Information Policy

Boom for Polish e-retail

Almost ninety percent of Poland's online shopping businesses are forecasting an increase in revenue over 2012.

Research company Gemius's report, "E-commerce in Poland 2011" notes that at present, some 11,000 online businesses exist in Poland, but that this number is constantly growing.

According to the report, the value of the Polish online market is 17 billion zloty (4 billion euro), with a growth rate of 10 percent per year.

The study claims that some 70 percent of Polish internet-users have already made at least one online purchase to date.

"Online shops are not afraid of the crisis," Okazje.info spokesperson Milena Bakalarz told the Rzeczpospolita daily.

Shoppers themselves most frequently cited price reductions as a key advantage to shopping online (38 percent), others noted the possibility to access top quality products (17 percent), while others evaluated the entire online process as time-saving (15 percent).

http://www.thenews.pl/1/12/Artykul/90053,Boom-for-Polish-eretail

BRIC countries lead advertising growth

Russia and India will record the strongest growth in advertising spend over the coming year, according to the latest Warc international ad forecast. It predicts that Russia will increase expenditure by 16.5%, followed by India (14.0 percent), China (11.5 percent) and Brazil (8.5 percent). The picture is very different outside the BRIC quartet, especially in Europe, where three countries - Germany (1 percent), France (0.8 percent) and Italy (-0.2 percent) - are now expected to record the worst year-on-year performances. All three economies are facing the possibility of renewed recession due to the eurozone debt crisis. Taking into account the likelihood of inflation, all three countries are likely to see a decline in advertising spend in 2012. The forecast for the UK is more positive, with predicted growth of 4.2 percent. But Warc, the marketing intelligence service, points out that the figure will be boosted by two sporting events - the London Olympics and European football championships. As for the United States, which is forecast to see a 4.1 percent increase in ad spend, its TV broadcasters will undoubtedly benefit from the presidential election. Indeed, across all 12 countries covered by the survey, TV is predicted to increase its share of main media advertising, growing by 5.3 percent compared to the overall media total of 4.5 percent. As for online advertising, the pace of expansion is expected to slow to 12.6 percent this year, down from an estimated 16.6 percent in 2011. The internet is expected to account for 20 percent of all media spend by the end of 2012.

http://www.ejc.net/media_news/bric_countries_lead_advertising_growth/

OECD Communications Outlook 2011

The OECD Communications Outlook 2011 examines recent developments in the communications sector, which has emerged from the global financial crisis with a resilience and underlying strength reflecting its critical role in today’s economies.
http://www.oecd.org/sti/telecom/outlook

Facebook IPO Will Put Social Network in Google, Apple's League

Facebook's Feb. 1 filing for a $5 billion initial public stock offering has the potential to give the world's biggest social network a market capitalization that would put it in the same rarified league as Google and Apple. The question is whether its future growth and financial performance will keep it there.

Facebook filed for a $5 billion initial public offering (IPO) Feb. 1, claiming to make $3.7 billion in annual revenue, $1.8 billion in operating income and $1 billion in net income.

With some 845 million users, Facebook may not have been an Internet darling for a few years. When the social network goes public, it will get a seat at the adult's table, joining Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) as an arbiter of online services.

The question turns to what will happen to Facebook when its financial performance is watched closely by investors and public shareholders. While Facebook follows in the footsteps of Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) and Google as a well-heeled Silicon Valley company, it will go public with a massive ecosystem of dependents already plugged into its matrix.

"I call Facebook an ecosystem, or a mothership, or a microorganism," Altimeter Group analyst Rebecca Lieb told eWEEK. "There are so many companies using either its API or its advertising services, and we're only going to see more of that."

For example, Facebook has tapped The Washington Post, Foodspotting, Spotify, Netflix, Pinterest and dozens of other companies as "social apps" partners. These software makers integrate their apps into Facebook to facilitate sharing users' interactions with those programs.

Social gaming platforms such as Zynga butter their bread in Facebook, making money from virtual goods and giving Facebook a cut. Ad platforms such as Buddy Media rely heavily on Facebook. Lieb also sees great untapped potential for Facebook in social commerce, where the company could compete with daily deals providers such as Groupon and Google's Offers deals service.

