Which is pretty odd. Because the search engines and portals have been getting their butts kicked in social media. Sure, Google owns YouTube and Blogger, and Yahoo owns Flickr and del.icio.us. But those were all acquisitions. The truth is, portals and search engines have had no success at all in building their own social media offerings. (And Blogger, Flickr, and del.icio.us aren't exactly hotbeds for marketing. Nor, really, is YouTube.)

So these findings tell me that social marketers are pretty confused -- they still don't know exactly how to make social marketing work, or even where they should be trying. Maybe that's why most European marketers spent less than €10,000 on social marketing last year, and why less than 10% of European social marketers say they're happy with their social marketing ROI.

It's a complicated topic -- one that's hard to deal with properly in a blog post -- but for those interested in learning more, we've just published a new report with lots more discussion and detail: Mining for Fool's Gold: European Social Marketing Budgets Grow Slowly as Marketers Focus on Free Opportunities.

(And for anyone who's curious, Facebook was #2 on the list of most important sites for social marketing. MySpace finished a very distant #4.)

But really, you should follow me on twitter too -- it's great fun, and it allows great conversations.

With o2 as main client, 4th Screen had gained lots of traction in the last few months in the UK market. Yahoo! runs mobile ads for 3, T-Mobile and Vodafone. Not many news from ScreenTonic (MSFT) and a few off-portal deals for Nokia and others...

According to my colleague Nate Elliott, "Banner prices are today artificially inflated by the scarcity of mobile advertising inventory". As mentionned several times here, expect those prices to go down over time, as inventory rises. This already started to happen when O2 active inventory was made available.

So exit "the Future is bright" and welcome the new vision expressed in the statement "together we can do more".

The rationale behind this global campaign is quite interesting. See excerpt from the PR: “The Orange brand was originally developed for one technology in one market – mobile telephones in the U.K” says Caroline Mille, Senior Vice President, Brand and Communications. Orange. “Today, just 14 years later, the brand now spans a range of technologies (internet, T.V content) and reaches consumers in 26 countries, covering very different cultures".

So contrary to some sarcastic comments I read in the UK press, this is not only about boosting the UK business but about positioning the company as the leading global provider of digital communications.

Interestingly and logically, Orange's claim that "Bringing people together is why Orange is here in the first place" is not that far from a certain "Connecting People".

France Telecom/Orange is entering a new stage of change, highlighted by recent news announced by the company:

- TeliaSonera's abandoned merger. "Too bad, we shall start by taking modest actions, which will not be on the front page of newspapers but rather in page 25" said CEO Didier Lombard. Indeed, there are few equivalent targets that could offer such a complementary geographic expansion, to the exception of Telenor. Strategically, it was also a way to be able to compete with the Internet giants and handset manufacturers with a larger installed base (handset procurement negotiations, return on investment on content/media investments, capacity to negotiate...). So now the company will continue its fight with other operators (Ghana is a good example) to acquire smaller companies in the developing world.

- new content strategy symbolized by the satelitte TV offering launched yesterday and the forthcoming Orange Foot channel. By the way, I attended a panel discussion at a conference from Daily les Echos the other day and was amazed by the agressive tone between Roverato (Orange) and Lafarge (Canal+). Not that common for such high-level executives.

- flaw of constant innovation with services just launched or announced in the coming months such as: Orange Musique Max, 3D TV (nice show off effect from the demo I saw - to be launched end 2009?), Warhammer Online (a MMORPG game expected in H2 2008), My personal TV adviser (easy and simple access to discover the VOD catalogue of 24/24 video - to be launched in 2009), Orange Maps (to le launched in q3 2008 in the UK, q4 in France and q1 2009 in Spain).

Anyway a few interesting results for Europe:

- 2 European countries in the Top 10: UK and...Romania

- not surprisingly, Symbian / Nokia are the leading players. Sony Ericsson K800i is performing quite well in several countries.

- In countries where iPhone is sold through operator partnerships, iPhone is among the top devices by traffic: 2nd in France, 1st in Germany but not in the UK. Interestingly, the iPod touch ranks second in Germany

- the Hiptop (Danger device) is grabbing the #1 device spot in Netherlands commanding 8.7% share of traffic, and explaining disproportionate Windows Mobile market share

- despite very different market sizes, Sweden and Germany have almost the same number of requests on AdMob servers. Another confirmation that Sweden is a more sophisticated mobile market and that German data pricing needs some revamping.

