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September 2007

September 29, 2007

Rishad Tobaccowala: Tips for Recruiting Talent

Denuo chief executive Rishad Tobaccowala advocates a simple strategy for hiring and retaining talent: don't be cheap.

"We make certain we have profit margins that allow us to pay better than anybody else," he said at a panel discussion during Interactive Advertising Bureau's MIXX conference this week. "I tell people: Money is tall, talent is short in this world. Pay your agencies well, otherwise, you'll have a bunch of mediocre people."

ClickZ asked Tobaccowala, who's also Publicis Groupe Media's chief innovation officer, how digital media executives can ensure their creative teams don't dismiss analytics as a diversion for number crunchers. Talent emerged as an issue aired by other executives during Advertising Week, as well.

Tobaccowala, in an e-mail, offered these insights.

ClickZ: How can organizations that embrace creative people learn to work with metrics?

Tobaccowala: Metrics are not necessarily creative unfriendly. Creatives love feedback and knowledge if their work is having an impact. The key is to make sure that the right things are being measured. If the creative's goals are a, b, and c and a and b are measurable and c is not then we should measure a and b. Often we measure c or d and e and then disparage the work by measuring the wrong thing.

ClickZ: What advice do you have for organizations seeking to optimize online
advertising and marketing campaigns on the fly?

Tobaccowala: Use technology. Recognize that creative still matters. Understand that fast optimizing requires organizational structures that allow for message, approval, and financial flexibility. Often the technology is ahead of the organization or financial ability to move quickly.

ClickZ: In the information technology world, some people say the role of business analyst has emerged to work as a liaison between technologists and executives in business units. Are there any new jobs emerging to bridge the gap between the creative and business sides of online advertising/marketing?

Tobaccowala: I do not see any from my vantage point. I think current planners, media folks, and creatives need to get better trained on how to use and analyze the data rather than have a special role created.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 3:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 28, 2007

Buzz Phrase of Advertising Week

Possibly the most-heard phrase in panels and meeting s of the various conferences this week: "Move the needle." It came up a few times, and while it's relevant to the discussion, it's moving beyond buzz-worthy.

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

You Know It's Time to Modify Your AdWords & AdSense Campaigns When...

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

comScore and NetRatings Race to Audit Finish Line

Following a self-aggrandizing press release from Nielsen//NetRatings in which the measurement firm boasted that it's leading the Media Rating Council accreditation process, its competitor comScore has just announced that it will indeed go through with a full MRC audit. It had been in the pre-audit phase till now.

Sure, the IAB has cracked the whip on these guys to get their systems and methodologies audited, but does this really need to be a race?

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In Legal Hot Water, Vonage Online Ad Spend Plummeting

It looks like Vonage, which has been embroiled in a couple patent suits, is on track to spend a heckuva lot less on online ads than the $185 million it spent in '06. Among the biggest online ad spenders last year, Vonage has fallen steadily from that lofty position since January. According to TNS Media Intelligence monthly data reported by ClickZ, Vonage spent about $26.2 million thus far through June, dwindling its spending as the year's gone on.

Vonage was told in April it would be barred from acquiring new customers, as part of a U.S. District Court in Virginia patent suit decision in which Vonage was found guilty of violating Verizon's VoIP patents. At the time the broadband phone firm was granted a temporary stay allowing it to continue to round up new customers.

Now it's back in the news as decisions have been against the firm made this week in the Verizon case, as well as another patent suit brought by Sprint Nextel. To be brief, the earlier Verizon decision was upheld. As for the Sprint situation, Vonage was found to have infringed on six of the telco's patents, and has to pay $69.5 million in damages and patent fees for future use of Sprint's patents. It also has to pay Verizon for use of its patents.

Vonage says it will appeal the Sprint decision, and claims the Verizon decision will have no negative effect on its business.

Sure, the company seems to spend a lot of money on TV ads, but the huge slash in online advertising (through networks, lead gen and affiliate marketing, that sort of thing) is striking. Last June the firm spent $13.6 million online; this June it spent about $2.4 million, according to TNS. In January it spent almost $7 million, and in February over $10 million.

