People love to debate the merits of free vs. paid content. But overlooked in all this is the cost of access to that content—that’s where the action is. We’re paying more than we ever have to receive our movies, news and music, according to Forrester analyst James McQuivey. Here’s his…

Yes Movielink and Cinemanow sucked for a long time, and iTunes never became a huge movie seller. That was 2-3 years ago. So what happened since, as online streaming has taken off? Turns out, not much on the uptick, only downside, in terms of revenues. According to new data coming…

The term “flat is the new ‘up’” was heard a lot last year with regard to ad spending. Now that Nielsen says display ad spending ended 2009 with a 1 percent gain, perhaps in 2010 “up” will retain its actual meaning. While a number of categories show signs of arresting…

It’s half-way through the Vancouver Olympics and NBC Universal’s research head Alan Wurtzel already has some findings to share about the viewing results so far. Anticipating the ire of bloggers who have complained that NBCU has been holding back too much live coverage of the games from online, Wurtzel made…

For the past several months, analysts have been predicting the local online advertising is likely to remain hot. As new numbers from BIA/Kelsey show, local online media is gaining not so much because it can tap smaller marketers that have tended to be overlooked by major media, it’s because traditional…

CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) Chief Research Officer Dave Poltrack took dead aim at a Forrester Research survey that said marketers consider TV ads less and less effective. AdAge was there to capture Poltrack’s fit of pique. He was particularly set off by advertisers’ claim that only 41 percent of their…

AOL (NYSE: AOL) has signed up for a three-year, $200,000 “consortium sponsorship” of the MIT Media Lab. After reorganizing its advertising and content units over the past few months, AOL is now moving to reform its technology side. Late last month, after denying that CTO Ted Cahall was leaving AOL,…

Hark, the herald angels sing! Total UK ad spend will rise this autumn, after nine consecutive quarters of annual decline, according to an Advertising Association and WARC forecast. The rise is modest - Q3 2010 is predicted to be 2.8 percent up from the year before. But it’s heartening after…

Several broadcast companies that reported earnings in the past few weeks have pointed out that TV station revenues were down due to the lack of political ad spending in 2009. Since 2010 is a banner year for major Congressional races, local media researcher Borrell Associates expects that TV broadcasters will…

The drive to increase membership for the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement , the research initiative formed by major TV networks, agencies and advertisers, is bearing fruit as the organization has added a number of high-profile companies. At its first meeting of 2010, CIMM also provided more details on the…

ClearSaleing, a company that claims to specialize in something called “attribution management”—in something close to plain English, “ROI tracking”—has closed a $3.75 million third round. Included in the round was a $1.7 million investment from NCT Ventures Fund I. The rest of the funding was made up of a combination…

Some data that is certain to be used to back up assertions that news aggregators—like Google (NSDQ: GOOG) News—are competing with newspaper sites as much as they are driving traffic to them. A survey of nearly 3,000 U.S. news consumers by research firm Outsell shows that 44 percent of Google…

Good news for the big search companies with earnings season just ahead. Search engine marketing firm Efficient Frontier has upped its estimates for search ad spending this year. The company now expects spending to increase between 15 and 20 percent, up from its earlier estimates of 10 to 15 percent…

The real estate market is expected to remain weak for at least another three years, but the category’s ad spending is expected to see a small recovery this year. However, as report from local ad analyst Borrell Associates shows, any uptick in spending will be unevenly spread across specific kinds…

Jive Software, a company that helps businesses interact with online communities, has acquired social media analytics provider Filtrbox. Terms weren’t disclosed. Boulder, CO-based Filtrbox has been around for a little over two years and has raised a little more than $2 million. It raised $1.4 million in its first round…

If 2009 in the digital-media world needed a title, you could argue it would likely be something to the effect of: “Social media goes mainstream.” Indeed, it’s no secret that social media is a huge force these days, but big questions remain about how companies – even the biggest, buzziest…

While hopes have been high for AOL (NYSE: AOL) since its spinoff from Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) last month, JP Morgan analyst Imran Khan is warning against any quick turnaround. In a research note issued this morning, the analyst has initiated coverage of AOL with a “neutral” rating and a…

Thomson Reuters (NYSE: TRI) has acquired scientific analytics software provider Discovery Logic as the company looks to expand its content and services. Discovery Logic will be folded into Thomson Reuters’ Healthcare & Science business. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Rockville, MD-based Discovery Logic gathers information from scientific…

Arbitron is moving up its target date to start including more “cell-phone-only” households as part of its media measurement diary system. The researcher currently measures about 10 percent of homes that use a mobile phone instead of a landline in its diary markets. It had initially planned to raise that…