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Yahoo's fourth-quarter earnings fell 5 percent as newly minted CEO Scott Thompson acknowledged the company needed to do better, but was short on details about his plans.

The company’s fourth-quarter net earnings declined 5 percent year over year to $296 million, with revenue off 3 percent to $1.17 billion. And search advertising revenue dipped 3 percent year over year to $388 million.

Yahoo’s full-year revenue hit $5 billion, a far cry from the $6.3 billion it recorded in 2010.

During the company’s earnings call Tuesday, Thompson said he's spent “a lot of [his] time and attention” understanding the problems facing Yahoo’s display advertising business. Referring to the company's results, Yahoo CFO Tim Morse said during the earnings call, “We expected better.”

Thompson repeatedly said that it was too early to discuss how he plans to improve Yahoo’s performance. But he isolated the consumer data Yahoo holds as “the key component for driving innovation.”

He said, “Our data may be Yahoo’s most underrated, underappreciated and underused asset."

Thompson said he aims to mine the data collected from Yahoo’s 702 million monthly unique visitors to improve the site experience for consumers, which he said would lead to more time spent on site and better results for advertisers.

Thompson and Morse downplayed the uncertainty that has dogged Yahoo throughout the fourth quarter and continues to follow the company. Morse—who took over as interim CEO after Carol Bartz’s ouster in September—termed the period “challenging” with “numerous distractions,” and Thompson said there was a lot of “commotion” surrounding the company.

Thompson’s appointment earlier this month may have settled the CEO question. But Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang resigned from the company’s board last week, and questions persist over whether Yahoo will be sold.

As to the latter, all Thompson would say was that Yahoo “remains open to anything that’s good for our shareholders.”

Facebook may be the biggest social network on the planet, but social ad targeting firm 33Across says it now has the distinction of managing the world’s largest social and interest graph.

The company was set to announce today that it has acquired San Francisco-based publishing sharing tool Tynt, which says it reaches more than 1 billion global users monthly. Ostensibly, the acquisition expands 33Across’ data footprint to more than 1.25 billion people worldwide (which the companies say eclipses Facebook’s 800 million, although comparing Facebook's network to 33Across' isn't exactly an apples to apples comparison).

Tynt, which tracks when readers cut and paste content for sharing via email and other social channels, has more than 500,000 publisher clients, including NBCUniversal, Sports Illustrated and MarthaStewart.com. 33Across will maintain the Tynt brand but take ownership of all of the company’s assets, including technology, patents, filings, analytics and tool sets, as well as its roughly 17 employees, including senior leadership.

33Across declined to reveal the purchase amount but said it was an equity transaction.

Most importantly, the companies said, the acquisition expands 33Across’ social targeting platform and gives publishers and marketers tools to predict new users.

“As social continues to transform the world we live in, publishers really need to go further and create real, actionable value from the big data graph that surrounds their brand," said Eric Wheeler, CEO of 33Across. "It’s understanding the social and interest graph around your readers and how you can accelerate that and [discover] who are those people. The technology that we bring to brands, we’re bringing to the biggest publisher brands.”

Since launching in 2007, 33Across has used proprietary technology to build what it calls a “brand graph” for its clients. By analyzing the anonymous social habits and characteristics of a brand’s customers within its social graph (which encompassed 220 million+ users before the Tynt acquisition), 33Across uncovers high-potential prospects who are socially connected to a brand’s customers and fans. Tynt CEO David Mandelbrot said the company expects to roll out new features in the coming months.

As for the terms of use agreements Tynt has with some publishers who don't want to have their data included in other targeting efforts, 33Across' Wheeler said the acquisition won't affect those pacts. 

Commenting on 33Across’ foray into the sell side of the business, Joanna O’Connell, senior analyst at Forrester Research, said the acquisition raised the question of whether it’s better to represent both sides of the business instead of just one.

“Lots of companies will say that being focused on one side or the other gives you a distinct advantage versus Google, which plays across the ecosystem,” she said. “No great answer yet, but it’s something I’m thinking about.”

Regardless, she said, the expanded data set would presumably strengthen the brand graph for marketers.

“They’re making a long-term bet on the value of social," O’Connell said, "and I think that’s a fair bet to make."

“Kill Hollywood,” is the latest battle cry from Silicon Valley. If you are Paul Graham, that’s not a bad way to motivate young would-be founders to create new startups.

But what if you are Apple, trading spots with Exxon on any given day for the most valuable company in the world, with nearly $100 billion of cash in the bank, looking for the next industry to overturn to keep fueling your growth? There aren’t that many new markets out there that can make a difference to Apple at this point. Hollywood is one of them. If you are Apple, however, you don’t want to kill Hollywood. You want to buy it.

Apple wants to bring Hollywood into people’s homes in an entirely new way. Hence all the chatter lately of a real Apple TV in the works. However, before TVs can become more than a hobby for Apple, there is a major roadblock it must get past. The reluctance of Hollywood to license its best movies and TV shows at the price Apple wants to pay.

