ITN appoints Blinkx to handle video ad sales

LONDON - ITN has appointed Blinkx to handle online video ad sales around the news broadcaster's content shown on Express Group's newspaper and magazine websites...

from MediaWeek

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Comment: Welcome news of course - any news about Blinkx is always welcome given the news drought of recent months - but why no official RNS?

Why is it that even when the company has something good to announce it chooses to let it drip out through back channels rather than officially informing the markets with an RNS?

I would have thought myself that any good news should be shouted from the rooftops.

They RNS BobVila.com but not this? Go figure...

Guardian launches iPhone application

The Guardian launched its first iPhone application today , providing readers with instant access to the latest news stories and multimedia features, including full-screen photo galleries and audio podcasts, on their Apple smartphones.

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Apple's iPhone launched in June 2007 and it now has about 30 million users globally. A further 20 million users of the Apple iTouch – which offers wireless web access – can also download applications...

from The Guardian

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Comment: So 30 million iPhones sold, and another 20 million iTouches. That's 50 million potential users. Add that to Facebook's 300 million users that's 350 million. That's a third of a billion. And yet Blinkx apparently doesn't think this market is worth going after. How do I come to that conclusion? Because, er, Blinkx haven't released an iPhone app or a Facebook widget.

Of course Blinkx wouldn't get 350m users with such apps. But if they (eventually) gained 1% of that total as regular users of the app/widget - that 3.5 million users conducting video searches using Blinkx.

A third of a billion potential users? Chickenfeed. Hardly worth bothering with...

Google to launch mobile phone to challenge iPhone's dominance

"Google has secretly developed a new mobile phone that it hopes will challenge the iPhone's dominance of the lucrative smartphone market..."

from The Telegraph

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Comment: From that article - 'Ben Schachter, analyst at Broadpoint AmTech in San Francisco, said: "If all of a sudden everyone is getting on the internet via their mobile device, Google needs to make sure it has an influence on that. They need to make sure they have influence on how the mobile Web will develop."'

And yet Blinkx gives absolutely no appearance of thinking mobile important at all. They haven't even had the nous to release an iPhone app (or tell us why they haven't). Or a Facebook app come to that, to try and monetise their index of 35m+ hours of video by getting it in front of Facebook's 300m users (yeah, I know - only 300m. Hardly worth bothering with...)

Quite laughably clueless...

Amen to that (slight return)...

This posted by 'grax' on the ADVFN Blinkx bulletin board today at 1.55pm:

"This is possibly the most unloved stock in the sector - nobody wants to buy it when all around tech companies are getting bought out by the big boys this never gets a mention [other than the made up ones on ramper heaven].

There must be something more than just the crass incompetence and arrogance of the management.There must be a genuine reason nobody wants blnx either as a company or as a stock in their investment portfolio."

What could that reason be I wonder?

• The astonishing - and in my view entirely unjustified - arrogance of Blinkx management (don't tell anyone anything - and don't deliver anything neither)?
• The fiasco of the Miva bid, which did so much to destroy both the share price and the management team's credibility (the phrase 'Micky Mouse' springs to mind)?
• The lack of clarity around the company's strategy (they started off as a video-indexing company, now they seem to have branched out into the spyware market - although of course we don't really have much of a clue what they're up to)?
• The lack of confidence in their own company that the lack of share buying by the management team very clearly conveys to the markets?
• The persistent manipulation of the company's share price by shorters, speculators and other assorted scum?
• The yawning gulf between what Chandratillake says and what he delivers (he said the company was 'very close to break-even' back in early 2008 - so where the bloody hell is it then)?
• The total incompetence at PR and marketing which ensures that nobody in the IT industry let alone consumers at large has even heard of Blinkx?
• The habit of spending time and money on products/services which either never see the light of day (Transaction Hijacking), are released but never promoted (SmartShopper) or are released, not promoted and then superseded by other industry developments (Blinkx Music)?
• The total lack of big-ticket newsflow (yes, I know they have MSN UK as a partner and a few other big names, but they were a long time ago. To get to where I'd like to see them Blinkx should be signing deals with big-name partners on at least a quarterly basis - instead we get BobVila.com. Pathetic, just pathetic...)?
• The total inability to communicate with shareholders and the markets? And why? Could it be because they have nothing to communicate?

...Or all of the above?

eMarketer: Online video ad spend soars in 2009

U.S. online video advertising is likely to be one of only two bright spots in what otherwise will be a down online ad year, eMarketer says. The company says online advertising will be down some 4.6 percent for the year -- the first decline in online ad spending since 2002 -- but that online video and search ad spending likely will finish with better numbers than in 2008.

The company said online video spending would be up more than $295 million for 2009 to $1.03 billion, an increase of just over 40 percent. Still, the latest projection is a downgrade from eMarketer's outlook it published in October, when it forecast video online ad spend to increase 42.6 percent online ad spend as overall online ad purchases declined 2.9 percent to $22.8 billion in the United States.

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Online growth surged 126.5 percent in 2008 to $734 million; it's expected to continue growing from 34 percent to 45 percent per year trough 2014 when eMarketer projects $5.2 billion in revenue from online video ad spending.

from FierceOnlineVideo

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Comment: Let's hope you-know-who is getting a piece of that action. Maybe even a big piece. Even if they are, though, just don't expect to be told jackshit about it...

Amen to that...

This posted by 'iamthejester' on Thursday on the www.iii.co.uk Blinkx bulletin board:

"lack lustre and boring, when will it take off

having held for a long while i am very dissapointed with this share, the words and theory all looked very promising however they have yet to materialise.

will this share ever come to anything

all comments welcome"

I would imagine an overwhelming majority of investors in Blinxk feel that way - and if the rest don't feel that way, my question to them is: why not?

Director buying...

Interesting piece on today's Money Box on Radio 4 about director buying sometimes being a reliable signal for small companies that are growing fast.

So I'll ask once again: if Blinkx is growing so fast, and is on track for such a bright future, why aren't its directors buying? If revenues are doubling every six months - and if costs aren't also rising in line - why aren't directors "filling their boots"?

It simply defies all logic, all common sense, all good business practise for directors not to be buying if the story that Chandratillake trots out to any journalist who will listen is in fact true. If there is a good reason why they aren't buying that should be communicated - except of course that we're talking about the company that never communicates anything to anyone...

The only fact we know for sure is that directors have not, so far as I am aware, made a single purchase in the open market in the two-and-a-half years since Blinkx floated.

Draw your own conclusions as to why - and if those are the wrong conclusions, whose fault is that?