ClickZ Stats shows TNS didn't even list Vonage in the top 50 advertisers by media spend this March, but the firm spent over $22 million on online ads the same month last year.

I'd assume these lawsuits are cutting into the ad budget, whether the firm is reallocating its spend or not.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Will Tech Tools Strangle Online Ad Growth?

Will the online advertising and marketing industry be held back by a shortage of people who possess the right mix of creative and quantitative skills? That was the assessment of some practitioners at Advertising Week in New York City.

ClickZ posed that question to Laura Thieme, president of Bizresearch, a Worthington, OH, consultancy specializing in search marketing. She recognizes challenges in finding talent, but says the industry's growing pains can be attributed to other factors -- especially technology.

The biggest obstacle? "The sheer number of [software] tools that exist," she said in a telephone interview this week. "Considering the tools that are getting updated, the acquisitions that are occurring or the new platforms getting rolled out, quite frankly, an analytic or IT [information technology] person would find it difficult to keep up with change," she said.

To quantity the problem, Thieme and her team identified the tools used to service the firm's top five accounts. Guess what? For a single account, they work with as many as 27 tools.

Of the 27, about seven to 10 were productivity tools such as Excel. The rest? Web site analytics, social media tracking, HTML authoring and paid search tools.

On Thieme's wish list: tools that allow for better or easier integration of data. It's difficult, she said, to analyze the results from a search campaign if you cannot easily compare the data collected by other tools. "You can tag your campaign. You can get it to work with LivePerson or ClickTracks, but oh gosh, that's one more integration that we'll put on the tech project list," she said, providing one scenario.

On the talent front, Thieme said the firm has a rigorous hiring and testing process. "We have found you can get creative people to gravitate toward analytics," she said. In instances where a talented creative person cannot master analytics, Thieme might still hire her but won't put her in charge of a major campaign.

To ensure that marketing students learn about the latest in Web analytics and search, Thieme teaches a class on the topic at Ohio State University. Of the 26 students in the class, three got jobs with Bizresearch and one went to work in interactive as an intern at P&G.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Do You Have a Web 2.0 Budget?

Performic's VP Emerging Media Cam Balzer and I were chatting at an Advertising Week lunch. When I asked what was new over at his shop, he had an interesting tidbit. Clients are allocating dollars into designated Web 2.0 budgets.

Now, plenty of marketers have "experimental" budget, money put aside specifically to experiment with new Web technologies and marketing techniques. So I asked Cam if that wasn't perhaps what he was referring to.

Web 2.0 is different, he explained. These really are Web 2.0 budgets, dedicated to mareting on patforms such as Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube, in allocations of up to $200,000 per quarter. The experimental budgets are flowing into things that are, well, experimental but not Web 2.0. Mobile, for example.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 27, 2007

Google Middle Earth

The road through Middle Earth is long and windy, and now it's been mapped by Google. For its "Lord of the Rings Online" game, developer and publisher Turbine, Inc. licensed the Google Maps API to map out world of "Lord of the Rings." And like all things Google, it's in beta! "We will keep it in beta as long as we're adding features," said Jim Drewry, director of marketing at Turbine. The map and wiki Turbine offers to its users is part of a retention-based marketing strategy.

When Turbine called Google to ask about licensing the map API to create a map for Middle Earth, Google was a little taken aback. When you use the API Google "almost assumes you will be mapping the earth. When it's not the earth, things get interesting," said Drewry. Turbine created the map with hundreds of thousands of map tiles stitched together. It's hosted by Turbine, and trafficked through Akamai.

link

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Traffiq Opens Online Ad Exchange to All Buyers, Sellers

After conducting a closed test of its new online ad exchange, Right Media and DoubleClick Exchange competitor Traffiq opened its marketplace to all buyers and sellers this week. The company's aim is to give media buyers a great deal of transparency into all media that's on sale, including competing bid information, a graphical view of the ad position that's on the block, and historical pricing data for individual publishers.

I spent some time playing with the Traffiq search tool to query various media listings, and while the system is fairly buggy (it's still in beta), it does provide an accurate and sizable set of available inventory based on a geographic, demographic or category-based query.

