Advertisers spend £1 in every £4 on the internet

The Internet Advertising Bureau in the UK (in conjunction with PriceWaterhouseCoopers) publishes its bi-annual advertising spend study.

Here are some headline figures that made me think:

• Online advertising’s share hits 25%, as advertisers spend £1 in every £4 on the internet. That represents £4 billion!
• Social media boosts online display by 27.5% on a like-for-like basis to £945 million. 
• There was nearly 200% surge in display advertising in a social media environment (on a like-for-like basis) and 91% year-on-year (absolute growth) in video formats. 
• Paid-search continues to perform strongly with growth of 8% year-on-year on a like-for-like basis to £2,346 million, representing 57% of total online spend (61% in 2009).
• Mobile advertising has experienced a 'staggering' 116% year on year growth (on a like for like basis), up from 32% in 2009. (Arthur: don't get excited, it is only worth £83 million, so 'staggering' is over egging it!)

Other stats

• By December 2010, the UK’s active online user base had grown to 40.3 million. 
• 47% of at home UK internet users access the internet with a connection speed of between 2Mb and 8Mb. 14% access online with a connection speed of over 8Mb. (Source: UKOM APS/Netview December 2010).
• Social networks now account for 25% of the time spent online in the UK. 

Top patent holders in Mobile Advertising

My previous post, Jockeying for position in Mobile Patent race, asked where Apple was in this race.

Alan Moore in in Mobile Patent Wars 2 answers my question:

1. Yahoo
2. Microsoft
3. Google
4. CVON Innovations
5. Nokia
6. NEC
7. Qualcomm
8. IBM
9. AT&T
10. Sony
11. Motorola
12. Sony Ericsson
13. Hewitt Packard
14. Hitachi
15. Alcatel-Lucent

Of note, CVON is selling their portfolio on 11th November.

Jockeying for position in Mobile Patent race

Alan Moore writes on the Mobile Patent Wars. Here are some interesting snippets from this post:

• The fact of the matter is that patents are all too often an after thought in many M&A process, RIM/Apple/Nokia/HTC have all been involved. Yet more multinationals are getting into patent wars, as we see today, using patents, to protect their competitive advantage.
• More than US$1.7 billion was spent in 2008 on mobile advertising, and this number is expected to grow to more than US$12 billion by 2013.
• More significantly, one in seven media minutes is spent with mobile already today. 

So those that own patents in the following areas would have their fingers on the levers of this burgeoning market. Alan reports that the following sectors would be valuable:

• In-application advertising
• Message tagging advertising
• Mobile search advertising
• Direct marketing to mobile devices
• Social media and instant messaging
• Pay per action in mobile devices
• Advertising campaign optimization in mobile devices

Finally, CVON is selling the world's fourth largest mobile advertising patent portfolio  behind Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google. It consists of more than 300 patents and patent applications across 58 patent families. (Side note: where's Apple in this race??)

So acquiring this little lot would be the equivalent of swallowing a jar full of steroids in the mobile patent wars for any of the existing competitors, I assume??