Here are a few of the top stories in which eMarketer data and analysis were featured this week:

9/16: Adweek.com – Appssavvy Ditches Banners for In-Game Activity Ads
Startups love the word “pivot,” but it’s rare that a company will outright ditch one money-making strategy for another untested one. That’s the case with Appssavvy. Read more.

9/15: Wall Street Journal – Google Says Display Ad Spending Rises Sharply
Google Inc. (GOOG) said Thursday that spending by the biggest advertisers on its display network more than doubled in the past year, a development that comes as the search giant’s rivals seek to counter its expansion in the display ad market. Read more.

9/15: Mashable.com – Mobile Ad Network InMobi Raises $200 Million
Mobile ad network InMobi has raised $200 million in financing from SoftBank to counter Apple and Google in the fast-growing market. The investment will be be doled out in two tranches — $100 million this year and then the rest in 2012, according to SoftBank. Read more.

9/15: AdAge.com – How Malibu Rum Is Using Social Gaming in Search of Winter Sales
Packaged in white bottles adorned with palm trees against a setting sun, it is no surprise that Malibu rum’s strongest season is summer. In July alone, the brand says it gets a 12% sales lift. But now the coconut-flavored, Caribbean rum is seeking to brighten its sales during the long, dark months of winter with what it says is the first social-media game for a spirits brand. Read more.

9/14: paidContent.org – Amazon Launches In Spain
Hola, Amazon: The company is officially launching in Spain today, as reported last week. Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) is opening its Spanish storefront with only physical goods: over 2.5 million books in Spanish and other languages along with CDs, DVDs, electronics and other consumer products. Read more.

9/14: New York Times – AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft Reportedly in Ad Deal
Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft, three major technology companies that have traditionally competed for digital advertising revenue, have created an unusual partnership in which they will sell ads for one another. Read more.

9/14: Wall Street Journal – Lights, Camera, Advertisements
During the July filming for “First Day,” a comedy series for teenage girls, a woman with a spreadsheet and a red pen sat in a director’s chair carefully checking off boxes. Read more.

9/13: Businessweek.com – Here Comes Apple’s Real TV
Get ready, America, because by Christmas 2012 you will have an Apple TV in your living room. I don’t mean the cute little box now called “Apple TV” that plugs into your set to stream Netflix (NFLX), but the real deal—a flat-panel Apple (AAPL) television set tied to the company’s online ecosystem and designed as only Apple can do it. Read more.

9/13: MediaPost.com – Publishers Need To Even the Real-Time Playing Field
Last year, real-time bidding established itself as a rising star in online advertising, growing from minimal adoption to 88% of advertisers planning to buy that way in 2011. This staggering growth quantifies what has become clear to many people in the digital media industry: RTB could redefine the norms of buying and selling media. Read more.

9/13: Adweek.com – Twitter: Payment to the People
It sounds a bit like a late-night infomercial. “You too can make money on Twitter! Just follow this simple plan…” And it’s true. Read more.

For more of eMarketer’s recent news coverage, click here.

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.

American consumers have plenty of alternatives to live TV, from TiVo and Apple TV to Hulu and YouTube. Content providers have kept some of the more popular programs off the Internet, so consumers have largely kept to “appointment TV.”

But their patience may be wearing thin. Internet use now rivals time spent with TV, according to Forrester Research data cited in Barclays Capital Internet Data Book August 2010. The idea of watching what they want when they want it is now ingrained in the consumer psych, more of a right than a privilege.

Several stories and research reports published in the past month seem to carry soothing statistics—at least for content providers—that the status quo is not threatened. In fact, a recent story in The New York Times seemed to assure that consumers are still hooked on TV—specifically premium cable content—and are not seriously thinking of cutting the cable cord any time soon. A New York Times/CBS News poll taken in August that found an overwhelming 88% of respondents paid for traditional TV service while just 15% had considered replacing their expensive cable habits with Internet video services like Hulu and YouTube.

Likewise, Comcast’s annual “TV Pulse Survey” showed 80% of consumers said they still regularly watch live primetime TV. Parks Associates’ “Digital Media Evolution II” reported that just 40% of US broadband households watched long-form video content online. And not to worry, content providers: most of it was just time-shifting from normally watched live TV shows.

But a new game’s afoot here: Comcast’s data also showed that 62% of consumers have watched primetime TV shows in time-shift mode in the past year and that use of time-shifting technology increased 61%, via DVRs, on-demand services, online or mobile. The top reason for time-shifting was a conflict with their personal schedules (79% of time-shifters). Programming conflicts claimed fewer respondents(63%).

Back in June, Nielsen’s Q1 2010 Three Screen report  showed the number of time-shifters grew to 94 million, up 18% in Q1 2010 compared with the same quarter in 2009. Although the amount of time Americans spent watching TV also increased by two hours per month during the same period, the average time spent multitasking with TV and a PC rose 9.8%, to 9 hours and 36 minutes per month.

Expect that shift to keep accelerating, as even more easy-to-use Internet-ready TVs reach stores—and living rooms. Some predictions:

• 65% of the 220 million flat-panel TVs sold in 2012 will be web-enabled and eventually connected to the Internet, according to investment firm Piper Jaffray .

• 98 million US broadband households will own web-enabled devices in 2014, for an installed base of 237 million devices, according to In-Stat .

• 57 million of all broadband households will be watching full-length online video programming on their TVs in 2014, In-Stat estimates.

Consumers already have the will to switch from cable and satellite providers. (The most notable part of the New York Times article was the pent-up animosity toward these providers, expressed by interviewees.) What they have largely lacked is the simple technology to make it happen. But the impending launch of Google TV, expected upgrades to Apple TV, Verizon’s recent announcement of an iPad app that streams live TV and many more efforts in the works, it looks as if the time is near—and inevitable.