The Conservatives are to become the first UK political party to run a marketing campaign on the internet music service Spotify, in a bid to target the hard-to-reach youth audience.

A 40-second ad for the party will launch next Wednesday on the fast growing peer-to-peer music streaming service. The ad, which will run for one week, features the Conservative party chairman, Eric Pickles, speaking on the issue of debt, backed by a message that Spotify users should vote Tory at next year’s general election.

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UK internet visits to Facebook have increased by 86.1% over the last 12 months, according to new research from Hitwise.

The popular social networking website accounted for 14.5% of all UK Internet page views during September 2009, equivalent to 1 in every 7. Robin Goad, director of research for Experian Hitwise, said, “During September Facebook was the second most visited website in the UK after Google UK, but because users view a much larger number of pages per visit, Facebook is the clear leader in terms of page views.

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Google has reiterated that the worst of the recession is over this week by posting a 7% surge in revenue to over £3.64bn and profits of £1bn for three months to September.

The optimism reflected what the company said was an “across-the-board recovery in online advertising”, with even the struggling financial services sector showing a return to growth. While search engine advertising has held up better than most other forms of online media in the downturn, CEO Eric Schmidt said the advertising revival appeared to have spread across the internet more broadly.
Source: UTalkMarketing.com

The companies behind the screening of England’s World Cup qualifier in Ukraine as a pay-per-view online broadcast today hailed it as a success after almost half a million people tuned in, despite complaints about the picture quality.

The Swiss agency Kentaro, left holding the rights after Setanta went bust this year, and Perform, the internet broadcaster it employed to show the match after receiving no “satisfactory” offers from TV broadcasters, said almost nine in 10 viewers who responded to a post-match survey found the picture quality “satisfactory or better”.

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Staying in a place with no mobile phone coverage, or suffering from the internet going down, is a cause of high stress and anxiety for an increasing number of people, according to a new survey undertaken for Virgin Media by the analysts Future Laboratory.

As many as 85 per cent of full-time mothers always have the internet turned on at home, while a third of people said they no longer felt any sense of guilt about always being “connected”, either by having their mobile phone or computer turned on.

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Online competitions make it easy for individuals to enter from multiple email addresses or “hack” competitions using the same methods hackers use to hit sites with a “denial of service” attack.

In some cases, online contests have been cancelled due to high levels of fraudulent entries.

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“Discomgoogolation” is a new stress-related disorder affecting internet-obsessed Brits. It affects users who have become so entirely dependent on the internet they suffer withdrawal symptoms. It is described as a “feeling of distress or anxiety when unable to gain immediate information access”.

76% of people say they could not live without the internet.

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According to a joint study by Harris Interactive and Fleishman-Hillard Research, the internet is the most influential of all media channels, beating TV almost two-fold. In the UK, the average response on how influential the internet is was 42%, followed by TV with 23%.The study analysed the media consumption patterns and internet behaviour of 5,000 users across the UK, France and Germany.

However, UK consumers prefer to spend more time watching TV than surfing the internet. For time spent across all media, 38% is devoted to TV, compared to 30% for the internet.

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Instant messaging has slumped by 25% in the past year as social networking sites grow. Time spent on the likes of Windows Live Messenger fell in the UK from 3.9 billion minutes a month in April 2007 to 2.9 billion in April 2008. Time spent on social networking sites such as Facebook has increased by 1.3 billion minutes a month.

Source: The Sun 11-06-2008

Cobra Beer is to launch a series of pub-based podcasts hosted by Xfm radio DJ Danny Wallace and comedian Dom Joly as it looks to position the beer brand beyond its Indian restaurant heartland.

The ‘Cobra Pubcast’ is part of the brand’s £14m ‘Now you’re talking’ campaign and is intended to support a shift into the mainstream. The Pubcast comprises 10 15-minute episodes of unscripted banter between the hosts and their guests and will be released fortnightly from 6 June.Fans will be able to download the recording through Cobra’s website and iTunes.Actor Mackenzie Crook will feature in the first episode followed by TV presenter Iain Lee.

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