Globaldata Share Discussion Threads

[littleredrooster] 24/10/2017 15:40

I should probably declare that I bought more FBT shares last week (though this is not a recommendation for others to do so).

hxxp://www.forbidden.co.uk/2017/10/24/ai-from-zero-to-hero/

AI – FROM ZERO TO HERO

October 24, 2017

by Stephen Streater

Introduction

Maybe the fear that AI was set to take over the world started with Mary Shelley’s monster – an intelligent human creation which got out of control. Nearly 200 years after this story was published, the goal of making a truly intelligent machine is yielding increasingly impressive results.

Google’s recent success with AlphaGo Zero wasn’t just through better hardware; it was a better way of thinking about AI. With thousands of years of human knowledge sidestepped, and months of computer training compressed, AlphaGo Zero reached World Champion standard in just three days. Continuing onwards and upwards, a few weeks later it became the best player in the world.

Why games

Whenever a new milestone in game playing is passed, people ask what relevance this has to “real world” problems.

For an AI writing poetry, it would be hard to measure its brilliance.

But for a game, you can play AIs against people and each other to rank them. You can also measure ability and progress over time, using the handy ELO rating system.

And there is abundant test data – the raw material of learning – which Google’s latest program even managed to generate by playing itself.

Moving target

As someone who has been playing with AI for decades, the change in attitude to AI is striking.

For a long time, AI was defined as anything computers couldn’t do yet. As each new milestone was conquered, the goal posts were moved to the next unsolved problem.

Like the Wizard of Oz, things only looked impressive if you couldn’t see behind the curtain. Once you could see how things worked, you could see the trick behind the magic, and the problem was no longer deemed hard enough to need intelligence to solve.

An initial attraction of early simulated Neural Networks was their opaqueness. All sorts of nonsense was spoken at conferences as people confused incomprehensibility with ability. Not understanding how a system works risks ridiculous and unexpected errors – for example mistaking random objects for an ostrich.

How an AI works needs to be understood or, like the Wizard of Oz, the “brilliance221; of the inscrutable AI can suddenly be shown to be a mirage. I will cover this subject more in a later blog post.

Game playing, though superficially a narrow field, shows relentless like-for-like progress. As computers overtake people in harder and harder areas, the Wizard of Oz’s tricks become ever more sophisticated. When even the tricks behind the curtain are not readily understood, AI’s position is ensured.

Applications

I will discuss AI applications of direct relevance to our cloud video platform in later posts. Suffice it to say for now that Forbidden already uses AI elements in its Blackbird codec and has AI concepts for a range of internal tools.

Third party AI video functions are well suited to the cloud, so are readily accessible to cloud platforms such as Forscene. Forbidden is working with major cloud providers to assist development and integrate with such tools.

After years of technical progress, the disruption caused by AI is just beginning. As my Italian friend exclaimed following a particularly difficult general election: the trouble is, the system of disorder is breaking down.

With practical applications poised to move from R&D to everyday life, hold onto your hats: widespread AI adoption is coming.

Are you ready for the extraordinarily exciting times ahead?

Stephen B Streater
Founder and Director of R&D

[littleredrooster] 09/10/2017 16:34

hxxp://www.tvtechnology.com/broadcast-engineering/0029/to-cloud-or-not-to-cloud--is-that-the-wrong-question/281937

To Cloud or Not To Cloud? Is That the Wrong Question?

Look at function first

September 28, 2017

By George Boath

In under 10 years, the concepts of public cloud computing and virtualization of computing resources have disrupted all of the perceived wisdoms of IT system design. Engineers who design systems for media processing and production now have to consider where the computing resources for their system are located and how they want to pay for it. In other words, they have to consider much more than just signal paths and workflows.

Solution architects now have choices of running their systems on various infrastructures, including dedicated “on-premise221; servers, virtual machines in private data centers, or on public cloud computing platforms. Then there is a choice of business models to consider… do you buy systems on CAPEX and depreciate them as business assets? Do you subscribe to software or do you pay for it according to usage? There are so many options to choose from and the cost/benefit comparisons can be very complicated, so it is understandable that many customers appear to be in a state of indecision.

