The ad:tech London conference rang several changes in 2010. For one thing, conference sessions were located in the same hall as exhibitors’ stalls and the seminars delivered by industry experts. This made for a buzzy gathering and more concentrated networking.

In another departure, a representative of the print publishing fraternity struck a positively optimistic note. According to Martin Morgan, CEO of the Daily Mail and General Trust, the DMGT now derives 30% of its revenue from digital. With 44 million unique users each month, the Daily Mail earns significant sums from advertisers. As a result, Morgan confidently predicted that the Mail site will remain free to access—and should pick up additional readers from news providers that move behind pay-walls.

But the big stories were social and mobile. Since last year, social media services have consolidated their position in the limelight. Shiva Rajaraman, product manager at Twitter, kicked off the two-day program, sharing some statistics (the site attracted an average 90 million tweets per day in September 2010) and news that the company will soon allow advertisers to target Twitter users on the basis of who they follow and what they are looking for. 

Next up was Colm Long, Facebook’s director of online operations, EMEA. Impressive stats here, too: According to Long, the site now operates in 70 languages (translated within hours by about 300,000 volunteers around the world), and 150 million people access Facebook via mobile apps. In the UK alone, there were almost 28 million users at the start of September 2010—more than 45% of the population, and about 55% of web users. Over 60% of UK Facebook users log in daily, and 52% are female.

Other speakers reporting from the front line of the social frontier included Nicole Vanderbilt, CEO of furniture and interiors site mydeco, which currently boasts 1.2 million unique visitors per month. Advanced software enables users to plan rooms, decorate and furnish them virtually, and offers various sharing options too. Site visitors can comment on the room plans and reviews of other users. Mydeco also benefits from the 1 million monthly click-throughs to retail partners whose goods are shown on the site.

Meanwhile, luxury brand owner LVMH is pioneering the concept of “open luxury.” The key, said Kamel Ouadi, EVP, Digital for Louis Vuitton, was to recognize the complex emotions associated with luxury in consumers’ minds, and recreate those by digital means. LVMH has tapped top-flight writers, artists, photographers, filmmakers, designers, actors and fashion figures to create exclusive high-end content for a new website, Nowness.  Launched in February 2010, the site aims to become “the essential reference point for luxury global lifestyle” and to disprove the notion that luxury and exclusivity sit oddly with social media. One new film or audio production from the stable of creative talents is uploaded each day. The site, said Ouadi, incorporates software “capable of assessing our users’ interests and tailoring our recommendations for stories to reflect their preferences as they browse the content archive.” The site now claims 200,000 unique monthly visitors.

Dell too is exploring the intersection of intimacy and scale, according to Manish Mehta, Vice President, Global Online for the computer giant. The goal, he said, was to take social media “beyond campaigns,” and ensure that Dell established an online “voice” that served as both foundation and expression of the brand. The company is also taking steps in social commerce—one project aims to create a tag cloud for aggregated product reviews, and post the results on Facebook.

Mobile business has also leapt ahead since 2009. Thankfully, the industry is well past the point of asking whether this is “the year of mobile”; recent statistics and projections speak for themselves. According to Ian Carrington, Google’s director of mobile advertising for the EMEA region, mobile search is growing at 400% per year, and spending in this area is set to climb from £500 million ($700 million) in 2009 to £2.8 billion ($3.9 billion) by 2013. Of course, not every proposition succeeds in this highly competitive marketplace. Carrington cited evidence that 90% of mobile apps are deleted within 30 days of download, as their novelty or usefulness wanes. But consumers’ willingness to engage and transact via mobile is good news for many retailers. Overall, said Carrington, Google has found conversions to purchase 43% higher on the mobile platform than on PCs.

Life isn’t always easy for exponents of the new mobile way of life, however—to judge by the recent adventures of Alexandre Mars, CEO of mobile communications agency PhoneValley and Head of Mobile for Publicis Groupe. Mars appeared on the ad:tech stage walking gingerly, and sporting a black eye. Apologizing for his appearance, he told the story: A few days earlier, he was attending meetings in New York City, where stocks of the iPhone 4 were low or nonexistent. Walking alone one evening, he was attacked and beaten by a gang of young people eager to get their hands on the coveted handset. The bruises, said Mars, were taking a while to heal. But he did manage to hang on to his iPhone.

There are growing signs that Apple is negotiating with news and media companies to launch a subscription service for online periodicals through the App Store.

Such a service would make sense given the potential of the iPad as a magazine—and newspaper—reading platform, and given publishers’ urgent needs to earn back some of revenue they’ve lost in the ongoing erosion of the print business.

Currently, Apple doesn’t sell online subscriptions but offers monthly iPad editions of magazines and newspapers through paid or free apps. For example, the iPad version of Wired is $3.99 while a daily edition of USA Today is free.

Details of the planned service are sketchy, but Roger Fidler, head of digital publishing at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute in Columbia, Mo., told the San Jose Mercury News Apple would likely take 30% of subscriptions sold through the App Store, and as much as 40% of the advertising revenue from publications’ apps.

The Mercury News further reported that Apple has “agreed to provide an opt-in function for subscribers to allow Apple to share [information] with publishers.” However, the Wall Street Journal disagreed, saying the Apple subscription service “wouldn’t allow publishers easy access to customer names or other personal information.”

It’s not yet clear what the price range of the subscriptions will be. Nor is it clear whether Apple’s purported shares of subscription and ad revenue will be acceptable to publishers. But it’s likely that these issues are big sticking points in the two camps.

Apple is trying to create a new revenue stream for itself along the lines of its lucrative iTunes Store and App Store. Publishers are also interested in new revenue, but they’re afraid of letting Apple control the market for digital newspapers and magazines.

