Users access various social activities such as social networks, blogs reading a message board etcetera at least once a week. However the site which has really done very well for itself, is without a doubt Facebook.

According to the Nielsen report, commissioned by women-focused blog network BlogHer and NBCU’s iVillage, Facebook is now catching up with TV in terms of popularity in the U.S.

While 55% of the population is believed to watch TV daily, 47% of the population visits Facebook daily. In fact, Facebook is now much more popular than other channels of information and entertainment such as radio and newspapers, which are accessed by 37% and 22% of the population respectively.

One of the major factors which draws people to Facebook, could be social gaming. Nielsen reports that 32.7 million people are now playing social games like Farmville daily. This figure is equal to the number of daily newspaper readers and double the number of magazine readers.

Other forms of social media such as blogs are not so popular, however, and attract only 11% of web users daily.

Webguild.org reports that Google is in the process of selling off Google Radio Automation. They had acquired this business for a total of $1 billion, inclusive of both cash and stock components. However this section of Google has been a complete failure right from the start as it failed to take off at all.

Now Mr. Vinod Khosla and Mayfield have raised $25 million to take over the Google Radio Automation business.

About one hundred employees working in the hardware and software departments of Google Radio Automation as well as those offering support to it are likely to be laid off.

In other areas of the company also Google has been laying off employees, and now their full time employees number 19,786 after 378 others were laid off in the second quarter of 2009.

On the other hand there are also reports that Google continues to hire highly skilled and talented professionals in some of its departments. But even this process has not been easy as the professionals have been asking for their market price, in spite of the recession and the consequent unemployment.

These demands have been putting Google in a rather tight spot as some of the older and senior employees are earning smaller amounts than what these new candidates are asking for, and that would eventually lead to unpleasantness among the old and new employees.

The audio ad service was launched in 2006 to enable the buying and selling of radio ads via Google AdWords. However, the search company now feel that in spite of investing a lot of resources, these services have not actually managed to create the kind of impact that was expected and it would be better to discontinue these services.

Google Audio Ads and AdSense for Audio will be phased out by the 31^st of May. Until then, publishers will be able to continue publishing their inventory. Google Radio Automation will be sold off to an interested party.

All is not quiet on the audio front, though. Google plans to concentrate on developing technology to deliver relevant ads for online streaming audio, where the audience numbers are increasing.

While it may be remembered that Google has also decided to shut down their Print Ads division only last month, they have stated that they will continue with their TV advertising initiatives as they can measure the audience response here and their advertisers can therefore judge ad effectiveness.

While some staff may be reassigned after the discontinuation of these services, it is expected that about 40 people will find themselves jobless as a result of this decision.

Even though Google executives maintain that they are closing the audio ads service due to failed expectations, if one looks at all their other recent cut-backs – print ads, followed closely by the closure of Jaiku, Dodgeball and Notebook – it looks suspiciously like a move to try and keep up the profit margin and tide over the financial meltdown by sticking to what they know best – search.

Studies conducted by The Pew Internet and American Life Project have found that only 65% of teens use social websites nowadays, as opposed to 78% who play online games.

Not too long ago, social networks were the hot favorite among this age group, along with email, which was used by 89% of teennagers at that time.

The latest trend, however, is to use text messaging and instant messaging instead of email, which is now used by only 73% of teenagers.

Significantly, young adults between the ages of 18 and 32 seem to be following the reverse trend, with only 50% of them playing games online while 67% access social networks.

Surprisingly though, it was found that only 10% of those between the ages of 12 and 17 years spend time in virtual worlds, which is almost the same percentage as was found a few years ago, and hardly 2-3% of the older generation do so.

Deloitte’s State of the Media Democracy Survey found that another victim of the changing times was the good old television. Studies reveal that those between 14 and 25 years of age are far more likely to use their PC for entertainment through games, music and social networks, than to sit and watch TV. This study was conducted across U.K., U.S.A., Germany, Japan and Brazil.