For instance, a search for healthcare-specific media reaching women aged 34 to 50 in North America turned up available inventory on LifeScript.com, eDiets.com and Medhelp.org/Childcare/maternal. Along with it were some placements of questionable relevance, for instance on Timeout.com, but these were few. Overall, the inventory was fairly premium... mostly above the fold and homepage placements. Where they weren't on the homepage, the inventory seemed pretty targeted, as with the Medhelp impression block. Yael Yekutiel, Traffiq's director of marketing and public relations, said the company is an appealing place for high-quality inventory since it lets publishers segment their audiences, which then generates higher marketer value and CPMs, creating a virtuous cycle of transparency.

"The exchange and its inherent business model reward those publishers selling ‘good’ media -- traffic that is premium, targeted, and converts well for the buyers," she said. "Sellers providing the most segmentation information about their inventory – precise demographics, geographical attributes, as well as clear ad placement details – will generate the most interest from buyers, and secure the highest CPMs and CPCs."

Strictly in terms of the interface, my sense is the platform's a few weeks shy of being advertiser-ready. Several of my actions on the site turned up error messages that forced me to hit the back button and start over. Also, it'd be nice if the search form was a little more integrated. As it stands now, you have to click away from the "geography" screen to add demographic preferences, and it's not immediately clear that the geographic data is preserved.

One unique feature is a one-click purchase capability similar to Ebay's "Buy it Now" feature. It lets sellers name a CPM that may be a little higher than they could command from an auction. Yekutiel said the feature's been heavily used, indicating many buyers are willing to pay a little more up front to forego the bid monitoring part of the equation.

As with Right Media, ad serving is free, and the system can integrate with third party ad servers. Ad networks will be permitted to sell into the exchange, so transparency is not mandated -- merely rewarded.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Yahoo Scoring More Political Cash than Ever

Yahoo says it's already collected more ad dollars from presidential campaigns this early on in the '08 election than altogether in any other election season. That's according to Richard Kosinski, Yahoo VP of Political Advertising, who told this week's "Presidential Campaigning" panel at IAB's MIXX conference, "We've seen more revenue now than we have in any election."

Still, he lamented the fact that, by his estimates, political campaigns are putting just 1 percent of their ad budgets on the Web. Indeed, they're using all the free social media platforms out there -- from Facebook to YouTube to Flickr -- to get messages out online.

"If you look at it from a paid side we have a lot of work to do," he added.

Readers following ClickZ's unique data-driven coverage of the presidential campaigns may note the fact that Nielsen/NetRatings AdRelevance hasn't picked up on any ads for presidential campaigns running on Yahoo. Stay tuned to this site for evidence that the candidates are buying on Yahoo.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sugar Buys Shopping Site, Trashes Competitor's Artificial Sweetener

Female-focused publishers are really good at co-opting each other's ideas. It wasn't long after Glam Media became the first notable smaller publisher to represent an extended network of sites that iVillage began doing the same. And this week, with the acquisition of "social shopping" site ShopStyle, Sugar Publishing has obtained new e-commerce and product discovery capabilities of the sort both iVillage and Glam offer.

In a video interview with AllThingsDigital's Kara Shwisher, publisher Brian Sugar describes the structure and strategy of the business, which has been renamed Sugar Inc. Along the way he takes a bunch of subtle and not-so-subtle swipes at rivals Gawker Media and Glam.

"Snarky's just sort of a trendy thing that eventually goes away," he tells Swisher, dissing Gawker without mentioning it by name (though Swisher had earlier referred to him as the "sweet Nick Denton"). "People magazine has a style we like. We model after them."

And in a blatant attack on Glam Media, Sugar tells Swisher he "really hates" sites that roll up comScore data from an extended ad network to "say they're bigger than they really are." Call it artificial sweetener.

Sugar is now hiring for a number of new and upcoming Sugar properties, including sites focused on pets, babies, finance and politics -- all bearing the Sugar name. Brian Sugar told Swisher the company's social network offering, TeamSugar, launched in February and has grown to 125,000 members. Every day Sugar writers produce about 150 posts and its extended community generates 15,000 pieces of content, some of which are promoted to positions of prominence on the network.