In fact, given Apple’s track record of controlling their partnered offerings in a “walled garden”—think App store submission guidelines, App Store revenue-sharing control, iAd creative control, Apple TV rental pricing and control of iTunes’ music pricing—it’s likely print publishers are afraid of letting Apple control anything. Publishers see Apple’s experience in the music business as especially cautionary—a tale of what happens when a single retailer gets leverage over an entire industry—and they are determined to avoid a similar scenario here.

Still, Apple has the upper hand in these negotiations, and I see a bad omen for publishers in Fidler’s assessment of the situation. As he put it: “Newspapers are seriously trying to re-create the traditional print model in digital editions for tablets and e-readers.” No matter how alluring the garden of Apple is for publishers, new digital toys are not going to change the fact that publishers need to get paid. And simply put, Apple doesn’t have the greatest track record of delivering monetary salvation to dying industries through its digital platforms. Just ask the major record labels how well recreating the traditional music industry model on iTunes turned out.

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Yesterday’s Apple event was music to the ears of statistics fans. In his usual fashion, Steve Jobs reeled off a long list of millions and billions related to the consumption of Apple products and services. For example, in the time it will take to read this sentence, more than 200 apps will have been downloaded from Apple’s App Store.

Of course, there was a slew of new product announcements as well. Traditionally, Apple’s September events have focused on the iPod (275 million sold to date), and yesterday was no exception. Apple introduced a complete refresh of its line of popular music players. In the “one more thing” department, Apple also unveiled a revamped Apple TV focused on streaming video, including the long-awaited addition of Netflix (nicely complementing the recent addition of the Netflix iPhone app).

But as exciting as these product updates are for music and video lovers, the key announcements revolved around the introduction of the Game Center social gaming platform, and Ping, a social network for iTunes users. These new platforms lay the groundwork for Apple to leverage the growing nexus of mobile, social, content and commerce.

In my just-released report, “Mobile Content: Games, Music and Video Take to the Cloud,” I cite a series of studies by Edison Research and Arbitron that suggest social networking is emerging as a bellwether for mobile content consumption, with frequent social network access leading to higher-than-average indices of gaming, listening to music and watching video on mobile devices.

In many ways, it makes perfect sense: music consumption has always been about sharing (favorite artists, songs, etc.). And while one may bemoan the demise of the mix tape, incorporating sharing mechanisms into the commerce platform and making them available on mobile is a logical move that strengthens the platform and makes it stickier. Social commerce is fast emerging as a key driver of sales, and content marketers benefit by enabling their audience to do some of their marketing for them. In the case of Ping, the platform could also emerge as an effective way for artists to market themselves as well.

Similarly, as gaming becomes a more social experience (e.g. more users playing interactive multiplayer games and using social features to share both games and results), social networks are likewise becoming more game-like, with users competing for status through check-ins.

Yes, social network fatigue is a danger (as is Ping’s current lack of Facebook and Twitter integration), and no, iTunes fans didn’t get the streaming version some had been hoping for, but the combination of mobile, social, content, commerce and cloud points the way to the future.

Speaker: Paul Verna, eMarketer Senior Analyst
What: The Evolving Online Video Landscape
When: Thursday, July 29, 2010, 1 PM ET

To listen and watch playback of the Webinar, click here. You can view the PowerPoint deck below.

Join us to find out:

• How the video content mix is changing, and why it is transitioning from user-generated clips to full-length, professional TV shows and movies
• Who watches online video today and who will watch tomorrow
• How and where video content is syndicated and monetized
• What role social networks play in video distribution
• How companies are succeeding with online video—both ad-supported and fee-based—with specific examples and case studies
• impact and influence of YouTube and how it is evolving

About Paul Verna
Paul Verna covers digital media and entertainment, including online video, music, movies, video games, user-generated content and blogging. Before joining eMarketer in 2007, Paul held leadership positions as a journalist, author and communications professional
in the entertainment industry.

Paul has moderated panels for the IAB, Digital Hollywood and The Recording Academy. He is frequently quoted in publications such as The New York Times, USA TODAY and Bloomberg Businessweek and has appeared on "CBS Evening News," CNN, ABC, CNBC and FOX, among other media outlets.

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The iPhone has been slowly losing its dominance in the minds of marketers as Google’s Android operating system gained share over the past year or so. The complication of creating apps for multiple operation systems has been an issue for marketers for some time, but as Android becomes a major player in the app world marketers may also have to start thinking about the way those apps are monetized and how that fits in with the norms of different user groups.

There is evidence across several studies that Android users are somewhat less willing to pay for apps than their iPhone-loving counterparts. AdMob found in February that while 50% of iPhone owners worldwide purchased at least one paid app each month, just 21% of Android users did the same. Credit Suisse reported that less than 70% of Android users had paid for apps in the month prior to being surveyed, compared with nearly 80% of iPhone owners.

According to a May 2010 report from Distimo, an analytics tool for mobile developers, the Android Market is the only store with a majority of free apps.

That could mean Android users are simply responding to supply—a large base of free apps means less need to purchase them. Credit Suisse also found that Android users spent slightly more on average than iPhone owners did on mobile applications, suggesting that they are willing to open their wallets as well.

But the rise of an operating system whose owners are used to relying on free apps could mean a user base that is more open than average to receiving the advertising support necessary to support those apps. In-app advertising and app sponsorships tend to be especially effective forms of mobile marketing, and are also found less annoying or intrusive by mobile users. An expanding base of Android users may mean not only a larger audience of smartphone owners, but also a growing share of that audience receptive to marketing messages that support their app habit.