This ecosystem has made Facebook so rich in user data that Lieb believes talk of the IPO may have forced Google to announce its privacy policy streamlining early. Google last week said it will be putting nearly 60 of its Web services under one privacy policy, breaking through the silos of disparate Google accounts to enable each of the services to share data. Facebook already has this in place.

"Their product is customer data," Lieb explained. "Their revenue stream is advertising. Advertisers are advertising on Facebook because targeting is theoretically so precise on the platform. In order to compete with Facebook as a media, Google had to do this."

Catherine Tucker, associate professor of marketing for MIT's Sloan School of Management, said Facebook itself is only beginning to recognize the "untapped potential" of this kind of advertising through its platform, APIs and resulting ecosystem.

While social network Websites haven't borne a lot of financial fruit for advertisers to date, Tucker said Facebook's data can be hugely valuable to marketers. In a research paper, Tucker examined data from an experiment in which a nonprofit charity used both traditional and social advertising on Facebook.

Tucker found that social ads tailored for friends of "fans" of the nonprofit on Facebook attracted far more clicks than those that were not. "When you target ads based on who is friends with whom, you can double the number of clicks," Tucker said. "This is because advertisers can uncover consumers who could also get excited about their product."

Facebook itself acknowledged in its IPO filing:

"We believe that the recommendations of friends have a powerful influence on consumer interest and purchase decisions. We offer advertisers the ability to include 'social context' with their marketing messages. Social context is information that highlights a user's friends' connections with a particular brand or business, for example, that a friend Liked a product or checked in at a restaurant."

Clearly, the rest of the social media market is thrilled with the news.

Take this comment from enterprise social software specialist Jive Software CEO Tony Zingale, who went so far as to say Facebook's success "paved the way for us at Jive to bring the social revolution to the enterprise and have one of the most successful IPOs last year."

"Facebook's IPO is the ultimate proof that social is the new way to connect and share personal information," Zingale said.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Cloud-Computing/Facebook-IPO-Will-Put-Social-Network-in-Google-Apples-League-551919/

Facebook could set record with IPO

Facebook could raise as much as $10 billion with an initial public offering of its stock, according to sources, who say a filing could be announced as early as Wednesday. The IPO -- which is expected to occur between April and June -- would be the largest ever by an Internet company and would value the company at as much as $100 billion

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204573704577187062821038498.html

Facebook set to file for flotation

Facebook could fire the starting gun on the biggest-ever technology company flotation by filing papers for an initial public offering as early as next week. Morgan Stanley is close to being picked as the lead underwriter for the social networking firm's stock market listing, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The company is understood to be looking at a valuation of between USD 75bn and USD 100bn. Facebook is expected to offer a 10 percent stake, raising up to USD 10bn in an exercise which could also make millions in fees for banks and other advisers. The appointment of Morgan Stanley as lead book-runner would be a blow to Goldman Sachs, which was seen as the frontrunner after arranging a USD 1.5bn private offering of Facebook shares in January last year. The float would dwarf Google's 2004 listing, which is still the largest American internet stock market float. The search engine giant raised USD 1.9bn, based on a valuation for the entire company of USD 23bn. Expectations of an imminent filing with the US securities and exchange commission, the precursor to any public offering, have been high since Wednesday, when Facebook suspended trading of its shares on the private secondary market.

http://www.ejc.net/media_news/facebook_set_to_file_for_flotation/

World Economic Forum Davos 2012: It would be foolish to restrict Internet , say top corporate honchos

DAVOS: Amid raging controversy over Internet censorship in countries including India, corporate honchos at the World Economic Forum today batted for online freedom saying it would be "foolish" for any government to impose restrictions.

Popular social networking site Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg, during a panel discussion, underscored the need for free and open Internet platform.

"It will be foolish for any government to block these platform," said Unilever CEO and WEF Co-Chair Paul Polman.

According to Sandberg, Internet and the social media have emerged as a major platform for freedom of speech and free exchange of views, providing a great platform to the people.

"There has to be free and open Internet platform, but obviously there has to be safety and security for the users," she said.

Google and Facebook are among 21 companies whose executives have been summoned to appear in person in a lower court in Delhi in March for allegedly hosting obscene and objectionable content.

Sandberg further noted that democratic countries would need to work together on how to keep the Internet free, and still a safe and secure platform.

"Right to privacy is certainly very important. We need to have checks and balances in place on whether and what data the users want to share. We need to get the right regulations, but not those that are not practical or not of any use," she pointed out at the WEF.