Perhaps it is time to suggest that we are looking at the system design problem in the wrong way. We should be looking at function first, i.e. what must the system do, then look at the required business model, then decide on the appropriate infrastructure, rather than letting the infrastructure form dictate the design process. To learn a lesson from another industry, classic architecture or design students are taught to get the balance right between form and function in a building or product design. They are taught that form without function is of little value, while function with form can be equally ineffective. Perhaps these factors should also be considered in media systems design?

A classic broadcast system would be designed according to signal flow (typically “left to right”), with discrete boxes that each perform a single task. As we have moved into IP-based and file-based processing, we have had to adapt to thinking about a hardware/software stack, with applications at the top and infrastructure—;computing, networking and storage—at the bottom.

Unfortunately, the infrastructure question has come to dominate too many discussions, when it should be software/system functionality that is decided first and infrastructure should be provided that suits the desired operational or business model. In other words, software function should come first and infrastructure form should be defined to suit the business needs.

WHERE TO HOST YOUR MEDIA PROCESSING PLATFORM

Having said that, the infrastructure decision is important, so when choosing where to host “heavy lifting” media processing, there are a few simple guidelines to consider.

For the highest-performance media processing, the servers should be located topologically close to the file storage. In many cases, on-premise processing will provide the fastest performance, but if the files are already on a cloud storage facility, maybe that’s where media processing should be formed.

Running most software on virtual machines is easy unless your vendor still relies on dongles for licensing. The challenging part is creating an elastically scalable license model that works on a customer’s private data center.

Media processing tasks such as transcoding can use the full computing resources of a server, so one of the benefits of virtualization—;that of sharing computing resources—is not usually seen. All of the other benefits of virtualization apply. For the same reasons, containerization of software offers little benefit over virtualization for media-processing systems.

If you plan to virtualize your software solutions, look for solutions that offer a single point of management.

SaaS IS A SERVICE, NOT JUST A PRODUCT

SaaS models for your media processing, used extensively, may cost more than provisioning your own servers and software but may be more aligned with your company’s financial and business models. SaaS on public cloud is typically chosen for reasons of cash flow, convenience, flexibility and easy scalability more than for cost savings.

Modern enterprise class software should be capable of running on any of the major infrastructure models: on-premise dedicated server, virtual machines or on public cloud, and with a range of business models from CAPEX purchase to usage-based SaaS models. Workflow orchestration should allow customers to use any one or a combination of these infrastructure types and payment models according to their business needs.

In summary, system designers should select the software and solutions that offer the functions their business needs, and vendors should be expected to make this available in any infrastructure form, and with range of business models.

If your software vendor cannot answer all of these requirements, then perhaps your real question should be—“Is this a vendor that can help my business?”

George Boath is the director of channel marketing for Telestream.

hxxp://www.telestream.net/

[littleredrooster] 19/9/2017 20:57

The Cloud allows pop-ups for software distribution

hxxp://www.forbidden.co.uk/2017/09/19/pop-up-cloud-infrastructure/

September 19, 2017

Pop-up cloud infrastructure

As a lover of fine chocolate, and a member of the Chocolate Tasting Club, I notice chocolate shops. They are liberally scattered throughout London.

The run up to Easter is a good time for chocolate, and numerous chocolate outlets appear at this time, either taking over shop sites, or or as pop-ups within shops, only to disappear shortly afterwards. The benefits are clear: it avoids the cost of running a chocolate shop all year round, and customers have access when they most need it.

An even more flexible stall shows up during the Wimbledon Tennis tournament, when numerous tourists arrive to enjoy the spectacle – and sometimes, the English summer sunshine. These tourists flood the local restaurants, where local shops adopt a tennis theme.

Near these 19th century shop fronts, at the top of Wimbledon Hill, you can find a couple of children sitting outside their back gate with a pop-up strawberries and cream stall, with soft drinks options. Based around a simple table, this lucrative set up carries out a brisk trade with those tourists who think that Wimbledon Station is the nearest one to the tournament. A few days later it vanishes without trace.

