Russian search engine Yandex has decided to withhold its planned fall IPO until 2009, reports Profy.
Official reasons were not explained, but Profy, which gleaned its report from Russian news source GZT, pointed out that the Russia-Georgian conflict, coupled with an...
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Seconds after Google announced its iPhone-like app store for Android, Microsoft began preparing a marketplace for applications that run on Windows Mobile 7. It is slated to launch in 2009.
Microsoft's plans were uncovered through a want ad it posted...
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Mobile web use is gaining traction in the United States and may soon surpass use in the United Kingdom, where consumers have accessed the internet from phones for years, according to data released by Bango, MarketingCharts reports.
The top five countries...
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Microsoft is acquiring Greenfield Online, the parent company of European price comparison site ciao.com, for $486 million.
The company said ciao's technology would precipitate the development of a more consumer-friendly search engine for European users, reports Reuters.
Google is currently the top...
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Carat lowered its growth forecasts for global advertising expenditures in 2008 and 2009, predicting 4.9 percent growth in 2008 (vs. 6.0 percent it estimated in March) and a growth of 4.8 percent in 2009 (vs. a 4.9 percent estimate in...
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New York Times journalist Matt Richtel has invented a storytelling format called the Twiller. The idea is for Twitter users to follow fictional characters — which many already do anyway — as they progress though a plot, reports Adrants.
Richtel's Twitter...
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Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention attracted 38.4 million American viewers — a larger audience than those that watched the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics (34.2 million viewers), reports the Guardian. (The speech was broadcast on...
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Agencies and Marketing Execs:
Big pharma Merck chose TBWA\GERMANY‘s Hamburg office to manage global comm for three of its labels: Nasivin, Femibion and Flexagil. Campaigns are expected to debut worldwide in 2009.
Honeyshed, a branded entertainment and online shopping site, inaugurated Stephen...
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Today Google stealthily released the beta version of an open-source web browser, Chrome, across 100 countries. Chrome is optimized for "web 2.0" applications and currently only Windows-compliant.
News of Chrome, in comic book form, was prematurely sent to German blogger Philipp...
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Pizza grabbed four of 10 spots in a recent list of mobile-directory restaurant searches in US metropolitan areas, according to V-Enable, as reported by TechCrunch (via MarketingCharts). Pizza Hut, Domino's, Papa John's and Little Caesar's all made the top six.
Results...
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For the next three days, teen network The CW will run an internet and mobile campaign for TV series 90210, which debuted last night.
The campaign reportedly cost $50,000. A "virtual billboard" will take over the home page of mobile...
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Mobile phone handset sales to consumers in the US totaled 28 million units in the second quarter of 2008 - a 13 percent decline from 2Q07 - according to The NPD Group, which also estimates total Q2 consumer sales of...
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Last week Profy reported that Russian search site Yandex planned to hold off its $2 billion NASDAQ IPO until 2009. Roem.ru, another Russian news site, declares that announcement did not come from Yandex; it was only a market forecast by...
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The total number of television households within the US (including Alaska and Hawaii) for the 2008-2009 season will be 114.5 million, an increase of 1.5 percent from last year, according to estimates from The Nielsen Company, reports MarketingCharts.
Nielsen estimates that...
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To encourage teens to use the web "as a canvas for social change," the UK's Channel 4 and AOL-owned social network Bebo launched Battlefront.
The site's tagline is "You're already involved." 19 young people were profiled to discuss a broad array...
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eBay's had a rough year. It suffered through an embarrassingly public lawsuit with craigslist, a boycott by angry Power Sellers, accusations of auctioning counterfeit goods, and the quiet death of its TV advertising marketplace, for which it had high hopes.
In...
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Only 19 percent of internet users have downloaded a podcast, up from an estimated 12 percent that have ever downloaded a podcast in 2006, according to a report released by Pew Internet & American Life Project, reports MediaBuyerPlanner.
Of the 19...
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Google has added video-sharing to Google Apps Premier, a suite of online productivity and management tools that directly target Microsoft Office marketshare.
To give users a sense of how Google itself uses video internally, the Googleblog — which released the news...
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Nearly half (45 percent) of search engine marketers do not integrate search marketing efforts with offline channels, according to the iProspect Search Engine Marketing Integration Study, conducted by JupiterResearch, MarketingCharts writes.
Just over half of search engine marketers (55 percent) intentionally...
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The 2008 Mendelsohn Affluent Survey reveals affluent consumers — those with incomes of over six figures — read print publications just as much as they did five years ago: about 15 per week, reports Ad Age.
The same demographic also...
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Tagging photos of friends and family by hand may soon become a thing of yesteryear. An updated version of Google's photo-sharing service, Picasa 3, will include facial recognition capabilities.
The technology, available to Google via its 2006 acquisition of Neven...
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The New Orleans Times-Picayune has not delivered a print newspaper since Saturday, but it continues to publish online editions, reports MediaBuyerPlanner.
New Orleans was (mostly) evacuated over the weekend in preparation for Hurricane Gustav. The newspaper has been without power since...
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Personal income decreased 0.7 percent in July, after increasing 0.1 percent in June, according to the "preliminary" estimates released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the US Department of Commerce, writes Retailer Daily.
The difference reflects rebates provided...
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A pilot program in Phoenix delivers coupons via cell phone to Visa and Chase cardholders that sign up to receive them from select merchants, reports MediaBuyerPlanner.
The text-message coupons are personalized to match the interests selected by Chase Visa cardholders, then...
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Seven in ten consumers (72 percent) use more coupons now than six months ago, some three-quarters of them (equating to about half of all consumers) ascribe the increased use to the troubled economy, according to a recent study by Prospectiv,...
