73% of Blackberry owners have downloaded 5 or fewer apps; 72% of iPhone owners have downloaded 10 or more apps

"73 percent of Blackberry owners have downloaded 5 or fewer applications; in contrast, 72 percent of iPhone owners have downloaded 10 or more applications
Facebook is hot among iPhone owners: 71 percent of iPhone users report accessing Facebook from their mobile device, 37 percent listed Facebook as one of their top three most utilized apps and 18 percent claim it’s their favorite app.
30 percent of all smartphone owners are either comfortable or very comfortable receiving targeted marketing on their device."
Source: Quarterly Smartphone Intelligence Survey, reported in a press release from Conpete Inc, 10th September 2009

UK online ad spend breakdown: Search 63%, Classified 19%, Display 18%

"Paid-for search continued to grow, proving itself a mainstay of marketing budgets with an 11.8% increase from H1 2008 to H1 2009. As the purest form of direct response advertising, search is proving recession-friendly with marketers investing £1.1bn during H1 2009, which equates to 62.6% of all online advertising expenditure.
Total online classified spend was £335.8m in H1 2009 – or 19.2% of all online ad spend – and saw a slight decline of 3.6% in this period. However within this ‘further classifieds’, increased by 29% despite the property market crash and stalled automotive sector to £215.2m, promising news for the industry
Online display was down 5.2% year on year to £316.5m, with an 18.1% share of all online advertising revenues. Online display buoyed a tough year as all other mainstream media saw a double digit decline. "
Source: Figures from the IAB / PwC for January - June 2009, reported in their press release on 30th September 2009

The internet now accounts for 23.5% of UK ad spend, compared to 21.9% for TV

"The UK has become the first major economy where advertisers spend more on internet advertising than on television advertising, with a record £1.75bn online spend in the first six months of the year.
The milestone marks a watershed for the embattled TV industry, the leading ad medium in the UK for almost half a century. It has taken the internet little more than a decade to become the biggest advertising sector in the UK.
UK advertisers spent £1.75bn on internet advertising in the six months to the end of June, a 4.6% year-on-year increase, according to a report by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. To put this in perspective, in 1998, when the IAB first measured internet advertising, just £19.4m was spent online.
The internet now accounts for 23.5% of all advertising money spent in the UK, while TV ad spend accounts for 21.9% of marketing budgets."
Source: Figures from the IAB / PwC for January - June 2009, reported by The Guardian, 30th September 2009

Americans who use social networks are more affluent than the national average

"If you’re in the U.S. and are using a social network like Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn, chances are you’re more affluent and more urban than the average American according to Nielsen Claritas, which provides in-depth segmentation analysis of consumer behavior.
“Nielsen’s online data shows that about half of the U.S. population visited a social networking website in the last year and that number grows every quarter,” said Wils Corrigan, AVP, Research & Development, Nielsen Claritas. “The rising popularity of these sites and the deep engagement consumers have with them has advertisers and marketers asking for more and more detail as to which lifestyles should be targeted for their online advertising and promotions.”
Through Claritas, Nielsen defines U.S. households in terms of 66 demographically and behaviorally distinct segments like “Young Digerati” or “Beltway Boomers.” When those segments are overlaid with the activity of Nielsen’s online panel of more than 200K, we see a marked difference in the demographic makeup of the two largest social networks, Facebook and MySpace.
Facebook users have a largely upscale profile. The top third of lifestyle segments relative to affluence were 25% more likely to use Facebook than those in the those in the lower third.
The bottom third segments related to affluence are 37% more likely to use MySpace than those in the top third.
Users of Facebook were also much more likely to use LinkedIn, a network geared towards business and professional networking, than those who use MySpace."
Source: NielsenWire blog, 25th September 2009

