I just witnessed a striking commercial on Hulu for a program that apparently airs on BBC-America. At first, I didn't have a clue to what they were selling, but after doing a quick search, I found that "Torchwood" will be starting its third season in a few days and I found my way back to the BBC-America site, where I saw that the new episodes will be available via iTunes.

I don't have an iPod and I'm one of the vast majority of people, who don't really listen to a lot of music and who've never purchased one of Apple's ridiculously small, proprietary devices.

In the past, whenever I've seen something that has interested me and learned that it's only available on iTunes, I've occasionally flipped over to their site to see if they've shut-down their sales-limiting walled garden. And, like every other time that I've done this with only a few early exceptions, I simply left after seeing that they still demand you to download some kind of spyware to shop in their store.

I don't want something that's going to search my hard-drive for non-existent music, I'd just like to see how much an episode of some particular program will cost and I'd like to know for certain that it'll play on a computer and not just some new-fangled pocket watch.

Is that really too much to ask?
Why can't I shop in their store?

Sure, Apple appears to be doing pretty well, but I'm not the only person who doesn't have iTunes on my computer and I'm among the majority. Therefore, I'm equally sure that if they'd set-up something like Amazon's "Video on Demand" store, they'd do a lot better because I for one would probably give them some money from time to time.

The founder and CEO of blogsearch Technorati has announced that he's stepping down from his executive position and installing a team of the company's Vice Presidents to serve as President. In his post explaining the move, Mr. Sifrey notes that their search for a replacement CEO has taken longer than anticipated, while others have noted that Technorati has benefited from several influxes of cash and may be headed toward oblivion because latecomer Google has been eating their shorts with a less functional tool.

I've long held that from the outside, Technorati looks like a good acquisition target for Yahoo! because it matches a lot of the criteria they've used in the past and a simple implementation of contextual advertising could be what the doctor ordered. Though I can speak only for myself, but I'd say that one of the big reasons that Technorati's widgets don't litter the web is because there's no back end from the results. Sure, Google hasn't offered an embeddable blogsearch and you're just left with their plain vanilla service, but if you use it or their "search within this site" functionality, the possibility does exist for you to monetize the results with AdSense.

Of course, Yahoo! is also in the business of contextual ads, plus their blogsearch tool was only available for a while and then it disappeared, or at least I can no longer find it. Nonetheless, it wouldn't take much for them to marry advertising to the Technorati widgets, but they have their own problems at this time and though I still think they should consider the purchase, if somebody were to ask me the solution to Yahoo!'s woes, the acquisition of Technorati would be the somewhere around third on my list.

It's still a good idea and the price is obviously ticking down, but since Mr. Sifrey made his announcement another scenario has popped into my head and because they aren't plagued by an infernal internal memo, it may actually be a more realistic option.

( My Suggestion )

Borrell Associates recently released an annual survey of media sources, where they asked the respondents about online-only revenue. While I only have the "Executive Summary" in hand, they do point out that different managers may interpret online-only* in a different fashion. Nevertheless, a few interesting statistics and promising trends can be seen from the following chart;

	2002	2003	2004	2005	Avg Mkt Shr**
Local Online Advertising***	$1.65 Billion	$2.1 Billion	$2.7 Billion	$4.8 Billion
Newspapers	$655 Million	$811 Million	$1.9 Billion	2.0 Billion	14.8%
Radio Stations	n/a	$18 Million	$34 Million	$60 Million	0.4%
TV Stations	$55 Million	$75 Million	$119 Million	$283 Million	1%

In addition to a wealth of knowledge, the survey of 2,266 media outlets also revealed that the "largest local web site in most markets will generate more in ad sales this year than the largest-grossing radio station in that market." The average online revenue, per radio station is $28,528 in a small market and $52,323 in a large. Newspapers account for over 40% of all local, online ad revenue.

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*A rep. sample received a follow-up survey which included a question about allocated revenue.  **From an analysis of WebAudit statistics ***Advertising placed by locally-based businesses for locally-focused online messages.     Includes locally-targeted dollars on national sites, such as Google, Yahoo!, Realtor, Monster, etc.

Many of us heard the hype promoting Cyber Monday and though most of the current headlines are reporting the results as being positive, it's mostly in how you measure. Personally, I'm of the opinion that whatever success it's deemed to be is more about how you frame the question, than could easily be illustrated by some simple stats.

According to BusinessWeek, last year an association of online retailers decided that they needed a hook, something that they could use in response to the brick and mortar, Black Friday. It was decided that should focus on the Monday after Thanksgiving, because everyone would be back to work and able to use their faster internet connections to shop. Several possible names were batted around and on the 21st of November, Shop.org issued a release.

The press kit used an assortment of statistics and a few vague generalities; "becoming one of the biggest online shopping days of the year" and "sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving have been creeping higher". I can see nowhere, where it explicitly states that it's really the twelfth busiest online shopping day and that the event was a completely new invention.

Preliminary results show that on Monday, non-travel, online consumer spending increased by 26% or from $386 million to $485, year over year. This is the exact same percentage, online sales increased over the Thursday to Sunday holiday weekend, $737 million to $925. And, though traffic figures aren't yet available for Cyber Monday, preliminary stats for the actual Thanksgiving Day was up almost 19% and on "Black Friday", online retailers reported a 20.9% increase in clicks.

If Cyber Monday is to survive as a marketing tool, merchants are going to have to offer better and more heavily-publicized discounts and I'd say, they'd need to be beyond those pre-Black Friday sales offered on Thanksgiving Day. Though, right now and without knowing how the season will end, if we learned anything from this exercise, it'd be; Issue a press release during the slower holiday buildup and let the media feed on itself, spreading your word through osmosis and possibly causing a better than natural increase.