Pop-up agility contrasts with traditional bricks-and-mortar store inertia. A big infrastructure cost – long term staff, a wide product range – is not needed. Or rather it is passed on the the system as a whole. Short term staff have to be available when the pop-up needs them, and they bear the cost of finding other work the rest of the time. Shop space must also be available – and the landlord has to carry this cost at other times.

Without paying to reserve staff and space, you risk resources not being available when you need them.

The Cloud allows pop-ups for software distribution. Clients can use – and pay for – the resources they need, when they need them. The cloud supplier bears the risk of an under-utilised infrastructure.

But here technology comes to the rescue. Computers are cheap. Storage is cheap. The main cost of a cloud supplier is electricity and cooling, so unused systems are cheap to run. And the internet runs 24/7, so people can “hot desk” computer resources round the clock. This makes much more efficient use of capital than with local computers, unused at night or when people are on holiday or at lunch or just not using them.

Cloud purchase and maintenance costs are lower too, benefiting from economies of scale. The cloud is so cheap to make that cloud suppliers are happy to bear the cost of spare capacity. Unlike people, the computers are happy to be idle or busy. So using pop-up cloud infrastructure, you always have availability of both your “store” and your “staff”.

The cloud provides the flexible infrastructure for scaling usage up and down: money is made duplicating identical software. Software development itself does not benefit much from the cloud – it is more akin to developing the cloud itself. And this is literally true in the case of Forbidden’s Forscene cloud video platform.

By commoditising computer resources, the cloud cuts hardware costs and margins. This moves the value added further towards differentiated software – ever more accessible through pop-up cloud instances.

Stephen B Streater
Founder and Director of R&D

[littleredrooster] 12/9/2017 09:03

companies with high capital spending tend to underperform



New Amazon Headquarters Should Alarm -- WSJ

12/09/2017 8:02am

Dow Jones News

By James Mackintosh

This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (September 12, 2017).

The list of warning signals for shareholders includes diversification into new industries, changes of business model, massive hiring programs, unfettered CEO power, distracted management, and high capital spending. But top of the list for many is the construction of a new headquarters. Hubris, meet Amazon.com.

Amazon has achieved extraordinary feats, most notably in speed of expansion. It hired more than 30,000 people in the last quarter alone, and in the past three years has tripled its head count to 382,400. It appears to have managed this without a hitch, even as it spent billions of dollars on Hollywood productions, launched a hit gadget and ramped up its spending on research and development.

Investors are betting that CEO Jeff Bezos will keep his magic touch, and that money plowed into expansion today represents big profits to be made some time in the future.

History and human nature are against Mr. Bezos -- and may eventually prove a headwind for much of the rest of the market too.

The lesson from the long term is that companies with high capital spending tend to underperform. Kenneth French, a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, calculates that shares in the 30% of U.S. companies with the lowest investment returned six times as much as those with the highest investment since 1963.

Human nature provides a story to back up the findings. CEOs like to expand (not coincidentally, CEOs of bigger companies earn more), like to chase new ideas (putting them on the front of popular magazines) and like to do what shareholders want (boosting the value of their stock options, at least in the short run). The three come together when a company or sector is in vogue, as shareholders give it cheap capital and cheer on plans for growth.

Often it turns out that the premise for the expansion was mistaken, and much capital spending is wasted. Remember peak oil, the race to dig new mines to satisfy forecasts of endless emerging-market growth, or the vast overinvestment in shipping to prepare for global trade's inevitable expansion? Those early in the expansion are right to invest, but as more capital is deployed it can drive down prices and destroy the very opportunity shareholders hoped to exploit.

Other times CEOs just fritter the money away, as in the dot-com bubble. If you exercise little control over management and actively encourage them to spend money as quickly as possible, you shouldn't be surprised if much of it is wasted.

