________________________________________________________________

Property                       Videos (000) Share of Videos Videos per

(%)         Viewer

Total Internet : Total Audience   2,515,325       100.0         92.9

Google Sites                        776,197        30.9         51.2

Dailymotion.com                     247,252         9.8         21.5

Megavideo.com                        70,102         2.8         29.7

AOL LLC                              67,837         2.7         20.4

Groupe TF1                           41,816         1.7          8.7

Microsoft Sites                      30,528         1.2          6.1

Orange Sites                         19,800         0.8          4.5

France Televisions Interactive       18,230         0.7          5.4

Kewego                               13,842         0.6          5.3

AlloCine Sites                       11,654         0.5          4.3

_______________________________________________________________________

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

**Excludes Internet activity from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Other notable findings from January 2009 include:
78.4 percent of the total French Internet audience viewed online video.
The total French online video viewing audience watched a combined 180 million hours of video content.
14.9 million viewers watched 756 million videos on YouTube.com (51 videos per viewer).
The average online video duration was 4.3 minutes.
Based on a three-month average ending January 2009, 3.9 million mobile phone subscribers, of which 39 percent were younger than 25 years of age, used their phone to watch any kind of TV or video in France.

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) posted $1.16 billion in 2008 revenue, notching 30% improvement over 2007.

The U.S. market made up an estimated 57% of the global tally; combined geographies are forecast to grow at 19% in 2009.

Revenue attached to audiovisual verticals including professional video, video advertising, video advertising networks, CMS platforms, online music spins, UGV and podcasting totaled $550 million, or 47.3% of total billings.

Professional video (including advertising) remains the most penetrated and lucrative audiovisual vertical, with 76.2% of views delivered through CDN contracts. Going the other way, 20.4% of lower margin UGV volume was handled by CDNs, plus another 31.7% of online music radio spins and track plays.

Commercial market (retail and transit) value attending the delivery of audiovisual content (including self-hosted networks and CDN) was equivalent to $886 million in 2008, with bandwidth making up 60% of billable costs.

Bandwidth fees as a percentage of CDN contract value are forecast to tack downward through 2010. The report analyzes historical and current pricing and pricing models by contract type, including volume and rate alternatives.

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) posted $1.16 billion in 2008 revenue, notching 30% improvement over 2007.

The U.S. market made up an estimated 57% of the global tally; combined geographies are forecast to grow at 19% in 2009.

Revenue attached to audiovisual verticals including professional video, video advertising, video advertising networks, CMS platforms, online music spins, UGV and podcasting totaled $550 million, or 47.3% of total billings, according to CDN Account Verticals and Revenue Performance 2006 – 2010, a rigorous analytics report published by AccuStream iMedia Research.

Professional video (including advertising) remains the most penetrated and lucrative audiovisual vertical, with 76.2% of views delivered through CDN contracts.

Going the other way, 20.4% of lower margin UGV volume was handled by CDNs, plus another 31.7% of online music radio spins and track plays.

Large media combines such as Google’s YouTube, AOL, Real Networks, Amazon, Yahoo and Comcast approach bandwidth provisioning as a core infrastructure precondition, taking that potential revenue base off the table.

Commercial market (retail and transit) value attending the delivery of audiovisual content (including self-hosted networks and CDN) was equivalent to $886 million in 2008, with bandwidth making up 60% of billable costs.

Bandwidth fees as a percentage of CDN contract value are forecast to tack downward through 2010. The report analyzes historical and current pricing and pricing models by contract type, including volume and rate alternatives.

Total media servers in deployment rose by 56.7% in 2008. Year end ’08 accounts under contract grew by 25% to 8,496.

Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) for the CDN group rose 1.8% in 2008 to $6,735, as the market pivots toward revenue growth linked more tightly to ROI-driven, value-added applications, reducing exposure to bandwidth commoditization.

Akamai (MRR up 21.4%) and Limelight Networks (MRR up 18.7%) significantly exceeded the CDN group MRR average.

“CDN content verticals and markets of opportunity are expanding as online experiences are transformed through a broadband medium powered by reach, scale and accountability,” commented research director Paul A. Palumbo.

“The infrastructure and application sophistication necessary to deliver broadband media continues to return healthy 50% – 65+% gross margins,” he added.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/9c23e1/cdn_account_vertic

“We believe the new Yahoo! Mobile will transform the way millions of mobile users around the world will interact with the Internet,” said Marco Boerries, executive vice president, Yahoo! Inc. “Yahoo! Mobile will enable users to create their own Internet starting point on their mobile device so they can better discover, connect to and stay informed about the people and things that are important to them.”