Two billion iPhone apps have been downloaded from the iTunes app store

""Apple today announced that more than two billion apps have been downloaded from its revolutionary App Store, the largest applications store in the world. There are now more than 85,000 apps available to the more than 50 million iPhone™ and iPod touch® customers worldwide and over 125,000 developers in Apple’s iPhone Developer Program.
“The rate of App Store downloads continues to accelerate with users downloading a staggering two billion apps in just over a year, including more than half a billion apps this quarter alone,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The App Store has reinvented what you can do with a mobile handheld device, and our users are clearly loving it.”"
Source: Apple press release, 28-9-09
Note - the first one billion downloads took nine months; the second took only five (24th April - 28th September)

Teens would rather save money by cutting back on clothes and accessories than console & PC games

"Shopping for clothes and accessories is the first thing that teens cut back on with 23%, followed by console and PC games (19%), food, sweets and beverages (16%), going to the movies (15%), online entertainment (13%) and music (9%). However, staying in is clearly not an appealing option to teens as only 33% say that they are in more in the evenings."
Source: Research by Habbo on 61,000 12-17 year olds across 30 counties, reported in a press release, 16th September 2009

24% of twitter users review or rate products

"Interpret surveyed over 9,200 internet users in August, finding that roughly 24 percent of the respondents that used Twitter, reviewed or rated products online; just 12 percent of people that used other social nets—but not Twitter—said the same. Twitter users were also more likely to visit company profiles (20 percent) than non-Twitter users (11 percent), and twice as likely to click on ads or sponsored links (20 percent vs. 9 percent).
The higher rates of engagement with brands could stem from a number of factors. First, people aren’t spending as much time doing activities (commenting on photos, chatting, playing games) on Twitter, so they could be more apt to click on an ad that would take them away from the site. In contrast, it’s been proven that most ads on Facebook, MySpace and other social networks, fail to garner high click-throughs or other interactions, simply because users don’t want to have their experience interrupted."
Source: Interpret research, as reported by PaidContent, 24th September 2009

There are an estimated 400,000 'gold farmers', mainly based in China

"In basic terms, gold-farming [the production of virtual goods and services for players of online games] is a sizeable phenomenon. The rather wobbly-legged best guesses for 2008 are that 400,000 gold farmers earning an average US$145 per month produced a global market worth US$500m; but we could easily more than double the latter to over US$1bn. There are probably 5-10m consumers of gold farming services. The main uncertainty of estimation relates to the gold-farming market in East Asia, which appears much larger than that in the US/EU. That uncertainty in part arises because gold farming operates at four levels – local, national, regional and global. We should encompass all four but, to date, the focus has been almost entirely on the global trade."
Source: Page 66 of Current Analysis and Future Research Agenda on "Gold Farming":
Real-World Production in Developing Countries for the Virtual Economies of Online Games, by Richard Heeks, Development Informatics Group, IDPM, SED, University of Manchester, UK
2008, citing Wang, R. (2008) The Truth Behind Gold Farmers, WoWMine, Wilmington, DE
This excellent paper will tell you all you need to know about gold farming!

Habbo has 144 million registered users

Some stats about Habbo (August 2009):
"# 31 local communities
# Registered users: 144,000,000
# Unique visitors: 13,000,000 / month
# Page impressions: 990,000,000 / month
# Age distribution: 90 % between 13-18 years old
# Average visit: 43 minutes / session"
Source: Sulake.com, retrieved 26th September 2009

65% of online shoppers wait a day or more to complete their purchase

"Retailers should re-examine abandoned shopping cart rates. McAfee’s study found that 65% of all shoppers wait a day or more to complete a purchase, and the average delay is 33 hours and 54 minutes. Instead of panicking, e-tailers should understand the reasons for abandoned shopping carts and implement strategies to combat consumer fears.
“Retailers shouldn’t misinterpret abandoned shopping carts – many of these potential sales return later to finalize the sale,” said Keats. “Understanding this delay is critical for merchant analytics.”"
Source: McAfee, 17th September 2009

