Guess not all that offline ad money will be moving online.

The bulletpoint-version:

• Pontiac, Saab and Saturn account for 20.7% of GM's total measured-media spending and 16.5% of its sales.
• The three brands together had $286 million in measured spending through August and $400 million for full-year 2007.
• Pontiac -- handled by Publicis Groupe's Leo Burnett -- had measured spending of about $90 million through August.
• Saab's agency is Interpublic's McCann Erickson, Birmingham, Mich. According to TNS Media Intelligence, measured spending was $22 million through August.
• Saturn is handled by Interpublics's Deutsch and spent $174 million through August.

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NBC Still Can't Sell Super Bowl Ads (GE)

Traditional Super Bowl advertisers FedEx, Garmin., Salesgenie.com and GM aren't buying commercials this year, reports the AP.

NBC (GE) says it is negotiating with other potential advertisers for the eight 30- second advertising spots that remain open.

'We're hearing from a lot of companies that this is a time to show strength and confidence in their brands in a challenging economy,' said Brian Walker, senior director of communications at NBC Sports in New York.

Walker said NBC had a total of around 67 spots for Super Bowl XLIII and has sold about 59, or 88 percent. In September, NBC said 85 percent of the 30-second spots had sold, some for as much as $3 million each. Typically, 60 percent of Super Bowl slots sell by then.

Walker said NBC could technically sell ad spots up to the last minute before the event. He declined to say whether NBC - a unit of NBC Universal, which is owned by General Electric Co. - is facing pressure from companies to discount rates.

See Also:
Super Bowl Ad Sales Stopped In September

iTunes Music store is easy to use and music downloaded from it could directly by synched on to your iPod of iPhone, but iTunes songs comes with bundled restrictions. Amazon on the other hand does not impose DRM restrictions but than you dont have the same ease of use with Amazon MP3 website as is the case of iTunes. An ideal world should have had the liberty of Amazon MP3 website and the ease of use of iTunes. That ideal world is now made a reality by Advantageous, a Mac OS X script that adds “Get MP3 from Amazon” link in your iTunes store, allowing you to fetch a song from the Amazon music store through iTunes.

[video via CNET]

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Digital sales include songs sold through services like Apple's iTunes and ringtones.

The news shocked industry watchers. 'That's very high. No one is near that,' digital music analyst David Card told the New York Times.

Moving from the way people used to consume content to the way they want to now has been expensive and difficult for the large companies that minted money doing things the old way.

NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker calls the transition "trading analog dollars for digital pennies."

Atlantic, which claims it boosted digital sales without a precipitous drop in CD sales, is mostly alone in the industry with its success. Eight years ago, music sales were $14.6 billion. This year they'll be $10.1 billion. Forrester Research says they'll drop to $9.2 billion by 2013.

It's worth wondering if costs cuts associated with producing fewer physical CDs won't mean record labels will get to keep a larger enough portion of that smaller revenue to make the transition bearable if not beneficial. But grumpy record label execs aren't ready to concede that point.Says former EMI exec and current Boston Consulting Group senior partner John Rose: 'It's not at all clear that digital economics can make up for the drop in physical."

See Also:
Web Music Service iLike On The Block
Rock Band Creator Eyeing iPhone Music Game, Says Tapulous Not A Threat (VIA)

Photo: pinkbelt

Sling.com also allows Sling Box owners to stream live TV through the site. But since only about a dozen people (a rough estimate -- Sling says "hundreds of thousands") own one of those, Sling.com is for most people the same thing as Hulu. It even syndicates much of its content from the NBC and News Corp joint venture.

This makes sense: Hulu's built a model that works for consumers and we expect more clones going forward. We do still wonder, however, how sustainable such sites will be in the long run, given that on top of expensive hosting bills, they have to return so much of their revenues to the original content creators.

See Also:
Hulu's Revenues And The Clone That Wants Them

Facebook has responded to the recent onslaught of spammers by actually banning real users from using Facebook Chat on the pretext of sending too many messages, when they havent actually sent any. Facebook has recently won a historic $873 million law suit against a spammer who used Facebook chat to send spam messages to people using dummy profiles.

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Facebook has responded to the recent onslaught of spammers by actually banning real users from using Facebook Chat on the pretext of sending too many messages, when they havent actually sent any. Facebook has recently won a historic $873 million law suit against a spammer who used Facebook chat to send spam messages to people using dummy profiles.

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Facebook has won a historic law suit against spammer Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital by Judge Jeremy Fogel a District Judge at the Northern District of California. According to the verdict Adam is required to pay Facebook $873 million, that is highly unlikely but extremely symbolic. Guerbuez was using Facebook’s messaging system to send spam messages to other people using fake profiles. MySpace won a $230 million spam verdict against Sanford Wallace earlier this year, but spam still continues to flourish.

