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

8/25: Adweek.com – Will New Apple Chief Mean Shift for Publishers?
Apple, its products adored by consumers all over, has nonetheless had a complicated relationship with publishers, who have battled with the tech giant over its intractable position involving the sale of content on its devices. Read more.

8/25: Reuters.com – Social media magazine Flipboard pursues TV, films
Internet video is getting even more crowded. Flipboard, the social media magazine whose investors include actor Ashton Kutcher, plans to add television shows and films to move it beyond the online articles that it offers now. Read more.

8/24: AdAge.com – As Growth of Search Marketing Slows, Agencies Change Tack
Considering some ad agencies are older than your grandmother, evolving for a digital world is hardly a new concept. But newer generations of agencies are focused on evolving too — especially those raised in search marketing. Read more.

8/24: Bloomberg.com – Emirates Craves Apple’s Cool in Online Push for 4,000 Crew
Emirates, the largest international airline, is advertising 4,000 cabin-crew jobs via online music provider Spotify Ltd. as it strives to attract international staff for the world’s biggest fleet of Airbus SAS superjumbos. Read more.

8/24: NYTimes.com – Google Reaches $500 Million Settlement With Government
Google will pay $500 million to settle federal government charges that it has knowingly shown illegal ads for fraudulent Canadian pharmacies in the United States, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday. Read more.

8/24: Mashable.com – Search Stereotypes: What Web Content Reveals About Cultural Biases
Few things bothered Sylvia Martinez more than what the web thought of her and other Latinas. Martinez, a VP and digital content director at the recently launched Mamiverse.com that focuses on the coveted Latina mom market, has been combating one of the web’s dirty little secrets for years. Read more.

8/23: Entrepreneur.com – The Fallacy Behind ‘Facebook Fatigue’
You can call it “Facebook Apathy” or “Facebook Funk,” but “Facebook Fatigue” it isn’t. The term “Facebook Fatigue” has wriggled its way into the business lexicon — most recently, in a pair of reports claiming there is flagging support for social media sites among users. Read more.

8/23: CNNMoney.com – $99 is the magic tablet price point
Hewlett-Packard couldn’t sell many TouchPad tablets for $499. It couldn’t even sell them at $399, which is around what they cost to make. But $99? Bingo. Read more.

8/23: WSJ.com – Tech Today: H-P’s Evolution
In an interview, Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker tells the Wall Street Journal that the company is beginning a “needed transformation” to better compete for corporate technology budgets. Read more.

8/23: AdAge.com – Facebook Seeks Acquisitions to Fend Off Google
Facebook, the world’s largest social network, is planning acquisitions that will improve site design, keep its service reliable and advance mobile features to stave off competition from Google and Twitter. Read more.

8/22: Mashable.com – Is Facebook Use Plateauing?
Haven’t sent your friend a virtual Facebook gift in a while? You’re not alone, a new study reports. Researcher Global Web Index compared Facebook usage in July 2009 to June 2011 and found that several Facebook activities, like virtual gifting, are on the decline. Read more.

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

Apple’s iAd platform launched to great fanfare in April, with the promise of revolutionizing mobile advertising. In June, Steve Jobs further excited industry watchers by announcing that Apple had booked over $60 million in iAd commitments for 2H 2010 from brands the likes of Nissan, Sears, JCPenney, GEICO, Target, Best Buy, GE and Unilever, as well as longtime partners Disney and AT&T.

The first iAd campaigns started to trickle out in early July, and in general, the platform has been slow to pick up steam. Wired reported in mid-August that “control issues” (something with which Apple is synonymous) were hampering the iAd rollout. On the other hand, most advertisers have professed themselves to be pleased with their iAds as well as the initial results of their campaigns. In a conversation we had earlier today, Chad Stoller of BBDO referred to this as the “return on innovation” – the benefit of associating your brand with something perceived as leading edge.

How long this effect will last is a matter of open debate. Jami Lawrence of Publicis Modem told the audience at this week’s Digiday Mobile conference that iAd lacks the reach brands are looking for, calling an iAd campaign little more than a PR move. And in a recent Reuters interview, Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz said with her usual candor that iAd will “fall apart” for Apple.

That long-term prognosis remains to be seen. For now, conversations I’ve been having with industry leaders as preparation for my annual look at mobile ad spending trends indicate widespread agreement that iAd has a) benefited the mobile advertising space as a whole, and b) underscored the effectiveness of mobile as a branding medium.

Just to cite a few examples, Maria Mandel, vice president of marketing and media innovation for AT&T Advanced Ad Solutions (NB: AT&T is an iAd advertiser) and North America Board Chair of the Mobile Marketing Association told me:

What Apple did was that they were able to brand and build a tremendous amount of awareness around in-app rich media advertising. And the success that they had with the upfront is evidence of that. They’ve really helped build out that market where now there are a lot of advertisers that are aware of in-app rich media advertising and are interested in doing it. And I think that’s a good thing for everybody in this space.

This sentiment was echoed by Frank Barbieri, chief product officer for Transpera:

With iAd in the market, it got everybody talking about the power of mobile as a branding mechanism, and that’s a rising tide that we’ve seen float all boats, including our own.

Eric Litman, CEO of Medialets, described what he’s seen as “a significant uptake in both the level of activity and the velocity of transactions happening on the premium ad side,” citing the launch of iAd as a key factor in this development.

