Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

The pitched battle between billionaire investor Carl Icahn and Yahoo for control of its board could hinge on whether Icahn can convince the company’s two largest institutional investors to vote for his alternate slate of directors. Those two investors are Gordon Crawford of Capital Research and Bill Miller of Legg Mason. As of May 7, they each controlled 16 percent and 6.7 percent of Yahoo stock, respectively. Icahn owns at least 4 percent. That’s more than a quarter of the voting shares between the three of them. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/09/legg-masons-miller-to-icahn-put-up-or-shut-up 7/9)

Google is getting into another me-too service, and about a year or so after the Second Life bubble burst: it has launched Lively, its virtual world/avatar service, with the twist being users can embed these avatar and worlds into their own blogs and social networking sites such as Facebook. (http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-google-tries-to-go-lively-with-its-own-virtual-world-effort 7/8)

As YouTube struggles to make money on advertising, according to a story today in the Wall Street Journal, and reportedly may resort to pre-roll ads (which consumers hate, but advertisers love), maybe they should take a look at some of the innovative ad units coming out of VideoEgg. Today, VideoEgg is launching five new kinds of Web video ads. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/09/videoegg-launches-new-video-ad-units-maybe-youtube-should-pay-attention 7/9)

Online ad tracking service NebuAd is being called before a panel of Senators today to address privacy concerns regarding its targeting methods. The hearing, which will also call officers and lawyers from Microsoft, Google and Facebook, is the result of vociferous complaints from groups such as The Center for Democracy and Technology and the FTC’s Consumer Protection Bureau, which will also testify at the hearing. (Cynopsis 7/9)

The Office junkies will be pleased to know the second series of original webisodes will go live from tomorrow at 3 pm ET on NBC.com. This season, sponsored by Comcast, Sony Electronics and Priceline, will revolve around Kevin (Brian Baumgartner) as he tries innovative ways to pay back his looming gambling debts. (Cynopsis 7/9)

Independent video sharing site Dailymotion saw unique visitors increase by 18% month-over month in May to 5.7 million uniques, according to ComScore. (Cynopsis 7/9)

Viewers are consuming more video than ever before thanks to the proliferation of content on multiple screen and devices, according to data released from Nielsen, the first time the company has compared viewing across TV, the internet and mobile. Instead of one platform suffering, they all seem to be benefiting. The average user (2+) is watching more TV than ever before (4% more compared to May of last year.) A small but growing number of internet and mobile phone users are watching video online (2 hrs, 19 min per month), as well as on their cell phones (3 hrs, 15 min per month).  (Cynopsis 7/9)

• 220 million Americans have internet access at home and/or work and 73%, or 162 million went online in May
• 119 million unique viewers watched 7.5 billion video streams in May 2008
• As of Q1 2008, 91 million Americans (36% of all mobile phone subscribers in the U.S.) owned a video-capable phone

Time Spent in Hours: Minutes Per User 2+, Per Month
May 08   May 07  % Diff
Watching TV in the home*            127:15    121:48     4%
Watching Timeshifted TV*                5:50       3:44   56%
Using the Internet**                     26:26      24:16     9%
Watching Video on internet**           2:19       n/a      n/a
Watching Video via Mobile Phone       3:15       n/a      n/a
* TV includes live viewing plus any playback viewing; Timeshifted TV is playback primarily on a DVR but including playback on services like Start Over as well as playback from a DVD recorder.
** Internet figures are from home and work.  Hours:minutes are based on the universe of persons who watch online video.
Source: Nielsen