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November 2004
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Desktop Search to Come to Mac, MaybeReuters reports that Google CEO Eric Schmidt told a UCLA conference on the 35th anniversary of the Internet that the search giant intends to create an Apple Mac flavor of its Desktop Search application. The release might take some time,... continue reading »Spyware Dominates Number One Computer Maker's Service CallsNumber one computer maker Dell is now bundling anti-spyware software on all its new units. It is also contracting with McAfee and Symantec to produce new and more effective anti-spyware packages. The company found that spyware-induced problems accounted for one... continue reading »Hitwise Grows Demographics PanelHitwise, a website traffic metrics and demographics firm, said that its U.K. web panel size exploded to two million individuals, up from 70,000. The company now provides basic demographic reports for 70,000 sites and more complicated analyses for 150,000 sites.... continue reading »DoubleClick: Ad Serving Prices May Stop Dropping in 2005DoubleClick CEO Kevin Ryan told analysts last week that he thought the dropping ad serving prices would stabilize next year. DoubleClick's own ad management revenue decreased a few percentage points, even as it added business. DoubleClick faces increased competition from... continue reading »Anti-Spyware Software Morfs into Adware via WhenUWhenU's aggressive effort to distinguish itself from spyware purveyors puts it in cahoots with unlikely partner Aluria, the maker of AOL's anti-spyware software. In fact, users of Aluria's products will soon be able to get the software for free in... continue reading »Fastclick Wins $75 MM VC RoundFastclick.com announced a $75 million private equity round, lead by VC firm Highland Capital Partners and Oak Investment Partners. A Disney venture arm also participated. Fastclick's network includes 7,500 sites that get visits from 80 million individuals in a month.... continue reading »Suits Target Spim along with SpamFinally employing the same legal strategy it used with some success against spam, AOL filed a lawsuit last week targeting senders of "spim," spam sent via instant messaging. The lawsuits were filed in Georgia, Virginia, Washington and California in conjunction... continue reading »PayPal Apology Not Good Enough for ManyPayPal's PR efforts to assuage angry business users who found their accounts at least partially frozen last week are merely fanning the flames. Rather than refunding fees for those several days during which a system upgrade made enormous sums of... continue reading »eBay Often Unwitting Party to Fencing, FraudThe IHT asks uncomfortable question about eBay's popularity among criminals for unloading stolen goods. Some have been caught doing so, like a couple in Chicago who were arrested for fencing about $3 million in stolen goods. Canadians wondering where their... continue reading »Fake Mazda Blog Site PulledA Mazda-touting blog was pulled offline after accusations that it was a shill site for the auto manufacturer. Hosted by the same company that hosts Mazda's parent company's ad agency, J. Walter Thompson, the "HalloweenM3" blog contained only two posts,... continue reading »DoubleClick Seeks Shake-UpDoubleClick announced late tonight that it hired Lazard Freres & Co. to explore how to shake up its business by doing something radical to its corporate structure. Among the options listed in the announcement were a sale of all or... continue reading »RDW Buys iFactory AgencySmall Providence ad shop RDW Group bought 30-person-strong interactive shop iFactory, giving it a much larger footprint in the more active Boston market. The agency claims $110 million in billings and $16 million in revenue. AdWeek reports.... continue reading »E-Payments Still Rare, Slated to GrowOnline payments aren't taking the world by storm, as once predicted during the first internet boom. Just under one percent of business-to-business payments will have been made via electronic means in 2004, up from about 0.51 percent in 2003. But... continue reading »VC Funds - The Milk of Froth - Poured into MarketIn a sign that the ingredients for another overly frothy market are perhaps combining, venture capital firms are being stuffed with billions of dollars - money that will be seeking new homes, primarily in start-up firms. With $5.5 billion added... continue reading »PaidContent Hires New Executive EditorIndependent web content industry blog PaidContent hired Staci Kramer as executive editor. Kramer is a well-known commentator on media issues for the Online Journalism review and occasional contributor to related sites, like Wired News. She will continue in those other... continue reading »Mercury Video Campaign Proves Stark Break from PastAutomaker Mercury is trying to shed its old image of producing merely adequate cars for aging rustbelt pensioners, launching a video ad campaign titled "Meet the Lucky Ones" on the web that directly addresses this perception. The creative shows a... continue reading »FindWhat