This summer NBC Universal Digital Media took a minority stake in Sugar. Part of that deal stipulates NBCU Digital Media will sell premium advertising on Sugar sites.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 26, 2007

Microsoft Talks Up its Live Search Update and Tweaks MSN Video Ads

Microsoft knows it's running in third place behind Google and Yahoo in the battle for search, and at its Silicon Valley offices today the company showed off its latest efforts in improving its Live Search service for its current users, and to bring more users to its system. Separately, the company also changed the manner in which it will place ads on its MSN Video by providing them to users based on how long they're viewing the player, and not at the start of each clip no matter the length.

At its amusingly titled Searchification 2007 event, Satya Nadella, corporate vice president Search and Advertising Platform Group for Microsoft, did lay claim to nearly 70 million -- or 40 percent -- of the U.S. based searching public as using Live Search, but admitted that only 11 percent of them are standalone customers. Mostly due to searchers using more than one search engine.

Looking to improve on its placement, the company is in the midst of upgrading the Live Search core capabilities, which it intends to do on a regular six to 12 month schedule. Nadella said the first thing Microsoft did was examine the search results it had been providing with its previous system.

"We did was look at a lot of the click log analysis to try to get a top level feel about how satisfied are customers and users with search results," he said, and noted that they monitored if a user clicked the first result of a search response. "We found that 46 percent of all searches are not satisfied and that's a large number. And 54 percent is either fully or partially satisfied. So that gives us a lot of room to get more people into the green area."

Live Search is not only getting upgrades to its index size and neural processing systems to provide better search results, but it's also breaking content into verticals for easier searching, including Local/Maps, Entertainment, Health and Shopping areas. And while the new features did seem worthwhile, including some admittedly eye-popping 3-D maps of San Francisco with high resolution picture overlays taken from space for map directions, what was conspicuously absent from the Searchification event was any mention of its Microsoft adCenter ad network system and how it will be tied to the updated Live Search.

When I caught up with Nadella after the event, he acknowledged the absence but promised "We have a major update in adCenter coming in the next couple of months." His co-presenter for the event, Brad Goldberg, a general manager for the Search Group, went on to say that Microsoft realizes that the update is about "Having a greater share and inventory. We're looking at inventory and verticals and providing different experiences. We're going to open up the ad models around things like health and entertainment, and that commitment is something that advertisers want and understand."

In another announcement, Microsoft also changed the advertising delivery model for MSN Video by giving viewers a pre-roll advertisement before the first video, and then playing an additional video no more than once every three minutes of using the player. Considering the vast number of less than :30 videos floating around the Internet, the move is clearly intended to allow for less users annoyance while using the MSN Video system.

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Next Dove Viral to Bow Oct. 1

Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty has met with blockbuster success. By now, it seems, everyone on the Web has seen (and re-seen) the spot that surely qualifies as the campaign of the year, Evolution.

Next Monday, the latest video in the series bows -- we just got a sneak peek. Unilever's longtime agency Ogilvy created the spot in which a sweet 7 year-old girl in bombarded, in about :60, with all the body image related advertising she'll see in a year. Tagline: Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does."

The spot is engaging, highly impactful, and will doubtless spawn even more consumer dialogue about women and girls' self esteem images. This is great advertising and great irony. What's in the crosshairs of the campaign after all is nothing less than....advertising.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Deer and Tails and Trees and Propagation

What's the perfect metaphor for combining word-of-mouth with major ad campaigns?

Yesterday, Carat's Sarah Fay told advertisers they should be "planting a tree" rather than painting a house. At a Yahoo event this morning, the similes and metaphors continued.

Mediavest's Jim Kite, president, connections research and analytics, told advertisers they're no longer in the "message delivery business," but rather the "message propagation business." He was followed by Ogilvy Vice Chairman Steve Hayden, who popped a drawing of a "big-eyed deer" onto the screen (presumaby, it was staring into an advertisers headlights). The deer was joined in short order by what looked like a goggly-eyed snake, but Hayden called the creature the "big-eyed tail."