An estimated 247 billion emails are sent each day

"The number of worldwide email users is projected to increase from over 1.4 billion in 2009 to almost 1.9 billion by 2013. In 2009, 74% of all email accounts will belong to consumers, and 24% to corporate users.
Worldwide email traffic will total 247 billion messages per day in 2009. By 2013, this figure will almost double to 507 billion messages per day.
In 2009, about 81% of all email traffic is spam. According to our projections, a typical 1,000-user organization can spend upwards of $1.8 million a year to manage spam."
Source: Press release from The Radicati Group, 6th May 2009

EMI sold 2.25 million Beatles Remasters CDs in one week

"Underlining their timeless appeal and unique status in music, The Beatles have broken multiple chart records around the world following the 9 September 2009 (9-9-09) CD release of their digitally re-mastered catalogue. In the major music markets of North America, Japan and the UK, consumers purchased more than 2.25m copies of The Beatles' re-mastered albums, both individually and in two multiple-CD boxed sets, one in stereo and one in mono, during the first five days of release (excluding non-traditional retail outlets whose sales are not tracked by the chart compilers).
[...]
US: During the first five days of release, consumers purchased more than one million copies of re-mastered Beatles titles, and the individual albums and boxed sets debuted strongly across multiple Billboard charts. "
Source: EMI press release, 22nd September 2009

Twitter users tend to be older than other social media users

"Twitter users tend to be older than non-Twitter social media users (54% over 30 years old, vs. 42%), twice as likely to be self-employed or entrepreneurs (18% vs. 9%) and to be planning to start a business during the next six months, and more tech-savvy (24% vs. 15% "buy gadgets/devices when they first come out," 48% vs. 30% have created a website, and nearly four of ten (37%) currently maintain a blog, twice as many as non-Twitter social media users)."
Source: Crowdscience, 22nd September 2009
Other twitter stats also contained in the article

Total US ad spending fell by 14.3% in H1 2009, while internet display ad spending rose by 6.5%

"Total measured advertising expenditures in the first six months of 2009 fell 14.3 percent versus a year ago, to $60.87 billion, according to TNS Media Intelligence. The results are in line with similar measurements from Nielsen, which estimated that ad spending fell 15.4 percent for the first half of the year.
[...]
Ad Spending by Media
Internet display, up 6.5 percent, and free-standing inserts, up 4.6 percent, were the only media platforms to post growth during 1H09. Print, TV, radio and outdoor were all down. Cable was off 3.6 percent; spot was down 27.1 percent and Spanish-language TV dropped 12.7 percent.
Ad Spending by Category
Automotive remained the largest category, though it was down by nearly one-third. Auto advertisers spent $4.4 billion during 1H09 compared to $6.5 billion last year. Dealer spending was off more sharply than manufacturers. Through June, auto advertising is pacing at a level one-half its 2005 peak.
The ten largest advertising categories spent a total of $33.6 billion, down 14.5 percent from a year ago. Heightened competition among wireless phone companies and TV service providers boosted telecommunications category spending to $4.3 billion, an increase of 7.5 percent. Restaurants represented the only other gain among the top 10, up 0.6 percent to $2.9 billion."
Source: TNS Media Intelligence, reported by Television Broadcast, 17th September 2009

The US ringtone market is worth an estimated $750m in 2009, down from a peak of $880m in 2007

"The music ringtone market is within the decline stage of its short life cycle, according to industry research firm IBISWorld. The company forecasts industry revenue to decline for the second consecutive year - down 15 percent from its $880 million peak in 2007 - totalling just $750 million in 2009.
“Music ringtones practically boomed overnight, but with two consecutive years of decline it seems the industry is exiting just as rapidly as it entered,” said Toon van Beeck, senior analyst with IBISWorld. “And with the ringtone market already reaching its decline stage, its life cycle is only expected to last about 15 years.”"
Source: IBISWorld press release, 21st September 2009

Approximately 15% of Twitter traffic, 10% of MySpace traffic and 7% of Facebook traffic is porn spam