The rise and rise of Amazon has come as the patterns of the past seem to have been suspended. Since the start of 2009 the runaway success of big tech stocks and big dividend payers have helped companies with the most and least investment do well, while middling companies underperformed. Calculations by Goldman Sachs' chief U.S. equity strategist David Kostin suggest shareholders have shifted again in the past 18 months, rewarding capital spending with bigger share-price gains than for dividends and share buybacks. If it continues, CEOs will get the message and corporate investment will pick up.

Amazon shareholders might argue that the company won't fall victim to misplaced capital spending because it is exploiting disruptive technology, investing in growth and spending heavily on R&D.

If the past is any indication, these offer up only a glimmer of a hope. History offers plenty of examples of disruptive technologies leading to investment booms, but those caught up in the spending spree usually lose out horribly. The British "railway mania" of the 1840s is a classic example: money poured in from excited shareholders, railroad companies found ways to spend it and were rewarded with ever-higher share prices, until investors discovered just how much of the capital had been wasted. The winners were the broader economy and those who entered early or sold out in time. But much capital had to be written down as profits were competed away or overestimated.

Investing in growth is more plausible. Academics have shown that higher R&D spending on average is followed by better stock performance than for companies with lower R&D spending.

For this to justify further increases in Amazon's stock price means assuming investors are once again underestimating the future profits from its R&D spending. Given how hard it is even to work out how much the company is spending on R&D -- it is lumped in with "technology and content," where $5.5 billion was spent in total in the second quarter -- it's impossible to come up with a firm view of how well it is spent, or what profits might result. The share price might well be underestimating future products, but might equally be extrapolating the past successes of the web-hosting division or the voice-controlled Alexa device to unknown future products.

Amazon expects to hire another 50,000 staff earning on average more than $100,000 a year at its second HQ over a decade and a half, adding $5 billion a year of pay to the more than $5 billion capital cost of "HQ2."

Amazon shareholders betting on it bucking history have to hope that by the time HQ2 is completed the company has both grown enough to justify its vast scale and found a way to profit from all its capital and R&D spending.

[littleredrooster] 08/9/2017 21:23

I must admit that I have recently been watching quite a lot of Blaze programmes on Freeview (completely independently of the FBT news).



A&E Networks

"On September 19, 2016, A+E launched Viceland. The next day, A+E UK launched Blaze, its global brand free to air channel, in the British Isles, its first market."

[littleredrooster] 08/9/2017 14:59

He is leaving a large media company to join a small technology company (though possibly he just wants to spend more time with his family).

hxxp://www.forbidden.co.uk/2017/09/07/top-broadcast-executive-ian-mcdonough-joins-forbidden-technologies-plc-as-ceo/

Top broadcast executive, Ian McDonough, joins Forbidden Technologies plc as CEO

September 7, 2017

hxxp://www.forbidden.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Ian-McDonough-e1504775858590-672x372.jpg

Forbidden Technologies plc, a media SaaS business, announced the appointment of senior broadcast executive Ian McDonough as CEO.

McDonough will be focused on driving commercial growth and continued development of their cloud video platform and related applications. He previously held board level roles at Turner (part of Time Warner Inc.) where he was the managing director for Northern Europe and BBC Worldwide as EVP and general manager of the CEMA business.

McDonough brings a wealth of experience in media sector commercial innovation and business growth. Examples of his key achievements include directing the development of the Sky Kids app where Turner is a key partner and the company’s presence on Now TV and Virgin Media’s OTT services. He also led development on large scale new products for Turner. At BBC and A&E he launched multiple branded services across EMEA, including BBC World News, CBeebies and History.

Ian McDonough says: “With the exponential growth in video use – rights holders, broadcast and OTT companies need more sophisticated capabilities to increase the use of their content across any device. I am extremely excited to be leading a business with this focus, and its huge potential for growth in this ever-evolving new media landscape.”

Chairman of Forbidden Technologies, David Main, said: “We are delighted that Ian is joining the Board of Forbidden Technologies as the company’s CEO. Ian brings fantastic experience and understanding of our customers. In addition, he brings energy, a strong track record of commercial innovation and a clear ability to drive business performance. “

Forbidden Technologies transforms the capabilities of traditional video production capabilities in line with the growing requirements of the new media world. Uses of their platform include rapidly generating and publishing clips, highlights off live content, viewing, logging, shot selection, editing and captioning remotely.