Clearly, consensus is needed on the right industry term for the phenomenon of consumers passing along brand messages. Word-of-mouth? Viral? They just don't seem to be cutting it anymore.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Exponential Joins Ranks of In-Line Ad Networks

In-text ads are distracting, they smear the line between content and advertising, and they're easy to trigger accidentally. For these reasons ClickZ News has tended not to cover them, though we recognize that every publisher must find its own balance between a degree of ad intrusiveness and a smooth end user experience. And so must each advertiser. Users will vote with their clicks.

Exponential, which owns ad network Tribal Fusion, has plunged into the in-line arena with a twist on the usual approaches that bears mentioning. Its EchoTopic in-line ad network uses semantic analysis of the content of a page, rather than the keywords buried within it, to target the ads. I spoke to VP of Strategic Marketing Alistair Goodman about the contextual offering, and with regard to the intrusiveness concern, he said the same thing I've heard from Virbrant Media and others: that it's up to the site owners and the advertisers to make the call about whether the ad format is appropriate for their content and audience.

He claimed however that click-through-rates during tests on 15 sites in Tribal Fusion's tech channel have been two to three times those of keyword-targeted in-line advertising. This, he argued, indicates it's providing a more relevant ad experience and hence a better overall end user experience.

A number of campaigns are already running on the EchoTopic network of 25 publishers in the tech vertical. Exponential would only name one advertiser, PC Tools, but Goodman said an employment-related advertiser is using the system to combine contextual with geo-targeting and serve tech job ads by region. The semantic analysis of sites in the Tribal Fusion network, in development for three years, will be applied to display advertising as well.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 25, 2007

Network Solutions tapped Ingenio to Offer Pay Per Call to Small Business

It's no secret that a lot of small businesses don't have a significant Web presence, but what if they still want to advertising online? Network Solutions, which bills itself as a provider of Web solutions for small businesses, is partnering with up with Ingenio to offer its clients a Pay Per Call system.

Simply enough, run the ads and pay for them based on how many calls they generate to the business. Network Solutions customers will find a new tab available to them to use the Pay Per Call network that Ingenio operates.

"Network solution has hundreds of thousands of small businesses that work with them for their core offering. To this point they've been offering Pay Per Click, and now they are offering Pay Per Call via our services," Marc Barach, chief marketing officer for Ingenio told me. "From the Network Solutions customer point of view we're able to bring in another efficient way to generate leads from online searches."

Posted by MatthewNelson at 9:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

EyeWonder Grabs Cologne-Based Vendi

Video and rich media ad vendor EyeWonder has acquired a Germany-based firm with a similar suite of services, and has expanded its presence in the U.K. and Ireland. Under the deal, vendi interactive will change its name to EyeWonder and serve as a jumping off point for further European expansion, EyeWonder said. Co-founder Ken Gitzen stays on as MD of EyeWonder in Germany.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Reach & Frequency: RIP

Shuttling back and forth between MIXX and OMMA during New York's Advertising Week has been more hectic than rewarding (two simultaneous conferences in the same city is bad for the industry, guys, not to mention speakers, exhibitors and vendors).

While it's impossible to catch everything, overall the discussions at both events has largely underwhelmed. Too many "it's about the user" and "the consumer is in control" platitudes.

So it was refreshing to hear CEO of both Carat and Isobar US this morning with a more tangible take on the state of the industry. Reach and frequency are over, said Sarah. "I do not believe an agency can succeed by putting a good media plan together." Rhetorically, she asked, "what is YouTube, creative or media?"

Bottom line, Carat is saying that the brands that will win are the ones whose consumers tell the best stories. Instead of mere B2C advertising, the new model, she argues, should be B2C + C2C (consumer-to-consumer) campaigns. As an example, she cites client Adidas' MySpace page, engendering 21.5M brand encounters per month (page visits, downloadable media, etc.).

This following an audit of one year of adidas advertising from which it was determined yielded a total of 6 minutes of contact with the target consumer. "That didn't make any of us feel happy."

None of this is earth-shatteringly new, of course. What's impressive are the data Carat is using to back up their claims.

Sarah closed her talk with an example of regression analysis. Paint a house, and like an advertising campaign, its value starts going down from Day One. C2C advertising is "more like planting a tree."

