Streaming Music Pricing
Inelastic Stretching

Mark Mulligan

February 2017

Streaming

Streaming Music

streaming subscriptions

Pricing has long been an issue for streaming music subscriptions, with the $9.99 price point having the double challenge of reducing the spending of the most valuable music buyers and being higher than the average spend of most music buyers. Streaming services have worked around the issue with a combination of telco music bundles and aggressive pri...

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Overcoming VR Adoption Hurdles

Zach Fuller

January 2017

Streaming

Radio

Paid Content

When it comes to disruptive technology, emerging formats such as Virtual Reality have been here before. The part about innovation that can so often omitted by uplifting TED lectures is that whilst these technologies present incredible opportunities, amongst the hype and excitement are often serious debates on how differently various contributors wi...

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Facebook The Media Company
If It Looks Like A Duck

Mark Mulligan

December 2016

Paid Content

Facebook

Content strategy

Facebook beat financial analyst estimates with its Q3 2016 earnings but announced that ad revenues would likely slow in 2017, due to the digital ad market feeling the pinch of advertiser budgets, which are lagging behind the shift in user behaviour. Facebook’s stock fell by 7% but Plan B is already in motion: to become a media company.

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Facebook Messenger User Profile
Streaming Savvy Mainstream Messaging App Users

Karol Severin

December 2016

Facebook messenger

Mobile messaging

Messaging apps

Facebook Messenger has caught up with WhatsApp, boasting more than 1 billion Monthly Active Users (MAUs). Along with WhatsApp and Instagram, Messenger is part of Facebook’s bet on the future of audiences as they migrate away from social networks. Facebook’s messaging apps are the company’s gateway to owning as much as possible of consumers’...

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Next Generation Apps
The Rise Of Mobile Life Ecosystems

Karol Severin

November 2016

app economy

next generation apps

mobile life ecosystems

The world of mobile is undergoing a seismic shift. It used to be that the smartphone platform world was largely understood in terms of a couple of big operating systems (iOS and Android) and their respective app stores. But now a succession of apps have emerged as platforms that exist both within and across OS boundaries.

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Virtual Reality
The Content Conundrum

Tim Mulligan

August 2016

scripted drama

VR

virtual reality

At the start of 2016 the tech hype machine was going into overdrive over the potential for Virtual Reality to finally break through to the mainstream. January’s CES in Las Vegas featured the launch of Fox Studio’s The Martian Experience, their second VR project in conjunction with a major big screen production.

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The Steady Demise Of The CD Buyer
How The Music Industry Is Sleepwalking Into A Revenue Collapse

Mark Mulligan

February 2016

cd revenue

cd buyers

Music buyers

The CD was the catalyst for the record labels’ apogee but now resembles a product strategy time bomb ticking away. With all the momentum of streaming it is tempting to discount CD buyers as an inconvenient legacy of the physical era, a format anomaly that will soon pass.

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Next Steps For Music Video
How Music Videos Miss Much Of The YouTube Opportunity

Tim Mulligan

January 2016

YouTube

Twitter

music video

The music video has undergone a major transformation since its original conceptualisation in the 1970s and commercialisation in the 1980s. Originally a tool to drive sales, MTV transformed it into a product in its own right and then YouTube did the same thing for the digital era.

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The TV App Revolution
Authenticated Channel Apps And TVE Strategy

Tim Mulligan

December 2015

apps

cord nevers

SVOD

Pay-TV is under assault from a pincer movement, on the one hand losing subscribers to cord cutting and on the other growth slowing due to cord-nevers (Digital Natives with no interest in subscribing to traditional pay-TV). Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and others welcome these consumers with open arms.

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Push Notifications
Vendor Landscape And Best Practices

Karol Severin

November 2015

app marketing

notifications

push notifications

In the increasingly competitive app economy, push notifications and in-app messages are becoming crucial means of driving retention rates and other KPIs. The question is no longer whether to use notifications, but rather how to maximise their benefits while mitigating the risk of alienating users.

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Short Form Video Growth
The Rise Of Social Video

Tim Mulligan

November 2015

YouTube

Online video

Facebook

Since its launch back in 2005, YouTube has dominated online video with an audience winning combination of user generated content and corporate short form content. While YouTube is more successful in terms of brand recognition and video views than it has ever been, it now faces real competition from video newcomers Facebook and Snapchat.

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App Whales And Minnows
Segmenting Mobile App Buyers

Karol Severin

September 2015

ARPU

mobile app economy

app buyers

Despite being small in number, app buyers are the bread and butter of the current mobile app economy, accounting for the majority of global app revenue. But their behaviour is too often simply benchmarked against that of free app users. However, it is not a binary equation.

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Connected Home Audio Forecasts, 2015 to 2020
The Reinvention Of Hi-Fi

Mark Mulligan

August 2015

Streaming Music

Home audio

connected home audio

While the home hi-fi market was fading into irrelevance Sonos quietly set about reimagining the whole concept of in-home audio. Now connected home audio is coming of age, with Sonos the dominant player in the multi-room audio segment. Consequently incumbents of all shapes and sizes are rising themselves from their slumbers and entering the market i...

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The Mainstreaming Of SVOD
How Apple Can Make Video Subscriptions Ready For Primetime

Tim Mulligan

August 2015

Apple

traditional tv companies

tv networks

The digital revolution has created an increasingly fragmented TV landscape. Traditional Pay TV still clings to its old business model whilst Netflix and Amazon hammer on its door, wooing audiences and tempting both cord cutters and cord nevers with its headline grabbing content budgets and original commissioning.

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Mobile App Economy Forecast 2015-2020
The Emergence Of A Mature Market

Karol Severin

June 2015

ARPU

average revenue per user

mobile apps

The global app economy is maturing. This transformation will bring a multitude of headline-worthy power shifts in the next five years. At the top, the share of global revenue will shift significantly between regions, as well as between platforms. Furthermore, the revenue mix will become more even between spend segments, as whales approach their ful...

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The Netflix Effect
How Netflix Is Changing The Rules For TV

Tim Mulligan

May 2015

Netflix

Pay-TV

traditional tv companies

Since reinventing itself as an online video subscription platform Netflix has transformed the paid video market. By delivering its online offering into consumers’ living rooms through connected TVs it removed the barrier between the TV and the internet.

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Mobile App Discovery
Imperfect Tools And The Overspend Or Die Dilemma

Karol Severin

April 2015

Apple

Discovery

Google

Discovery is accentuating the app economy divide. Superstar app developers can afford TV ads and supercharged digital campaigns to distinguish their apps from the ever-growing pool of competitors, leaving smaller developers increasingly locked out. Supercell and King’s combined $1bn annual marketing spend is not only out of reach for most, it als...

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