With a rich design and interactivity that leverages the capabilities of today’s mobile devices, Yahoo! Mobile will offer an open environment within which consumers can bring together their favorite content and services from across the Internet. Consumers will be able to:

* Discover: via results from Yahoo!’s award-winning mobile search, editor-selected content, and new maps tools.
* Stay Connected: through access to their email and social network accounts from the most popular Web providers, as well as instant messaging, address book and calendar tools.
* Stay Informed: by bringing together favorite content – websites, sports teams, news sources, RSS feeds, weather, stocks, horoscopes and more – into a single location.

“Yahoo! Mobile represents significant and continued innovation by Yahoo! around creating a compelling and engaging user experience with mobile data services, and especially the mobile Internet,” notes Scott Ellison, VP Mobile and Wireless, IDC. “Rich and well-integrated offerings like Yahoo! Mobile, offered across a broad range of devices, will play central roles in the rapidly evolving mobile Internet space,” he added.

KEY FEATURES OF YAHOO! MOBILE

The mobile Web and iPhone™ versions of Yahoo! Mobile are planned to include the following features:

Discover

* Yahoo! oneSearch™ – Yahoo!’s award-winning mobile search service providing the most current, relevant answers you need.
* Today – The most interesting stories buzzing on the Internet right now, selected by Yahoo!’s editorial team.

Connect

* Yahoo! oneConnect™ – Yahoo!’s service designed to provide consumers everything they need to stay in touch with the people about whom they care:
o Email – Access to Yahoo! Mail and other popular email service providers, including Gmail®, Windows Live™ Hotmail and AOL® Mail.
o Pulse – Access to their social networks, including Bebo®, Dopplr™, Facebook®, Flickr®, Friendster®, Last.fm®, MySpace®, Twitter™ and YouTube™.
o Yahoo! Messenger – An upgraded version of Yahoo!’s popular mobile instant messaging service.
o Yahoo! Address Book – Keeps consumers’ contacts always handy and in sync.
o Yahoo! Calendar – View, add and edit appointments when users are away from their PCs.

Stay Informed

* Yahoo! News – Breaking headlines across popular topics.
* Yahoo! onePlace™ – Access and manage your favorite content, all from one location. Its “Add Anything” functionality is a simple-to-use search and browse process that helps users find and add what they want. Consumers can add their favorite interests from a growing selection of popular categories including news topics and sources, RSS feeds, weather conditions, sports scores, stock quotes, websites/blogs, horoscopes and movie theaters.

The smartphone version of Yahoo! Mobile will include the above functionality, plus:

* Yahoo! oneSearch with Voice™ – Allowing users to launch searches by simply speaking.
* Maps – Powerful improved tools that let consumers locate, learn about and get directions to points of interest.
* Opera Mini™ 4.2 – An integrated version of the world’s most popular mobile web browser, with easy return to the Yahoo! Mobile app, that launches when web site access is needed.
* Widgets – Enhanced mobile-optimized experiences for services from Yahoo! and other brands. Users can browse, add and remove these at anytime according to their tastes.

AVAILABILITY OF YAHOO! MOBILE

A managed beta program for Yahoo! Mobile has started today. Consumers interested in participating should enter http://mobile.yahoo.com into their phone’s browser.

Details on the upcoming general public release for Yahoo! Mobile are as follows:

For the mobile Web:

* Launch timing: expected late March 2009
* Devices: those running WebKit-based browsers (e.g. iPhone and iPod touch, many Nokia Series 60 and Android devices), Opera Mini 4.x, Windows Mobile devices with Internet Explorer Mobile, and the BlackBerry® Bold™ and BlackBerry Storm™ browsers

For iPhone:

* Launch timing: expected late March 2009

For smartphones:

* Launch timing: expected late May 2009
* Devices: hundreds of select models from RIM, Windows Mobile, Nokia S60 and 40, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola.

At launch, each version of Yahoo! Mobile is planned to be available for the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, India, Indonesia and the Philippines. Versions for other countries will roll out over the remainder of 2009.

Yahoo! Mobile will feature Yahoo!’s industry-leading display advertising from major global advertisers.

Visit the Yahoo! booth at Mobile World Congress to see Yahoo!’s latest mobile products – 7B26, Hall 7. For more information and screenshots of the Yahoo! Mobile product suite, please visit http://mobile.yahoo.com/newsroom.

UNIONDALE, N.Y. – Yellowbook, a national leader in the local search industry, announced today a content distribution agreement with YouTube™, the world’s most popular online video community allowing millions of people to discover, watch and share originally created videos, to showcase yellowbook.com’s video advertisers across YouTube’s network. Yellowbook is the first publisher in its category to partner with YouTube to distribute its customers’ video ads.