"About 15% of Twitter traffic, 10% of MySpace traffic and 7% of Facebook traffic is porn spam, according to security expert Alexandru Catalin Cosoi of BitDefender.
What's more, as porn spam rises on social sites, email-based porn spam has begun to drop.
Twitter, presently the "it" brand of social networks, currently suffers from a deluge of spam. Spammers register as users with provocative images, then follow mounds of other users and invite them to visit links to their sites."
Source: Research by BitDefender, reported by MarketingVox, 11th September 2009

The 2009 MTV VMAs generated 2 million tweets within 17 hours of broadcast

"Through the "Twitter Visualization" tool used on-air by video blogger iJustine during the VMA pre-show on Sunday night, MTV, social media monitoring firm Radian6 and design agency Stamen tracked more than 1.3 million tweets created about the show by the end of the premiere airing of the show (11:30PM EDT). There were upwards of 1.75M tweets about the show by the end of the second airing (2:30AM EDT), and more than 2M total tweets as of midday on
Monday, September 14."
[Show started at 7pm on Sunday, so midday is 17 hours later]
Source: MTV press release, published by Reuters, 16th September 2009

The furore surrounding Kanye West gave MTV.com it's second largest daily unique visits

"One day after 2.7 million unique visitors gave MTV.com its best VMA premiere day in the site's history, 5.5 millionpeople visited the site on Monday, September 14 to recap and experience more
from the "2009 MTV Video Music Awards," tying MTV.com's second-place record for unique visitors, all-time. The site saw 53.4 million page views, marking the second-highest day overall for the site. 17.9 million video streams were watched across the site on Monday, a whopping 64% increase from the day after the "2008 MTV Video Music Awards" and the second highest stream total in MTV.com's history."
Source: MTV press release, published by Reuters, 16th September 2009

Facebook now has >300m active users

"General Growth
More than 300 million active users
50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older
User Engagement
Average user has 120 friends on the site
More than 6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
More than 40 million users update their statuses at least once each day
More than 10 million users become fans of Pages each day
Applications
More than 2 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
More than 14 million videos uploaded each month
More than 2 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week
More than 3 million events created each month
More than 45 million active user groups exist on the site
International Growth
More than 65 translations available on the site
About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
Platform
More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries
Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications
More than 350,000 active applications currently on Facebook Platform
More than 250 applications have more than one million monthly active users
More than 15,000 websites, devices and applications have implemented Facebook Connect since its general availability in December 2008
Mobile
There are more than 65 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
There are more than 180 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products"
Source: Official Facebook Statistics, retrieved 16th September 2009
Earlier figures here (250m active users, in July 2009)

20% of twitter posts relate to products and brands

(On reflection this must include all posts to or from companies on twitter, plus all the spam 'buy X now - click here to save' spam tweets, so treat this with a bit of a pinch of salt. Search for any brand name on twitter to see what I mean)
"Companies are also benefiting from Twitter, where 20 percent of the tweets contain requests for product information or responses to the requests, according to Jim Jansen, associate professor of information science and technology in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) at Penn State.
"People are using tweets to express their reaction, both positive and negative, as they engage with these products and services," said Jansen. "Tweets are about as close as one can get to the customer point of purchase for products and services."
Jansen, along with IST doctoral student Mimi Zhang, undergraduate student Kate Sobel and Twitter chief scientist Abdur Chowdhury, investigated micro-communicating as an electronic word-of-mouth medium, using Twitter as the platform. Their results were published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Sciences and Technology.
The researchers examined half a million tweets during the study. The team looked for tweets mentioning a brand and why the brand was mentioned -- to inform others, express a view on the brand or something else -- and found that people were using tweets to connect with the products.
[...]
Results from the study found that users employ Twitter to inquire about product information. About 20 percent of the tweets contained product information in the form of asking and providing, thus giving companies a "rich source" of information concerning issues and questions that customers have regarding their products.
Jansen's prediction was not far off from the results, though some results did surprise him.
"A lot of the brand comments were positive," he said. "There are some good products out there, or at least products that people are happy with.""
Source: Research from College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) at Penn State, reported by Penn State Live, 10th Septmber 2009