Up on Mystery Espotting RevenuesPay per click search firm FindWhat reported income of almost $5 million, about double last year's figure for the quarter. About half of that figure came from its recent Espotting acquisition. Earnings were up 25 percent. This was the first... continue reading »Kanoodle Seeing Rapid Growth in PPC BizA local paper reviews the progress of cost per click search network Kanoodle. Founder and CEO Kent Keating answered criticisms that the network's second tier keyword traffic is anemic by saying that the firms current growth rate will solve that... continue reading »AOL May Cut 700 JobsAnonymous sources say AOL will cut about 700 jobs just in time for Christmas (and bonus season), trying to deliver the $1 billion in cash it promised parent company Time Warner. Ad sales improvements - estimated by analysts to have... continue reading »Survey: Media Buyers Dislike Partisan MediaA MediaPost survey shows that media buyers show a surprising degree of political activity in their media choices. More than half of buyers said they took a network's political slant into account when apportioning media dollars. 52.5 percent said an... continue reading »In Net Change, Content More Popular than CommunicatingFor the first time, people spent more time this year looking at stuff online than they did communicating with each other. Content viewing's share of internet activity increased about seven percent from August's figures. Commerce and communicating (and even, surprisingly,... continue reading »E-Commerce Up 19 PercentOnline retail sales grew 19 percent in the week ending October 17, according to comScore. E-commerce hit $1.3 billion. ShopperTrak reports that all retail sales increased only 5.5 percent for roughly the same period. Online travel sales increased 24 percent... continue reading »Google-BellSouth Deal Focuses on Small Biz Hand HoldingAdAge reports on the making of the Google-BellSouth deal that has armies of the telephone company's salespeople pounding the pavement for Google search ads as well as BellSouth phonebook inventory. The theory behind the cooperation holds that small businesses -... continue reading »Yahoo Installs TV Exec as Head of MediaYahoo installed an entertainment executive as head of its media group. Former chairman of ABC Entertainment Television Lloyd Braun will take over the division that includes TV, movies, music, news, games and other content businesses. ClickZ reports.... continue reading »Brits Prefer Net Search to PhonebooksThree quarters of British people surveyed said they'd rather search via an online search engine than use a paper directory. Only 18 percent said they still relied on the traditional methods of looking up company information. Separately, another U.K. company... continue reading »Nike Shoxploitation Site Promotes Unreleased ShoePaying homage to blaxploitation culture, Nike launched a Shoxploitation website to promote its new Shox Neo sneakers. The video site content introduces Nike's "playas" as though they were part of a movie. The trailer ad format is appropriate because the... continue reading »AOL: No Plans for Search Engine, Plenty for PersonalizationAOL again confirmed it lacks plans for its own search engine, relying instead on Google's, but it did say it is working on personalization features. "Personalization is on the horizon," said AOL's chief of search Gerry Campbell. "We're very focused... continue reading »AOL Firing Rumors Persist, Q3 Numbers to ComeCNET went and found its own anonymous source to confirm to it that AOL plans on firing 700 people next month. The cuts are expected across the board, focusing on the Virginia headquarters. This past year the company was criticized... continue reading »Yahoo CEO on Desktop Search: We're a Comin'All the rage, the desktop search category got another plug, with Yahoo CEO Terry Semel saying that the online media giant would develop such an application as well, following Google's example, and very likely Microsoft's. He also said he intended... continue reading »E-Commerce Conversion Rates IncreaseDoubleClick reports in a tracking study that conversion rates for e-commerce firms are improving steadily, even as shopping cart abandonment continues to plague online retailing. 57 percent of shoppers abandoned a cart, up from 53 percent last year. And as... continue reading »CMR Figures May Severely Undercount NetA TNS Media Intelligence/CMR study showed that about $1.4 billion was spent on political ads in 2004, leading up to last night's see-sawing presidential results that remain this morning somewhat uncertain. Almost nine out of ten of those dollars went... continue reading »News Sites Buying Traffic on Search EnginesOnline news sites, long in a battle for marketshare, are turning to search advertising to up their online circulation. The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR and several other major news sites have campaigns running on Google and Yahoo. The... continue reading »AdAge to Produce Non-Web Digital EditionAdAge is launching a new digital edition through Zinio, a company that takes print