The agreement supports Yellowbook’s commitment to give users unprecedented access to local businesses through sound, sight and motion while expanding the reach and visibility of local businesses in the online world.

With more and more people extending their physical communities to the online world, Yellowbook is meeting the needs of users who shop online and make buying decisions based on the information they find with video advertising capabilities. Yellowbook offers advertisers professionally produced custom videos, photo motion montage videos, stock video ads, and the opportunity for businesses to upload preexisting videos.

“We’re pleased to be the first internet yellow pages publisher to offer YouTube as a distribution channel for our video advertisers,” said Pat Marshall, chief new media officer for Yellowbook. “Video advertising on yellowbook.com and via YouTube distribution uniquely promotes Yellowbook’s advertisers to more potential customers than ever before.”

Yellowbook.com’s video products, and the expansion of its video distribution channels, are a strong reflection of demand. In 2007, online video ad spending posted the highest year-over-year increase, up 89 percent to $775 million according to a recent report published by eMarketer. And ReelSEO, an industry-leading video search optimization and online video marketing site, found more than half of small businesses expect to buy online ads featuring videos within the next two years.

About Yellowbook

Since 1930, Yellowbook has focused on a simple goal – connecting consumers with local businesses. Today, Yellowbook is a national leader in local search and advertiser content, managing a comprehensive online and print product portfolio that provides users easy access to local business information, and advertisers a single source for cost effective media programs. The Yellowbook Network, anchored by yellowbook.com, reaches millions of users via computers, mobile devices, organic web searches and the company’s network of partner sites, and has been recognized as the fastest growing internet property (comScore, April 2008). WebReach, Yellowbook’s fully managed search engine advertising program, places customers’ advertising on the major internet search engines. In print, Yellowbook publishes nearly 1,000 directories in 48 states plus the District of Columbia with a combined circulation of over 128 million copies. For more information, visit yellowbook.com.

RESTON, VA, September 10, 2008 – comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released July 2008 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, reporting that Americans viewed more than 11.4 billion videos for a total duration of 558 million hours during the month.

Google Sites Maintains Dominant Position

In July, Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property with more than 5 billion videos viewed (representing a 44 percent share of the online video market), with YouTube.com accounting for more than 98 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 446 million videos (3.9 percent), followed by Microsoft Sites with 282 million (2.5 percent) and Yahoo! Sites with 269 million (2.4 percent). Hulu ranked eighth with 119 million videos, representing 1 percent of all videos viewed.

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

More than 142 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 80 videos per viewer in July. Google Sites also attracted the most viewers (92.1 million), who watched an average of 55 videos per person. Fox Interactive attracted the second most viewers (54.9 million), followed by Yahoo! Sites (37.6 million) and Microsoft Sites (32.6 million).

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

Other notable findings from July 2008 include:

• 75 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• Americans spent a total of 558 million hours watching online video during the month.
• The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video.
• 91 million viewers watched 5 billion videos on YouTube.com (54.8 videos per viewer).
• 51.4 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace.com (7.8 videos per viewer).
• The duration of the average online video was 2.9 minutes.

To request more information about comScore Video Metrix, please visit http://www.comscore.com/contact

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/boilerplate.

“You now will be able to upload and monetize videos in your account that are longer than 10 minutes. This feature is exclusively for partners. Independent Film makers that partner with us will now be able to upload their feature films on our site. Please note that for long form content, the maximum file size is 1GB.”

The 1GB limitation, while not enough for 2 hours long movies or HD, should still be good for 1 – 1,5 hours of standard content.

Question is, how will this be monetized?

Currently, monetizing medium and long video content is very problematic – there are no industry standards, no unity whatsoever between what a publisher can do and what advertisers want. Additionally, owners of online video content seem to have problems in figuring out a good monetization strategy and are still just testing out waters. Some resorted to simply copy TV and resort to having lengthy pre-rolls, mid-rolls and/or post-rolls, not understanding that online video is a completely different scene than the traditional TV one.

Surely, some ad networks have pioneered solutions to monetizing video content (Videoegg, for example, and their pretty awesome overlay in-stream ads), but these are oriented more towards short video content. We still don’t know how to monetize a 1 hour long piece of video content and where is the balance between revenue generation and good user experience.

In my opinion, YouTube opening doors to medium and long video content will intensify efforts to find viable, sustainable monetizing solutions versus the ‘hit-and-run’ ones. Google’s in-video program, which is still closed, will probably be one of the major players. It’d be very interesting to see what follows and what the responses from major video content owners will be.