In that light, all the cash Apple has been hoarding and building up for years now becomes more intriguing. Its staggering piles of money now total $97.6 billion, to be precise. What are they going to do with all that cash?

One thing they could do is buy their way into Hollywood. Think about it for a second. Today, Apple could literally buy Time Warner ($38 billion market cap), Viacom ($29 billion), and Dreamworks ($1.6 billion) combined, and still have $30 billion left over. If it waits a few more quarters it could snap up News Corp ($49 billion) as well. Only Disney, which is worth $70 billion, would take a while longer to save up for.

But it is very unlikely Apple would just snap up all the major media companies. It would be a post-acquisition mess, not to mention the antitrust issues it would raise. No, all Apple needs to do is take a few billion dollars of that cash and start licensing the rights to stream first-run TV shows and movies. It could easily compete with cable. It needs to compete with cable if it truly wants to build a TV replacement.

As I’ve written before:

. . . does anyone really doubt that eventually the Internet will triumph here to smash the rigid program guide that cable and satellite companies shove down our throats? Most of us only watch a few dozen channels regularly, yet we pay for 500. If we could subscribe on a per channel or per show basis, many of us would. It’s just so obvious that the better experience starts with letting people watch what they want, when they want, on whatever device they want—whether that’s their TV, laptop, iPad, or mobile phone.

Imagine any show or movie on demand on your TV, way beyond what is available in iTunes now. There is no program guide, no schedule. Everything is there, organized according to your taste or what’s popular that day. Just as Apple provides a store for hundreds of thousands of apps—some free, some paid, some subscription—it could do the same thing with videos. TV shows and movies would be treated like apps. Some would be free. Some you could pay to download or rent to watch, like you can today. But there would also be subscription options.

You would subscribe to a show, and be able to assemble your own programming slate by picking and choosing the shows you want to pay for. Not sure about a show? Watch the first episode for free or pay to watch it once. If you get hooked, then get the subscription.

And if Apple charges only a fraction of what you pay for cable today, with much more flexibility to pick and choose the shows you want to subscribe to, well then, whatever it costs Apple to get to that point will be money well spent.

This Sunday will see the launch of a new campaign for Cottee’s cordial.

Created by George Patterson Y&R Melbourne, the commercial aims to take the brand back to its roots by celebrating the simple goodness of childhood – and the fact that no matter how many kids end up in your back yard at the end of the day, there’s always enough Cottee’s to go around.

VIEW THE SPOT
Says
Troy McKinna, advertising manager at Cottee’s: “We’re hoping the
generation of Australians who grew up with classic ‘My dad picks the
fruit’‚ ad will share this new Cottee’s classic with the next one.”

AGENCY:
Producer: Romanca Jasinski/Sheridan Bott
Executive creative director: Ben Coulson
Copywriter: Mathew Lawson
Art Director: Jake Burrows
Group Account Director: Mathew Cummings
Account Director: Matilda Hobba
Account Manager: Courtney Robertson

PRODUCTION:
Production Company: Playbig Film
Director:  Rey Carlson
Producer: Bonnie Fay
Editor:  Rohan Zerna
Music: Electric Dreams
Sound engineer: Paul LeCoutier


CLIENT:
Advertising Manger: Troy McKinna
Brand Manager: Karen Elsbury

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Here at the World Economic Forum in Davos, among the banking, shipping, steel and transport magnates of the global economy, there are a number of technology entrepreneurs floating around. As they rub shoulders with the likes of Eric Schmidt, Sean Parker, Loic Le Meur and Robert Scoble, it’s possible to peel them off from the crowd. I managed to catch Jose Ferreira, CEO and Founder of Knewton a startup which is aiming a silver bullet at the education problem with something that one might even call an audacious platform.

How so? Well, Knewton, a technology company based in NYC, currently has an application being tested with 10,000 college student in the US and is described as an “adaptive learning platform”. What does that mean in English? Well, the idea is that it customises your average educational content to meet the unique needs of each student. This is personalised education on steroids. Using thousands of data points — concepts, structure, difficulty level, media format — and data on how the person uses it, it’s like having a super smart teacher analyse everything you try to learn and suggest ways to make the process easier.

Ferreira has raised $54M to achieve this, which is quite a sum. Despite that, he is openly critical of VCs who do not think in such word changing arenas as education.

Writing for the WEF blog, he says “The venture capital industry in the United States is the envy of the world.. But it’s been getting a bit stale of late. As VC ranks have swelled with recently-minted MBAs over the last 10-20 years, venture capital has become more financial and less inspirational. These new VCs are obsessed with de-risking venture investing.”

Check out the video above for more thoughts on this.

New Zealand holidaymakers are set to petition Prime Minister John Key this summer for a day off, a national first.
 
The petition, which asks for an extra legal day in lieu, is the first
documented petition against a wet New Zealand summer.  Fresh-up has
picked up the petition due to local interest and will send it to John
Key once it gains 50,000 signatures.
 
