The media market is entering a brave new world of real time auctions and inventory management

eBay is increasingly moving away from the traditional auction model towards more ‘buy it now’ sales. They now allow major retailers such as Argos and Littlewoods to list items at fixed prices.

The business had dramatic success since the emergence of dotcom largely because the auction model is much fairer for people with the price linked to supply and demand, not set at some arbitrary level by the seller.
Read more »

A look at the fortunes of applications and widgets across social networks

Like Facebook, both Bebo and MySpace have now opened up their platforms to support third-party applications, encouraging users to send mass notifications and invites across the big three social networks. But since their peak in November last year, all of Facebook’s top 10 applications have shown a significant drop in daily users. The novelty is clearly starting to wear off.
Read more »

A personalised web for personal devices

In 2005, mobile marketing accounted for $255 million and 2006 was proudly unveiled as ‘The year of Mobile’ with giant leaps in web usage anticipated. Three years on and slow connection speeds, expensive data charges, clunky devices and the complexity of modern websites have stalled progress. With the iPhone launching in June last year however, and its 3G equivalent leading the current surge of touch screen phones, the suggestion is that that moment isn’t far away.
Read more »