28% of Japanese play mobile games nearly every day

"Overall 27.6% of Japanese play almost every day. 31% are male and 27.1% are female. On the other hand 44% of Japanese barely play any mobile games. Therefore you can say that Japan has a solid base (28%) of heavy users who enjoy playing games every day and a 44% base of non gamers with virtually no interest."
Source: Research by Data Labo, reported by CyberMedia Blog, 15th September 2009

Blogger has 10 million active users - people who have posted in the last 30 days

"Blogger (now owned by Google) has 10 million "active" users, or people who have posted something new over the past 30 days. The number of "seven-day active" users has doubled over the past two years. Blogger has 300m unique visits a month. In an average minute, 270,000 words are written on its blogs, and something like a quarter of a trillion words have been written on Blogger since its foundation."
Source: John Naughton, The Observer, 13th September 2009

83% of US online shoppers are interested in sharing information about their purchases with people they know

"The survey results confirm that consumers are social with 83 percent of online shoppers very or somewhat interested in sharing information about their purchases with people they know. In addition, 41 percent would be inclined to join and be active participants in online communities that share information about their favorite products.
This information sharing impacts commerce as pre-purchase opinions from others influence buying decisions for 74 percent of online shoppers. Additionally, 73 percent agreed that "people like me" are the most trusted sources when making a shopping purchase. In fact, product recommendations from friends are almost twice as valuable as product recommendations from merchants (46 percent versus 24 percent) for their ability to influence purchases."
Source: Survey findings from Ripple6, 9th September 2009

Hulu has a greater monthly reach than Time Warner Cable

Click to enlarge

"In July, some 38 million people watched a video on Hulu, according to comScore.
Meanwhile, we estimate that Comcast has approximately 62 million viewers, while Time Warner Cable has 34 million. (To calculate cable viewers, we multiplied their end-of-June video subscribers by 2.59, the U.S. Census Bureau's most recent stat for average persons per household.)"
Source: Business Insider, 28th August 2009

Chinese site QQ generated approxmately 88% of it's revenues from value added services in 2008

Inside Tencent Presentation

View more documents from Benjamin Joffe.

"QQ made over $1bn in revenue in 2008, with 40% net margin
This came from approximately 8% of its active user base
$719m from online value added services
$205m from mobile value added services
$121m from advertising"
Source: Presentation from Plus 8 Star, August 2009, charts 11 & 17

People who access Facebook on mobile devices are nearly 50% more active than non mobile users

"There are more than 65 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
There are more than 180 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products"
[Growth: In December 2008 15m people accessed Facebook through mobile devices, in January 2009 >21m people accessed through mobile, and in April >30m people accessed through mobile devices]
Source: Facebook official stats, retrieved 10th September 2009

3/4 of mobile phone owners never leave home without their phone

"Three quarters of all respondents never leave home without their phone
One in four would find it harder to replace a mobile phone than a wallet or purse
17% of Brits and 15% of Americans now social network via mobile
One in five across 11 markets set up a first date via text
15% flirt with someone other than partner by text"
Most popular features:
"Alarm clock - 67% use this on a regular basis
Camera - 62%
Games - 33%"
Source: Synovate global mobile phones survey, 4th September 2009

Apple has sold 30m iPhones and 20m iPod Touches

"Apple’s Steve Jobs appeared on stage today to say that the company has sold 30 million iPhones to date. Later in the presentation, SVP of product marketing Philip Schiller confirmed that they have sold 20 million iPod Touches. That’s a total of 50 million devices that have access to the iTunes App Store, which has more than 75,000 applications. In all, users have downloaded 1.8 billion applications (not including updates) from Apple"
Source: Steve Jobs, quoted by MocoNews, 9th September 2009