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Microsoft's Facebook Friendship

Microsoft is wearing its social media heart on its sleeve this week.

The software company is in talks to acquire a stake of up to 5 percent in Facebook, the social networking site, the Wall Street Journal reported today.

On Tuesday, Matthew Carr, Microsoft Digital Advertising Solution display product marketing, appeared on a MIXX panel on convergence and politely skirted a question posed by Steven Levy, Newsweek chief technology writer and the panel's moderator.
"We have a great relationship [with Facebook] already and we expect for that to continue," Carr said.

A look at Microsoft's booth at the MIXX conference and expo this week at the Crowne Plaza Times Square shows how much the company is flirting with social networking.

Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions' booth prominently promotes two vehicles for brand advertisers: social media and MSN video. In a hand out, Microsoft also points out that its Windows Live, in addition to Facebook and Digg, another networking site, help over 67 million people stay in touch.

"It's about time they [Microsoft] did something. Look at everything they missed out on buying," said one wag at MIXX.

Attending an Advertising Week reception, sponsored by Microsoft and Universal McCann, were digital advertising solutions team members who work with Facebook. They, of course, were mum on any potential deal with Facebook.

In August 2006, Facebook and Microsoft struck a deal to use Microsoft's advertising technology. Microsoft was also designated the exclusive provider of banner advertising and sponsored links on Facebook. At that time, Facebook had 9 million registered users compared to 42 million today.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A-B Marketing Heavy Discusses Bud.tv's Tribulations

Tony Ponturo, president & CEO of global media and sports marketing at A-B's Busch Media Group, played down Bud.tv and played up the company's total digital ad and media strategy during a keynote address at Advertising Week today.

Speaking at OMMA, he was very blunt about the "learning experience" involved in nursing the over-hyped site through its rocky first few months. He even shared some stats both flattering and unflattering: The site has averaged over six minutes per visit from between 50,000 and 100,000 monthly uniques, a total of 1.1 million videos have been viewed, and 40,000 users have opted in to receive e-mail.

As it turns out, the most viewed content on Bud.tv are the commercials, a phenomenon that appears to have been driven by the site's one monster viral hit, Swear Jar. He said the spot was actually developed over a year ago for the Super Bowl, and was not surprisingly buried for being too vulgar. In its resuscitated form online, he said it garnered three million page views on YouTube and 125,000 on Bud.tv. "You try to do content and be clever, but consumers still want to view the commercials."

After lamenting that "for better or worse, Bud.tv's gotten a disproportionate amount of talk" relative to A-B's other digital initiatives, he spent the bulk of his keynote discussing those efforts. He said A-B doubled its online ad spend from 5 percent of its overall budget in 2005 to 10 percent in 2006, and that this year will bring an additional 30 to 50 percent increase. The company now operates 40 brand sites and has relationships with 65 to 100 third party sites, including properties like Maxim and the streaming properties of local broadcast stations. Additionally A-B uses mobile as a "social connector" at live events and other venues.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

IAB Calls Slowing Online Ad Spending Growth "Torrid"

Online ad spending has grown at "a torrid pace," 26.8 percent, during the first half of this year over the same period last year, Randall Rothenberg told a packed crowd at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's MIXX conference in New York yesterday. The IAB prez said spending hit the $10 billion milestone in the first half. "This is the first time in history this has happened," he gushed.

When the IAB reported numbers for the first half of '06 from its regular online ad spending report (conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers), it pegged spending at $7.9 billion, a 37 percent increase over the same period the year before.

Sure, nobody's saying 26.8 percent growth isn't moving at a fast clip, but during the first half of last year it grew 10 percent more over the previous year.

As reported here last week, though the reports would have us believe that online spending is scorching, it might be smart to temper that a bit, considering both Nielsen and TNS also reported slowing Web ad spending growth during the first half of '07 compared to that period of '06. Yes, it's becoming bigger piece of the overall ad spending pie, but the fact is, all three of these measures -- IAB, Nielsen and TNS -- show spending growth has dwindled since last year at this time.

