The news that matters

■ AROUND THE WORLD

M&M’s approach to news

M&M brings together the most signifi cant international news stories and those local market developments which have direct relevance to major industry trends. Published fi rst online, our weekly email round-up, ‘The M&M Shortcut’, then offers its time- pressed readers the quick route to the most important news, which they should be aware of to do their jobs effectively. Those stories that make it to print are the essentials – that will have lasting impact for the industry and can’t be ignored. Our ‘News In-depth’ pages (see tab) focus on the stories that dominated the headlines, cutting through the furore to give an insightful overview of what happened and why it matters.

US

US to get fi rst tourism agency

The US

government

US/JAPAN

YouTube offers mobile ad space

US and Japanese companies will now be able to advertise on

Youtube’s mobile websites. The Google- owned video platform is now selling banner ads on a full-day basis. Mazda was one of the fi rst brands to use the service extending its homepage online ad to include the mobile site as well. YouTube’s mobile websites saw a 160% increase in traffi c during 2009 to stream “tens of millions” of videos a day. It has also already seen the likes of Sony and Kia use its mobile platform in the past, as brands look to take advantage of the growing popularity of smartphones.○

THE WORLD IN FIGURES

$13bn

4 M&M PREVIEW 2010

EUROPE

CONTINENT SEES POSITIVE FMCG GROWTH

Fast moving consumer goods growth across Europe outstripped the US in the fourth quarter of 2009,

according to fi gures from The Nielsen Company. Nielsen compared value and unit growth across a high number of product categories. Overall the EU posted a 2.9% growth to maintain a rate of around 3% for the entire year. This compares favourably with the US, which ended the year with a 0.6% growth rate. End of year performance across the largest fi ve European economies varied. France and Spain performed well, while Germany and Italy failed to post much growth at all. Growth in the UK hit 5%. ○

WPP’s reported headline revenue for 2009, the strongest of all the holding companies

$1bn

The amount expected to be invested by Oman’s Ominvest in a tourism resort for the city of Salalah

$119.6bn

is set to invest $200m in an effort to attract more international tourists to the country. The US senate gave the green light to the ‘Travel Promotion Act’, which will result in the creation of the fi rst dedicated agency with the remit to promote the North American country abroad. Unlike other countries the US does not have a central body that is tasked with attracting tourists; it has been historically left to individual states to promote themselves. ○

Google vs China: the search engine had threatened to pull out of the market

Online ad spend for 2010 as it overtakes print, according to forecasts from researchers Outsell

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