Pandora Seeing Mobile Ads Momentum; CPG Leads Video Ad Spend; Slate's Display Ads

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Mobile Ads Are Here

Is there gold in the online radio business? Pandora says if you’re measuring in dollars – yes. ClickZ’s Christopher Heine reports on Pandora’s most recent finanicial report, “Pandora’s total Q2 revenue was $67 million, with ad revenues hitting $58.3 for the quarter ending July 31. Subscriptions accounted for $8.7 million of that sum, a 112 percent lift year-over-year.” Read more. Notably, Pandora President & CEO Joe Kennedy said in the financial report, “Pandora’s mobile advertising revenue for the first time comprised approximately half of total advertising revenue as we lead the way in the nascent but fast growing mobile advertising market.” See it. More mobile ad proof: Millenial Media says it made $50 million in 2010. Read TechCrunch.

News Meets Blur

VivaKi Chief Strategy Officer Rishadt Tobaccowalla how he the news media needs “to think and organize differently to survive and even thrive in the new economic realities it faces,” according to the VivaKi blog. In the article, Tobaccowalla revisits the trends that got news where it is today, and then, offers some solutions to his news brethren on pointing toward success including “embrace the blur.” He means, “Go to your editors and have an honest, non-bullshit, non-fear-based, nonposturing conversation with them. This church and state stuff is all very fine, but what does it matter when the entire landmass is going underwater? You both must serve the community — and the community is the civic folks, the retailers, and the readers.” Read it all.

CPG Likes Video

Leveraging its own data, video ad network Yume announced the results of its Q2 2011 video advertising metrics report. Consumer packaged goods (CPG) advertisers remain big spenders – comparatively – in video advertising as Yume said CPG accounted for 17% of spend in Q2. That’s tops among all categories. But, other categories such as Telecom are on the march as CPG’s overall share actually dropped from Q1 by 28% says the company. Download it here (PDF).

In Search Of The Secret

Online-only publication Slate has gone through another round of layoffs as it continues to search for a profitable formula reports The Wall Street Journal. The WSJ’s Russell Adams writes that Slate is trying to go beyond “traditional display ads into new ad offerings, including a video interview series hosted by Jacob Weisberg, Slate Group’s chairman, sponsored by Volkswagen.” Like many publishers, it would appear they have an audience challenge. Read more (subscription).

Transitioning To Digital

Down under, news publisher Fairfax Media will be looking to $85 million of cost cutting over the next two years as its traditional print operations appear to be impacting the bottom line. Read more about the company’s latest financial results in the Australian. Australian Associated Press (AAP) finds the bright side in the Fairfax results as “yields on its digital display advertising rose 16% in the year. Digital revenue now represents 13% of total revenue, up one percentage point from the prior year.” Read more.

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What’s Stopping Video

In an iMedia Connection article titled “5 obstacles preventing online video advertising growth,” Julia Casale-Amorim, CMO for Casale Media offers her views on video bottlenecks. Among them: “On demand vs. scheduled – The traditional and online video models are fundamentally different. Online video consumption occurs largely on demand, which means advertisers can’t know exactly when and where their messages will be viewed. This presents a scary proposition for many marketers who find the same controls they have over placement on broadcast and cable TV don’t translate perfectly online.” Read more.

Digital And Traditional

More VivaKi – VivaKi EMEA exec Marco Bertozzi muses on his personal blog on whether or not “digital people” will ever be in charge of holding company’s larger media agencies. He sees a need for change, “I believe that the Head of Digital roles and careers will ultimately always hit a career ceiling until they start to become more generalist and strategic, and get less bogged down in tech and implementation.” Read more.

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