Lady Gaga's Poker Face is the UK's most downloaded song, with 779,000 downloads

"Lady Gaga's single "Poker Face" is the most downloaded song in the five years since download charts were first compiled, the Official UK Charts Company has said.
Digital sales now make up 98 percent of the singles market.
The New York singer, 23, known for her outlandish dress sense, topped the all-time chart, with US band Kings of Leon also among the most downloaded artists.
"Poker Face" notched up 779,000 sales on downloads, while "Just Dance", her first single release in Britain, came third in the chart with 700,000 sales.
"Sex on Fire" by Kings of Leon came second, while the Tennessee family were also fourth with "Use Somebody". British electropop duo La Roux's "In For The Kill" -- the most recent release in the top 10 -- was at number five.
The top five were all released within the past 12 months, indicating the importance of download sales to the music industry."
Full top 10:
1 "Poker Face" -- Lady Gaga
2 "Sex On Fire" -- Kings Of Leon
3 "Just Dance" -- Lady Gaga
4 "Use Somebody" -- Kings Of Leon
5 "In For The Kill" -- La Roux
6 "Run" -- Leona Lewis
7 "Hallelujah" -- Alexandra Burke
8 "Bleeding Love" -- Leona Lewis
9 "Chasing Cars" -- Snow Patrol
10 "Rockstar" -- Nickelback
Source: Official UK Charts Company, reported by AFP, 7th September 2009

Zippo's iPhone app has been downloaded 5 million times

"Virtual Zippo Lighter, a free, branded application available in Apple’s iTunes App Store has just passed a major milestone, with 5 million downloads since its launch about a year ago.
[...]
The Virtual Zippo is currently free, but the company will be launching a premium version this fall for $0.99 that will enable users to greatly personalize their virtual lighters.
This app ranks in the top 20 iPhone apps of all time according to Comscore. “If you were to tell us how popular the Virtual Zippo app would be twelve months ago, we would have told you that you flipped your lighter lid” jokes Pat Grandy, Marketing Communications Manager at Zippo, “but the results speak for themselves.”"
Source: MobiAdNews, 16th August 2009

A high resolution version of District 9 was downloaded over 1 million times within 24 hours of appearing online

"With over a million downloads in less than 24 hours, Peter Jackson’s Sci-Fi thriller District 9 is well on its way to becoming the most pirated movie of 2009. The huge download spike is caused by a DVD quality version of the movie that leaked onto various BitTorrent sites yesterday.
In the present day and age, no blockbuster movie can escape the fate of being pirated. However, the popularity of the various rips and titles can differ drastically, and a recent leak of a high quality version of Sci-Fi thriller District 9 might become a record breaker.
Two weeks ago a Telesync version of District 9 already found its way onto the Internet, but the rate at which the freshly released R5 release is being downloaded easily beats all other titles released in 2009 to date.
At the time of writing the movie has been downloaded over a million times on BitTorrent alone, less than 24 hours after it first surfaced. There are a few dozen torrents out there already, and the most popular one has over 50,000 people downloading the movie simultaneously."
Source: Torrentfreak, 6th September 2009

A typical iPhone contains $80 worth of apps; only 7% have only free apps

"Average number of apps per device - 65
Average spent per iPhone - $80
Average price of a paid app installed - $1.56
Media price of a paid app - $0.99
% of users who only have free apps - 7%
Extrapolated value of the total apps market - $3.3bn"
Source: AppsFire presentation, 6th September 2009

The Compare The Meerkat campaign reduced Compare The Market's cost per acquisition by 73%

Plus:
"It's also interesting to see the effect that this campaign has had on their price comparison competitors: according to Hitwise rival MoneySupermarket.com's traffic fell shed 25.2 per cent, Confused.com dropped 5 per cent and GoCompare.com fell 31.8 per cent."
Source: Amelia Torode of VCCP in her blog, 3rd September 2009
More data in her AdMap article