Taking into consideration the IAB counts a variety of online ad forms including the monster that is search, in addition to just display ads like TNS and Nielsen do, this is an important caveat.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

MIXX: Audience Counting Blues

Will Web measurement companies ever churn out audience data that can be easily compared? Don't count on it.

Executives from comScore, the Nielsen Co., HitWise, and Omniture at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's MIXX conference said Monday they will continue to fine tune how they collect, track, and analyze Web site visitor data and pointed out differences in their methodologies.

Some said the newest frontier involves tracking crossover media consumption, that is, measuring the extent that people consume traditional media, such as television and then cross over to the Internet.

"The Internet is part of a broader media spend, but growing," said John Mellor, Omniture's senior vice president, business strategy and corporate strategy. "We're trying to understand IP-connected devices, mobile distribution. Cable TV is increasingly digitally connected. It's as measurable as the Internet is."

How will advertisers know where to spend their money?

"Know how the Internet interplays with other media," said Manish Bhatia, Nielsen Online's president of global services and U.S. sales. Then, decide. For example, if consumers are turning to print, such as magazines and newspapers, in addition to the Internet, then they may want to cut TV spending.

To a large extent, each executive at the panel discussion, "Convergent Validity," touted his respective company's offerings.

Magid Abraham, comScore CEO, pointed out how his company uses audience panels to collect "effectiveness" metrics, not soley audience measurements. Dissing audience data collected from servers, he gave this example: If a person goes to a Web site, then deletes the cookies from that visit, she's counted as a first-time visitor when she returns to the Web site, though she's actually a return visitor.

Bhatia said Nielsen has acquired an assortment of companies that generate many Web measurement data points, thus providing opportunities to dig into the information for trends and other insights.

Bill Tancer, HitWise general manager of global research, said his firm provides online competitive intelligence. "If you do nothing but audience measurement, you're doing yourself a disservice," he said, adding that his firm collects demographic and other information that shows where Web site visitors are online, what category of sites they visit, how they are getting there, and what's driving traffic to competitors.

Omniture's Mellor said his company does not deal with audience panels. Instead, the company measures the visits and customer behavior on every single page of its customers' Web sites, he said.

One challenge, participants said, some metrics are more important to some businesses than to others. "Definition of engagement is different to everyone in this room. Retailers boil it down to ROI (return on investment), to media companies it may be a function of page views, time spent on site, or repeat visitors."

Stay tuned: discussion continues Nov. 29 at an IAB audience measurement summit.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 24, 2007

Internet Broadcasting: Traffic on the Rise to Local TV Station Sites

Traffic to TV station Web sites just experienced two consecutive record-setting months, according to data released today by Internet Broadcasting, which supports local publishers like NBC, Cox Television and Meredith Broadcasting. IB's site partners saw 15.8 million unique visitors in July, followed by 16.7 million in August, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, handily beating the previous record of 15.4 million visitors recorded last February. Page views in July were over a half-billion for the first time.

The firm said the record traffic was driven by weather-related events and new distribution strategies, including IB's content alliance with CNN.com. the data comes from approximately 70 TV station Web sites.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Recruiting Sites Up the Ante

A company that matches job candidates' resumes to jobs has buffed up its own curriculum vitae.

Trovix, founded five years ago, has been offering a Web-based application that uses proprietary search technology to match and track talent.

Today, the Mountain View, CA, company expands its mission, launching a free online job service for job hunters, said CEO Jeff Benrey. Candidates can anonymously upload their resume to Trovix.com; the company promises candidates will get matches within 30 seconds based on their experience and skills. Additional listings will be e-mailed to the candidate.

Initially, the site will be open to any company that wants to post jobs. Eventually, Trovix plans to charge for advertisements listing job openings. Ads will appear as a paid result, if relevant, in response to a candidate's search. If paid results closely match a candidate's skills and experiences, it will receive a five-star designation. All search results will include a score that will indicate how well a job matches a candidate's background, according to a Trovix spokeswoman.

Results will be culled from other sources, including corporate Web sites, Monster, Career Builder, industry association boards, and free job feeds.

