emarketer

Add another entry to the lengthening list of reduced revenue estimates for Facebook.

eMarketer said in a report issued earlier today that it has cut its 2012 revenue estimates on Facebook from more than $6 billion to around $5 billion.

In February, eMarketer estimated that Facebook's total revenues would go beyond the $6 billion mark this year, but the company's underwhelming performance in the first and second quarters of 2012 has changed the opinion of analysts.

The new estimate has Facebook's revenue at a 35.9 percent increase from 2011, according to eMarketer's forecast, but analyst … Read more

CNET News's Tom Krazit stops by to handicap Apple's big iPhone operating system announcement.

Ad projections cut for social networks

Comcast passwords leaked onto the Web

Discovery hits Amazon with Kindle patent suit

Study: Microwind turbines a tough sell in Mass.

Longtime gamers "Bello" and "Merca" were married this past December in Artix Entertainment's massively multiplayer online role-playing game AdventureQuest Worlds, the company reported Monday. The bride and groom have been avid MMORPG gamers for three years and met each other while playing the game. The wedding was held in a private, in-game room and 11,000 avatars were on hand to witness the exchange of vows.

Unfortunately, the wedding was raided by Troll Wedding Crashers, a clan within the game that "camped out on the dance floor of the reception area."

Low-cost pocket … Read more

Market research firm eMarketer has cut yet another ad spending estimate for 2009, and this time it's social networks. The social-network advertising industry is now pegged at $1.3 billion next year, down from $1.8 billion. For 2008, it's been lowered to $1.2 billion from $1.4 billion.

That's a big drop. Looking at individual social networks, eMarketer has cut its estimates for MySpace from $755 million to $585 million this year, and from $265 million to $210 million for Facebook.

"As consumer usage of social networking sites continues to flourish, advertising has not … Read more

Update at 10:30 a.m. PST, with information from IDC holiday spending report.

The Grinch has made off with Christmas.

In yet another sign that e-commerce is taking a hit over the holidays, online sales growth projections for the critical November-December holiday shopping season were cut by more than half Tuesday in a survey released by digital marketing and media research firm eMarketer.

Online sales are expected to grow a mere 4 percent year over year to $30.3 billion during the two-month period, versus eMarketer's previous projection in May of 10.1 percent growth, or $32.1 … Read more

Marketers ought to be aware that some consumers are suspicious about the phenomenon known as "behavioral targeting," a new report from eMarketer says.

Called "Behavioral Targeting Attitudes: The Privacy Issue," the report released Friday explores the digital ad strategy, which collects consumer information and uses it to serve up ads that they may find interesting or relevant. This has been the basis for high-profile programs like Facebook's Social Ads and MySpace's HyperTargeting, as well as Google's extraordinarily successful AdSense. (That's why you'll see ads for vacation homes in Gmail after you'… Read more

Market research firm eMarketer recently published a study about U.S. consumer spending on music since 1980. Most commenters have seized on the fact that the study shows a higher percentage of people are buying music today than ever, but that those users are spending much less, probably due to the rise of single-song downloads. (eMarketer calls these "MP3 downloads"--in fact, the #1 source of legal downloads, iTunes, offers them in the AAC format, and many other sites offer downloads in the Windows Media Audio format.)

But I also noticed that music spending per capita rose dramatically … Read more