Week commencing 14th July 2008
 Both Channel 4 and ITV suffered a drop in their shares
of commercial impacts last month, despite the return of Big Brother
and the Euro 2008 football championship. Multichannel benefited
from terrestrial's loss of share, increasing its commercial impacts
by 9.5% in June, year on year. After a strong commercial performance
in May, boosted by Britain's Got Talent and key Champions League
fixtures, ITV's share of all-adult impacts fell by 9.8% year on
year in June. Meanwhile, Five's all-adults share of impacts dipped
by 9% year on year for June, with its ABC1 share falling 4.6% year
on year. Source: Mediaweek
Yahoo UK is attempting
to increase its presence in the nascent but potentially lucrative
online video market by securing content from mainstream UK broadcasters
for the first time for its Yahoo Video service. Yahoo has struck
content partnerships with the BBC and Channel 4 to attract advertisers
into running campaigns around professionally produced, rather than
user-generated content. Initially, Yahoo Video will offer short-form
clips around shows such as EastEnders, Top Gear, In Cold Blood,
Baywatch and Big Brother. Source: Mediaweek
Eurosport, the pan-European
sports broadcaster, has launched a high-definition TV channel in
the UK on the Sky satellite platform. The new channel will complement
the broadcaster's existing Sky presence of British Eurosport and
Eurosport 2, and will take up EPG position number 412. Eurosport
HD is a simulcast service of Eurosport International - a pan-European
TV channel launched earlier this year to promote Eurosport France's
coverage of the French Open. The channel will be available to the
roughly half a million Sky homes that subscribe to Sky's HD service,
Sky+ HD. Source: Mediaweek
 The
Independent on Sunday has shown a 4.3% increase in the latest newspaper
ABCs, a set of figures that makes tough reading for the Sunday papers.
The IoS lost 10.86% of its circulation in May, shedding almost 25,000
copies to hit a 200,920 low for 2008. June's figures show that the
paper added close to 9,000 copies to climb back to 209, 561, although
its year on year for June shows the paper down 14.8%. The Daily
Star Sunday, News of the World and Sunday Express were the only
other Sundays to show an improvement, posting 3.4%, 1% and 2.9%
increases respectively. The Sunday Sport posted the worst figures,
down 5.3% month on month, and 19.23% year on year, achieving an
average net circulation of just 78,576 for June. The mid-market
title The Mail on Sunday lost 33,451 copies (1.5%) to average 2,204,058,
while the Sunday Post fell 1.86% to 394,428. In the Sunday quality
sector, The Observer was the biggest loser, shedding 3.52% to 437,798,
closely followed by The Sunday Times, which lost 3.25% to post a
figure of 1,148,287, while the Sunday Telegraph dropped just 0.53%
to 632,244. Source:Mediaweek
News International is expected to make about 100 of its
450 sales staff redundant across its soon-to-merge commercial team,
which it will organise into agency-focused hubs. Last week, NI confirmed
it is to merge its sales teams into one department covering all
five newspapers. The company plans to organise the merged commercial
team around agency-focused hubs, each housing between six and 10
people. Each team will, among others, house a Times Media trader,
News Group Newspapers trader, an inserts/magazine trader, a digital
trader, a thelondonpaper trader and a creative specialist. NI expects
the teams to be operational by the end of September. Source: Mediaweek
The internet will become the UK's single largest advertising medium
next year, overtaking both TV and newspapers, according to the latest
ad spend forecast from ZenithOptimedia. Internet ad spend is projected
to grow by 32.3% this year and 28.2% next, to reach £4,055m
in 2009. The next biggest medium, newspapers, is only valued at
£3,950m in 2009. The UK will overtake Germany to become the
world's third largest ad market by 2010, according to the research.
