UBC is to sell its traffic and travel news business to US radio company Global traffic Networks for £9 million in cash. The deal was meant to be finalised last year but was not completed due to what UBC called the unfavourable economic conditions at the time. The deal is now on again, however, with… Continue reading UBC to sell commercial division

January saw the release of the IPA’s latest Bellwether survey, which found that in Q4 2008 annual marketing budgets were revised down to the greatest extent ever recorded in the report’s nine-year history. The cut was the fifth successive quarterly reduction in spend, and 2009 is set to see further cuts, said the report (see… Continue reading INSIGHTanalysis: Media Healthcheck – January 2009

The online gaming site category in the US has grown 27% during the past year to 86 million visitors in December 2008, while the total time spent playing PC-based online games jumped 42%, new research has found. According to the analysis of US usage of online game sites by comScore, Americans’ total share of internet… Continue reading Growth in US online gaming

Although mobile operators have seen average revenue per user decrease, they have sought to boost revenue via new value-added services; however, the most profitable data service is still text messaging, reports In-Stat. Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Message Service (MMS) technologies provide potentially endless revenue streams for forward thinking Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), the… Continue reading Text messaging remains most profitable mobile data service

This week’s edition of “The Inside Line” looks at the UK Quality newspaper market. Each week we will take a key media topic and ask the industry for their opinion.This week’s question:In light of the news that the Independent could be up for sale, do you think that there are too many Quality newspapers in… Continue reading The Inside Line: The UK Quality newspaper market

JCDecaux saw UK revenues fall 4.7% during 2008, although the company said that it “outperformed” its domestic advertising market. Excluding acquisitions and the impact of foreign exchange rates, the UK street furniture business enjoyed a “high single-digit” decrease in organic revenue in Q4. UK billboard business revenues were flat in the last quarter of 2008.… Continue reading JCDecaux revenues fall 4.7% in 2008

BBC Radio 2 continues to have the highest weekly reach of all the national stations at 13.5 million listeners, according to the RAJAR figures for Q4 2008, following a year on year rise of 5%.BBC Radio 1 was not far behind, with 10.5 million listeners, although it was down both year on year and period… Continue reading BBC Radio 2 remains top national station

Magic 105.4 remains above all the other London stations for the third consecutive quarter, in terms of weekly reach and share of listening, according to RAJAR figures for Q4 2008.Its average weekly reach in London is back up to almost 2 million listeners, after a period on period increase of around 6%.Magic was also the… Continue reading Magic 105.4 stays on top in London

Internet giant Yahoo! has reported a $303 million (£212 million) net loss in the fourth quarter, although its revenue was up for the period. The company’s net income for the whole of 2008 was down 36% on 2007 to $424 million. Yahoo! said that the loss was due to restructuring charges related to layoffs and… Continue reading Yahoo! reports $303m net loss in Q4

The increasing availability of broadband-enabled mobile networks will underpin continued strong growth in mobile phone usage in Brazil, Russia, India and China, according to a report published by Juniper Research. Mobile phone usage in the BRIC markets will grow from 1.21 billion in 2008 to 1.64 billion by 2013, said Juniper. The report also found… Continue reading Strong mobile usage growth forecast in BRIC markets