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And as you can gather, we’re still not quite at that dream state, where everything is available, sharable, discussable, and yes, even mashable.

So where are we, then? Will utopian (tele)visions for Facebook and MySpace soon come to pass? Or are we far from perfection? Will we ever get there? Looking at these fifteen or so official Big Media-borne devices, there’s still a considerable distance left ’til we see heaven.

Mixed Signals

Facebook is in a thorny position when it comes to media, we think you’d agree. The company has managed to assemble a pretty solid set of homegrown social software, and has done much to pioneer the third-party network application boom. Yet it has no MySpace Music or MySpace TV of its own. No major media-heavy awesome to speak of.

Which is certain puzzling, given the fact that Web users have been yelling the where-we-want, when-we-want refrain for a long while now, whether it’s on Hulu, YouTube, or, indeed, on Facebook.

Here are several items Big Media world that can be found on Facebook today. You’ll notice most applications are just gadgets ancillary to the brands which deliver them:

FOX - Yes, let’s start off with FOX. MySpace, after all, is part of the Fox Interactive Media umbrella, so it sholudn’t be expected that the company or any affiliates would establish a strong presence on Facebook. Nonetheless, FOX does boast a “News Video” application through Buddy Media. It’s neither terrible nor worthy of any applause. It just…is.

NBC - There are only two items from the NBC universe which have grabbed small but reasonable attention on Facebook. Both are games: “What’s Your iCue?,” and “Gladiator Battle.” No video offerings from the company’s news divisions, and no titles from NBC’s weekly primetime lineup. Which is disappointing. Very.

ABC - This broadcaster offers widgets for most all of its popular shows. Names like “Grey’s Anatomy,” “LOST,” “Dancing With The Stars,” and “Ugly Betty” are all present. Yet none feature the full library of content associated with each production.

It’s quite well known that ABC has remained largely independent and solitary in the Web video world, serving much of its online audience at its main website. The company has claimed that to be its preferred method of delivery. But the “be everywhere” motto being carefully exemplified by other broadcasters may draw ABC to rethink its strategy. We hope so, anyway.

CBS - The most outstanding CBS option on Facebook at present are: an AOL Radio application that CBS has partnered with; a fairly basic “Survivor: Gabon” widget; and a service dubbed “Breaking News Headlines.” There is also an item from CBS Sports called “Sprint Fantasy Pick,” which highlights weekly choices for the NFL schedule.

Suffice it to say that CBS needs to get going with the premium media delivery if wants to transition from “dabbler” status to something with a vested interest in tapping the social media space to full(est) effect.

The WB - Though the WB and UPN television networks merged some ways back to form “The CW,” there has still been an effort to resurrect the WB’s back catalogue and introduce new Web-only shows to eek extra value from the brand. Interestingly enough, this fourth or fifth place network (after CBS, FOX, ABC, and NBC, in no particular order) has delivered what I find to be a fairly good experience with its Facebook application. Its competitors could take lesson.

Seriously, the only thing negative to say about The WB at this point is that there should be more content to choose from. The necessary groundwork has been laid, however.

MTV - Listing some 7,500 monthly users, the “MTV Music Videos” application, currently in beta, grants users access to some 16,000+ music videos.

While the browsing experience can be considered clunky, the wealth of material provided is substantial. The developers promise that improvements are on the way, too. Improvements = good news.

ESPN - Games and team picks are where ESPN devotes its attention on Facebook; no radio or video highlights to speak of. The most utilized item in the ESPN playbook is “No Limits Moto Jump,” from ESPN Arcade and Skyworks.

How unfortunate. ESPN is one of the most valuable names in all of media, and the best the company can come up with is a motocross gimmick. They can do better. A lot better.

Comedy Central - The only official item released by Comedy Central to the Facebook application directory is “Indecision 2008 Games.” Which might be a tad past its expiration date.

In fact, the names that emerge from the Stewart-Colbert world that are relatively popular have been produced by non-affiliates. “Watch Colbert,” and “Daily Show News” are the sole items that promise video content. You might say that’s unnatural.

PBS - Yep, PBS is on Facebook! Besides a “Teacher Search” application, it boasts a video preview and podcast service for its trademark “Nature” programming. We’d like it if PBS were to do with this application what the broadcaster has done with things like Frontline. Put it all up on the Web for all to see. Wouldn’t that rock if PBS had a enthusiastic followers on Facebook? On Facebook!? Heck yes.

Are there any Facebook applications with ties to Big Media that you don’t see here which you enjoy? Are there any apps that you haven’t seen that you’d really, really want to see? Share your picks in the comments!

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There’s no video trivia application on Facebook as it exists so we felt there was an opportunity to jump in.

All of the work was done in house at a very modest cost.

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