Media Monday is a weekly round up of media (as in advertising, content, publishing, audiences…) happenings and insights from Australia and around the world.

 

Brazil media sector to score big with strong kicks from World Cup and Olympics

According to PQ Media’s Brazil Media & Technology Outlook 2014, the Brazilian digital and traditional media sectors are in position to score big during the 2014-17 timeframe due to a rare tandem of powerful kicks the market will receive from the World Cup this year and the Summer Olympics in 2016.

In spite of daunting inflation, questions about World Cup spending and related civil unrest, Brazil’s consumer-facing media economy is pacing for accelerated 14% growth in 2014.

Brazil’s double-digit growth this year would mark acceleration from an 11.5% rise in combined media operator revenues and consumer spending on media content and technology in 2013, when the consumer-facing media ecosystem generated $76.53 billion. Overall consumer media usage is also expected to grow at a faster rate this year, climbing 3.5% to a weekly average of 60.9 hours, according to PQ Media. Brazil’s consumer-facing media sector is forecast to expand at fluctuating annual rates throughout the 2013-17 period, driven by even- year boosts of advertising and marketing dollars related to the duo of global mega-events, juxtaposed with consumer spending on wireless devices and other tech products driving growth in odd years.

Brazil’s digital & alternative media operator revenue and consumer spending together grew 15.9% in 2013 to $33.29 billion, fuelled by first-ever purchases of the latest digital devices in spite of high inflation that has tripled prices since 2011. Growth is projected to remain strong going forward, although it will decelerate to 15.2% this year as rapid growth in the nascent digital ad & marketing segment will be offset by weaker growth in the larger digital content & tech spending segment, PQ Media found.

In the traditional media sector, where consumers have already upgraded to HDTV to watch their favourite telenovelas, combined media revenues and consumer spending increased 8.4% in 2013 to $43.24 billion. Growth is projected to accelerate at a 13.3% pace in 2014 due to the infusion of advertising and marketing dollars generated by the World Cup, which comes home to soccer’s epicentre for the first time since 1950, according to Brazil Media & Technology Outlook 2014.

 

The Curiosity Show‘s first episode in two decades 

For the first time in more than 20 years, much-loved kids science program The Curiosity Show has created a new episode all in the name of educating Aussie parents and their children about breakfast nutrition in collaboration with Kellogg’s.

The Curiosity Show‘s hosts and creators Dr Deane Hutton and Dr Rob Morrison were regulars on Aussie television airwaves from 1972 until 1990 fascinating and engaging their young audience with experiments, fun facts and segments.

Hutton says many of the children they were creating the show for 24 years ago would now be parents themselves.

“We’ve created this special episode for parents to be able to enjoy because it has many elements of the program they would have watched after school on the Curiosity Show all those years ago. We would love them to then take the experiments and demonstrations from the TV screen into their own kitchens to share with their children,” Hutton says.

From cooking up homemade Corn Flakes from scratch, old segment favourites such as ‘brain games’ and ‘Curio’, to learning about iron and brain development, Rob and Deane’s latest episode will have parents turning their kitchens into science labs in no time.

Kellogg’s says the episode was a fitting collaboration with Hutton and Morrison, given that they were all about encouraging children’s curiosity and education.

 

Spotify Australia turns two, releases global and local data on listening habits

As music streaming service Spotify celebrates its second anniversary in Australia, it has released new figures that reveal it has 10 million paying subscribers and more than 40 million active users in 56 markets worldwide.

Market research firm Nielsen suggests that Spotify occupies market leader position with a 71% share of the music streaming market. As Spotify approaches its third year.

Spotify’s own data says that, since May 2012, Aussie consumers have streamed more than 8200 years of music or the equivalent of 100 lifetimes. They have also actively created 27 million playlists.

In order to make its case to advertisers, Spotify also recently commissioned a consumer insights, which found that users of Spotify’s free, advertising-powered tier of the service (in comparison to the general population) are:

• Highly engaged: users stream three times as much music  across most of the day and listen most when they’re driving, travelling, exercising, relaxing and commuting,
• hyper social: use social media regularly and for longer, and
• influential: 45% more likely to enjoy telling other people about new brands or products.

 

The Guardian launches a new app supported by ‘sympathetically integrated’ ads

The Guardian has unveiled a redesigned app to deliver a more personalised and engaging experience for its readers. Built around the principles of open journalism, the redesign offers readers even more opportunities to interact with, and be a part of the conversation by integrating GuardianWitness for the first time.

The app is free to download and use by everyone – supported by sympathetically integrated advertising. An in-app premium tier is also available, offering readers daily crosswords, hand-curated content from the Guardian’s archive, special extracts from Guardian books and an ad-free experience. The new app will be delivered to current users as an update to their iPhone or Android apps.

The team of over 20 experienced developers, designers, editorial staff and digital experts conceived the app in the Guardian UX Studio – a state-of-the-art research and testing space that puts user testing at the heart of the innovation. The Guardian has also been improving its in-house technology to give journalists a bigger toolbox to tell their stories with. This includes inbuilt tools to embed media from a greater range of sources, and greater flexibility in the formatting of content.

 

James Magnussen/Ask Men/Maurice Lacroix video interview series

As part of the swimmer’s brand ambassadorship with watchmaker Maurice Lacroix, Ask Men has created a series of online video interviews with swimmer James Magnussen.

Watch (ha!) them here: