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March 2005
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PointRoll Hires M&A FirmRich media firm PointRoll hired a merger and acquisition firm to help sell the company, according to MediaPost. ClickZ reported last week that an unnamed investment bank had been engaged. The category has seen much consolidation, with Unicast and Viewpoint... continue reading »Week's Online Sales Up 22 PercentInternet Retailer reports that comScore found online retail sales grew 22 percent in the week ending February 6, amounting to $1.53 billion. That is about consistent with the average of 2005's first five weeks, up to $7.07 billion from $5.7... continue reading »BlueLithium Takes a VC RoundBlueLithium won a $11.5 million round of venture funding from WaldenVC and 3i, according to AdWeek. The funds are slated for a U.K. expansion and engineering improvements to its targeting technology. BlueLithium, a media reselling network in the style of... continue reading »Senior Marketers: Accountability Top IssueAn ANA survey showed that the first thing on the minds of senior marketers at large companies is accountability. By far, more of them indicated it as one of their three biggest issues, followed not particularly closely by building strong... continue reading »Survey: Print Catalog's Influence on E-Commerce WaningDM News reports a new Millard survey showed increased satisfaction with online holiday sales, with 51 percent of shoppers saying they were satisfied with the experience, up from 2003's 46 percent. Still, specific problems showed increased prevalence, including order process... continue reading »Microsoft Browser Share Sinks Below 90 PercentTwo studies showed that Microsoft's Internet Explorer's share of the browser market dipped below 90 percent, largely the doing of gains made by Firefox, according to CNET. Where Microsoft had previously pointed to WebSideStory figures as a source of information... continue reading »Yahoo to Nix Overture Brand NameYahoo plans to ditch the Overture brand, according to ClickZ, adopting the prosaic Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions. Two years ago, Yahoo acquired the search engine advertising technology firm, which has since been the major engine for the company's growth. Yahoo... continue reading »Yahoo APIs to See Light of DayYahoo is set to announce the release of several application programming interfaces that will allow marketers and others to develop systems that work with Yahoo's video search, image search, news search and local search. The move parallels APIs already released... continue reading »Search to Become $5.5 Billion MarketMediaPost reports on new Jupiter search data showing that paid search is continuing to eat up share of the online marketing pie. Accounting for $2.6 billion in spending in 2004, Jupiter projects it to grow to $5.5 billion by 2009.... continue reading »LinkedIn to (Gasp) Charge for Recruitment ListingsLinkedIn, one of the many social networks that attracted millions in venture capital prior to figuring out a strong revenue model, announced it will start charging for employment ads. The prices will be steep, too, at $95 per listing on... continue reading »Few Searchers Monogamous to Search EngineNielsen/NetRatings reports that most searchers use more than one search engine, according to eMarketer. Of Google's reported 71 million unique searchers in January, 41 million (58 percent) also dabbled with other engines. Yahoo saw 71 percent of its own users... continue reading »SES Conference a Vortex of Search StudiesMarketingVOX's roving conference reporter B.L. Ochman reports that the Search Engine Strategies conference got off to a low-key start. Much of the initial action occurred over the PR newswires, with sheafs of research releases sent out just prior to the... continue reading »Snap.com Goes Cost-per-ActionPaidContent reports that the Snap.com started touting its cost-per-action method of selling advertising on its nascent search engine. Using a phrase that PaidContent implies may come back to haunt it someday, Snap.com's release spoke of advertisers in the more prevalent... continue reading »Search Campaign Management Tool Sold to 360i360i, the search marketing agency, bought SearchIgnite, a popular campaign management software provider, according to ClickZ. SearchIgnite will continue to operate as a separate division. In addition to having its own marketing clients, SearchIgnite provides campaign management services and software... continue reading »PointRoll Intros 'FoldOver' Ad UnitPointRoll announced the introduction of a new rich media ad unit, a FoldOver that sits in an upper corner of a web page until a viewer rolls the cursor over it. It then rapidly unfolds to cover the entire screen... continue reading »DoubleClick Bows Feed Management SystemDoubleClick's Performics division launched FeedLab, a system that manages feed-based marketing campaigns, like those geared to shopping comparison sites. DoubleClick already runs the feed campaigns for more than 100 clients. The FeedLab application is used by the firm's account teams... continue reading »Yahoo Suggests HTML Additions to Instruct Search EnginesAndy Beal reports from Search Engine Strategies in New York City that Yahoo is testing the popularity of adding still more new tags to HTML to better instruct search engines on how to interpret bits of content. Tags such as... continue reading »WebSideStory Shows Growth, New Product PlansWebSideStory's revenues grew 38 percent in 2004 to $22.6 million, showing a profit of $1.78 million. Q4 revenue grew 43 percent to $6.53 million, providing $840,000 in profit, more than doubling its earnings from the same period the year before.... continue reading »Circuit City Drops Amazon as E-tail PartnerCircuit City, coming off of a poor holiday quarter, announced that as of today it would handle its own e-commerce efforts, according to E-commerce Times. For the last four years, Circuit City fulfilled orders on Amazon's electronics store. But ""Circuitcity.com... continue reading »Hitwise: Vertical Search Starting to 'cannibalize' General SearchHitwise told ClickZ that its data shows it can see evidence of a predicted movement from general search use to an increased use of vertical search applications, such as online shopping comparison sites. "In the shopping classifieds category," said Hitwise's... continue reading »ValueClick Bows Private Label Search, Nixes Search123 BrandValueClick announced it will rebrand its Search123 division as ValueClick Search and launch a new premium search service called Simpli. Simpli is a search and directory template that gives publishers control over how search appears on their sites. The Simpli... continue reading »IAC Buys Major CatalogerInterActive Corp (IAC) struck again, this time acquiring catalog marketer Cornerstone for about $720 million, according to E-Commerce Times. Explicitly billed as a play to bring catalog sales online, an IAC executive noted "Catalog shoppers have been the fastest retail... continue reading »Searchers Stick to Top ListingsEyetools' CTO Greg Edwards revealed a "heat map" of people's eye movements on the typical Google results page, part of a Did-It and Enquiro study that determined that, indeed, both organic results rank and paid placement rank are of paramount... continue reading »Three Quarters Admit to Researching In-Store Purchases OnlineThree quarters of people either regularly or occasionally use the net to research purchases they plan to make in-store, according to data released by BIGresearch reported in DM News. About 80 percent of men said they research electronics online before... continue reading »Yahoo Chief: We Won't Be Content CreatorYahoo's CEO put to rest speculation that the portal firm wanted to get into the production of TV and movie content. Terry Semel said that whatever content the company created, "it has to be more unique and hopefully more clever"... continue reading »Traditional Media Had Great 2004Nielsen reported a 6.3 percent rise in "measured" media last year, which includes pretty much everything but the internet. An AdWeek account of the figures shows that cable and network TV grew the fastest, each more than a dozen percentage... continue reading »SES Tchotchke ReportSo now that all the search palaver is out of the way, the important Search Engine Strategies coverage begins: the tchotchke report. B.L. Ochman reports "there is a paucity of cleverness in the tchotchkes at SES, with a few of... continue reading »Tacoda Intros Behavioral Net for BrandingTacoda said today it plans to launch a behaviorally-targeted ad network - called Tacoda Audience Networks - geared to divvying up audiences into segments useful for branding purposes. The network will be geared for the large scale and reach necessary... continue reading »TechWeb Intros 'Dogear Peelback'CMP's TechWeb Network announced a new ad format, similar to the one introduced earlier in the day by PointRoll, called the Dogear Peelback, an ad unit that makes the web page look as though it's folded over in one corner.... continue reading »Canadians Online Retail Market Said to MatureCanadians, slow to adopt online shopping, may be coming out of their torpor, according to a new YourShops.ca study covered by Internet Retailer. The report doesn't actually reveal any specific increased shopping statistics, but does show that the demographic balance... continue reading »Microsoft in Decade-Long Partnership with ARFMediaPost has early word that Microsoft and the Advertising Research Foundation will announce a 10-year partnership, including ongoing sponsorship of the Ogilvy Awards. Microsoft and ARF intent to expand the awards and promote learning coming from the relevant research outside... continue reading »Passive Click Fraud Prevention for an Impassive MarketA New York Times report on click fraud shows that for all the hand wringing about the issue - a high proportion of search marketers indicate they're concerned - not many are tracking it, never mind doing anything about the... continue reading »Google's Local Search Earning Big TrafficGoogle reports that its new efforts in the local search area - including its February integration of a mapping application and a more recent inclusion of user reviews of many establishments - has already exceeded the traffic seen in its... continue reading »Dominant Radio Firm Moves Stations to Internet, to Sell Net AdsRadio station company Infinity plans to stream its radio stations directly to the internet and sell advertising on those feeds as a separate offering to its customers. One problem facing radio stations has been a strange legal regime in which... continue reading »Eolas Trial Judge Faulted in AppealA federal appeals court scolded the federal judge who managed the Eolas patent case, telling him that he improperly disallowed key evidence that could show Eolas's patent is invalid due to prior art. The case once threatened to change the... continue reading »Keyword Prices Mostly Flat in FebAfter an inflationary period leading up to last years holiday shopping season, search keyword bid prices have flattened out, rising only two percent between January and February. MediaPost reported the very slight decline follows a three percent decline in January.... continue reading »Lycos Dumps Yahoo's Inktomi for Ask Jeeves EngineReuters reported that major search engine brand Lycos dropped Yahoo's Inktomi search technology in favor of that from Ask Jeeves. Lycos, recently acquired by South Korean firm Daum Communications, had already been using Ask Jeeves technology on some of its... continue reading »Friendster to Charge for BloggingAdding still another revenue stream, social network site Friendster said it will charge upgrading members fees for blogging services provided by Blog Software firm Six Apart, according to CNET. Charging up to $150 per year, members will be able to... continue reading »Anti Kid Marketing Law Shuts Off Parts of Web for Kids, OthersA law designed to protect kids from overly-grabby marketers is instead leading to many companies reducing their content creation geared to children under the age of 13, limiting their access to content otherwise provided freely and causing many kids-oriented firms... continue reading »Pop-Ups Decline in Number, EffectivenessA Wired report shows that pop-up ads are going the way of the cheesy synthesized website sound track - relegated to fewer and fewer sites because uses just can't stand them. But, in a big difference, the stalwart sites continuing... continue reading »True.com Pushing States to Mandate Competitors Add DisclosuresIt is a practice as old as the states themselves: a company convinces the local legislature to pass a law giving it an advantage in the state. These measures, often struck down by federal courts as unreasonable limits on interstate... continue reading »Republicans on FEC: Blogs May Be RegulatedFederal Election Commissioner Bradley Smith stirred the blog pot by suggesting that blogs might be treated very differently in the next elections, according to CNET. The FEC opted not to regulate internet coverage of the election in a 2002 decision,... continue reading »Car Shopping Moving Online for Savings, LiquidityInternet auction sites and car comparison shopping engines are creating a more liquid market for vehicles, according to Poynter Online. The incentive for car buyers, not surprisingly, is savings, which typically amounts to thousands of dollars for those researching deals... continue reading »Wired Anti-Pop-Up Story Peeks Out from Under Pop-UpAdland points out that Wired’s story yesterday on the waning of pop-ups – and the rhetorical questioning of why major media sites fail to abandon the annoying format – was served, you guessed it, under a pop-up. ... continue reading »CBS Making Another Interactive TV ForayUnbowed by the failed WebTV experiment with Microsoft, CBS is set to start up another interactive television project, this time with tech firm GoldPocket, according to MediaWeek. Some shows, like Survivor, will provide interactive elements that will first be available... continue reading »Beauty Brands Benefit Most from Net CampaignsDynamic Logic told AdWeek that a look across its brand research studies revealed that, among consumer package goods, beauty products generally get the most brand lift from online campaigns. Purchase intent rose 3.7 percent on average and brand favorability 4... continue reading »Yahoo Ice Cream Campaign a Hit, LocallyCNET ran down the story of imbalances in Yahoo’s ice cream giveaway anniversary promotion. Apparently, West Coast Baskin-Robbins stores saw lots of coupons coming in – some stores even surpassing the 300-per-store they were required to honor. In the Bronx... continue reading »Travel Sites Beat Airline SitesExpedia, Orbitz and Travelocity topped a Keynote study on user preferences among travel sites in purchasing tickets, edging out all the airline sites except for Southwest. In addition to providing more selection, which was unsurprising, the three travel retailers also... continue reading »NBC May Buy Out Microsoft's MSNBC StakeE-Commerce Times reports that NBC is trying to buy out Microsoft's stake in their MSNBC joint venture. The news network started off with $400 million of capital from the two companies in 1995.... continue reading » |