Yahoo!, Coca-Cola and MSNBC announce mobile initiatives; Merrill Lynch upgrades online ad spending forecast, and Klipmart eyes upfronts: it's the week in review.

All talk this week has been about mobile marketing and online video ads, but before I get to that, it looks like yet another forecaster has raised its expectations for this year, which is worth mentioning. Merrill Lynch on Wednesday upgraded its forecast for U.S. ad spending for the year, predicting record mid-term election campaign ad spending will contribute to a total 5.3 percent growth in ad spend for 2006. Merrill's worldwide ad outlook is also brighter -- 5.1 percent rather than 4.8 percent. Notably, in the U.S., Merrill downgraded most traditional media for 2006: newspaper to -0.2 percent growth from 1.8 percent; radio, to 0.2 percent from 2.2 percent; broadcast TV to a 0.7 percent gain from 5.5 percent.

Which brings us to interactive.

First, MSNBC.com and Action Engine have launched a multimedia ad-supported mobile news offering -- MSNBC.com that will offer downloadable news articles, videos and slideshows from various sources for handhelds. This marks the first of its kind -- a free, ad-supported mobile news application.

Also in the mobile neighborhood, Coldwell Banker Real Estate this week launched a streaming video service that helps site visitors with the real estate buying and selling process. Upon visiting the site, consumers are greeted with a three-minute extension of currently running TV commercials. The broker will also be producing its own videos and has content agreements with the likes of Forbes, HGTV, and Fine Living. 

Also, a new deal between Coca-Cola Co. and mobile content publisher Smartphones Technologies, call for more branded mobile content, including ringtones and ringback tones with Coke jingles.

Interestingly enough, all this talk about streaming content is still largely hype. According to the latest research release from Forrester, only a small percentage of Americans regularly listen to podcasts - 1 percent of 5,000 internet users surveyed said they regularly listen to podcasts, and only 2 percent had sampled them. Nevertheless, Forrester predicts 12 million households will regularly listen to podcasts by 2010. Previously, Pew Internet & American Life Project estimated that 6 million Americans had listened to a podcast, including 29 percent who owned an MP3 player.

In the meantime, Yahoo! expanded its relationship with BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion, whereby Yahoo email and search will soon be available on the smartphone in the form of "Yahoo Go for Mobile".

On the online video front, Klipmart Corporation has launched an initiative to put online video into the mix of the traditional television upfront and has tapped industry expert Cory Treffiletti, formerly of Carat Fusion, to lead this effort.
 
"As audiences spend a greater and greater part of their media consumption on the internet, online video can be a must-have companion to TV advertising," says Klipmart CEO Chris Young. "Online video can also deliver user metrics to help give advertisers a better sense of who is seeing their ads and how audiences are reacting to them.  We think that broadband video advertising should be planned in the same method and consideration as the traditional TV and cable upfront."
 
Incidentally, both AOL chairman and CEO Jonathan Miller and reality show bigwig Mark Burnett both said in recent speeches that the future of TV is online. "Video consumption is exploding online, and on-demand is going to be the dominant way to consume content," Miller said in his keynote address at this week's MIPTV in Cannes.

According to Jupiter Research, 68 percent of U.S. homes online access the internet through a broadband connection, which translates to about 40 percent of the U.S. total.  In other countries, such as the UK, the younger 18-24 audience is spending more time with the computer than with television.  These signs all point to the increased usage of broadband video in the home, especially as the amount of content made available increases.  The last few months have seen the launch of more video content from MTV Overdrive, their broadband channel, In2TV from AOL, Broadband Enterprise's Cube Fabulous and a host of other sites have taken off such as YouTube. eMarketer says that online video ad spending in the U.S is up from $225 million in 2005, heading towards $385 million in 2006 and by 2008 will reach a billion dollars.

And finally, albeit apropos of nothing, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is at it again. He has filed yet another spyware-related lawsuit against internet advertising company Direct Revenue, alleging it has secretly installed millions of pop-up ads programs that monitor the online activity of users. This is the second spyware suit filed by Spitzer, who is seeking the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. As it usually happens with these things, I'm sure we'll be reporting on a multi-million dollar settlement soon enough. Stay tuned.