If anyone will be there and wants to meet up, either stop by my presentation -- Thursday at 3:30pm -- or drop me an email: nelliott *at* jupiter research -dot- com.

The ad-funded MVNO has announced it will launch in the Netherlands (sometime in S2 2008) and is willing to expand in other European countries.

It is an interesting concept. The company will have to adress 3 main issues moving forward:

- widening the installed base so that advertisers and marketers benefit from a larger reach

- making sure ads are perceived as information/entertainement so that the growing number of youth attracted by the offer will continue to engage with brand messages

- find a profitable business models in countries where market conditions are not ideal for MVNOs. In this regard, bear in mind Blyk is not a totally free offer. Customers get 43 minutes and 217 texts every month for free and have to pay a fee when they reach this ceiling or when they use other services. This is also part of complex modelling of their profitability approach.

I've held off writing about Phorm until I had the time to speak to the company and delve a little deeper into how it works.

John and Nate are both right that there is nothing inherently wrong with advertising using behavioural targeting. But there are several key differences that make ISP-level monitoring more scary and intrusive for consumers than the existing approaches of companies like Google:

• An ISP is able to use behavioural modelling to track every site a consumer visits, not just a selection of sites.
• Consumers are often locked in to 12 or 18 month broadband contracts. So, there is a considerably greater switching cost for consumers than there is for current behavioural tracking where consumers may simply choose not to use a particular search engine.
• As we identified in the net neutrality report, the consumers that care most about the performance of their Internet connection are both high value and very vocal.

For these reasons, ISPs that seek to exploit this new advertising revenue opportunity should deploy it differently to the current approach of Phorm and its partners:

• ISPs that are positioned as quality brands, such as BT, must ensure that targeted advertising models do not tarnish their brand. Running a series of trials with tens of thousands of live consumers, without their consent, was a stupid thing to do and should not be repeated.
• ISPs should consider deploying Phorm-style behavioural tracking on lower priced broadband package tiers rather than on higher priced products or on all products. If the ISP has a quality positioning this differentiates the tiers and will assist the ISP in up-selling consumers. ISPs positioned around value and low pricing, such as Carphone Warehouse, are the natural ISP partners for Phorm.
• Opt-out is inherently more scary for consumers than opt-in. The problem for the ISP is that this is a scale business and with an opt-in model, Phorm will need to improve the consumer carrot from its current anti-phishing functionality. ISPs that differentiate on what they do based on package tiers will be better placed - ISPs could have opt-out on lower priced broadband package tiers, and opt-in on quality tiers.
• ISPs need to reconcile different parts of their package and remove contradictions.There is little point in stressing and supplying for free online security and privacy products as part of the bundle on the one hand, and yet separately deploying Phorm-style behavioural modelling which may create privacy worries.

But behavioral targeting is incredibly scary to publishers and advertisers and any other company who wants use anonymous user data to effectively target advertising. Because even some very smart people simply don't take the time to understand what's being discussed. I'm sure Sir Berners-Lee is one of the great minds of the digital world -- but either he has never bothered to read up on behavioral targeting, or he doesn't know the meaning of the word 'anonymous,' or he simply doesn't trust his ISP.

It's probably the latter: he doesn't trust his ISP. That's fair; everyone can decide for themselves who to trust. But it's also odd, because he presumably already trusts Google to store all his searches -- including personally identifiable data -- for 18 months. Does Berners-Lee really trust Google more with data about exactly who he is and and what he searched for (which is not just the 'worst-case scenario' he discusses in the BBC story, but the actual fact of his relationship with Google today) more than he trusts BT or Virgin Media with anonymous data? (After all, who stores more sensitive data about you: your search engine, or your ISP? And who has a worse history of leaking users' behavioral profiles: search engines, or ISPs?)

This is why the ISPs who partnered with Phorm just weeks ago have already gone weak in the knees. It seems it's simply not possible to have a fair, informed discussion of behavioral targeting -- not in the face of scary stories from the media, and over-reaching, under-informed comments from the type of digerati who should know better.