People are getting more social and more altruistic. That’s the simple part of the takeaway from Nielsen SVP of consumer insights and analytics Radha Subramanyam‘s presentation at paidContent Advertising. Here are some of the highlights on the ever-growing, ever-changing social landscape:

Kicking off the full day ahead of paidContent Advertising, Geoff Ramsey, eMarketer’s CEO, talked about the rapid growth in mobile and the opportunities ahead—in particular, in mobile advertising. Half of marketers in the U.S. now have mobile in their marketing plans. But, he said, mobile is still best in a…

ZenithOptimedia has revised its ad spend forecast upward for the U.S. and Europe, while the internet is poised to grow 13.1 percent in 2010 and gain another 16.1 percent year-over-year in 2011. In the U.S., mobile ad spending and social media ad spending have had a particularly strong impact on…

In how many markets can media companies honestly say they’ll be growing in double digits this year? Exactly. The Indian media and entertainment market, which had a relatively tepid 2009 in face of collapsing media markets all around, is slated to be back on track, according to a new 234-page…

People love to debate the merits of free vs. paid content. But overlooked in all this is the cost of access to that content—that’s where the action is. We’re paying more than we ever have to receive our movies, news and music, according to Forrester analyst James McQuivey. Here’s his…

If 2009 in the digital-media world needed a title, you could argue it would likely be something to the effect of: “Social media goes mainstream.” Indeed, it’s no secret that social media is a huge force these days, but big questions remain about how companies – even the biggest, buzziest…

The results of the latest round of Indian Readership Survey is out and here’s a compilation of how some of the most popular English newspapers and magazines fared. All figures in this story are all-India average issue readership. Of the 25 English newspapers covered by this round, 12 registered an…

In September, India had 35.8 million Internet users (excluding visits from net cafes and handhelds), up 17% year-on-year, according to web metrics firm comScore. India’s growth rate is the third highest in the Asia Pacific region, China and Japan surpassing the country both in absolute number of users and in…

Four themes more or less dominated an interesting panel discussion on media and entertainment at the India Economic Summit of the World Economic Forum yesterday. 1) India is underadvertised. The country’s ad spends to GDP ratio is 0.55, while the global average is 0.86 and in the US, it’s 1.18…

Most English dailies in India registered a drop in circulation during January-June 2009, according to figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). Of the 52 editions of various dailies that were surveyed, only seven, including two editions of the same newspaper, registered a higher circulation compared with the previous…

A week after Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) splashed India’s top newspapers with its bright yellow house colour in a high voltage ad campaign, it has emerged that its email service has lost its status as the most popular email service in India to Gmail, rival Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Inc.‘s email service.…

So far, in our exclusive paidContent:UK/Harris Interactive poll, we’ve learned that only five percent of regular news site users would pay if their favorite haunt started charging, and that readers would prefer to subscribe annually (Thursday’s final installment: will bundling a newspaper subscription help?). But the all-important question is: how…

Day two in our exclusive paidContent:UK/Harris Interactive poll shows that more than half of those surveyed prefer a long-term subscription, not micropayments or day passes. Details here.

If Rupert Murdoch thinks readers will pay to read his websites, maybe he should think again. Exclusive research commissioned by paidContent:UK from Harris Interactive shows that most readers would run a mile. —If their favourite news site begins charging for access to content, three quarters of people would simply switch…

Audience measurement/analytics has been one of the few areas where companies have been able to hold out for high M&A prices. The latest example: Adobe Systems  has struck an agreement to acquire audience analytics company Omniture for $1.8 billion. The terms call for Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) to pay Omniture (NSDQ:…

India’s mobile phone companies added 14 million subscribers in July, up from 12 million additions in June, according to data from India’s telecom regulator. In January this year, India added 15 million mobile phone subscribers, the most ever. The country now has a total of 479.04 million telecom subscribers, of…

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) reached an agreement last month under which Yahoo Search will be replaced by Microsoft’s Bing sometime in 2010. According to Komli Media’s analytics platform Vizisense, the combined share of search traffic from India for Yahoo and Microsoft in July is only 8.49%, compared…

In July, on the back of reports that companies are gradually coming back to the hiring market, candidates spent a lot of time on job portals, data from Komli Media’s Vizisense shows. The top web portal, Naukri.com, saw an 8.52% growth in traffic, compared with June. Due to a 1…

Deficient rainfall this monsoon season and the resultant slump in demand in sectors that are key advertisers will adversely impact earnings of media firms and may have a disproportionately negative impact on media stocks, Kotak Institutional Equities said in a report today. India’s meteorological department yesterday lowered its rainfall estimates…