In 2011, Twitter’s advertising revenues grew 233 percent, and LinkedIn’s sales were up 95 percent, and both are set to see more growth in the years ahead.

Meanwhile, just days before an expected IPO, Facebook has solidified its lead in online display advertising not just in social networking, but over all online properties.

According to figures out from eMarketer today, Twitter’s revenue from advertising was a mere $139.5 million in 2011, but that was actually up by 233 percent over 2010. The analysts believe that international growth will further push that number up to $259.9 million this year, a rise of 83 percent.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD) actually rounded off 2011 with more ad revenues than Twitter, with $154.6 million in sales. But it will see much more modest growth in the years ahead, with that figure only going up by 46 percent in 2012 to $226 million. At the moment, LinkedIn is proving to have the bigger international profile when it comes to advertising, with some 32 percent of its ad revenues expected to come from outside the U.S. in 2012, versus only 10 percent for Twitter.  (Full tables with forecasts at the bottom of this post.)

Today, Twitter has some 300 million users compared to 135 million for LinkedIn, and so some of Twitter’s gain on LinkedIn in ad revenues could be down to that simple fact. User numbers may, too, be the reason why Twitter will widen its lead in ad sales even further in the years ahead. By 2014, eMarketer predicts that Twitter will have annual ad revenues of $540 million compared to $405.6 million for LinkedIn.

But even those 2014 figures are still less than 15 percent of what Facebook makes in advertising at the moment, mostly in the form of display ads.

With revenues of $4.27 billion in 2011, $3.8 billion of that from advertising (eMarketer via WSJ) Facebook is the social network to beat. That’s true today but also in the future, as it only continues to enhance the services it offers to engage users and keep them on the site for longer.

According to figures provided by comScore (NSDQ: SCOR), in the U.S. Facebook has widened its lead in the display-advertising market in 2011. It now has 27.9 percent of that market, compared to 21 percent the year before. That puts Facebook significantly ahead of the next-closest competitor in display, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), which is at 11 percent. The full figures for 2011 and how they compare to 2010:

In UK figures provided also by comScore, the leadership of Facebook is even stronger, with over 30 percent of the market for 2011 in terms of revenues.

With Twitter and LinkedIn, it is too early to tell which social network’s ad formats prove to be the more engaging, and more attractive to media buyers.

For now, it looks like LinkedIn is winning at least in the variety stakes, with ads to match particular user profiles and professions, as well as different areas for placement (Profile Page, Home Page, Inbox, Search Results Page and Groups) and formats. Twitter has, so far, concentrated on promoted tweets as the basis of their advertising. LinkedIn offers advertisers a self-serve platform for its services. Twitter launched its ad platform only in November 2011, and as eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Wiliamson puts it, the “verdict is still out” on whether it will gain traction.

Related

• What's Coming In 2012: Digital Advertising, Up Close And Personal
• 2012 Mobile Ad Spend Revised Up To $2.6 Billion, Google Fueling The Machine
• Yahoo In Context: It's Declining While The Online Ad Market Keeps Growing
• Is This The Year Ad Spending Online Tops Print?
• Interactive TV Advertising: Not Huge Now, Will This Be The Year It Grows?
• Highlights Of 2011: The Year In Advertising, By The Numbers

In a blog post from Friday afternoon—the traditional time that many companies like to break bad news—Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) announced that it would stop developing and supporting 10 apps that it offers across various mobile platforms. They are Yahoo! Meme (iPad and iPhone); Yahoo! Mim (iPad); Yahoo! Answers (Android); Yahoo! AppSpot (Android and iPhone); Yahoo! Deals (iPhone); Yahoo! Finance (BlackBerry); Yahoo! Movies (Android); Yahoo! News (Android); Yahoo! Shopping (iPhone) and Yahoo! Sketch-a-Search (iPad and iPhone).

As you can see, the list is a mix of some of Yahoo’s more popular online brands and some services it created especially for mobile users, but all have one thing in common: they weren’t being used much by consumers. In the words of Yahoo itself, it is removing the apps as part of its effort “to continuously measure and scrutinize what’s working and what isn’t” as part of a new “mobile first” strategy.

What isn’t working? Yahoo has for years now been steadily falling behind Google in terms of how it has tackled the mobile opportunity.

This latest move seems like a particularly damning admission in the case of popular online brands such as Yahoo’s news and finance portals: it is yet another demonstration that Yahoo has failed to find mobile traction with consumers in some more obvious areas.

Meanwhile, others like Meme (Yahoo’s microblogging network), Deals and Shopping (mobile commerce initiatives) are signs that Yahoo’s attempts at creating me-too services to mimic those from more popular brands—like Twitter in the case of microblogging, or Groupon (NSDQ: GRPN) in the case of deals—have not come to much, either, at least on some platforms.

As for what is working, Yahoo says that it will continue to support a number of other apps: for now, News and Finance will continue, for example, on iOS; as will Sports, Mail, Messenger and Flickr. Yahoo is also pressing on with two new apps it launched last year, IntoNow, a GetGlue-like ‘check-in’ app for TV and other entertainment viewing; and Livestand, a Flipboard-like aggregated magazine (pictured).

But given that it’s easy enough to describe these apps in terms of popular competing services, one has to wonder if their days will also be numbered if take-up doesn’t take off.

Yahoo also notes that some of the technology in the de-commissioned apps, meanwhile, will be making its way into some of the apps that are staying online.

In his plans for building up Yahoo’s audience, usefulness and credibility once again, Thompson has made a point of talking up Yahoo’s culture of innovation—he mentioned it on his first conference call after taking the job; and again last week during his first quarterly earnings call. This should be the company’s way of making space to be able to execute on some of those ideas, and indeed Yahoo says it will be releasing new mobile products this year.
 
In that sense, it’s probably a step in the right direction. Thompson still has a very big task ahead, though, to convince an increasingly more distracted consumer base that this slightly tired Internet brand is one worth watching for the future.

Related

• Yahoo In Context: It's Declining While The Online Ad Market Keeps Growing
• Yahoo: Revenues Slightly Down, Investors Await Words Of Wisdom From New CEO
• Report: Yahoo To Name PayPal Head As CEO. Sign Of A More Commercial Push?
• AOL Doubles Down On Its Editions iPad Magazine With UK And Canada Versions
• Updated: Yahoo Highlights Immersive Ads In HTML5 With Livestand Launch
• Updated: Yahoo Teams - Yet Again - With ABC News On Original Video Series
• Report: Yahoo, Google Set To Muscle Into Crowded Tablet News Reader Space
• @ MWC: Bartz: Our Secret Sauce Is An Editorial Team That's Always Watching
• How Bartz Didn't Help Yahoo Mobile

—Yahoo: MaryBeth Malcolm has been promoted to senior director, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) category development and marketing solutions. The company also announced two new category leads: Debbie Menin to lead entertainment and travel, and Karina Montgomery heading up CPG/FMCG and health. Menin and Montgomery report to Malcolm, who reports to Elizabeth Ritzcovan, VP, marketing solutions. Throughout her tenure at Yahoo, Malcolm has overseen development of advertising programs on the Yahoo Homepage, Mail, Messenger, Mobile, Finance and Flickr. Previously, Montgomery was VP, sales development at SocialVibe, while Menin was entertainment practice head at AOL.

—Wikia: Hilary Goldstein joins as gaming category manager and Eric Moro is now entertainment category manager. They’ll lead Wikia’s community by curating and creating content as well as industry partnerships. Goldstein was previously editor-in-chief of IGN Games, while Moro was editor-in-chief of IGN’s movies, TV and Blu-ray/DVD site.