Searching and downloading music was the most accessed facility on the internet with 80% of youngsters using it while 73% access chat rooms social networks and message boards. It was also found that 59% of the youth use their mobile phones for entertainment, and the amount of time spent watching television is about one-third less than that spent by other age groups.

As far as advertising power goes, however, it was found that TV is the most influential for youth, followed by magazines, online ads and newspaper ads, while radio ads are fifth in line.

• Pew Internet Report: Adults & Social Network Websites
• Pew Internet Report: Adults & Video Games

This news comes in spite of the fact that the total amount of money being spent on advertising across the various forms of media, such as print, television and radio is expected to go down.

Media communications company, Carat, has estimated that the budgets allocated to online advertising will go up, by 23.7% in this fiscal year, and 18.6% next year. In other words, the Internet will account for 8.6% of the total revenue allocated to advertising this year, and 9.8% next year.

An important cause for this could be the change in loyalty of consumers, from the older forms of media to Internet and mobile. However, it is more likely that the increased level of accountability offered by search marketing makes it more attractive than other media formats, especially during times of economic uncertainty.

Another report released by StrategyEye Digital Media also indicates that in spite of the general down-sizing in advertising, Internet and social media advertising will continue to remain strong.

StrategyEye surveyed over 200 decisionmakers in dominant companies across the digital media sector. The survey found that 60% and 56% of respondents are likely to invest more in social media and mobile respectively. 87% of those surveyed felt that online advertising gave better results than other form of advertising.

While almost 62% of advertisers using traditional media plan to cut down these budgets, 52% of advertisers using online plan to increase their budgets and only 13% of them will reduce online ad budgets.

Most advertisers are of the opinion that online advertising presents a great opportunity. Many companies plan to spend more on digital media at the expense of traditional media. Mobile advertising is doing very well presently, and is expected to continue doing so. Online TV is also believed to be a great opportunity in the future.

The most surprising result of the survey, though, was the general opinion that investing in social media is perceived to be a good move, in spite of the relative reluctance shown by most brands to invest in the space.

Having a well balanced mix of online advertising, mobile advertising, online TV and social media might be the most effective strategy for 2009.

These ads were planned in last December and Yahoo! said the campaign has nothing to do with the Microsoft offer, which came only in February 2008. The campaign was kicked off in the last week of March in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Advertising Yahoo! search on the radio in a bid to entice customers away from Google sounds like clutching at straw. The ads highlight product features that Google does not have and claim that their product is easier to use and more effective. But radio is certainly no longer considered to be a state of the art technology, and does not command as large an audience of listeners as it used to. The first question that then springs to mind is why is Yahoo! using the wrong medium and the wrong message to reach the wrong sort of audience?
“Search engines like Google get you lost in all the links, but not Yahoo! Search.” says one of the ads in circulation. They then mention that Yahoo! has drop-down menus with related suggestions and then proceed to say that “You won’t find that on your Google page.”

Strangely enough, SearchEngineLand reports that Google Search Suggest might become a default feature on the Google.com search box, just like it is on the Google toolbar and in some localised versions of Google.

Raj Gossain V.P. of marketing at Yahoo! Search explains that the radio ads are just a means to inform people who have not used Yahoo! Search for a while, that they now have the option of a better and easier to use product available to them. How ethical it is to actually run down a competitor to sell your product remains debatable.

Interesting new features of the audio ads program include:

• Budgeting on a weekly rather than daily basis
• Demographic targeting of ads
• Ad targetting by radio station
• Geographical targeting by city, state, post (zip) code or countrywide
• Pricing based on CPM – cost per thousand listeners
• Google estimates audience numbers based on Arbitron’s estimates
• Ad scheduling enabled for days of the week and times of the day, similar to CPC ads.

The full post can be viewed at http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/03/first-look-at-google-audio-radio-ads.html