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November 2004
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Yahoo Hires Breed Speculation on Content AmbitionsSearchEngineWatch called a CNET item on Google's long-term content strategy "speculation." The story indicated only a loose connection between certain hires and acquisitions, drawing a conclusion that the web portal may have ambitions of becoming a major web content creator.... continue reading »Free 411 in Exchange for Texting PermissionLookSmart developed a joint venture with UpSnap to offer free mobile telephone directory assistance in exchange users allowing advertisers to send them text messages. Mobile phone users can look up the "Free 411" service and get phone numbers at no... continue reading »BIGResearch Study Gets Skeptical ReceptionBIGResearch released its fall 2004 cross media study at an Advertising Research Foundation conference in New York today, measuring media usage of more than 10,000 people. The company reported that five out of six people indicated they use more than... continue reading »Marketer Survey Shows Net Ads to GrowThe American Advertising Federation published results from a survey that indicated advertisers are starting to treat online media as both a "traditional" and a larger part of their media budgets. According to the survey, major marketers spent more than eight... continue reading »Firms Differ on Holiday E-Commerce Take, Agree on GrowthJupiter says the fourth quarter will see e-commerce revenues of about $21.5 billion. comScore pegs the figure at $20 billion. Yesterday, MarketingVOX ran a story showing eMarketer believed the figure to be $16.7 billion. The chart at left (click to... continue reading »Google Publishes Incomplete Ad GuidelinesGoogle finally published some of its guidelines as to what will get ads accepted or rejected. Verboten are fireworks, hacking aids, spam services, miracle cures and prostitution. Those were the easy things, though, most of which would be assumed by... continue reading »Americans Flock to Canada Immigration SiteThe Canadian government reported that Americans started hitting their immigration website intensely when President George Bush officially acknowledged his election victory. Favorite pages of interest proved to be the skilled worker online self-assessment form. Canada will take some Americans northward... continue reading »ValueClick & 24/7 Real Media Report EarningsValueClick did much better than even it expected, posting a $7.6 million profit for the third quarter, tripling last year's figure. ValueClick's CEO attributed the results to the cross-selling the firm has been doing between its various online marketing units.... continue reading »Sportsman's Guide Moving from Cataloger to E-TailerOutdoor discount firm Sportsman's Guide - traditionally a catalog retailer - says that its proportion of web sales now exceeds 40 percent, up five points from last year's 36 percent figure. Sales were up 37 percent to $41.2 million for... continue reading »Atlas OnePoint Reportedly Catching Up on PaymentsAtlas OnePoint, the aQuantive division that was known as Go Toast back before it was purchased, seems to have resolved accounting issues that some bloggers say prevented OnePoint from sending payments to affiliates for months. Michael Wong, for instance, reports... continue reading »Citysearch & Topix.net PartnerTopix.net and Citysearch are partnering to put Topix.net's localized news on Citysearch's 40 city guide sites and place Citysearch's pay-per-performance ads across Topix.net's network of news sites. Citysearch has been using an inside sales force to push its inventory to... continue reading »Complaining Couple, Sued by Company, Fights BackA Georgia couple that published a site to complain about an allegedly shoddy home repair product found themselves sued by the company that makes Spray on Siding. This sort of suit doesn't appear to be uncommon. Many times companies sue... continue reading »FTC to Hold Email ID PanelThe Federal Trade Commission will hold an expert panel in Washington, D.C. this week to help ferret out issues with domain-level email identity authentication. CheetahMail, a division of Experian, along with Constant Contact and the Direct Marketing Association have all... continue reading »Yahoo Intros 'Precision Browsing,' Holiday CenterJust in time for the holidays, Yahoo melded together content search, product search and product comparison tools in a Holiday Gift Center. The site also debuts a new "precision browsing" feature that allows visitors to narrow down search items by... continue reading »Travel Site Posts Profit GrowthHotel bookings helped push travel site Orbitz to increased profitability, reporting about $5 million of earnings versus last year's roughly $4 million. Travel sales growth has been more consistent than other e-commerce categories in 2004, most weeks showing about 30... continue reading »Google Appears to Be Eyeing Television MediumGoogle co-founder Sergey Brin and other Google staff figured out a way to conduct on-the-fly searches to compliment TV content with relevant stuff on the web. The technology uses