publications and produces identical-looking digital copies. While this means the company won't likely be producing a freely available site designed for the web, AdAge did say... continue reading »TW Profits Lower, AOL Accounting Still at IssueTime Warner revealed a poor third quarter, citing both an eight percent profit drop and the need to sock away $500 million in order to set up a reserve to pay for expected liabilities in an ongoing AOL accounting scandal.... continue reading »European Corporate Websites Improving DisclosuresAfter European corporate financial scandals, E.U. firms are improving their websites and the disclosures they provide on them, according to a Swedish consulting firm conducting a study with The Financial Times. In particular, southern European countries, which have long been... continue reading »Jupiter Finds Blogs a Sales WinnerJupiter Research reportedly is using analyst blogs as a highly successful driver of business. Its analysts gin up an extra 50,000 pageviews a week with commentary, often building up trust with readers that chief of research David Schatsky says is... continue reading »Pay-per-Call Evaluated as Next Big ThingNetimperative got ranging comments when it asked experts about whether or not pay-per-call advertising might be the next new product success in the search engine marketing arena. The sales method charges advertisers only for when people use a search result... continue reading »Study: B-to-B Searchers Quite Different than RestA Marketing study shows that business-to-business searchers act quite different from consumers. While Google enjoys the largest marketshare generally in search, at 36 percent, it absolutely dominates B-to-B searches, winning 83 percent. A majority of B-to-B searchers begin their queries... continue reading »Overture Looking at Flat Rate PricingOverture is contemplating rolling out a different pricing model that would solve some of advertisers' biggest complaints; particularly that the costs of advertising on paid search vehicles is completely unpredictable. Yahoo's Overture division is reportedly testing out flat rate pricing,... continue reading »MarketWatch Ridicules BlogsMarketWatch's Frank Barnako baits bloggers - a fine pastime for those seeking instant traffic spikes - by pointing out that a very, very low percentage of the electorate bothered to check up on political blogs on election day. He taunts... continue reading »Holiday Net Sales to Be BigeMarketer reports that holiday shoppers will spend almost $17 billion this year, up almost a third from last year. Crediting a combination of more sophisticated buyers and better executed websites, eMarketer's Jeffrey Grau predicts growth to $16.7 billion from 2003's... continue reading »Yellow Pages Giant CreatedConsolidation struck the online yellow pages business hard and suddenly this morning. SBC and BellSouth created a joint venture that is acquiring YellowPages.com. A source privy to the negotiations told MarketingVOX that the price was close to just under $100... continue reading »Spammer Gets 9-Year Jail SentenceJeremy Jaynes was sentenced to nine years in jail by a Virginia court for sending out too many unsolicited commercial messages and doing so with fake email addresses. His sister, Jessica DeGroot was found guilty as well, getting away with... continue reading »Kelsey Small Biz Study Further ExplainedExpanding on a study reported last week, the Kelsey Group said that while almost two thirds of small businesses see the internet as an advertising opportunity, only one in four made an online buy in the last year. MediaPost reports.... continue reading »Online Drives Newspapers into Leisure NicheThe most loyal newspaper readers still find the web to be a better source of breaking news. They are starting to read newspapers more as a form of leisure, according to a new Yahoo study. More than two thirds of... continue reading »Mailblocks Mail Challenged, Responses LostMailblocks is lucky the company that bought it turned out to be AOL, the largest - and sometimes one of the pickiest - internet service providers when it comes to delivering email. The company, which sells subscriptions to its service... continue reading »Ask Jeeves Adds Local FunctionsAsk Jeeves developed a new local search interface, putting several localized searching services in one place. Included in a tab interface are local listings, maps, driving directions, news and weather. Clicking on one of the links changes the nature of... continue reading »CSO, SMO Named at CXO, Publisher of CIO, CSO & CMOFormer Georgia-Pacific CSO Bob Hayes was named as CXO's new CSO, along with long-time CXO manager Cathy O'Leary's appointment to CMO of the publishing firm that puts out titles CIO, CSO and CMO.... continue reading »Amazon Sued (Again) for Targeting Patent IssueDirect marketing firm Cendant is suing Amazon.com for allegedly violating a patent related to product recommendations generated from past purchase behavior. Amazon has already been sued at least once for alleged patent infringement over the same basic issue. Many patents... continue reading » |