MediaCommunications

MediaCom View: In a deal that seems positively cheap compared to Google's recent payment of £462M to provide NewsCorp with their search results, Google have purchased internet video-sharing site YouTube, to now command 57% of the online video market. In the face of competition from Microsoft & Yahoo's new ventures, Google look to have secured their future in this growing (but fickle) marketplace. Combined with YouTube's recent deals with Warner Bros & EMI to make their content legally available on the net, rumours of Google buying up the online rights to classic TV shows, and movies, place them in a very strong position to be the online distributor of rich content for the foreseeable future. However, whether these sources remain free for all remains to be seen, with YouTube reportedly making a £270K loss per month, can Google manage to monetise their new content, and mirror the success they've had in search...?

MediaCom View: ITV1's share of audience fell to 19.9% (down by 1% y-o-y) in the second quarter of 2006, a period which included the World Cup on ITV1. The ITV digital channels gained 1.4% y-o-y which will help to minimise the damage but their rivals continue to make inroads. Channel4, BSkyB, IDS and GMTV all saw gains in impacts, a trend which is also representative of non-terrestrial airtime which reached a record high of 32% of all television viewing in the same period. The report also revealed that the average number of hours spent watching television has fallen to a new low of 3.43 hours a day compared with 3.89 hours in the first quarter of 2006.

MediaCom View: The OAA digital committee organised a test, running the same 10sec creative approximately six times an hour, across different digital platforms (representative of 15% of the market) in London and Manchester earlier this year, analysing awareness levels attributed to an outdoor campaign run exclusively on out of home digital screens. 16.4% of all adults questioned in the street interviews were aware of the campaign after eight weeks - average awareness levels for a digital out of home campaign of this size would normally be between 10 and 30%. Obviously this is a very basic piece of research probably because each digital contractor used had to agree to the parameters of the test. However, the test does show that digital screens have achieved critical mass in major cities. It also gives the impression that people do notice digital screens and that they have a positive attitude towards them. Finally and most importantly, the results convey that ad recall on digital screens is high. The next and more controversial step would be to analyse the awareness levels of the different environments utilised across the campaign display period and assess reasons for success or failure.