Mirror Mirror on the wall, who's the biggest ad spender of them all?

The biggest ad spender for Q1 of 2008 goes to the Healthcare sector and with good reason! As the world gets more polluted, more and more people are putting a premium to health and insurance with Nielsen Global Consumer Concerns report, May 2008 noting health as the global consumer's biggest concern. This makes a lot of sense. There are so many kinds of diseases going around, people are so busy now making sure they're insured for their family or that they stay healthy enough to go on working.

Basically the growth in advertising spend per sector looks like this

• Healthcare - 10%
  
• FCMG or Fast moving consumer goods - 6.7%
  
• Clothing and accessories - 5.5%

With regards to advertising medium, television has seen much growth too in the last quarter, followed by radio and newspaper

Will Starbucks Say Goodbye Soon?

Starbucks has been going on a downward spiral with an initial job cut and then a lawsuit over "free" wifi. Starbucks is finally closing the doors of 600 outlets! That's a lot I tell you. That's approximately 10% of their total store chain since they have 6,800 US stores. And 600 stores have the equivalent of 12,000 employees losing their jobs. That's really sad.

So what happened you ask? Let's take our answer from Boston.com's Alex Beam - he has laid down in the best and simplest possible terms the answer

What went wrong at Starbucks? To invoke the venerable business cliche, they didn't stick to their knitting. Their core business was overcharging consumers for coffee, and a very lucrative business it was. Then they started selling dreamy CDs, and the company even helped produce a movie, "Akilah and the Bee," that bombed at the box office. Schultz bought a basketball team and started hanging out with Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney, the usual recipe for business disaster.

Google Getting Sued Again! This Time By Viacom Bec Of Piracy Issues On Youtube

There have been just articles upon articles on privacy issues for online use. And I agree that is imperative that people be able to retain online privacy at some point. Companies like Google though make a living out of collecting personal information from users. This allows them to profile clients, enhance advertising and improve the user experience online.

But in cases like this when Viacom sues them, that information also becomes a threat. After illegally posted clips of "The Colbert Report' was posted on Youtube, Viacom cried foul and demanded to know who was doing this.

This then started the avalanche of online piracy and online privacy nightmares for everyone concerned. The judge just ruled that Google would have to turn over user information for Youtube, and although I don't think it's really a big deal as long as they find the culprit and put the case to rest just so we can all go on with our lives, it's still sensitive that this amount of powerful data can fall indeed be transferred and can indeed fall into the wrong hands.

At this point though, Google and Viacom have come out publicly to say that they will do everything they can to retain people's anonymity. Yeah right!