—AdoTube: Thomas MacLean has been hired to lead the new Detroit office as VP of sales. He previously was strategic accounts manager at Kontera. AdoTube also has new account executives, Bia Parente and Carter Wall.

Since its launch in 2008, Bleacher Report has been a disruptive presence in sports reporting. Its army of amateurs has led it to acquire over 20 million unique visitors a month and placed it in the top ranks of sports sites behind gorillas like ESPN (NYSE: DIS) and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Sports.

Bleacher Report’s new hires, who will cover specific fields like baseball and soccer, will join the five existing “Lead Writers” who were brought on last year to provide football-centered coverage.

The lead writers are in part responsible for guiding the thousands of volunteer contributors who produce a slew of often-absurdly specific content along the lines of ‘5 reasons Albert Pujols will like the french fries in Anaheim better than St. Louis.’

“We see this growth as another big step in creating a purer meritocracy for sports content creation on the Web,” wrote Dave Finocchio, Co-Founder and Vice President of Content and Product at Bleacher Report.

While the site is often derided by other news outlets, it’s hard to gainsay its business model which relies on sports team devotees to produce free content lapped up by insatiable fans. A spokesman described a typical Bleacher Report writer as “a guy who works by day and is a 49ers fan by night.”

The move to add more professionals may in part be to persuade advertisers that it’s a quality brand. In October, Ad Age reported that sponsors find Bleacher Reports hyper-specific demographics appealing but that at least one advertiser chose not to renew its contract because of the questionable content.

In addition to selling ads, Bleacher Report is also syndicating its content to national and regional partners like USA Today and Philly.com. Last week, it launched a tablet version of the site.

Bleacher Report’s success raises the intriguing question of whether its model could be replicated in other domains such as fashion, or whether there is something unique about sports readers that allows it to work.

Related

• Gannett Goes Long With Acquisition Of Fantasy Sports Ventures
• Bleacher Report Raises $22 Million, Aims For New Verticals
• Why Two Sites Decided To Start Paying Their Writers
• Sports Blogger Bleacher Report To Start Paying Contributors

eMarketer were the same analyst house that last year revised up their mobile ad forecasts to over $1 billion—the first time a company had made that proclamation. In the event, those revenues reached $1.45 billion, they said, nearly double what they were in 2010. Their 2012 figure represents a rise of 80 percent on last year.

Yesterday Yahoo’s new CEO Scott Thompson claimed that there wasn’t yet a clear leader in mobile advertising, and that it was still an open field. That may be the case in that there is still a lot of room for growth, but there is actually a company dominating the mobile ad business at the moment: Google (NSDQ: GOOG).

In 2011 eMarketer says that Google had about 51.7 percent of all mobile ad revenues, with sales of $750 million. The second-two biggest platforms were far behind it. Apple’s iAd took in $92.4 million for a 6.4 percent share; while Millennial earned $90.9 million for a 6.3 percent stake.

Google totally dominated the mobile search category—an area where Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Millennial currently do not play—with some 95 percent of all revenues. Google was not shabby in display, either, leading in that category, too—although not as comprehensively, with only 24.8 percent of the market, with Millennial Media and Apple’s iAd very close to each other for second place.

As a sign of how fragmented mobile display advertising remains, “other” was the biggest category of all with 39.6 percent of all sales.

How different mediums will grow. eMarketer predicts that spend in mobile search will double in 2012, with $1.28 billion spent in the medium compared to $652.5 million in 2011. Higher-value display and rich-media ads will see less investment—which could either be a sign that mobile is still working to earn its stripes as a credible medium with big brands, or a tacit belief that these formats simply are not working as effectively as search at the moment.

Display will be worth $861.7 million, a rise of 93.5 percent on 2011; video will be worth $151.5 million, a very respectable rise of 122 percent.

Very usefully for those of us who take forecasts with a grain of salt, eMarketer has also published a kind of leader board for how much different research groups believe mobile ads will bring in the year ahead. eMarketer is coming out at the top end with some of the more bullish predictions.

Mobile marketing and advertising services have also attracted the attention of venture capitalists: it was one of the big draws in a record-breaking year for mobile investment, according to research from the investment bank Rutberg & Co.

eMarketer notes the overall U.S. online advertising market grew was worth $9.2 billion in Q4 2011. That’s growth 23.5 percent on the same quarter a year ago. The full-year growth rate was comparable: up 23 percent in 2011 to $32 billion from $26.04 billion in 2010.

However, Yahoo’s share of that is going in the other direction: as the market grew last year, Yahoo declined. It now has an 11 percent share of the market, compared to 13.3 percent in 2010.

Meanwhile, Google’s share of the online ad market is continuing to rise: it stood at 40.8 percent in 2011, compared to 38.5 percent in 2010. New entrants like Facebook are also nibbling into the pie: Facebook’s share was 6.4 percent in 2011, up from 4.6 percent in 2010. Overall, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) reported $36.53 billion in ad revenues for 2011, compared to $4.01 billion for Yahoo.

A lot of that strength for Google comes from search: Google now takes 75.9 percent of all search ad sales, dwarfing Yahoo’s 7.9 percent share (down from 10.7 percent a year ago). In financial terms that worked out to revenues of $1.85 billion for 2011, nearly halved from 2010’s revenues of $3.16 billion.

Meanwhile, display is a particularly tough spot for Yahoo. This had traditionally been where it claimed superiority over Google and others, but that’s not the case at all anymore: Last week, Google said it was on track to make $5 billion annually from display ads, more than twice the amount of sales that Yahoo reported for display in 2011: $2.16 billion.

Here’s what that means in terms of U.S. online display market share, according to eMarketer: Yahoo’s display share is now 13.1 percent in 2011, down from 14.4 percent in 2010. eMarketer estimates that Facebook is bigger, taking a 16.3 percent share in 2011 compared to 12.2 percent in 2010. In 2011, Google’s share of overall US display advertising revenues grew to 9.3 percent in 2011 from 8.6 percent in 2010, but if you consider Google’s forecast of $5 billion, it, too, will surpass Yahoo unless Thompson really manages to turn things around.

Related

• Yahoo: Revenues Slightly Down, Investors Await Words Of Wisdom From New CEO
• Updated: Still Apple's World: 37 Million iPhones, 15 Million iPads
• Updated: Google Miss Sends Stock Down 9 Percent On Cost-Per-Click Questions

Those revenues were slightly lower than the $1.19 billion expected by analysts polled by none other than Yahoo Finance.

Earnings per share stood at 24 cents—exactly the same as Q4 2010, and in line with analysts’ expectations. That probably comes as some relief to investors, considering all the turmoil the company has seen in the past year: changes have included a new CEO, numerous executive departures, an overhaul of its advertising system to partner up with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and AOL (NYSE: AOL), and continuing loss of market share in both display and search to other competitors like Google.

The numbers and business situation of Yahoo couldn’t be more different from Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), which also reported earnings moments ago with sales of $46 billion for the quarter.

Some of the particulars from the Yahoo’s results release:

—Display revenue was $612 million, a four percent decrease compared to $635 million for the fourth quarter of 2010. For the full-year they were actually slightly up: $2.16 billion compared to $2.15 billion in 2010.
—Search revenue was $465 million, down a massive 27 percent compared to $640 million for the fourth quarter of 2010.
—North America revenue was $885 million, down from $991 million for the quarter last year.

Yahoo will be hosting an investor call to go through the earnings, and for its new CEO, Scott Thompson, to give a few more particulars about the state of the company. A call with investors and media three weeks ago when his appointment was announced were very light on specifics. We’ll update this post as that proceeds.

