... $50 billion over the next three to five years. 

The rise of sophisticated wearable technology, such as smart watches, Google Glasses and other accessories, looks to be irresistible.

The report's authors contend that while 'wearables' are “not new,” they are “at an inflection point in market adoption”. The rationale for their conclusion?

Posit the Swiss hi-rollers: "Because there is a growing installed base of smartphones, cost and performance improvements are coming in components. There is more mature software to run them, and there are new business models for them."

Moreover, the wearables market is a lot bigger than investors realise. The authors contend that as of now the 'wearables' market is worth $3bn to $5bn, rising to perhaps $30 billion to $50 billion over the next three to five years.

Read the original unabridged Barrons.com article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... an important part of the media landscape, especially as mobile-friendly "native ad formats" fuel growth in the market.

Here's an overview of some major players in the mobile advertising ecosystem:

• The lure of social media advertising is massive: As brands look across a fractured media landscape, social networks offer them an interesting proposition. Social networks have scale - enormous user bases and deep databases. They have high engagement - Americans were spending an average of 12 hours per month on social networks as of July 2012, with 18-24 year olds averaging 20 hours. And potentially, social media offers brands a uniquely captive audience for their content.
   
• Guaranteed placement is getting advertisers to pay up: Brands are paying to get their content or copy in front of a quantifiable audience, an increasingly rare feat in an era of scattered consumer attention. This desire for guaranteed attention also helps to explain social media's move away from traditional display ads — like Facebook's right-rail ads — and toward so-called "native ads" that surface in a user's stream, either as a Tweet or a Facebook post. A consensus seems to be forming around in-stream advertising as the most promising social advertising format.
• Social media advertising is set to explode: it is a young market and, so far, it represents only 1% to 10% of ad budgets for a wide majority of advertisers. There's significant opportunity for that share to grow. BIA/Kelsey recently published a study that offers one view - forecasting $11 billion of social ad spend in 2017, up from $4.7 billion last year. That estimate is large - but still seems pessimistic, because ...
   
• Increased mobile usage will be a huge driver of advertising growth: The BIA/Kelsey prediction calls for mobile to account for only $2.2 billion of that in 2017 - a 20% market share. This could easily be surpassed. Both Twitter and Facebook have passed the 50% mobile usage mark and, given the continued growth of mobile devices, it will only rise. Mobile accounted for 11% of Facebook's ad revenue last year even though it didn't release mobile ads until the tail end of the second quarter. By the fourth quarter, it was up to 23%. And now, Twitter is reporting that its mobile ad revenue regularly outpaces its desktop ad revenue. Social media advertising is therefore uniquely positioned to grab an increasing share of the fast growing mobile advertising market. 

Read the original unabridged BusinessInsider article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... "Data will be a core resource in the future". 

“If the UK wants to make sure that in the next phase of the digital revolution Britain has the Googles, and the Amazons and the eBays … then the government needs to turn its current enthusiasm [for data] to a really solid, defined implementation for a national core data set,” evangelises Mr Shakespeare.

“This is a major new piece of infrastructure for all society. It will be a platform on which we live our lives.”

Gavin Starks, ceo of the Open Data Institute, a quasi-independent agency responsible for assessing the government's use of data, agrees that the opening up of public data would provide an opportunity for businesses across Britain.

“Health care, transportation, finance, insurance; it will affect many, many different sectors, the change will be as broad as the web itself. There’s a huge amount of value to be unlocked".

An analysis by Deloitte, launched in tandem with the Shakespeare Report, calculated that the use of public data in 2011-2012 had added up to £7.2 billion ($11 billion) to the UK economy.

In one case, opening up live transport information from Transport for London saved Londoners' working time valued at up £58 million in one year alone, Deloitte guesstimates. Opening up more public data would unlock more value, the accountants argue.

Read the original unabridged WSJ.com article.

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... actually improved by the current trends in media.

Mr. Corty's take on the situation helped make him the WSJ's top-rated analyst in the advertising and publishing sectors this year. He was also one of the top three media stock pickers. 

Says he: ""Going back five years, there was a feeling that these agencies might get disintermediated by Google or clients placing ads directly online".

"But actually, it turns out that these agencies are more important than ever to their clients, as agencies are crucial in sorting through the increasing complexities of reaching consumers in a digital age."

Corty, who specialises in following media and advertising companies, applies lessons learned from previous roles at Morningstar, including overseeing coverage of media and internet stocks.

He joined Morningstar in 2004 and became team leader for media and internet coverage in 2007. He believes this gives him an advantage in a world where media and technology are converging.

Read the original unabridged WSJ article.

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... a “think tank approach” to their findings, which were unveiled at the FMI's professional development conference in Olando Florida.

During the conference FMI president/ceo Leslie G Sarasin presented an overview of the FMI's future analysis in her address which posited a sobering reality - yet one poised for market possibilities, offering data analytics from interviews with CPG executives and retailers.

Although consumer demand has remained flat, which is modestly disproportionate to the population growth over the past 15-20 years, the industry has witnessed an explosion in its capacity.

Ms Sarasin suggested that retailers will be evaluating alternative ways to address consumers’ need for value, convenience and safe foods by focusing their growth strategies on the overall shopper experience.

Discussing the FMI report's future vision, Sarasin said: “The leaders in our industry kept coming back to three key words to describe the future food retail experience: Personal, Digital and Virtual.”

A broad range of key drivers will determine the success of instore marketing and merchandising programmes over the next decade. Today, price and convenience continue to trump other consumer trends in garnering shopper attention in store.

