Jack starts working with Original Travel
Jack Media has started working with Original Travel, an award winning travel company. Original Travel organises adventure led experiences and tailor made holidays to incredible destinations – honeymoons, family trips, bespoke travel for corporate clients or safaris and other luxury trips. Jack Media is tasked with helping them to grow their client base through digital channels including social media, online PR, blogger out reach and further down the line direct response campaigns. Check out their site as they have some fantastic holiday and experiences.
Ladbrokes’ iPhone App is Huge Success
According to an article from MobileJackpots, Ladbrokes have released a report on their iPhone sports betting application. The report revealed that since the launch just before the World Cup it is proving to be a huge success, with downloads even over taking some similar apps on the Apple Store.
Betfair, who released their own app just before Ladbrokes also provide a real money sports betting product, which for the first time let users bet through their phone rather than through a web browser.
It was reported that during the FIFA World Cup 2010 the largest number of bets for a sporting event ever were placed using the mobile app. Over 100,000 wagers were received, four times higher than the number of bets received via mobile phones since Euro 2008, the last major international football tournament.
Ladbrokes also explained that turnover for mobile gambling for the last year was up as much as two times the level seen just after the launch of the application, and they had seen six times the number of customers betting exclusively on mobile phones.
John O’Reilly, Managing Director for Remote Betting and Gaming at Ladbrokes, said, “Since smartphones and particularly the iPhone have improved their user experience, mobile gaming and betting have become important growth markets. We’re very pleased that we’re the first major bookmaker to introduce a complete betting application for the app store, and we will follow up the successful World Cup application with the introduction of a broad range of other apps”.
Bluff Poker Magazine Predict Huge Growth in Mobile Poker
Mobile Poker was forecast to be a multi-million pound business, however unlike mobile bingo and other casino games it did not take off as predicted. This was largely due to a lack of technology advanced enough to handle multi-player poker on mobile phones.
Now though, with powerful smartphones such as the iPhone and Androids becoming ever more popular, Bluff Poker magazine are predicting that the mobile poker industry will live up to original predictions. The magazine expects that major poker sites such as PokerStars who recently acquired mobile gaming company Cecure Gaming will flock to make mobile versions.
PokerStars Buy Cecure Mobile Gaming Company
According to a recent article from mobilejackpots PokerStars have purchased Cecure Company, who specialise in mobile gaming. The move by PokerStars to purchase Cecure certainly indicates that they are about to go mobile with poker. PokerStars recently completed a survey, which it had distributed to its players asking their opinions on playing poker on their mobiles.
Although PokerStars have not released anything official as yet we may be about to see mobile poker taking off as previously expected.
Google Invests $200m in Zynga gaming company
According to an article in New Media Age, speculation is growing over Google launching its own gaming service after it invested up to $200m in the online gaming company Zynga.
Zynga is the creator of many of the most popular games on Facebook, such as Texas Hold’em and Farmville and recently agreed deals to add its titles to Microsoft and Yahoo portals.
Japan’s Softbank Capital led the investment with a $150m outlay joined by $180m from Digital Sky Technologies. The investments helped Zynga raise close to $500m in the past year and although both Google and Zynga declined to respond to the speculation, sources close to the deal report that Google intends to make Zynga the foundation of its Google Games platform.
Google To Launch Newspass
Google plans to deliver Newspass, a paid content platform, to publishers before the end of the current year, according to two news sources. Newspass will offer publishers the ability to earn more revenue from online content.
Newspass marks the introduction of a new business model that will have a wide range of effects on consumers and create questions for the future of web-based news. Consumers will be forced to pay for only certain types of news with flexible payment options and the ability to access multiple sites via single login. How Google will distinguish between free and premium content will be a significant discussion point, as well as how it will transform the environment of online news and blogs.
Is Google’s moral compass pointing in the right direction? Newspass will likely benefit producers much more than Google, but the new business venture will surely have antitrust advocates raising flags.
TV ad revenue in July set to exceed those in 2009
The 2010 TV ad industry is predicted to consistently outperform results in 2009 with ad revenues in July set to be 6% higher than those in 2009.
Analysts have pointed out that the FIFA World Cup is a prime candidate for the increase in June, particularly at ITV. Several media agencies have predicted that this growth is set to continue throughout July, and start to flat line in August.
The TV advertising market has seen improved revenue figures compared to the same periods in 2009, with the total TV market up by around 8% in the first quarter and 19% between April and June.
TV advertising is still an attractive choice to advertisers, despite the slight inflation. Many advertisers consider it a cheaper form of advertising compared to how much it has cost throughout the past decade.
Yahoo described as ‘Having their Pride back’ as the company predict further growth
Within a presentation to Financial analysts on the 26th May, Yahoo projected their net revenue growth to be 7-10% between 2010 and 2013, comparing to a 13% decline in revenue experienced by the company in 2009.
CEO of Yahoo, Carol Bartz commented saying that “Yahoo has its focus. It’s excited about its future and it has its pride back.”
Carol also said that Yahoo’s improved outlook was involved with their refreshed fortunes in the display advertising industry with a forecast of display ad revenues growing by between 13-16% annually to 2013.
This announcement has also come in conjunction with the news that they sign a global partnership with Nokia in order to power their Ovi Mail app.