Update: The call is kicking off with a few words from Thompson. “I’ve validated what I believed coming in, the talent of the people and the huge opportunity ahead of us,” said Thompson. “I believe we have a lot of work to do and it’s still early.” He says that at the moment Yahoo has 702 million unique visitors worldwide. He says he will lay out the foundations for what he plans for 2012.

He says in the future he will provide more insight about the details of results covering regional differences.

“There is no question we need to do better and we will,” he says. “We need to better monetize the engagement that we have.”

Display was mainly affected by declines in the Americas—it actually grew in Asia Pacific and Europe, while declining in the U.S.

The sales force is getting overhauled, according to CFO Tim Morse. “Several major advertisers that reduced spend in 2011…have made meaningful commitments or 2012.”

Unique visitors are up by 11 percent around Yahoo’s “tent pole” events such as the Super Bowl, the Royal Wedding and others. Yahoo is putting more, Morse says, into its “editorial voice,” with the creation of original content. One recent notable announcement there is the project with Tom Hanks; another is the creation of Livestand.

Some frank and slightly depressing words that really size up not just the challenge ahead but perhaps hint at employee morale? “Despite these changes, revenue isn’t growing,” said Morse. “We expected better.”

Back to Thompson who gives a very robust pep talk for the future, which sounded very encouraging except that it’s Yahoo we’re talking about, which has been the subject of many robust speeches over the years. Some highlights:

“Our users need to use our services more frequently…We need to be a media company as well as a tech company.”

“I make decisions quickly and move fast, fast, fast. That’s how we get to playing offense rather than defense.”

“We will focus on balancing our investment resources and allocation of capital on products of today, tomorrow and long term…To strike the right balance, we need to focus on the products that are driving results today. But also the business of tomorrow. But also a small but meaningful percentage on products that will play out 12 months from now.”

“At least two fundamental building blocks customer experience and data…We want our users to spend more time with yahoo because they love what we are doing.”

“Data is the most underrated asset at Yahoo.”

“I believe our company can do much more to innovate and disrupt.”

Some questions from the analysts:

Future acquisitions?
These will be made to fill technology gaps, said Thompson.

What’s your strategy to turn around display?
Alas, no specifics but this: “We’re meeting with customers to understand why they don’t give us more of their spend. We’re after this with a real sense of urgency. Too early to say what actions we might take but full intention is to get that back and growing at a healthy rate.

Are there no sacred cows going forward? And what about premium video, any new deals?
Thompson: “I could interpret the first question in a variety of ways, as part of the work we’re doing we are understanding and evaluating all options going forward. Things we will continue, stop, and additional monetization strategies. We are being aggressive.”

Morse: “As for short-form, we had 9 of the top 10 original shows for web programing. We need to do more there (no numbers disclosed on traffic).”

What products do you think are appropriate areas for Yahoo to move into? And what about the declines in search?
Thompson: “Too early for strategic framework but we are looking at how to increase monetization.” Morse: “On search, in mobile it’s still too early on for how you monetize going forward. There is a lot yet left to evolve in mobile. I’m not concerned, I’m optimistic.” Thompson: “No winner has shown himself visible in mobile search.” (Google (NSDQ: GOOG) might beg to differ here.)

Related

• Still Apple's World: 37 Million iPhones, 15 Million iPads Destroy Estimates
• Yahoo: The Rise And Fall Of An Internet Pioneer
• Jerry Yang Has Left the Building; Resigns From Yahoo, Alibaba Boards
• New Yahoo CEO Makes Millions Even If He Does Nothing But Show Up For A Year
• What The Analysts Asked Yahoo Today, And How The New CEO Responded
• Confirmed: A New CEO For Yahoo, Scott Thompson
• Report: Yahoo To Name PayPal Head As CEO. Sign Of A More Commercial Push?

It appears so far that this is less about any issues with Kelly’s performance and more about getting Kenny. Kelly will become an advisor to TWCC and to Bain, and Kenny begins in his new role effectively immediately.

Kelly had been CEO of TWCC since July 2009 and other past roles have included head of media at AOL (NYSE: AOL). Kenny, meanwhile, brings with him some skills that could help TWCC’s growth in the years ahead. He comes from streaming and content delivery giant Akamai (NSDQ: AKAM), where he had been president. Prior to that, Kenny racked up of years of experience in digital marketing and interactive advertising: he co-founded VivaKi, the digital and television arm of Publicis Groupe, and he was chairman and CEO Digitas Inc. He also sits on the board of Yahoo.

In an interview with paidContent a few moments ago, Kenny said that the offer of a CEO job had come out of initial conversations for him to join the board of The Weather Channel. “We’d been talking about how to move faster on programming and other areas,” and that gradually progressed to the subject of Kenny taking on a bigger role.

He told paidContent that the three key areas he hopes to focus on as CEO are to invest more in programming, digital assets and international expansion. In programming, the emphasis will be on making more long-form content, while the mobile apps and the website will focus on more basic weather information. Both of these are largely ad-supported at the moment, and Kenny said this is how they will remain.

As for international, this is where you can see the Akamai content delivery expertise coming into view: “TWCC has been more focused on the U.S. up to now, but there is an opportunity globally and I believe you will see a much more global enterprise going forward,” he said.

In a departing internal memo to staff, which paidContent has obtained and is copying below, Kelly gave Kenny a full endorsement in the role: “TWCC will be in good hands with David Kenny at the helm,” he wrote. He noted also that the pair have been good friends for many years. 

Under Kelly, TWCC has seen some huge growth in its digital media business—specifically around its many apps for mobile devices.

Being about weather—a subject that is continually changing—these apps have picked up a particularly loyal following.

At paidContent’s mobile conference last year, Kelly noted that mobile users use The Weather Channel’s apps 26 days a month, with 30 million of the company’s apps getting downloaded in 2010. Overall reach for the company, as reported last year, was 35 million people, covering access from TVs, PCs, and mobile devices. During one period last year the company launched 10 separate apps in 11 weeks.

Kelly’s memo:

As you know, this morning we announced a change in leadership for TWCC.  As we make this transition, let me take a moment to thank you for making the last two and a half years such a pleasant and rewarding experience.

I came to The Weather Channel with many goals, including building a strong team, developing long term plans and moving the business forward.  A part of these efforts included our “one company” initiatives, which I believe have been a tremendous success.  I’m proud of these accomplishments and even more proud of the teamwork it took to get it all done. I will continue to be involved in the company, serving as a special adviser to David and the Board of Directors and I will also serve as an adviser to Bain Capital.

TWCC will be in good hands with David Kenny at the helm.  We’ve been friends for many years and I am certain he is the leader who will keep things moving forward and secure a great future for the company.

Thank you again for your hard work and dedication.  We’ve come a long way together and we’ve seen the power of one company and the power of vision and values.  In the past years, we’ve seen record viewership and page views and saw our mobile business reach unimaginable heights.  The resulting economic growth has put us in a strong position.  Thanks for the great teamwork.  Keep growing.

Sincerely,
Mike Kelly

Related

• Weather Channel's Digital Director To Lead International Mobile Expansion
• Industry Moves: TWCC; InMobi; Vibes; Topps
• Ex-Publicis Exec David Kenny Joins Akamai As President
• David Kenny Preparing To Exit Publicis; Klues To Be VivaKi's Sole CEO
• Publicis' David Kenny On Razorfish Buy: Digital Revs Now 25 Percent Of Total Revenues
• @ pcMobile: Sunny Skies Over The Weather Channel's Mobile Strategy

Sixteen years later, while studying for a doctorate at Stanford, Yang and his business partner Dave Filo set up Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web. Renamed Yahoo, it was soon to become one of the most successful internet businesses of all time.