Outside of health and beauty care and pharmacy, health and wellness–based themes are the third most common platform for displays, behind price-only and snack/meal solutions.

Read the original unabridged Booz.com article.

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... the group of non-OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] nations.

With world output growth projected at 3.3% in 2013 and 3.7% in 2014, the forecast again points to a global recovery that is hesitant, below par, and uneven. 

NIESR summarises its projections thus:

• The world economy will grow by 3.3% this year and by 3.7% 2014, remaining below trend.
   
• In the developed world, divergence continues; the USA will grow just over 2% in each year, while the Euro Area zone remains in recession and will grow only about 1% in 2014.
   
• Unemployment remains very high in most countries, at depression era rates in some peripheral Euro Area countries.

This outlook reflects, especially in the advanced economies, weak demand resulting from several factors, especially continuing fiscal consolidation and deleveraging by private sectors, impaired credit intermediation in many cases, and significant policy uncertainties.

Of most concern is the continuing slump in the Euro Area, which is expected to remain in recession in 2013 and seems unlikely, on current policies, to experience better than weak growth next year.

In the USA, private sector demand has continued to be strengthened by a substantial improvement in the financial positions of banks and households, but this is partly offset by accelerated fiscal adjustment.

NIESR's growth projections for Japan have been raised to 2% per annum in 2013–14, taking into account the announcement of significant fiscal and monetary stimulus measures.

But the main drivers of global growth remain the developing and emerging market economies, especially in Asia; prospects seem good for a broad strengthening of growth in these economies this year and next, following the moderate slowdown experienced in 2012.

Read the original unabridged NIESR article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... 'I will never live a day without them'. 

Google's gizmo is a wearable computer with a head-mounted display [HMD] under development by Google's Project Glass research and development project, with the mission of producing a mass-market ubiquitous computer.

Google Glass displays information in a smartphone type hands-free format that interacts with the internet via natural language voice commands.

While the frames do not currently have lenses fitted to them, Google is considering partnering with sunglass retailers such as Ray-Ban and may also open retail stores to allow customers to try out the device.

The Explorer Edition can't be used by people who wear prescription glasses, but Google has confirmed that Glass will eventually work with frames and lenses that match the wearer's prescription.

The glasses will be modular and therefore possibly attachable to normal prescription glasses.

View GoogleGlass video.

Read the original unabridged Geekwire article.

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... financial markets before stock market falls.

According to the report's co-author, Helen Susannah Moat, a social scientist from University College London:  “Our results are consistent with the suggestion that Google Trends data not only reflects aspects of the current state of the economy, but may have also provided some insight into future [stock market] trends.”

Published in Scientific Report - a primary research journal from the publishers of Nature magazine - the report further suggests that Google Trends data and stock market data may reflect two subsequent stages in investors' decision-making process.

Postulates Ms Moat: “Trends to 'sell' on the financial market at lower prices may be preceded by periods of concern. During such periods of concern, people may tend to gather more information about the state of the market, ie, search on engines like Google". 

Read the full unabridged Scientific Reports article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... convenient, efficacious or suifficiently high-quality to command a premium price.  

Opines Maureen Morrison, writing in today's Advertising Age: "Brands can no longer bide their time, fending off store's own-brand options while waiting and hoping for consumers' wallets to fatten.

"About 40% of the US population is still downtrodden, concerned or otherwise worried about their financial futures, according to IRI [Information Resources Inc] research.

"In addition to convincing consumers, brands may need to perform an even tougher trick: redefining their own definition of value to one that's additive.

"When not reduced to the question of price, value speaks directly to what benefits a product or service adds to a customer's life. Some smart brands get this and are using packaging, design, sourcing strategies and technologies to entice consumers to get them to open their wallet a bit more, even in these tough times."

Conversely, however, the classic example of a recessionary innovation that gets consumers to pay more, not less, is P&G's Tide Pods.

The repackaging of its detergent into one-pack-per-load pellets is a clear boon to the consumer because it eliminates messy measuring.

Research consducted by IRI concluded that P&G's Tide Pods been a breakout hit that rocketed to $500m in stateside sales in about one year.

Better yet, from P&G's viewpoint, the bundle of individual laundry detergent packages comes at a significant premium to liquid Tide - $18.99 for a 66-load container of Pods on Walgreens.com.

Read the original unabridged AdAge article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... although the report relates solely to the USA, the halcyon days of near-exponential growth for social media elsewhere in the western world are trending sharply downward.

The Experian data indicates that, proportionate to other online activities, the time US consumers spend on social media sites is actually in decline.

However the report qualifies that apparent decline: "Blindly chasing fans or followers has rightly lost credence as brands realise that social sharing and referring has the biggest impact. As a result, simpler and more effective tools to measure social sharing will allow brands to refocus on creating meaningful social media campaigns."

By contrast, time spent shopping online grew year-on-year. In fact, US consumers spent 9% of their web time shopping in 2012. After analyzing US browsing data for mobile devices, email accounted for the largest time spent on average.

Overall, email made up 23% of time spent on mobile devices during the first quarter of the year, while social networking accounted for 15% of consumers’ mobile time.

Consumption of news content also increased among US consumers who devoted 4% of their online time to news.

Although the data refers solely to the US market - the western world's largest - the report's implications are equally valid within the UK and European Union.

All pales into relative insignificance, however, alongside the Chinese  social media market vis a recent report from Forbes.com.

Read the original unabridged MediaPost article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.