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To encourage AdWords marketers to better manage campaigns without help, Google is giving away free copies of its Adwords Editor Guide (pdf).
AdWords Editor 6.0, released in June, is an application that assists in AdWords campaign management. Users download the...
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Global online video revenue is expected to surpass $4.5 billion by 2012 - up from $1.2 billion in 2008 - as it continues grow rapidly, according to the World Report on Online Video from In-Stat (via MarketingCharts).
Purchased and rented videos...
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Gannett Co., the nation's largest newspaper chain, purchased a 10 percent stake in CareerBuilder for $135 million — valuing the website at $1.35 billion.
Gannett now owns about 50.8 percent of the job search site. Tribune Co. holds the next-largest share...
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Fox's "House" and ESPN's "Home Run Derby" generated the most out-of-home (OOH) viewing in July among primetime broadcast and cable shows, respectively, each attracting 570,000 OOH viewers, according to a new service from Nielsen and Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI)...
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Linden Lab, which operates virtual world Second Life, announced the launch of SLim, a lightweight, voice-enabled instant messaging client that lets users talk to buddies beyond Second Life's virtual borders.
Previously, users could only communicate with friends "in-world," or logged...
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Today ubExact launched its "direct navigation, action-based search engine" in beta.
The human-edited search engine categorizes content into actions: See It (reference), Do It (entertain), Shop It (buy), and Find It (navigate). The idea is to enable searchers to navigate to...
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Brands that fail to embrace and engage in online consumer dialog are set be among those most severely affected by an economic downturn, according to research conducted in the UK by E-consultancy, Logan Tod and immediate future (via Retailer Daily)....
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Battered by bad press, recent Congressional probes and the loss of ISP clients, CEO Bob Dykes of NebuAd has decided to step down.
Following his departure, President Kira Makagon was chosen to lead the company. Dykes will move on to a...
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AutoTrader.com ranks highest among online buying services in satisfying auto dealers with new-vehicle leads, while Cars.com ranks highest in satisfying dealers with used-vehicle leads, according to a J.D. Power and Associates study, MarketingCharts reports.
The 2008 Dealer Satisfaction with Online Buying...
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Ad Networks and Analytics:
Google is preparing a measurement system for display advertising on YouTube, comparable to the Quality Score system used for paid search.
Agencies and Marketing Execs:
Former InterActive Corp. executive Moshe "Mo" Koyfman has become a VC at Spark Capital...
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Google AdWords has released a new reporting feature: the Geographic Performance Report, which tells users where their impressions, clicks and conversions come from. Reporting can be terraced down to the ad group level.
The AdWords blog describes it thus:
Say […] you...
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Comcast is challenging the FCC's demand that it cease slowing internet speeds to heavy bandwidth users.
In early August, the FCC voted 3-2 against Comcast's practice of "throttling" broadband for users of peer-to-peer filesharing sites. Comcast was ordered to manage...
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Rodale shall partner with women's online network Glam Media to provide branded articles, slide shows and videos from Women's Health and Prevention magazines, reports MediaBuyerPlanner.
The content will appear on Glam's new Health channel, which pulls 9.6 million unique visitors a...
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Use of online social networking, text messaging and cell phones is diminishing the effectiveness of email marketing, especially among consumers that say promotional messages inspire their purchases, according to a report from JupiterResearch, MarketingCharts writes.
More than one-fifth (22 percent) of...
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Worldwide sales of mobile phones will reach 1.28 billion units in 2008 - up from 1.15 billion units in 2007 - an 11 percent increase from last year, according to Gartner, Inc - (via MarketingCharts).
While the mobile phone market is...
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An unfortunate email blunder alerted Carat staffers that their jobs could be in peril, and shared with them the specifics on how they would be told of the news, reports MediaBuyerPlanner.
The media agency will restructure its US operations and plans...
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Consumers in all income segments are cutting back spending, and doing so to a greater extent recently than at the beginning of the second quarter, according to a comScore study examining changes in consumer attitudes and perceptions about the US...
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Governor Sarah Palin's debut as Vice Presidential incumbent on the Republican ticket drew 37 million viewers, dramatically outstripping the 24 million that watched Senator Joe Biden, the VP incumbent on the Democratic side.
Her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention...
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Online TV viewing has been steadily gaining in popularity - nearly one-fifth of American households that use the internet watch television broadcasts online, double the online viewership levels of 2006, according to a study by The Conference Board and TNS...
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Chrome's the new kid in town. It's gaining popularity fast. To see just how fast, log in to Google Analytics.
As of yesterday (Sept. 4), Google added Chrome to its browser tracking category in Google Analytics. Prior to yesterday Chrome data...
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Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which won Microsoft's $300 million creative account in February, has released its debut ad in an anticipated campaign featuring Jerry Seinfeld.
The minute-and-a-half-long spot went live yesterday and depicts Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld meeting at a...
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Metaversum announced the launch of Twinity in public beta.
Twinity is a virtual "mirror" world based on existing cities. Users can move into a city they have always wanted to visit, build an avatar and furnish their own apartments; then explore...
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After a slower start than Western Europe, the United States caught up in adoption of 3G mobile, with 28.4 percent of American mobile subscribers having 3G devices vs. the average of 28.3 percent among the five largest Western Europe states,...
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Co-founder Patrick Koppula of iLike conceived Ffwd, a video aggregation site that launches today.
The company manifesto is "your personal remote control for channel-surfing video on the web." Its job is to find videos users will like from a panoply of...
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An overwhelming majority (81 percent) of US small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) say they will maintain or increase their ad spending in the next 12 months, according to the latest wave of the Local Commerce Monitor from The Kelsey Group...
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