Last week, Yang, 43, stepped down from Yahoo’s board with immediate effect. “The time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo,” said Yang in a press release that did not delve into details. It didn’t really have to.

Yahoo remains one of the biggest draws on the web. About 600 million people a month visit the site but like AOL (NYSE: AOL), that other dinosaur of the first era of the internet, Yahoo has been left flat-footed as Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Facebook emerged as the next generation of online leaders.

Sales have fallen at Yahoo since 2008 and Google and Facebook are taking an increasing share of its display ad business. The firm has cut costs and found ways to boost its profit margins and keep earnings up. But the pressure for change is on – and it shows.

In 2008, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer launched a $44.6 billion (£28.8 billion) takeover bid for Yahoo but it was resisted, especially by Yang, and eventually the deal collapsed. Yang was the man who fought hardest to reject Ballmer’s offer. Yahoo is currently worth about $19 billion but now that Yang has gone, it may require a more radical fix.

Yahoo is still huge, but what is sort of company is it? “They are not going to beat Google in search, or Facebook for the social network,” says Dan Olds, analyst at Gabriel Consulting. “They will continue to get ads because of their size, but if they are not seen as relevant – and they are not – the quality of those ads and the price paid will fall. In today’s environment, companies that are not seen as relevant are dead.”

Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group, says Yahoo lost its way long ago. “It’s big in news, sport, finance, email and it owns Flickr, the photo-sharing site. But somehow none of these sites add up to a whole. To turn this company around what you need is a Steve Jobs. Someone who comes in and strips it down to the core before building it back up again,” says Enderle.

Yahoo recently appointed a new chief executive, Scott Thompson, former boss of eBay’s online payment company PayPal. He replaces Carol Bartz, acrimoniously ousted by a board she dismissed as “doofuses”. Given the firm’s shoddy record with bosses, she might have had a point. But so did they.Bartz’s strategy – trim costs, sack people, sell stuff – did little for Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO). According to comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) data, the number of minutes that US website visitors spent on Yahoo sites during her two-and-a-half years as chief executive fell 33 percent while the stock price stayed flat.

It’s a bit early to see what Thompson has planned – the first results since he arrived come out next week – but the signs are that it will be more of the same. Kara Swisher, tech scoop-meister at AllThingsD, reported this week that Yahoo has instituted a hiring freeze and is considering more jobs cuts.

“The big question is what is he going to do that’s different,” says Colin Gillis, analyst at BGC Partners in New York. Gillis believes Thompson is likely to sell off Yahoo’s Asian assets, a move many analysts believe Yang was holding back.

Yahoo bought a 40 percent stake in China’s Alibaba in 2005 for $1 billion. It was a great buy. Analysts calculate that the Alibaba holding, along with the company’s stake in Yahoo Japan, is now worth $17 billion.

But what happens after that? Yahoo is undergoing a “strategic review” and competitors smell blood in the water. Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is reportedly looking at Yahoo again, albeit at a far lower price, and private equity firms have been sizing it up. Jack Ma, Alibaba’s founder, has also expressed an interest and is tipped as a likely buyer for Yahoo Japan and maybe more. Before Christmas, Ma hired the Duberstein Group, led by Kenneth Duberstein, once chief of staff to the former president Ronald Reagan, to help him navigate the political landscape in what could be the biggest Chinese takeover of a US company in history.

“I think he’ll try and turn it around,” Enderle says of Thompson. “But that’s not his skill set.” The rumour in Silicon Valley is that he was far from the company’s first choice. Like Bartz, who came from a design software firm, Thompson does not have a media or advertising background. “But if that doesn’t work, at least he’s a finance guy. He’ll know how to package this company for sale.”

With Yang gone, a sale of all or part of the business looks more likely. It’s what comes after this that worries Olds. “Yahoo is one of the top sites in the world,” he says. “That’s a lot of opportunity. But if it can’t redefine itself, it could be scattered to the winds.”

Related

• Jerry Yang Has Left the Building; Resigns From Yahoo, Alibaba Boards
• What The Analysts Asked Yahoo Today, And How The New CEO Responded
• Microsoft Appears Closer To Making Formal Yahoo Bid
• Yahoo Shareholder Third Point Demands Yang Leave Board, Wants Two Seats
• Microsoft's Ballmer: 'Lucky' To Not Own Yahoo; Nokia WP7 Devices Next Week
• Here's The New Yahoo Leadership Structure (For Now)

Indeed, you don’t have to fly to Park City, Utah to see that tech companies are everywhere at this year’s festival. As the event kicked off Thursday, for example, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) established a significant presence for the first time, providing extensive fest coverage through its various video channels. This includes the competition streaming of select short films on its Yahoo Screen channel – users will vote on a winner, with that short’s maker receiving a $5,000 prize.

Video sharing service Vimeo also announced that several of its short films will premiere at Sundance. And group-funding platform Kickstarter will have a number of its projects showcased at the event, too.

Meanwhile, Google’s YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG) – which has collaborated with Sundance for several years and continues to run a dedicated fest channel – also announced this week that it will conduct its own shorts competition at the Venice Film Festival in September.

The intersection between the indie-film festival circuit and big tech companies expanding into the video space makes a lot of sense.

As they seek to build video channels and evolve their programming beyond the scope of amateurish user-generated content, the festival circuit provides companies like Yahoo and YouTube access to emerging filmmaker talent that will work on the cheap.

“At Sundance, you have all of this content that isn’t encumbered by legacy deals with cable companies and such, and it’s available to be distributed on these new platforms,” said Brian Bedol, a veteran cable-industry executive who now serves as chairman of Bedrocket, a production company that operates a just-launched YouTube channel.

Bedrocket is also debuting indie comedy Sleep Walk With Me at Sundance. “It’s not only great content, and it’s not only independent of the shackles of legacy deals, it’s produced without studio and network overhead,” Bedol added.

The indie film world, meanwhile, has seen its traditional finance models collapse in recent years. While Hollywood’s major studios remain cautious regarding the disturbance of traditional release windows and finance models, indie film is embracing new digital options more than perhaps any other video content sector right now.

Fest backer the Sundance Institute, for example, ramped of its Artists Services Initiative last year. Through a partnership with Kickstarter, filmmakers involved with Sundance can use the crowd-funding service to raise money for all phases of production.

The initiative also aids with distribution through such platforms as iTunes, Hulu, Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) and Amazon.

Ahead of the festival, Sundance Institute announced digital premiere dates through these platforms for 13 films. One of those movies is filmmaker Zack Godshall’s Lord Byron, a New York Times (NYSE: NYT) Film Critics Pick that it was shot for less than $1,000 using non-professional actors. The film was never shown theatrically before it made its digital premiere this week.

Sundance can also lay claim for the current poster child for indie’s emerging distribution model, the Wall Street crash-themed drama Margin Call. Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF) and Roadside Attractions jointly paid $1 million at last year’s Sundance to acquire U.S. distribution of the film, and that paid off, with the movie grossing $5.3 million in limited theatrical play.

However, simultaneously with its theatrical bow on Oct. 21, Margin Call was released on VOD rental through iTunes, Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) for $6.99. The film grossed another $5 million through these channels, racking up about 500,000 rentals.

Related

• Documentary Streamer SnagFilms Adds Drama, Wider Mobile Distribution
• The Future of Distribution: Thoughts From a Platform Agnostic
• ComScore Video Rankings: YouTube Usage Spiked 72 Percent Over 2010
• YouTube's Lineup Gets A Boost From Two New Entertainment Channels

—SwoopThat.com: Book publishing vet Dan Farley is joining the San Diego-based college textbook price comparison startup as EVP, business development. He is responsible for building partnerships with on-campus college bookstores, allowing the stores to serve as retail hubs by hosting SwoopThat.com technology on their websites and receiving affiliate fees. Farley was most recently the president and publisher of Macmillan’s Henry Holt & Co. and the Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, and before that was head of the consumer publishing division at Harcourt.