Thousands of New Zealanders have taken to social media and other outlets
to proclaim their disappointment at the weather conditions during the
holidays. Key venues such as the Wellington Waterfront were blocked off
over New Years Eve, while much-anticipated festivals such as Rhythm and
Vines and Coro Gold have left punters wet and upset during the holiday
period. 
Tourism outfit Destination Manawatu’s co-ordinator Shelly Deegan noted the cancellation of holiday activities was nationwide.

The duration of the wet weather has spanned over a longer holiday period
this year, a further cause of event-goer resentment. Events as early as
the December 13 Foo Fighter’s concert have been close to cancellation,
with the bad weather reported to continue until March. Snowfall in
Canterbury continued the trend this week, with one West Coast reporter
describing the conditions as “completely winter like”.

Although the bad weather may hold intermittent sunshine, many holiday-makers are not appeased.
 
“The thing is, we shouldn’t be this excited about a bit of sun in January.  It shouldn’t be this wet and miserable”, tweeted one disgruntled traveller.
 

With the petition gaining speed on the fresh-up website, the watch is on Mr. Key’s response to the impending document.

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After turning his back on Australian viewers, iconic advertising character ‘Rob the Dentist’ has returned to our screens through a new campaign by ArnoldFurnace Sydney.

Joel
Cotter, Oral-B Brand Manager, said; “Rob has been responsible for some
of the category’s best performing and memorable campaigns. He is widely
recognised and continues to intrigue Australian audiences. Rob gives
Oral-B’s marketing efforts a real point of difference in the category
and we’re excited to provide consumers with the opportunity to engage
with Rob for the first time.”

The campaign launched on 11 January as Oral-B’s ‘Rob the Dentist’ Facebook page was set live. Fans of the page have the opportunity to decide and share
where they think Rob has been for all these years by getting creative
with a Rob avatar.

Maile Carnegie, managing director P&G Australia commented;
“P&G’s purpose is to touch and improve lives through innovation. We
are always striving to deliver innovative campaigns and believe what Rob
has to offer Facebook users will be refreshing and a true first for the
category.”

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The Megaupload troubles make for interesting discussion because there is much to be said on both sides. Whether the illegal aspects of the network “outweigh” the legal aspects is a question that will be discussed for months and perhaps years.

But one thing can’t be disputed: after the two-year investigation by the FBI, the site’s takedown was swift and perhaps over-thorough. Thousands and thousands of users who had legitimate and often critical files hosted on the site have been left behind, their legal files hosted on a simple file-hosting service. A coalition of Pirate Party organizations, led by Pirates of Catalonia, are planning to sue the FBI over what they say are “huge personal, economic and image damages to a vast number of people.”

The group leading the charge contends that the FBI may have violated Spanish Law, and at any rate,

Hard words to disagree with, whether you think Megaupload is a patsy being taken to school by IP mongers or a den of thieves getting what was coming to them. Either way, you have to agree that the wholesale takedown of the site harmed a lot of people totally unconnected to the alleged crimes performed by Megaupload.

The question of a grace period while the law does its work doesn’t seem to apply here: if, say, a cache of drugs was found in a public storage facility you used, you wouldn’t be surprised if the whole place shut down for a couple days while the law did its work. In this case the takedown may be permanent; having arrested the main actors in the company and seized many of their assets, chances are the site couldn’t be restored to working order without a fair amount of work. Not that that hasn’t happened before: The Pirate Bay relocated some servers last year to an actual secret cave after repeated raids and takedown attempts. And plenty of other favorite targets of law enforcement have proven more tenacious than expected.

The point is it’s not much of a stretch to suggest that files hosted on Megaupload will never again be accessible. If they are restored, it will still have been a clumsy and potentially illegal action that made them inaccessible, and the Pirate Parties hope to call out such actions for what they are and perhaps cause authorities to think twice before taking them again.

The Taboo Group, in partnership with Pachinko Pictures, has just released “Chuck’s Lol-A-Coaster” a fully customized and interactive game for Chupa Chups (Stuart Alexander).

The game can be download free via the App Store and can be previewed here

The
game is part of Chupa Chups broader 2012 consumer promotion which gives
three lucky lickers the chance to win an around the world trip to visit
Chuck’s favourite rollercoasters.

Entry in the competition is simple – buy a Chupa Chup, get the code and
enter that code online. Users can enter multiple times to increase their
chances of winning the major prize.
The codes also unlock hidden content and “Sweet Rides” on “Chuck’s
Lol-A-Coaster”, thus prompting repeat plays and simultaneously driving
sales.

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Paul McIntyre from AdNews reports that Publicis Groupe is about to acquire the remaining 40% of Publicis Mojo (including its ZenithOptimedia media unit) for $50 million.

Mojo’s largest local shareholder is Graeme Wills (far left, with deputy chairman and fellow shareholder Craig Davis). Other shareholders include Nicholas Davie and Belinda Rowe.

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