[littleredrooster] 23/8/2017 18:41

Paris 2024 Olympic programme could include video gamers as the meteoric rise of eSports continues

•eSports has seen a meteoric rise in popularity over the last 12 months
•Discussions will now take place over video gaming taking place at the Olympics
•Paris 2024 could be the first year that eSports players can earn Olympic medals
•Co-president of Paris bid committee Tony Estanguet says they will speak to IOC

By Rob Harris, Associated Press

Published: 10:27, 9 August 2017 |

"Video gamers could be competing for Olympic medals by 2024, according to Tony Estanguet, co-president of the Paris bid committee.

The explosion in popularity of eSports events, drawing large crowds of youngsters to arenas for tournaments, has already seen gaming embraced by the Asian Games, and talks will be held about the possibility of it joining the 2024 programme.

It will become a full sport by the 2022 edition, although details of which games will be contested are yet to be provided."

[littleredrooster] 23/8/2017 14:20

Faster publishing of live events into social media ... is vital for us

hxxp://citywire.co.uk/money/wednesday-papers-britain-softens-brexit-stance-on-eu-court/a1043601

Wednesday Papers: Britain softens Brexit stance on EU court

by Himanshu Singh on Aug 23, 2017 at 04:41

•Daily Mail: Britain’s booming video game industry received a double boost yesterday as two AIM-listed companies announced major partnerships; Cambridge-based Frontier Developments revealed it had struck a deal to make a game based on the Jurassic Park films, with London’s Gfinity also announcing it was set to launch a virtual motor racing championship with Formula One.



hxxp://www.forscene.com/blog/gfinity-chooses-forscene-to-help-grow-their-fan-base

Gfinity chooses Forscene to help grow their eSports fan base

Jovana Posted On May 22, 2017

Forbidden Technologies plc (AIM: FBT) is pleased to announce it has won a contract with Gfinity plc (“Gfinity”), a leading electronic gaming promoter (eSports). Gfinity will use Forscene to help grow their fan base through faster and improved use of video in social media and exploitation of archived video content.

eSports is a sports category that is going through rapid growth. Newzoo, the leading provider of market intelligence covering the eSports market, predicts that in 2017 eSports will generate global revenues of $696 million, up 41 percent from $493 million in 2016, and is expected to have an audience of regular and occasional viewers of 385 million people.

Today, a major eSports event may attract 40,000 people watching live and tens of millions watching over the Web. Beyond its own tournaments, Gfinity provides a full turnkey solution for any brand wanting to create their own eSports tournaments and has staged premium eSports events for leading publishers and brands including ‘Call of Duty’, ‘FIFA’. ‘Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, “Rocket League’, Street Fighter V, and ‘Forza Racing Championship’.

Gfinity plc Chief Gaming Officer, Paul Kent said: “Gfinity requires a solution that will help us grow our fan base and improve our engagement with them. Faster publishing of live events into social media and better overall use of the video content we produce is vital for us. Forscene fills a gap in capabilities that we have been looking to solve.”

Forbidden Technologies Chairman, David Main, said: “The eSports market is an exciting new high growth sports category for us. Our Forscene cloud video platform provides a range of core capabilities, including live clipping for social media and exploiting the value of archive content for this innovative and demanding new sector. Our range of applications helps address the range of video requirements for fan engagement.”

Forbidden Technologies Head of eSports, Sal De Parres said: “Forscene will deliver the fast and flexible workflow that eSports requires. eSports is about worldwide distribution and speed – Forscene provides both.”

[littleredrooster] 20/8/2017 18:26

Sports are the biggest draw on television

hxxp://www.sharecast.com/news/iconic-new-york-venue-extends-agreement-with-forbidden-technologies/26333241.html

Iconic New York venue extends agreement with Forbidden Technologies

Fri, 18 August 2017

(ShareCast News) - Video editing specialist, Forbidden Technologies announced on Friday that it had extended an existing agreement with an "iconic sports, music and entertainment venue in New York".