On the issue of Internet freedom, Citigroup chief Vikram Pandit said that right to privacy and security of data is certainly very important.

The issues like cyber security need to be taken seriously and we need to do a lot better on these fronts, he noted.

"When we talk about free Internet and restrained Internet, the names like Arab Spring indeed come to the mind and the authoritarian regimes and democratic regimes," Sandberg said.

Participating in the discussion, Mexico-based Cinepolis CEO Alejandro Ramirez said that social media is indeed a powerful tool.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/world-economic-forum-davos-2012-it-would-be-foolish-to-restrict-internet-say-top-corporate-honchos/articleshow/11676293.cms

Telecommuting still not computing in Hungary

Only 8% work from home

Hungary ranks last among 24 advanced and emerging economies when it comes to options for working from home, according to an online survey by market researcher Ipsos of employees who could be remotely connected to their workplace.
Only 8 per cent of respondents said they "telecommute" using stationary or portable computers, email, phone or online chat to work from home. Of these only 1 per cent regularly do so, 2 per cent occasionally in the evenings or on weekends, 3 per cent several times a week and 2 per cent once or twice a week.
The survey found that over a third of respondents would be willing to work from a remote location if their employer gave them the opportunity, though a further 19 per cent said their job requires them to be at the workplace at all times.

28% in Great Britain

Other European countries surveyed have a higher proportion of telecommuters in the workforce, including Germany and France with 12 per cent, 28 per cent in Great Britain and 31 per cent in Poland. The number of telecommuters in the US and Japan is also higher, at 26 and 18 per cent respectively. Emerging economy India's low rate of internet access produced a high figure of almost 82 per cent of its online workforce being able to telecommute.

Understand benefits

Regarding the pros and cons of telecommuting, Hungarians are among the most likely to agree that greater opportunities to work from home can help to keep talented women in the workforce instead of leaving temporarily or entirely to raise children. The same proportion of respondents, 51 per cent, agreed that telecommuting reduces stress by limiting the time spent commuting, though only 41 per cent said it improves the balance between work and family.
Asked whether telecommuters are more productive than those working at an office, one in four agreed. Concerns that telecommuting may increase social isolation, or undermine chances of a promotion, did not feature prominently among respondents in any of the countries surveyed.
With 62 per cent of Hungarians using the internet, the country is below the EU average of 67.3 per cent but closer to the EU's most connected member - Sweden, with 92 per cent - than to its least connected member - Romania, with 35.5 per cent.

http://www.budapesttimes.hu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=23067&Itemid=219

Google performance drives mobile estimate to $2.6 billion

Google's "exceptional" mobile advertising and new data has prompted eMarketer to revise its 2012 estimate for mobile advertising spending upward, from $1.8 billion to $2.61 billion. Google has already come to dominate the field, capturing 51.7% of mobile revenue, far ahead of Apple's 6.3% share. The competition is tighter in the area of mobile display, with Google at 24.8%, Apple at 18% and Millennial Media at 17.7%.

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-2012-mobile-ad-spend-revised-up-to-2.6-billion-google-fueling-the-machi/

U.S. online ad spending to surpass print for first time in 2012

U.S. online advertising spending is expected to surpass print for the first time this year, according to a study released Thursday, Jan. 19, by eMarketer, reported AdAge, adding that this would "represent a watershed in the media business." Forbes noted that such a forecast means "digital remains the sole bright spot for newspapers and magazines," as print ad revenue dropped 9.3 percent to USD 20.7bn in 2011, the report said. The report also noted that total U.S. ad spending is expected to increase 6.7 percent to USD 169.5bn in 2012, attributed to campaign ads and mobile advertising, said Mashable. The Mobile Market 2011 Review released Tuesday, Jan. 17, showed mobile advertising skyrocketed in 2011, with tablet ad impressions up 771 percent, reported Tech Crunch. Meanwhile, mobile advertising on tablet computers is "outpacing and outperforming" the printed versions of the ads, reported the site Tab Times. Research from marketing company Affinity shows that iPad and tablet users have better product recall and are more likely to make a purchase after viewing an ad than those who viewed print ads.

http://www.ejc.net/media_news/u.s._online_ad_spending_to_surpass_print_for_first_time_in_2012/