—ABC Interactive: The Audit Bureau of Circulations has named Eric T. John VP of ABC Interactive, where he’ll manage products and services, day-to-day operations and building strategic business relationships. He’ll also work closely with ABC’s U.S. and Canadian Digital Advisory Committees as a staff liaison. He comes from AdKnowledge, where he was head of marketing.

—Digitas: Online advertising veteran Simon Calvert has signed on at Digitas as worldwide head of strategic planning, based in London and reporting to Mark Beeching, worldwide chief creative and strategy officer. Previously, Calvert was global chief planning officer and executive strategy director at Draftfcb.

—Yahoo: Javier Garcia has been promoted to GM of the U.S. Hispanic business, reporting to Armando Rodriguez, VP and managing director for Latin America and U.S. Hispanic. Garcia was the marketing development director for Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Hispanic Americas. Prior to Yahoo, he was director of media and mobile strategy at Diamond Advisory Services.

From Yang’s letter to the board:

“My time at Yahoo!, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life. However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo! As I leave the company I co-founded nearly 17 years ago, I am enthusiastic about the appointment of Scott Thompson as Chief Executive Officer and his ability, along with the entire Yahoo! leadership team, to guide Yahoo! into an exciting and successful future.”

It is a surprising move but only in its timing and its thoroughness. Activist shareholders—most notably Third Point’s Daniel Loeb—have called for his resignation, concerned in part that Yang was on the board while he was exploring ways to take the company private.

Yang also has stepped back before, resigning as CEO—but always keeing a connection. This time, Yang—aka the “Chief Yahoo”—is severing all ties with the company he and David Filo founded in 1995 for the navigational guide they developed as students at Stanford in 1994.  He has been on the board since 1995, was CEO from 2007-2009, and at this writing, still anchors the management page.

That page is headed now by Scott Thompson, the PayPal president who joined Yahoo as CEO just two weeks ago, replacing Carol Bartz, who was fired on Labor Day. Yang’s departure letter includes a shout out for Thompson, who in press-release speak thanked Yang for “the warm welcome and support Jerry provided me during my early days here.”  Thompson’s first earnings call in next Tuesday.

But Yang can’t get completely away: he’s still one of the company’s largest individual shareholders. And resigning won’t really help him escape the blame for Yahoo’s failure to thrive as an investment or to set a strong course, no matter how many highlights the company’s been able to string together. It also doesn’t blot out the memory of failing to sell to Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) when the price was right.

What it does do is remove him as an impediment, imagined or real, to Yahoo’s future and leaves Roy Bostock, chairman of the board, as the lead voodoo doll for outside investors and critics to stick pins in until he, too, goes away. (Kara Swisher’s sources say Bostock and three others will be leaving soon: board vets Arthur Kern, Vyomesh Joshi, and Gary Wilson.)

Unless, of course, resigning from the boards of Yahoo, Yahoo Japan and and Alibaba Group is a palette cleanser for an effort to work outside the company to take it private.

I hope not. I hope Yang is sincere when he says it’s time to pursue interests outside of Yahoo! (I’ll give him the exclamation point this once).

It’s bittersweet to watch someone who has given his all, sometimes with stunning results and sometimes with outcomes far less than desired, decide what’s best for him—and the company—is to move on.

The sweet bit comes from knowing Jerry Yang has a lot more left to accomplish.

Yahoo! Stock Chart by YCharts

Related

• What The Analysts Asked Yahoo Today, And How The New CEO Responded
• Yahoo Shareholder Third Point Demands Yang Leave Board, Wants Two Seats
• Three Years Later, Microsoft Attempting Another Bid For Yahoo?
• Yahoo's Interim CEO: 'We Are Not In Limbo'; Yahoo's Board: Well, Sort Of
• Here's The New Yahoo Leadership Structure (For Now)
• Updated: Bartz Out At Yahoo; Fired Over The Phone

According to comScore’s latest monthly report on online video usage, Google – driven primarily by the performance of YouTube – drew 157.2 million unique viewers to its video offerings in December. That marked a 9 percent rise from December 2010 and represented 86 percent of the total internet audience for the month, according to comScore.

And with YouTube focusing on longer form, professionally produced video in its dedicated “TV” channels—not to mention other offerings like full-length movies—usage per unique viewer shot up 72 percent year-to-year to an average of 471.9 minutes per viewer.

The top 10 dedicated video channels all have homes on YouTube, with music channel VEVO ranking first, Warner Music second and game channel Machinima third. Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), which has also been aggressively building content channels, had a 6 percent year-to-year rise in unique video viewers to 53.3 million, while Hulu saw its unique viewers spike 18 percent to 31.2 million for December, according to comScore (NSDQ: SCOR).

Facebook saw only minimal growth, 2 percent to 42,024 unique viewers, over Dec. 2010.

Some other highlights from the comScore report:

—Hulu once again delivered the most video ad impressions with nearly 1.5 million ads rendered in December, up 22 percent from the same month in 2010.

—Across the entire internet, video ad deliveries increased 20 percent to 7.1 million.

—181.7 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in December – up 6 percent over 2010—for an average of 23.2 hours per viewer (up 59 percent). The U.S. Internet audience watched nearly 43.5 billion videos last month.

Related

• YouTube's Lineup Gets A Boost From Two New Entertainment Channels
• What The Burst Of Hollywood A-Listers Will Mean For Online Video
• Hulu Plus Claims More Than 1.5 Million Subs; Commits $500 Million To Content In 2012
• Can Tom Hanks Really Deliver The 'Comic-Con Crowd' For Yahoo?

The two new channels are part of the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) video portal’s $100 million investment in original appointment viewing; YouTube is backing up to 100 professionally produced channels.

Entertainment News Television, a co-production by ION TV and Penske Media Corp., went live at 9 a.m., promising to deliver “breaking entertainment news 24/7”—at least until 11 p.m. when it shuts down each night. The showbiz news-and-interviews format leverages talent from Penske’s stable of entertainment-themed websites, including TVLine’s Michael Ausiello and HollywoodLife’s Bonnie Fuller.

The Young Hollywood Network (YHN), meanwhile, kicked off its daily 1 p.m. offering of celebrity interviews and other showbiz-themed programming with the weekly series Studio Secrets. The one-on-one interview show, which features pretty much any celebrity guest eponymously named production company YHN can get access to from its perch within Beverly Hills’ Four Seasons Hotel, kicked off Monday with an interview of actor Ewan McGregor.

Tuesday’s 1 p.m. YHN show, All Quiet on the Set, will feature behind-the-scenes visits to TV shows and movies; this week’s installment will be focused on ABC (NYSE: DIS) comedy The Middle.

YHN will round out each week with the industry-focused Power Players on Wednesdays, the celebrity-lifestyle-themed Guest List Only on Thursdays and the pop-culture-oriented YHN Trend Report on Fridays.

Young Hollywood founder and CEO R.J. Williams told paidContent that he secured a “seven-figure commitment” from YouTube to produce the five-day-a-week slate of shows.

YHN also has relationships with brands including Coca-Cola, Samsung, Research in Motion (NSDQ: RIMM) and Electronic Arts (NSDQ: ERTS) to help pay the bills, which run high.

Williams employs a staff of 25 full-time employees, plus myriad freelancers at his production company, which operates “24/7” to keep its five-day-a-week programming commitment.