Source: Mediaweek
Mail Online leapfrogged Telegraph.co.uk and Guardian.co.uk
to become the UK's most popular newspaper website last month. Mail
Online leapfrogged Telegraph.co.uk and Guardian.co.uk to become
the UK's most popular newspaper website last month. According to
May ABCe data, Mail Online attracted 18.7 million users, up 3.7%
from the previous month. The figures will be welcomed by Associated
Newspapers, which is currently setting up a specialised digital
sales unit for Mail Online. Source: Mediaweek
 The Radio Advertising Bureau is doubling the number
of campaigns its quantitative research tool RadioGauge will analyse
this summer. The tool, which launched in January this year, provides
national radio advertisers with access to free research to quantify
the effectiveness of their campaigns. It is available to those advertisers
who spend £350,000 or more. From January onwards, RadioGauge
was measuring three campaigns every two weeks, but it will now double
that amount from now until September, giving an additional 36 campaigns
the opportunity to have their effectiveness measured. Source: Mediaweek
The trade body for the commercial radio industry
has warned that the BBC's planned expansion of its local
online video services would have a "devastating" impact
on local stations. Andrew Harrison, the chief executive of the Radio
Centre, said a "line in the sand" had to be drawn to rein
back the BBC's activities, which would "massively distort"
the ecology of the commercial radio market. The BBC is planning
to offer increased local news and video content on 60 websites in
England - broadly divided along the lines of its existing local
radio stations - and another five in Wales, with a total annual
budget of about £23m within five years. Source:Guardian
 Consumers'
body Which? has criticised companies including McDonald's,
Nestlé and PepsiCo for allegedly breaking responsible marketing
pledges by targeting junk food ads at children using mobile marketing
and websites such as Bebo and YouTube. Although the report found
"notable improvements" in marketing tactics from Weetabix
and KFC, it found that many major food companies are taking advantage
of lax regulations and are "still using irresponsible approaches
to negatively influence children's food choices". The report
said that companies are using marketing techniques such as viral
promotions, text messaging and social networking websites to target
children with junk food ads. Source: Guardian
Travel.co.uk, a package-holiday
comparison site, has launched with the aim of tapping into consumer
concerns about rising travel costs. The site, which provides live
pricing and availability information, enables users to compare holidays
from 15 tour operators, including Thomas Cook, Thomson and Airtours;
it plans to add First Choice, Virgin Holidays and Kuoni to its selection. Products can be compared by flying time, destination temperature
and price supplements. Users can also compare prices offered by
travel agents with those from the operators. Retailers can be compared
by description, location and speciality, and users can book via
independent or personal home-based travel agents as well as the
tour operators. The site, developed by Zolv, offers TripAdvisor
user reviews, weather information and Google Maps. It also carries
tour-operators' brochures and video footage of hotels and resorts.
The service plans to roll out flight- and hotel-only options, and
introduce dynamic packaging including flight and hotel bundles.
The launch is being backed by a digital promotional drive including
email marketing. Travel.co.uk founder and managing director Ray
Mason is a former managing director of Teletext Holidays Online
and head of Virgin Holidays' ecommerce division. Former Virgin Holidays
marketer Vicky Smith is the site's marketing manager. Source: Brand
Republic
Digital growth is at its lowest since 2002 as marketing
budgets were revised down across the board for the third consecutive
quarter as the gloom surrounding the industry builds momentum, according
to the latest IPA Bellwether report. All sectors of marketing
reported budget cuts with the exception of the online, but even
the industry's perennial star performer experienced its smallest
upward revision since 2002. Only 19% of companies reporting said
that their online budgets were revised up, down from 27% in the
first quarter, while 12% reported a decline, up from 5% in the first
quarter.Growth of internet search slowed sharply during Q2, but
less so than total internet advertising, 18% of companies revised
budgets up and 9% revised them down. Anthony Wreford, deputy chairman
of Omnicom Europe, said: "Internet spending will continue to
grow as more clients see the importance of this form of communication
and the ability to use this medium, like PR, in a tactical context."
Traditional media -- TV, press, outdoor, radio and cinema -- was
worst hit, with budgets dropping at the fastest rate since the first
quarter of 2006.
This was followed by "all other" marketing, which includes
PR, events and research. Downward budget revisions indicated that
growth will be the weakest in these areas for at least five years.
Source: Brand Republic
 The
new Ford Mondeo
Titanium X Sport is to launch with a five-day interactive campaign
at major railway stations across the country.Titan has
handed its exhibition sites and digital Transvision screens over
to the campaign, which will promote a virtual golf game aimed at
commuters.The interactive game will be played on 42" LCD screens
at each station involved. Competitors swing a golf club at the screen,
and are then told how far they have hit the virtual golf ball.Over
the course of the five-day promotion, which begins today (Monday),
the names of every station's five top scoring players will be displayed
on a leader board. The highest scorer at each station will win a
set of golf clubs, while Ford-branded Tee packs will be handed out
to commuters. Participating stations in the campaign, which was
planned and organised by Mindshare and Kinetic in conjunction with
the Titan Experience team, include Liverpool Street, Glasgow Central
and Manchester Piccadilly. Source: Brand Republic
 UK
Box Office Top 10
1. Mamma Mia!
2. Hancock
3. Kung Fu Panda
4. Journey to the Centre of the..
5. Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
6. The Forbidden Kingdom
7. Wanted
8. Sex and The City
9. Adulthood
10. The Mist
Source: Nielsen EDI
Edited by The Direct Response Team |