Apple's iPhone App store generates an estimated $2.4 billion dollars per year

"If I were to tell you that Apple’s app economy was worth more than $2.4 billion a year, you would laugh hysterically, shake your head and walk out of the room, yes? Surf on over to some other web site? But here I am telling you exactly that! According to mobile advertising startup AdMob, there are some $200 million worth of applications sold in Apple’s iPhone store every month, or about $2.4 billion a year.
Just to put that in context, Apple says about 1.5 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store. In comparison, the Android marketplace brings in about $5 million a month or on a run rate to do $60 million in a year, AdMob says."
Source: Research by AdMob, reported in the GigaOm blog, 27th August 2009
(I must confess that I missed this bit when I reported the original AdMob research here

Madonna's Sticky & Sweet tour grossed $408m

"According to the [LiveNation], the now-ended Sticky & Sweet tour grossed a massive $408 million, the highest-ever for a solo artist. After starting in August of 2008, the train reached its last station in Tel Aviv after 85 shows, 3.5 million fans, and visits to 32 countries. "Madonna has proven yet again that there is virtually no limit to what she can accomplish both creatively and commercially," effused Arthur Fogel, Chairman of Global Music and CEO of Global Touring at Live Nation.
Indeed, this is one of those rare, money-gushing machines that managed to set records through the worst of times. Now, Live Nation is positioning itself to benefit from a string of future windfalls. The latest tour tops an earlier record set in 2006, when Madonna grossed $194 million on her Confessions Tour. Overall, the Rolling Stones still claim the highest-grossing tour of all time - the massive Bigger Bang trek netted $558 million."
Source - DigitalMusicNews, 2nd September 2009, citing financial data reported by LiveNation

The number of mobile devices accessing Wi-Fi hotspots in the US grew by 79% in the first half of 2009

"Overall, the number of mobile devices accessing Wi-Fi hotspots grew by 79 percent in the first half of the year. While the iPhone and iPod Touch remain the most popular Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices, collectively representing 97.8 percent of all mobile device connections, the Palm Pre debuted as the No. 5 most popular mobile device in June 2009, just within the first three months of its introduction.
When looking specifically at the online audience in cafes and coffee shops, the findings reveal that people tend to use these venues as the extended ‘home office’ or ‘college library’ with 83 percent of users connecting locally in their own neighborhood. Additionally, 40 percent are business decision makers with management titles, 23 percent have C-level or VP titles, and 44 percent are in small- to mid-sized businesses, a traditionally difficult segment to reach."
Source: Press release from JWire, 31st August 2009

US newspaper advertising fell by 29% in Q2 2009

"For the second quarter of 2009, total newspaper ad sales fell 29% to $6.8 billion, down from $9.6 billion last year, according to Q2 figures released by the Newspaper Association of America.
As evidence of the continued toll the recession is taking on the industry, online ad sales were significantly affected again this quarter, slipping 16% to $653 million. Online newspaper advertising declined 1.8% in all of 2008, but tumbled more than 13% in Q109.
Total print advertising totaled $6.2 billion, a decline of 30% over the same period last year. Within the print category, national ads fell nearly 30%, while retail ads fell nearly 25%.
Classifieds ads took the biggest hit within the print category, falling a total of 40%. Job recruitment classifed ads declined 66%, the worst slide of any classified category. Automotive classifieds fell 43%, while real estate classifieds fell 46% for the quarter, the NAA said.Newspaper ad losses have grown worse in each of the last 12 quarters, experiencing the worst declines in newspaper history"
Source - Newspaper Association of America, reported by MarketingVox, 1st September 2009
A spreadsheet of the raw data from the NAA can be found here

Two years after launch Flip has 17% of the US camcorder market

"Within a few months, Pure Digital could barely keep up with orders. Customers found that the Flip was the perfect way to get homebrew videos onto the suddenly flourishing YouTube, and the camera became a megahit, selling more than 1 million units in its first year. Today—just two years later—the Flip Ultra and its subsequent revisions are the best-selling video cameras in the US, commanding 17 percent of the camcorder market. Sony and Canon are now scrambling to catch up."
Source: The Good Enough Revolution, Wired, 24th August 2009