Williams, who used to produce celebrity-interview-related content for cable channels including the TV Guide Network, also rents out an entire wing at the Four Seasons.

“It’s up there,” Williams said, responding to a question about operational cost. “But when you look at it in the grand scheme of things, it’s just so efficient to be based here. We just have access to so much talent.”

Other YouTube original-content channels that have already launched include the Madonna-backed DanceOn, World Wrestling Entertainment’s Fan Nation and the satire-oriented Onion News Network.

The launch of the two channels comes 24 hours after rival Hulu announced its latest original series, Battleground. The politically themed dramedy (executive produced by the guy directing Sony’s next big Spider-Man tentpole, Marc Webb) is Hulu’s first original scripted offering.

Hulu carefully chose a traditional TV forum for the announcement: the Television Critics Tour in Pasadena, Calif. Sunday. Hulu SVP of content Andy Forssell also announced that it had picked up a documentary series, Up to Speed, from filmmaker Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused) and re-upped with documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock to produce another season of his unscripted series A Day in the Life.

Hulu’s big programming news, meanwhile, followed an announcement last week by Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) that it’s teaming with Tom Hanks’ Playtone Productions to produce an original animated series, Electric Town.

Related

• @ CES: YouTube Thinks Web Video Is Big, Also Pretty Sure Sun Rises In East
• Hulu Plus Claims More Than 1.5 Million Subs; Commits $500 Million To Content In 2012
• Study: Old-School TV Viewing Is Still Growing
• Can Tom Hanks Really Deliver The 'Comic-Con Crowd' For Yahoo?

Some numbers out from eMarketer (via Memeburn) seem to imply that up to now, advertisers have not ignored connected TV. But nor has interest in it grown:

Looking just at investment in just in digital video advertising (itself only a part of overall spend in digital ads), only eight percent of advertisers said they invested in connected TV video ads in 2011. That’s a modest number, and smaller than other mediums like mobile, where respectively 42 and 41 percent of advertisers said they would spend on iPhone and iPad platforms, and 31 percent said they would invest in ads for Android devices.

Perhaps more tellingly, that eight percent was flat on the year before—that implies that interest in the medium of connected TV seems to have stalled.

Publishers, meanwhile, seem to also be trying to play catch-up in this area: in 2011, 17 percent said they supported video advertising for connected TVs, while only 11 percent supported it in 2010. According to eMarketer’s numbers that puts connected TV video ads on par with video advertising support for non-Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) tablets, but still a ways behind iPhone and iPad (both 35 percent) and Android smartphones (28 percent).

Judging by announcements last week during CES, consumer electronics companies still laying the groundwork for how advertising on connected TV platforms might work in the years ahead:

—Samsung is forging its Smart TV strategy on its own, proprietary platform (complete with Kinect-like gesture recognition and lots of content options). And last week it also launched its own AdHub connected TV advertising services. Premium Interactive Advertising (PIA) is Samsung’s very first ad initiative for its Smart TV platform, and offers advertisers banner advertising on its home screen with functions like click to microsite (interactive multi pages), click to video, and click to application.

—And while Google (NSDQ: GOOG) had a mixed showing for its Google TV connected platform at CES, it continues to make headway into how it is helping more traditional broadcasters sell and manage their advertising inventory. (Their latest customer win: Cox Media.) As those broadcasters begin to consider how they offer advertising on connected TVs, I think it’s a safe bet to say that Google will step up to offer their services there, too.

—Sony’s music and media technology company Gracenote, meanwhile, launched an interesting-looking new service called Entourage, which uses “audio fingerprinting technology” to listen to short clips of content via a mobile device that can trigger the service to then look up content on a smart TV, be it a film to purchase or an advertisement. Gracenote, of course, will need buy-in from smart TV players to make this into an actual service; given that Gracenote is owned by Sony (NYSE: SNE), their might be the first TVs, mobiles and other products where you will see it work first.

—Meanwhile, Sony inked another interactive TV ad deal: Yahoo’s connected TV services, which serve content related to programs and advertisements on regular TV, will now be embedded in Sony Bravia sets. Like Gracenote, it offers an audio-based trigger to deliver advertising (its technology comes from its own subsidiary, IntoNow). Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) says its 180-odd connected TV apps already work on connected TV services from Samsung, VIZIO, Toshiba, Haier and HiSense. Yahoo is also starting to roll out new ad units around its these: it says that Toyota is the first company to use such a service, with display ads placed into Yahoo’s Fantasy Football TV app.

—Ooyala is another online video player that is linking up with a vendor, in this case Panasonic for its Viera line of connected TVs. Advertisers and content publishers now using its platform will now also be able to publish their content on Panasonic’s TVs as they are now able to do on mobile and Internet platforms. The Country Network will be the first broadcaster to use the service to offer selections of its content on-demand and live through Panasonic’s platform.

Considering this is CES we are talking about, it’s unsurprising to have a profusion of device- and platform-led announcements, although in the bigger scheme of things broadcasters will inevitably also be playing a role.

“I think traditional broadcasters want to be seen to be involved in new media today,” says Simon Murray, an analyst with Digital TV Research in the UK. “They were slow before and now want to be involved in new technologies and providing information and serving advertisers in different ways.” But he also notes that “Broadcasters have a bit of a dilemma. Obviously they want to diversify but they don’t want to alienate existing advertisers and traditional ways of advertising because it’s still their bread and butter. Puttng too many ads on to programs outside their traditional market might upset their ad base.”

But regardless of who controls the game, perhaps the biggest issue of all is that, unlike internet or even mobile penetration, we are still a long way from critical mass in connected TV services. Figures from Strategy Analytics estimate that by the end of 2011, there were only 12 million connected TV devices distributed globally by the end of 2011. The U.S. had a penetration of only eight percent while Europe’s connected TV device penetration was seven percent.

That, too, appears to be changing, though. Digital TV Research forecasts that it will take until 2016 for there to be a global penetration of 20 percent in connected TV services—that includes not just connected sets, but also other devices such as blu-ray players; games consoles; retail set-top boxes and pay-TV set-top boxes. Highly anticipated updates from the likes of Apple and its Apple TV could also advance the market.

While today games consoles are the most common way for making a TV internet-friendly, Murray says he thinks that connected TVs will overtake games consoles by the end of this year (2012) as the main route to accessing Internet services via televisions worldwide, driven by more widely-available

“The thing about advertisers is that they want traffic. Some will experiment earlier. It might appeal to advertisers selling highly priced items such as cars, where you might want to demonstrate features of, say, a new model of the BMW, but I don’t know how much P&G or Unilever would benefit TV interactive advertising today,” Murray told paidContent. “I think it will be a fairly minor and experimental feature for at least the next five years, until the market becomes more established.”

Related

• Challenges Ahead Before 2012 Is The Year Of Connected TV
• @CES: Samsung Hat-Tips Kinect On Smart TV Gesture Controls, Content Bonanza
• T-Mobile Parent Deutsche Telekom Inks Multiscreen Deal With MobiTV
• What The Burst Of Hollywood A-Listers Will Mean For Online Video
• What's Coming In 2012: The Age Of Ubiquity (For Some)
• Connected TV: BBC News On Sony, Absolute On Samsung, PlayJam Adds Games
• TV Traction: BBC Gets Comcast Leap, Al Jazeera Relies On Online
• France Telecom's Orange Looks To 3D And Xbox For New TV Bells And Whistles
• Apple Wants To Offer Subscription TV Packages, Analyst Says
• Can Apple Shake Up TV Like It Has Mobile With Its iPhone?
• Updated: Apple TV Streaming Quietly Goes International

A new report issued by Efficient Frontier says brands like Pepsi are buying into Facebook primarily to acquire “fans.”

