ad revenue

Twitter ad revenue should near $1B next year, researcher says

Twitter's ad revenue is soaring, and a big reason for that is mobile, a market research firm said today.

eMarketer estimates Twitter will earn $582.8 million in global ad revenue this year, $950 million next year, and $1.33 billion in 2015. According to its boosted forecast, more than half of Twitter's ad revenue -- about 53 percent -- will come from mobile advertising this year, up from virtually no ad revenue from mobile in 2011.

And mobile is where Twitter will see the most growth over the next two years, eMarketer said. By 2015, more than … Read more

Google makes more money from ads than print media combined

Google makes more money from advertising than all U.S. print publications combined, according to a new study from German statistics company Statista.

The company found Google generated $20.8 billion in ad revenue in the first six months of 2012, while the whole U.S. print media industry -- newspapers and magazines -- made only $19.2 billion.

Statista did note, however, that the comparison is "obviously unfair" and shouldn't be judged scientifically. Google operates globally, while the company only looked at print media in the U.S.

Still, it's a pretty interesting indication of … Read more

Facebook's mobile-only use jumps 23 percent since March

Facebook's latest 10-Q filing reveals that nearly 20 percent of its more than 543 million monthly mobile users accessed the social network in June solely on their mobile device. That's 102 million people.

These astounding numbers were first reported by TechCrunch, which also notes that mobile-only users have increased dramatically. According to the SEC 10-Q report, 83 million people visited the site with only their mobile device in March, which adds up to a 23 percent increase of mobile-only users from March to June.

The specifics of Facebook's mobile use are important because the company's revenue … Read more

Study: Apple's UDID restrictions cost developers 24% revenue

Privacy concerns have been at the top of many tech industry reports lately. Between Apple's Flashback Trojan issues, Google's faux pas with Safari privacy settings, and a myriad of other privacy-related stories, consumers, lawmakers, and the media have been pressing for greater privacy restrictions.

Partly in response to a Congressional inquiry, Apple has begun restricting access to consumers' UDID numbers, a unique identifier that individually accounts for all iOS devices Apple sells.

Ad servers, like MoPub, have been using UDIDs to serve particular ads to targeting demographics for years. Now that Apple has begun rejecting apps that continue … Read more

Pew Center illustrates how Craigslist is killing newspapers

It's tough to compete with free.

The use of online classifieds sites, such as Craigslist, has more than doubled in the past four years, according to a study published Friday by the Pew Research Center. At the same time that Web classifies are on the rise, the classifieds business that newspapers once depended on has collapsed, the Pew Internet & America Life Project found.

"Nearly half (49 percent) of Internet users say they have ever used online classified sites," the Pew Center said in the report. In 2005, the percentage was 22 percent.

One out of 10 … Read more

Between a rock and YouTube, video execs see promise

SAN FRANCISCO--If the $1 billion Web video advertising market is to reach the level of television's estimated $50 billion, it ironically won't be thanks to YouTube, the Internet's most popular spot for watching clips.

That's at least the read from Internet video executives here Thursday at the RBC Capital conference. Executives from popular video search and ad companies said that so-called user-generated videos like those on YouTube aren't drawing any significant dollars from advertisers or agencies. Advertisers need to control their brand, and it's seen as too risky to give up that control on … Read more