the closed caption text feeds to run searches. Their research found... continue reading »Feedburner, Overture May Team to Offer RSS AdsPaidContent reports that Overture and RSS measurement firm Feedburner are teaming up together to create easier ways to include advertising in syndication feeds. Feedburner already offers innovative tracking mechanisms for publishers wishing to understand how many individuals view sites' content... continue reading »Ad:TECH Kicks Off, BloggedThis fall's New York City Ad:TECH conference promises to be enormous, with more than 5,000 people signed up to come, potentially bursting through levels not seen since the dot-com boom. Steve Hall reports on the eerily quiet preparations leading up... continue reading »O&M Forgot U.K. Domain Name, Probably Regrets ItReminiscent of the "...everyone knows, we’ve got your name, la la la; this is a donkey..." site that made Price Waterhouse Coopers look foolish two years ago, gigantic ad agency Ogilvy & Mather appears to have let its guard down,... continue reading »AOL Zags to Ads after Subscription ZigAOL is again rearranging its senior management chairs, this time shifting back to an emphasis on online advertising. The company will be divided into four pieces: paid membership, ad sales (including free content and programming), premium services and a European... continue reading »Business.com Wins $10MM VC FinancingBusiness-to-business search engine Business.com won a $10 million round of venture financing. The company said it would use the funds to accelerate product development and boost its sales and marketing efforts.... continue reading »Researchers to Turn to Web More for DataA Ciao study found that seven out of eight European and American research firms said they expected to increase their use of the internet for research collection. About three quarters said they used it for satisfaction studies. About two thirds... continue reading »New Search Sites Show High Hype-to-Use RatioHitwise reports that new search engines and meta search engines in the news may be getting much more attention from the press than they are from users. The sites (Vivisimo, Clusty, AlltheWeb, A9 and Snap) collectively amounted to only about... continue reading »IRI, Tivo Team to Measure Ad EffectivenessInformation Resources Inc. (IRI) licensed digital video recorder firm Tivo's audience measurement data and plans to incorporate it into its BehaviorScan software to measure ad effectiveness. Tivo already has an agreement with IRI competitor Nielsen Media Research. Forrester predicts that... continue reading »Online Sales BoomOnline retail sales continued their upward swing for the week ending October 24, according to comScore, rising 32 percent over the equivalent week last year to $1.3 billion. This compares to general retail sales rising only eight percent over roughly... continue reading »Non-Search Adspend to RiseeMarketer reports that online display advertising, including sponsorships, banner advertising and rich media placements, will rise by 10 percent in 2004 and another 21 percent in 2005. The figures exclude search engine advertising. These non-search revenues will amount to $3.3... continue reading »Study: Search Engines Failing to Meet FTC Disclosure StandardsConsumers Union, the folks who publish Consumer Reports, tested out the disclosure policies of many major search engines and meta search engines. The findings noted improvement over last year, but was particularly harsh on the meta search engines, which the... continue reading »Click Cost Upped 14 Percent Over Last MonthFathom Online reports that the average click costs about 14 percent more than it did last month, rising in price to $0.19. But, as usual, the devil is in the details, with some types of keywords going up a great... continue reading »U.K. E-Commerce Pulling Down InflationInternet sales in the U.K. have grown quickly and are projected to reach about one third of consumer spending by 2010. The move to online is having a price cutting effect on the costs British punters pay from everything from... continue reading »High Proportion Visit Web CommunitiesTwo out of five Americans say they visit online community sites, according to an ACNielsen study for eBay. In an interesting comment a Nielsen executive noted that personal interests are beginning to supercede proximity in defining which communities people join.... continue reading »Pheedo Intros New RSS Ad ServerPheedo, a blog and content syndication firm launched a tool for publishers that will insert into their syndicated feeds either their own paid ads or ads from the Kanoodle network. The SimpleAd Feed Management and Server reports adviews, clicks, audience... continue reading »Meeker to Microsoft's Search: Not by the Hairs of My Chinny Chin ChinMorgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker told a conference that Microsoft's impending search engine release didn't pose much of a threat to existing search players. "This is a more competitive market for Microsoft to have an impact on than they've encountered... continue reading »Time Inc Bullish on WebPaidContent reports that the folks over at Time