Pepsi is launching a campaign on the social network to search for the two biggest fans of Pepsi MAX and reward them with a lifetime supply of the drink. (Participants need to upload 60 seconds worth of video explaining their fanaticism about the soft-drink maker’s products.)

“As marketers improve their ability to acquire and engage Facebook fans, brands will continue to pump new budgets into Facebook to capitalize on the social network’s reach and the amount of time users spend there,” the report reads. “The increased spend will help companies improve brand awareness and drive the customer lifecycle amongst fans and non-fans.”

According to Efficient Frontier, this investment in Facebook and other social networks is “additive” to brands’ existing ad budgets and is not cannibalizing other digital media channels.

Still, the Efficient Frontier data arrived on the same day that Wall Street securities firm J.P. Morgan issued a report warning investors about weakness in the branded advertising sector for top ad-supported internet companies like WebMD (NSDQ: WBMD). The firm’s advisory, which was obtained by MediaPost, told investors to expect “mixed earnings” results for most of these companies.

Some other insight from the Efficient Frontier report:

—Mobile search accounted for 7-8 percent of all search advertising in the fourth quarter, up from 2 percent in the same period during 2010. The report attributes the uptick to the proliferation of tablets, which now account for half of mobile search ad spending.

—Overall search spending increased 14 percent in the U.S. and 19 percent in the U.K during the fourth quarter, with report tying the bump to aggressive spending by retailers.

—Impression costs for search advertising declined 5 percent across the board, with more brands migrating their dollars to the less expensive mobile sector.

Related

• What's Coming In 2012: Digital Advertising, Up Close And Personal
• Highlights Of 2011: The Year In Advertising, By The Numbers
• Did Google Go Too Far Mixing Social And Search?

Of course, the big news this week was Tom Hanks partnering with Yahoo for the animated series “Electric City.” Hanks, one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars, said he was drawn by the opportunity to make “ambiguous attractive” which feels like another way of saying he’s searching for greater creative freedom. While creativity may be motivating Hanks, in Louis C.K.‘s case, it seems more about tweaking the System and proving that when presented with a compelling offer (in this case a $5 DRM-free download of his “Live at the Beacon Theater” special), people will behave properly (i.e. pay rather than steal).

All of these initiatives are risky, but the prerequisites for them to succeed are firming up as well. Most important, established companies like YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG), Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), AOL (NYSE: AOL), Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) and Hulu are leading the charge, and seem ready to invest in and deficit finance these productions. Each has meaningful original content initiatives, underpinned by their sizable audiences and monetization capabilities (whether ad-supported or subscription-based). They are each doing their part to create an ecosystem of third-party production houses gaining expertise in digital, and therefore poised to help subsequent stars succeed in the online medium. Often big brands are getting involved early on, enticed by customized, high-value opportunities.

In addition, there are countless independent online vide sites that are attracting big audiences, increasing their content quality and building their own brands. In this group are sites and producers like Machinima, Revision3, Maker Studios and others.

One final - and crucial - piece to the picture are the connected TVs and devices that allow audiences to experience these new shows in a familiar and high-quality, lean-back mode. Watching short clips on computers jump-started the online video industry, but to make it a mainstream entertainment experience requires conforming to viewers’ expectations. The proliferation of connected TVs, gaming consoles, Blu-ray players, tablets, Rokus, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) TVs, etc. is creating a massive user base that can tune into these online-only productions as easily as flipping conventional channels.

And that brings us to the question of what impact all of these initiatives will have on the traditional Hollywood ecosystem. I think it’s inevitable that audience fragmentation will increase further. Just as cable TV networks have splintered broadcast TV audiences over the last 30 years, online is now going to sub-divide all of TV. Many on-demand viewers are already oblivious to what channel a particular program actually appears on; to this audience there will be no big behavior leap required to navigate to Tom Hanks’ or another star’s new online show. Discovery will be facilitated by emerging personalized aggregation and recommendation mechanisms.

Hollywood is entering a brave new world, driven by audience changes, technology advancements and the shifting interests of its own biggest stars. How it adapts to all of this is yet to be determined.

Will Richmond is president and founder of Broadband Directions LLC, a market intelligence, publishing and consulting firm specializing in broadband-delivered video, which he established in 2003. Will edits and publishes VideoNuze, a daily online publication widely read by broadband video decision-makers.

Related

• Can Tom Hanks Really Deliver The 'Comic-Con Crowd' For Yahoo?
• Comedian Louis CK Says $5 Rights-Free Content Is A Winner

Quarterly figures from Marin Software indicate that mobiles and tablets accounted for 10 percent of all search ad clicks in the U.S. in Q4 2011. That is double the amount of clicks seen on those devices in Q3 2011.

On tablets, search ads—the ad units that typically appear alongside a search made through engines such as Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) or Bing—also accounted for the highest of all click-through rates.

Tablets’ CTR (the ratio of clicks/the number of times the ad appears) for the quarter, according to Marin, was 1.31 percent, compared to 0.95 percent on desktop computers. Smartphones had nearly as high of a CTR, at 1.25 percent. Marin does not break out which devices are proving “more” interactive, although recent figures from Jumptap indicate that at least on its network Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) devices continue to dominate in interactivity.

Search advertising is currently the most-popular form of interactive advertising, above display, and video and other rich media. It’s the case as well in mobile, where search is projected to have accounted for $349 million of the estimated $1 billion spent on mobile ads. But overall, PCs are still a vastly more popular platform for searches, and subsequent search ads. Marin notes that in the last quarter, mobile devices accounted for just seven percent of impressions on search ads, with PCs taking 93 percent:

On PCs search ads were estimated to have accounted for 25.6 percent of $73.8 billion spent on online advertising, or $18.9 billion, according to Publicis’ ZenithOptimedia.

Marin, which offers an online advertising management platform to brands and agencies, says that it based its conclusions on its own Marin Global Search Index. This includes more than 1,000 advertisers and agencies that invest over $2.7 billion annually in paid-search, which each brand or agency typically spending over $1 million annually on paid-search, social and display.

There are a couple of reasons why the numbers could be higher for tablets and mobile phones, which are worth pointing out here. As mobile ad skeptics have pointed out in the past, it can be much easier to “click” accidentally on ads on a touchscreen compared to a PC. That is partly due to the touch element, but also because of the smaller screen sizes. At some point advertisers might start demanding better metrics to try to account for accidental clicks on touchscreen and other mobile devices.

The other issue that could account for the rise in clicks in Q4 in particular is the fact that it covered the holiday season. As we’ve seen from other studies, mobile devices had a double-whammy for increased use over that time period, as people received or bought new devices for themselves as presents; and others used them to look for goods other information related to the holiday shopping season. We’ll have to keep an eye out how numbers look in Q1 of this year to see whether the increased clicks are a trend, or a seasonal blip.

Other changes that Marin noted in its quarterly report:

—Click volume is up by 56 percent across Google, Yahoo and Bing, while paid search spend increased 35 percent (note: Marin does not give hard figures for how much its customers actually invested in the quarter).

—Google’s clicks grew by 48 percent, and so did its CTR.

—Impressions are growing on Yahoo and Bing, which were up by 43 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago, and clicks were up by 44 percent. Marin attributes some of this to the companies’ new search alliance. However, the sites are still not getting more effective in their search ads: CTRs only increased by one percent.

