Plus more than 7,000 feature films were produced around the world in 2009 (compared to 1,700 in 1995), and in excess of 100 million song tracks have now been catalogued

“More content creators are producing more content than ever before – and are more able to make money off of their content than ever before,” the report says. “On top of that, consumers are living in a time of absolute abundance and choice -a time where content is plentiful in mass quantities.”

However, for the traditional middlemen, the Internet represents both a challenge and an opportunity, says Floor 64. There is no doubt that online has eaten away at some traditional means by which such businesses earned a crust. But, there is more money going in to the overall market, more content being created, and many new ways to make money.”

“With our hotspot ad format we can make distinct products part of publishers’ videos and engage viewers with hovers and clicks,” says Ryan Welmans, commercial director at the UK-based company.

“Through our partnership there’s immediate ROI through advertising revenue share,” says Marina Sirotkin, UK country manager for ipercast. “The platform is also combined with social media, so we can help increase traffic, and we can up time spent by adding interactivity to a customer website, which can further boosts returns.

A Red Carpet event online video might, say, feature celebrities wearing a range of clothes and accessories. The digital audience can roll over to initiate an ad unit for a suit or a handbag and the system will lead purchasers through to buying a product from one of its online retail clients.

“We have a number of ad partners with big feeds, such as Marks & Spencer and Tesco, and we match keywords with their products to make it work,” says Welmans.

On the publishing side Invideous works with the likes of Express Group, Future Publishing’s bike magazines and Ireland-based video website Muzu.

“We’ve sold out on the ads side though the publishing side is harder to fulfil,” Welmans says. “We really want to push into hotspot-enabled preroll ads, because from a publishers’ perspective, it should mean higher revenues when we are dealing with millions of views.”

Players of the game will be able to explore the world of Panem – the setting for The Hunger Games trilogy – and complete missions that will take them to each of the ‘Districts’ and the ‘Capitol’ where they will interact with characters from the story. The game will be the first place fans can see the official Map Of Panem, and the Districts layout. Details for the Map Of Panem will be rolled out in the game with a steady stream of chapter expansions.

“Suzanne Collins’ amazing novel delivers an unbelievably detailed world that completely immerses the reader,” says Sam Glassenberg, CEO of Funtactix. “Fans want to enter this world, interact with the characters and truly become a part of it.”

As part of the marketing effort for the film, Lionsgate has also launched an online immersive games experience at TheCapitol.pn, where visitors can register as a Citizen are be assigned to one of the Districts. Users can head to the square and collect their gifts, as well as send letters of love and support to their District’s Tributes.

“Young people will be logging on to listen, watch and take part in the show,” says Ben Cooper, controller of BBC Radio 1. “I hope that this will be to our young listeners what listening to the chart and waiting to record your favourite pop songs was for another generation.”

The series has been created by content design outfit Somethin’ Else together with games publisher Electronic Arts, using The Sims 3 as its platform – a virtual studio and soundstage.

“This is an exciting and experimental way to tell stories about coping with life using a game that millions of teenagers love,” says Gemma Brady, Channel 4 Education. “It is exactly the kind of creative innovation we love to see at Channel 4 Education.”

“But even though the human attention span has become remarkably fickle, much of the web remains slow,” writes Google svp of Infrastructure Urs Hoelzle on Google’s latest Think Quarterly: ‘Speed’ Issue. “The average web page takes 4.9 seconds to load – in a world where fractions of a second count, that’s an eternity.”

‘Fast is better than slow’ has been a Google mantra since the company’s early days, and Hoelzle says it’s more important now than ever

“We have one simple rule to support this Gospel of Speed: Don’t launch features that slow us down,” he says. “You might invent a great new feature, but if it slows down search, you have to either forget it, fix it, or come up with another change that more than offsets the slowdown. We have what we call a ‘fixed latency budget,’ which is sort of like a family budget. If you want to go on a nicer vacation but your budget doesn’t stretch, you need to cut back somewhere else.”

And in the quest for greater velocity, the search giant is working on something called Page Speed, an open-source project that helps webmasters speed up their sites (it can even re-write pages to boost performance). It’s also experimenting with a Page Speed service which automatically accelerates page loads without code changes. Publishers simply need to route a page through the service and it gets faster.

“At Google, we don’t plan on stopping until the web is instant, so that when you click on a link the site loads immediately, and when you play a video it starts without delay,” says Hoelzle. “What amazing things could happen then? What else could be invented?”

When audiences use Shazam while watching Being Human, they’ll be able to see exclusive scenes from next week’s episode, a track list of the songs featured in that night’s episode and wallpaper for their mobile device.

Viewers of Shazam-enabled Psych will get to watch show bloopers, browse a photo gallery of stars James Roday and Dulé Hill, and download wallpaper.

The Soup watchers will get links to exclusive clips from the programme.

Lexus is sponsoring these ‘second-screen interactive experiences’ and is offering a chance to win trips for two to each of the three shows’ locations.

The social media site has taken off in the US – the sixtieth-most-visited site, according to Hitwise – with some 17 million visitors, the majority of them women (70%). According to comScore, “social content-sharing site Pinterest’s global engagement measures skyrocketed in 2011, showing a dramatic 512% increase over the course of six months”.

That kind of reach has already attracted a number of brands on the look-out for social media marketing opportunities.

In December, Lands’ End launched its Lands’ End Canvas Pin It To Win It contest, tasking people with creating a pinboard of their favourite branded goods.

“Lands’ End Canvas is continually looking for new communication channels and opportunities to introduce customers to the brand, as well as engage with our current customers in unique and exciting ways,” says Michele Casper, director of public relations, Lands’ End Canvas. “Pinterest is the intersection of style and social and is a natural, visual platform to showcase the lifestyle and relevant appeal of Lands’ End Canvas.”

And Universal Pictures is marking its 100th anniversary in 2012 with a yearlong celebration of the studio’s film history. As part of the festivities, Universal’s Pinterest account is drawing on fashion inspiration from films such as The Breakfast Club, Scarface, Sixteen Candles, Bridget Jones’s Diary and Bridesmaids.