Daily Buzz 7/27

Mobile entertainment will see near 20% average compounded growth with the bulk of the business coming from music by 2014.
Mobile music — not video — will still be the major driver, rising to $21 billion by 2014
Right now, the world’s largest mobile entertainment market has been in Asia-Pacific (www.mediapost.com)

Bowing to increasing pressure from groups fighting against childhood (and adult) obesity, McDonald’s today announced menu modifications meant to help the chain’s nutritional profile, especially for the Happy Meal.
The new Happy Meal, which McDonald’s will begin rolling out in September, will automatically include both produce (a quarter cup of apple slices) and a new smaller size french fries (1.1 ounces) along with the choice of a hamburger, cheeseburger or Chicken McNuggets, and choice of beverage, including fat-free chocolate milk and 1% low-fat milk. The chain aims to have the new Happy Meals available in all 14,000 U.S. restaurants during first quarter 2012. (www.adage.com)

Video on demand has been around for years, but advertisers’ interest in it has always been limited. That’s because marketers had to bake commercials into the shows there, resigning themselves to running the same ads as long as the show was available for demanding — even if the message grew hopelessly out of date. Holiday sale over? Seasonal Shamrock Shake no longer available? Too bad.
Now Comcast and its majority-owned NBC Universal subsidiary are offering an emerging technique known in the business as “dynamic ad insertion.” Has your tentpole movie already opened? Just swap out the ad for something fresher.
Chrysler and Kraft are the premiere advertisers of the offering, which encompasses Comcast cable systems’ on-demand programming from USA Network, E!, Syfy, Bravo Media and Oxygen Media.
Its early stages will focus on commercials that run before and after a program, but ad insertion for “mid-roll” ads during shows are slated to become available by the fall, said Marcien Jenckes, senior VP-general manger of video services for Comcast. (www.adage.com)

Fox Broadcasting plans to make its recently aired TV episodes available on the Web only to paying subscribers, a new step as major broadcast-TV networks consider reining in free Web offerings that could undermine their traditional advertising and subscription businesses.
Beginning in mid-August, new episodes of Fox shows, including “Glee” and “Family Guy,” will no longer be available to watch free on Fox.com or video site Hulu until eight days after they debut, Fox says. (www.wsj.com)

Dunkin’ runs on coffee more than doughnuts, which means its IPO-fueled expansion plans are likely to heat up the fast-food java battle, particularly with McDonald’s Corp.
On Tuesday evening, the initial public offering of Dunkin’ Brands Group Inc. was priced at $19 a share, raising $427.5 million.
The franchise-centric company, which houses both the Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins chains, plans to use the funds to pay down debt and move beyond its Northeastern roots.
Though Dunkin’ doesn’t have the same level of brand recognition as McDonald’s or Starbucks Corp., the company also hasn’t penetrated the western U.S. or other parts of the country as deeply, giving it more opportunity to expand.
And it’s there that it hopes to give both rivals a run for their money among caffeine cravers. (www.wsj.com)

Sellout crowds in the Pacific Northwest combined with a new stadium and rebranding effort in Kansas City helped Major League Soccer post midseason attendance gains for the second consecutive year.
The league has also seen an incremental increase in television viewership from most of its TV. (www.sportsbusinessdaily.com)

The NBA’s release of its 2011-12 regular-season schedule nearly a month earlier than the league’s usual schedule unveiling hands teams some marketing ammunition during the lockout while giving arena operators a jump on booking acts should games be lost to labor strife. (www.sportsbusinessdaily.com)

When Facebook rolled out its facial recognition feature last month, and automatically turned it on as a default setting, many people were worried that the “tag suggestions” could be a privacy risk—including Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen.
Jepsen contacted the company to express his concerns about the privacy implications of the tag suggestions, and the fact that users weren’t given adequate warning about the feature or told how to disable it easily. So Facebook began running ads showing users how to change their privacy settings to turn the tag suggestions off.
The first round of ads ran on Facebook at the beginning of July, and the second wave of ads started yesterday and will run for two weeks. The social network claims that every user will see the ad at least twice. (www.adweek.com)

To hear it from AOL, content and brands are the keys to the company’s comeback strategy. But some in the industry wonder if the company’s new pick to lead ad sales muddies the message.
In a memo to staff Monday, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong announced that ad sales chief Jeff Levick would be transitioning out of the company in six weeks. Armstrong also said that Ned Brody, formerly president of AOL’s Advertising.com group, would be promoted to the new position of chief revenue officer and president of Advertising.com, responsible for all global O&O advertising, sales, and ad and publishing products.
As the company focuses on growth, Armstrong said the shift is intended to unify a premium strategy for advertisers and publishers and connect the company’s premium brand formats to its owned and operated properties and the network. But some media buyers question what Brody’s pedigree in the data-heavy, targeting world of Advertising.com portends for AOL’s efforts at building out the crucial brand relationships. (www.adweek.com)

PepsiCo’s SoBe has partnered with Mike Tyson’s Main Event game in launching a mobile gaming campaign for the brand’s teas, fruit juice blends, and enhanced waters.
Tied into SoBe’s “Try Everything” brand positioning, the “Try Everything Challenge” invites iPhone users to compete for a high score in a fruit-smashing game within the existing Tyson Main Event game. After the next month of play, the highest point earner wins a trip to Las Vegas in October to train with Tyson. SoBe worked with iPhone game developers RockLive and Omnicom’s OMD Gaming and OMD’s Ignition Factory on the initiative. Launched in March, Mike Tyson: Main Event has attracted 1.6 million downloads so far. SoBe game competitors need to get a free update to participate. (www.adweek.com)