—It’s still early days at Facebook. Marin also broke out how search ads are performing on Facebook and the numbers are still pretty low, with only a 0.1 percent CTR and $0.23 cost per click (CPC). That doesn’t look too good compared to Google and Yahoo/Bing who respectively had CTRs of 2.36 percent and 1.61 percent in Q4 2011. CPCs at for the portals were respectively $1.02 and $0.85. To be fair, Facebook is putting more effort, and seeing more success in display ads, although you can be sure that as Facebook grows even bigger it will look to improve its position in search against the likes of Google, too.

Related

• What's Coming In 2012: Digital Advertising, Up Close And Personal
• Highlights Of 2011: The Year In Advertising, By The Numbers
• Microsoft & Yahoo Get Regulatory Clearances in U.S. & Europe On Search Deal; Integration To Begin
• Jumptap: Apple Has Highest Click-Through Rates Among Mobile Ad Platforms

Today, Deutsche Telekom (NYSE: DT), owner of T-Mobile, and Groupon said they would collaborate to offer Groupon’s local deals to Deutsche Telekom’s subscriber base across Europe. It represents the first carrier deal for Groupon, and a big step for T-Mobile in how it hopes to use its network for more mobile data and mobile commerce activities.

The deal will include marketing activities as well as “deeply integrating” Groupon’s offers into Telekom’s services. While the deal looks like it is mainly aimed at T-Mobile wireless customers, the joint press release also notes that “selected fixed” services will also get the Groupon treatment.

One of the key gating factors for any mobile service not directly integrated into the fabric of a phone’s OS is that users have to make the effort to download apps; many phones still require users to “turn on” those services to get automatic notifications. Mobile web services are even less automatic. This is one area that this deal hopes to address most immediately: starting sometime in the first half of this year, Groupon’s local offers will be pinged directly to subscribers “without the need for a separate download,” say the companies.

Michael Shim, the ex-Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) executive who decamped to Groupon about a year ago to become its VP of mobile marketing and partnerships, is the man behind Groupon’s partnerships, and it looks like this could be the start of other, similar deals with other carriers. The Deutsche Telekom deal announced today, it should be noted, does not appear to extend to T-Mobile USA. That is slightly bizarre, given that it’s Groupon’s biggest market, and therefore a more likely place for those deals to get grabbed up.

In the lead-up to Groupon’s initial public offering in 2011, the company had to weather scrutiny from more than a few people over whether it would be able to sustain its basic business model, offering daily deals on goods and services to a subscriber base. The rapid rise and success of the company led to hundreds of similar companies, which in turn led to an increase in the rise of the syndrome commonly known as “daily deal fatigue.”

But in this age of growing smartphone penetration and usage, it’s easy to see the mobile opportunity for Groupon. Location-based offers, based on a user’s actual purchasing history, using the phone’s own charging capabilities to complete the transaction and then broadcasting (read=marketing) that deal to their friends? It seems like a no-brainer.

So far Groupon has not capitalised on that opportunity as much as one might think—perhaps not because it can’t but perhaps because the scale for such services still isn’t quite there. Taking just the first of that chain of events described above—location-based services—a recent report from Forrester notes that only six percent of consumers in the smartphone-friendly U.S. use location-based apps on a regular basis. If the U.S. is producing such a low number, what does that mean for the rest of the world?

Nevertheless, this deal with Deutsche Telekom could be a crucial step in getting Groupon more easily integrated into those services, and it gives Deutsche Telekom another partner in its quest to drive more service revenues from its consumers not only from mobile data, but from other, more lucrative services like mobile commerce.

It is not the only carrier eyeing up this space: O2, owned by Spain’s Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) has been ramping up its own local deals and location-based services in the UK and Ireland—a service that it will likely try to extend to Deutsche Telekom’s home market of Germany, where it is a spirited competitor to the incumbent. That could be another fire driving the Deutsche Telekom/Groupon engine.

Related

• Yahoo Loses Mobile VP Michael Shim To Groupon
• What's Coming In 2012: Digital Advertising, Up Close And Personal
• Highlights Of 2011: The Year In Advertising, By The Numbers
• Groupon, Yelp Sued Over Mobile Commerce Patent
• Groupon Prices IPO At $16 to $18 Per Share, Expects To Raise $478.8 Million
• Reports: Groupon To Release Scaled-Back IPO In Next 2 Weeks
• Groupon's New Fuzzy Math
• Telefonica's O2 Expands Placecast-Powered Location-Based Ads To Ireland
• Telefonica Stakes A Claim On The Mobile Ad Space: Six Million O2 More Users

The big question: Can an older star like Hanks still play big with the young-male audience Yahoo is seeking for this venture? Hanks’ Playtone Productions has been developing the anime project for several years, casting the actor as voice star in a series of three-to-four-minute animated videos, set in a post-apocalyptic future. According to Erin McPherson, Yahoo VP and head of video and original programming, Yahoo’s first original scripted program will be aimed at an 18-34-year-old audience—“the Comic-Con crowd,” as she described it.

Details about the financial scope of the project—which was bid on by several other large digital media platforms—haven’t been revealed. But funded with Reliance’s notoriously deep pockets, it’s probably one of the priciest originals ever created specifically for a digital platform. “It’s very ambitious,” conceded McPherson, who said the program will be available early this year on its own dedicated Yahoo channel but will be promoted across the portal in areas like Yahoo Movies and OMG. “It’s a big bet for us.”

Yahoo will be placing this big bet on the 55-year-old Hanks, a venerable Hollywood A-lister who has starred in some of the biggest films in motion-picture history, but who also doesn’t necessarily seem so congruous with the male 18-34 audience these days. Hanks—who once starred in such cutting-edge fare as cross-dressing-themed ‘80s sitcom Bosom Buddies—is now noted for directing and starring in one of 2011’s biggest box-office turkeys, the romantic comedy Larry Crowne, which opened last July to an audience that was astoundingly 81 percent over the age of 35—one of the older-skewing films in the annuls of a theatrical medium that has traditionally catered to youth.

Playtone, meanwhile, has generated a number of successful series for premium cable titan HBO over the years—notably, World War II miniseries The Pacific and polygamy drama Big Love.

But you never saw any of these successful programs paneled at Comic-Con.

Hanks and Playtone are widely recognized global brands, and their inclusion in the portal’s content universe shows Yahoo is serious about competing in the realm of original video programming. That said, you’d think that if Yahoo searched the pantheon of high-profile talent running production companies, it might have found a partner more versed in youth culture. Ashton Kutcher’s Katalyst Media or Ben Stiller’s Red Hour, for example, come to mind as the kind of innovative, multi-platform production outfits you might expect to see involved in Yahoo’s first-ever scripted content deal.

For her part, McPherson insists that the deal represents more to Yahoo than just the ability to lend Hanks’ name to recently invigorated original programming efforts that also featured the announcement in December of a live Bill Maher stand-up comedy special. Yahoo also announced a major non-scripted video slate in October, touting eight new series featuring such female comedy actors as Judy Greer and Niecy Nash, as well as documentarian Morgan Spurlock.

“We were excited about the project not just because Tom is one of the biggest and best-known story-tellers,” McPherson said. “The other part of the appeal is that this project is provocative and full of mystery and really lends itself to a digital audience. There’s a lot of opportunities to create an immersive, interactive experience.”

Indeed, in its press release announcing the new program, Yahoo touted a range of interactive features, such as the ability of the portal’s 700 million unique users worldwide to navigate 3D maps of the series’ eponymous city, delve into character back stories, and interact with other fans via Facebook and Twitter. Hanks will be on hand in Las Vegas Tuesday, when Yahoo officially announces the venture at the Consumer Electronics Show. “You can expect to see a lot more of these big tentpole properties from us,” McPherson said.