Warner might actually be seeing the web as an opportunity for its print titles. Online-generated subscriptions are up, and ad revenues are tempting. Said one executive, the online audience has "gotten really... continue reading »Gmail Churn Very High, New Users Relatively LowA Return Path employee's blog notes some interesting statistics about Google's lack of penetration with its much-talked-about Gmail free email service. Return Path offers a mail forwarding service that gives them a view of the amount and direction of free... continue reading »TypePad Blog to Offer Kanoodle Context AdsSix Apart, the company that makes blog software TypePad and MovableType, partnered with Kanoodle to let TypePad blog authors offer contextual text link ads. Google, not surprisingly, lets is Blogger users sign up for AdSense to help generate blog revenues.... continue reading »Firm Offers Creative Testing on Site SegmentsTargeting and metrics firm Optimost launched an application allowing marketers to do creative and offer testing broken out by audience segments. Optimost breaks audiences up into groups based on keywords used, ads seen, origin and other metrics detectable through the... continue reading »Microsoft Offers Search Preview AgainMicrosoft managed to generate additional attention for its upcoming search engine by again announcing it would offer a pre-release version for viewing - the third time the company has done so since the summer. Reporters are getting views of it... continue reading »Visa: Online Sales Jumping to Every Eleventh DollarVisa reported the first week of November saw online credit card sales jump by a third from last year's levels to almost $2 billion. That 33 percent rise compares with a 16 percent rise across all U.S. transactions, both online... continue reading »New Star Wars 'Revenge of the Sith' Trailer Used by AOLAOL concluded a deal to broadcast a trailer for Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith on its online network. The deal with the studio covers the U.K., France and Germany as well as the U.S. Also available with be scene... continue reading »Spam Trial Explained by ProsecutorVirginia prosecutor Russell McGuire explained the logic and strategy behind his successful conviction of a spammer to a lengthy jail sentence. The first-hand account of the trial is a fascinating story of how a state can meet the burdens... continue reading »Amazon Launches Celebrity Video CampaignAmazon.com launched a series of movie shorts produced by major Hollywood talent to promote items available at the e-commerce site. The movies also link to other movies by the same directors and actors that are available for sale on the... continue reading »DoubleClick: Ad Trends Slowing, MaturingDoubleClick published a flurry of statistics coming from its own ad serving figures, some of which it suggest that the online ad industry is maturing - or at least slowing down in some of its more volatile trends. Rich media... continue reading »Society's Ills Blamed on Market SegmentationA doom-filled PBS documentary about marketing and our over-commercialized society begins to bring up an interesting point that has less to say perhaps about marketing and more about media consumption. The 90-minute piece naively looks at market segmenting and draws... continue reading »Ballmer's Math Not Adding Up; Predicts Microsoft Ad Growth Well Below Google'sMicrosoft chief Steve Ballmer told shareholders that the software giant would catch up to and surpass search leader Google, but his estimates for ad revenue growth over the next five years open up questions as to whether or not he... continue reading »Many Firms, Many Plans, DoubleClick Bids to Cause Industry ConsolidationWhile a record 7,000 attendees roam the Ad:TECH trade show floor, stuffed together into a waxing tide of slow-motion gawking, very little hard news broke this week - perhaps because the real news isn't ready for the press releases just... continue reading »Study: Net Constitutes 20 Percent of Brits' Media UseA study of Europeans showed that the British use the net for about 20 percent of their media consumption. TV and radio both beat it out at 36 percent and 27 percent respectively. Lots more statistics are available in the... continue reading »Mozilla Denies Google Browser PlansMozilla's head, Mitchel Baker, told eWeek that his outfit was not working - as occasionally rumored - on a Google browser. He did note that, as open source products, both the Firefox browser and the Gecko rendering engine were open... continue reading »Blog Suspects Microsoft Copying Parts of Google's IndexA couple of search engine marketers noticed that a Microsoft bot program has been exhibiting some odd behavior, perhaps indicating that Microsoft has copied parts of Google's index in order to catch up in its own indexing efforts. The bot... continue reading »Apple to Boost its Own Desktop SearchApple is making more rumblings about its Spotlight desktop search feature, slated to come out in its next major operating system release. The feature set sounds an awfully lot like that of Google's Desktop Search product, but Mac users will... continue reading » |