Forbidden, which had previously signed a deal with Madison Square Garden to help them reduce live sports clips editing and publishing down from 25-55 minutes to under five minutes, said its professional software as a service (SaaS) solution, Forscene was already in use by the unnamed venue to improve its time to market for digital clips.

Chairman of Forbidden Technologies, David Main, said "Expanding the scale of our relationship with this iconic venue is clear validation of the value we can bring into the live sports and entertainment market. Our Forscene cloud video platform provides the venue with the capability to outperform competition in terms of speed to market for the highlights of live events."

As of 1225 BST, shares had moved ahead just 0.83% to 6.05p.

Market Cap (m) £11.05

hxxp://www.forbidden.co.uk/2017/08/15/enabling-vs-restrictive-standards/

"But cloud software blows restrictive standards out of the water."

[littleredrooster] 16/8/2017 14:02

Well, I personally greatly enjoy "the old British TV series of the same name" (it's available most nights on Freeview).

hxxp://www.mesalliance.org/2017/08/14/aws-unveils-machine-learning-powered-security-service-summit-adds-hulu/

By Jeff Berman HITS August 14, 2017

AWS Unveils Machine Learning-Powered Security Service at Summit, Adds Hulu

"Challenges that Hulu faced when developing the new live service included dealing with the huge amount of metadata that accompanied all the new content it was handling, Soltanovich said. Making sure that the correct description of a program or movie is attached to that content is one necessity, he pointed out, noting that it’s important to make sure that, for example, the Marvel movie “The Avengers” is correctly identified as a superhero action movie and has the right accompanying images so that viewers can see it’s that movie rather than the old British TV series of the same name or the movie of the same name that was based on that show."

[littleredrooster] 16/8/2017 13:58

hxxp://www.mesalliance.org/2017/08/15/aws-exec-machine-learnings-undergoing-renaissance/

By Jeff Berman M&E Connections August 15, 2017

AWS Exec: Machine Learning’s Undergoing a ‘Renaissance’

"NEW YORK — Machine learning is undergoing a “renaissance” now thanks to the increasing shift of data storage to the cloud, according to Matt Wood, Amazon Web Services (AWS) GM-artificial intelligence (AI).

That’s because “the cloud has enabled machine learning and customers to overcome the single largest point of friction, which is almost always around scale,” he told the AWS Summit Aug. 14 during a keynote in which AWS also introduced the new machine-learning based security service Amazon Macie and announced new cloud service client wins that included Hulu.

“When you’re working with machine learning and training machine learning models, you need tons and tons of data — the more the merrier,” Wood said. The concept is simple. “The more data you put in, the more likely it is that your model is going to be accurate,” he said.

When you have all that data, you then “need to be able to train it at scale – typically using high-end” graphics processing units (GPUs), he said. “Once you train those models, you need to be able to perform predictions against them, also at scale, both in the cloud” and “at the edge through connected devices or on mobile apps,” he said.

AWS has been “addressing these challenges for customers for over a decade,” he went on to say, noting that its customers have been “aggressively migrating everything out of their data centers up to AWS as quickly as they can,” and nearly all the new data “has been generated in the cloud by default.”

Earlier in the keynote, Wood pointed out that “it’s never been cheaper, easier or more cost-effective for customers to be able to pull data from their program applications, their web applications, their IoT applications – even their data centers – and load it up onto AWS.”

Once that data is in the cloud, “customers typically want to be able to get some value out of that data,” he said, explaining: “They want to be able to analyze and they want to be able to compute against it. They want to be able to ask questions and get answers back in a reasonable time.”

Before, “inside the constrained walls of the data center” on premises, that was “extremely challenging” because companies were “stuck with a fixed set of resources unless” they wanted to make large capital investments, he said. So, customers typically “ended up being crammed inside that same box,” inside the walls of their data centers, he said.

However, he said: “In the cloud, those data center walls – they just disappear. And so, customers can start to collect the data that they need, aggregate it at the right level and ask the questions which are truly important to their data.”"