The positive impact of iAd even extends to Apple’s closest rivals. Tony Nethercutt, vice president of sales for AdMob, the mobile ad network Google acquired in December 2009, explained:

We’ve benefited in a number of ways. First and foremost, from the attention it has brought to creative, and mobile, in general.

Apple undoubtedly faces challenges with iAd. Considerations such as cost, longer campaign development cycles and the necessarily limited reach that comes with a siloed network are readily acknowledged. But even firms that ostensibly compete with Apple in the rich media, premium ad space appear to have benefited, either directly or indirectly, from Apple’s entrance into the market.

Image via Apple

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.

When Steve Jobs first announced the iAd platform back in April, the clever analysts at Juniper Research put up a blog post asking “Will iAd Generate iAdspend?”

Following yesterday’s somewhat glitch-ridden introduction of the iPhone 4, the answer appears to be yes. Steve Jobs told an enthralled audience that Apple had over $60 million in commitments for 2H 2010 from the likes of Nissan, Sears, JCPenney, GEICO, Target, Best Buy, GE and Unilever, as well as longtime partners Disney and AT&T. Those commitments represent 48% of mobile display ad spending the second half of the year, according to Apple (which clearly based its calculations on more optimistic projections than eMarketer’s, below).

Of course, we have to factor in the Apple effect. Combine a new, slicker and seemingly more capable iPhone with a revised OS and a new ad platform and you have the potential for a rising tide. Apple’s entrance into the mobile advertising market in such a high-profile fashion undeniably serves as a validation of the medium. But whether it will lift all mobile advertising—or just mobile display—remains to be seen.

The iAd examples Apple demonstrated yesterday certainly looked impressive, as they should given how high Steve Jobs has set the bar. The bar for performance has likewise been set high, commensurate with the cost of participating in the iAd program. The awareness Apple has generated about iAd, which transcends the marketing community at this point, should work in favor of iAd advertisers, who will also get to bask in Apple’s glow.

The novelty factor associated with the first round of iAd likely could contribute to high levels of consumer engagement. Wired magazine saw a huge boost in sales when its iPad app was released, thanks to the considerable hype associated with the app’s engaging, touch-friendly content. The same hype could be applied to engaging, touch-friendly iAds, which launch July 1.

The question, however, is whether Apple’s halo effect will last with the iAd platform. The proof ultimately lies in the effectiveness of the campaigns once they are in-market, not in the flashy demos.

(Image Credit: James Martin/CNET)

It’s a good question, and one that I debated yesterday with Gregg Hano, the VP of publishing for Bonnier Corporation (publisher of Popular Science, among many other titles), and David Steinberger, the CEO of Comixology, a Web and mobile technology platform for comic book publishers. The event was the first in a three-part series entitled “The Magazine Mobile Imperative” presented by the Magazine Publishers of America in conjunction with eMedia Vitals, an online publication that serves print media executives transitioning their business to digital.

In terms of the question at hand, the available survey data present a decidedly mixed outlook. A recent CMO Council study, “Leveraging Loyalty to Transform Publishing,” found that the vast majority (92%) of US magazine subscribers still get their favorite publications in print format and prefer print in nearly equal proportions. However, as awareness of e-readers increases, a growing portion of consumers are starting to consider switching their subscriptions to mobile devices.

Consumer attitudes toward paid content are likewise in transition. As my colleague Paul Verna noted in his March 2010 “Paid E-Publishing Content: Books, Newspapers and Magazines” report (available on eMarketer Total Access):

More than 90% of online newspaper readers and publishers in North America consider news content “somewhat” or “very” valuable, according to the American Press Institute.

However, when it comes to paying out of pocket for that content, most US consumers would take a pass.

A February 2010 Nielsen study, “Changing Models: A Global Perspective on Paying for Content Online,” found that only 36% of respondents had paid for—or would consider paying for—an Internet-only news source.

In an even more discouraging finding for content owners, an Adweek Media/Harris Poll study noted that only 23% of US Internet users were willing to pay for online news.

Other survey data presented in the report reinforced this rather gloomy outlook. And yet, we have word that Wired sold 24,000 copies of its iPad app in its first 24 hours of availability (in other words, since yesterday). Granted, the Wired app benefited from a great deal of pre-release buzz, including a video that was widely distributed in the wake of its presentation at the TED conference in February, but it does suggest that consumer attitudes toward paid content, and specifically mobile paid content, are slowly shifting.

As might be expected, the magazine publishers who attended the MPA/eMedia Vitals event were both very interested in and concerned by the growing level of media consumption on mobile devices, from smartphones to tablets. The excitement in the room was palpable when Gregg Hano took the audience through Bonnier’s development of the Popular Science iPad app, which will serve as the basis for a platform Bonnier will use for its other titles. Popular Science has also been the beneficiary of some significant buzz: during his April presentation of iPhone OS 4, Steve Jobs referred to the PopSci iPad app as the “king of the hill” of iPad magazine apps (Hano did not detail the impact of Job’s endorsement but it’s hard to imagine that it didn’t result in a spike in interest).

Similarly, the audience listened with rapt attention as David Steinberger described that by mobilizing comic books and putting a vast catalog of titles in front of a large mobile audience, many of whom lack access to print comic outlets, his company’s platform has actually boosted, not cannibalized, print comic sales.

Overall, the consensus in the room was that while many magazines had failed to effectively utilize the Web to build readership and drive incremental revenues, tablets, and the iPad in particular, represent a huge opportunity to get right what they had previously gotten wrong.