[littleredrooster] 01/8/2017 13:52

I come to the party via IBG (shares possibly bought when IBG was valued at less than £1m).

hxxp://www.azam.info/tmn-group-buy-ibg-affiliate-future/

IBG (Affiliate Future) sells to TMN for no premium

Posted by Azam Editorial Team as Performance Marketing

Some shareholders in IBG, parent company of AffiliateFuture, have expressed concern about the decision to effectively sell the network to direct marketing company TMN Group (formerly TheMutual.net). The reason is because the acquisition values each IBG share at a miserable 12.75 pence and the whole of IBG at a mere £9.84 million.

This compares to a share price of 28 pence six months ago on 20 June, 2007 and talk of IBG shares looking to hit the 40 pence mark.

“I think what has happened over the past 6 months is a bloody disgrace”, says a shareholder who goes by the name Omlaysause on the ADVFN.com stockmarket forums. “First off we get that ridiculous RNS saying we MAY have a problem with profits and then to say it could be effected for 2 years, which as we all know, killed the share price there and then. Coupled with the strategic review which turned out to be a complete waste of time. We are then told, don’t worry lads, we’ve got some great ideas and you’ll all reap the benefits if you stick around for the next 2 years. Then a few months later, do you know what, we’re just going to sell up with no benefit to the IBG shareholders in the deal, it’s a simple swap of IBG to TMN.”

Most IBG shareholders have expressed similarly negative views on ADVFN.com as they’ve felt that, by selling when the share price is at its lowest point in years, and by selling without a premium, they’ve been let down.

However, some of the biggest losses will be incurred by IBG Directors who hold substantial holdings in the company. As recently as 7 August 2007, Non-Executive Director Nicola Costa and CEO Maziar Darvish bought £99,755.84 of shares between them at around 16.5p.

The buyout/merger ends a year which has seen a number of affiliate networks and what could be more or less described as affiliate companies come together. Examples of notable tie-ups include TradeDoubler and The Search Works, Buy.at and Lightstate, Linkshare and TrafficStrategies.com as well as CauseLoyalty.com and AffiliateFuture and NetFreeStuff.

The two CEOs, Maziar Darvish and Mark Smith, are both astute businessmen and will have made the decision with the best interests of their ‘babies’ at heart: the greater size will bring cost savings and there will be the potential to cross-sell services.

With email marketing companies always hungry for campaigns and with affiliate networks always desperate for means to market their advertisers, this could be the perfect marriage of convenience… even if there is discontent about the amount of dowry paid.

You can read the full buyout/merger statement below:

“TMN – Nil Premium Merger with IBG

14 December 2007

....

•TMN’s services include email and website marketing (TMN Media), full service digital advertising (EDR), online fieldwork solutions (iD Factor) and research analysis (ICD Research). For the year ended 30 April 2007, TMN reported revenue of £16.1 million and operating profit of £3.3 million. For the six months ended 31 October 2007, TMN reported revenue of £9.0 million, and headline profit before tax of £1.4 million..

•IBG’s operations are divided primarily into the following three divisions: AffiliateFuture (a Performance Marketing network), IBG Media (brokering traffic as well as publishing a variety of websites), and E-commerce (websites retailing product lines across several sectors within sports and lifestyle). IBG is today announcing its preliminary results for the financial year ended 31 October 2007, reporting revenue of £16.4 million, profit before share based charges, interest, taxation, depreciation, amortisation IFRS share based charges and movement in investments of £1.6 million, and profit before taxation of £0.92 million."

[davea] 31/7/2017 18:41

Yes, and I started with the mutual.net too :)

[skinny] 31/7/2017 14:15

I'm also here for historic reasons - although my holding is showing +146% - its too small to make a significant difference!

[anusol] 31/7/2017 06:52

Nice steady increases in revenue and a dividend increase too - more than happy with the way this company is managed and future prospects. Assuming it'll be looking for more acquisitions over the next 12 months.Anyone else in Globaldata? (I'm only here from a long history with the mutual.net)