Trovix is not the only company working to put a new spin on job sites. Earlier this month, Rob McGovern, CareerBuilder's former chief executive launched a career site called Jobfox. While some other job sites charge businesses to advertise openings, Jobfox charges a subscription fee to companies using the service, said Jobfox spokesman Barry Lawrence.

Using Jobfox, a job seeker can create a profile by answering a questionnaire. That profile is posted on a Jobfox page and the job seeker can receive a unique URL. Jobfox matches companies and candidates based on profiles, said Lawrence. "It's an eHarmony matching system for jobs," he said, referring to the dating service.

About 1,000 profiles or resumes have been posted each day since the company's Sept. 12 launch, in addition to 500,000 collected during the company's beta, Lawrence said.

In addition to Monster and CareerBuilder, career site competitors include Indeed.com of Stamford, CT, and Simply Hired of Mountain View, CA, both of which launched in 2005 as jobs search engines.

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September 21, 2007

Wenda Harris Millard Named Vice Chair at IAB

The IAB announced some changes to its board this afternoon, including the appointment of Yahoo vet Wenda Harris Millard as vice chair of its executive committee. An alum of DoubleClick back in the day, Yahoo most famously and now Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Wenda has perhaps the most recognized faces in online ad selling. Or she did, in the days before Tim Armstrong grew an entourage of giddy Twitter stalkers.

Other new members of the board include Ned Desmond, president of Time Inc. Interactive; Peter Horan, CEO of IAC Media and Advertising; Tad Smith, CEO of Reed Business Information; and Matt Wise, president & CEO of Q Interactive. New to the executive committee are Neil Ashe, CNET Networks CEO; Mike Hard, VP of Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions, U.S. Sales; and Dave Morgan, founder and chairman of Tacoda.

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Google Updates Newspaper Print Ad System

Google's synching up its DIY ad platform to better work with newspaper classifieds systems. At least, that's what it looks like. The company has unveiled a new free ad creation tool that allows AdWords advertisers using the Print Ads interface to build ads in templates "designed to fit the ad size you've selected for each specific insertion," according to a press statement. Advertisers can upload logos, images, headlines and text.

Google also said it's print paper network includes inventory from "over 450 newspapers (which includes a growing offering of college, Spanish-language and free papers)." No word yet from the company on the names of new publisher partners, though.

This print project at Google is obviously a work in progress, and it appears the company may have been experiencing some glitches when it came to translating its online text ad platform to stodgy print paper classifieds systems. Not surprising, really.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 4:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Meteor Hits Napa! Web Analytics Set Back a Decade! Wine Saved!

Web analytics may not be for everyone in the high tech world, but those that are into it can really be passionate about it, if my experience this morning at SEMphonic's X Change Web Analytics conference in Napa, Ca., is any indicator.

For the opening keynote of the event, Eric Peterson, the CEO and principle consultant for his recently launched Web Analytics Demystified firm, knew he was preaching to a well-school bunch of analytics professionals. He pointed around the room at Matt Belkin of Omniture, Rand Schulman of Unica, Terry Cohen of Digitas, Clint Ivy of Visual Sciences and others, and proclaimed "If a meteor hit this room right now, Web analytics would be set back ten years!"

The comment elicited a laugh, but there were also nods of agreement when Peterson announced the demise of the "good ol' days" of Web 1.0 style of analytics that used cookies and page views, in favor of Web 2.0 communications.

"Now sessions start in a widget, then go to a blog, and then to a reader… how do we do the measurement?" he said. "The old measurement model is about to crack and we need to get ahead of the curve with 2.0."

Peterson touted his idea of R.A.M.P., or Resources, Analysis, Multivariate testing and Process. He said resources can be more than software, but also the people who make recommendations about what they see, while analysis is more than just issuing reports that no one reads. He also said that testing is essential for analysis of results, and that having a process is necessary in case employees leave your business and take an entire analysis system with them. He also admitted that no one has all the analytics answers when it comes to Web 2.0, but "You're going to have to cobble this together with what you have and new tools that are coming. Cause Web analytics 3.0 is the problem."

And that's mobile, Peterson said. As mobile devices can't be as easily tracked, or have cookies installed or other standard analytic tools "It's going to be a mess," he said. "But it's also going to be an opportunity. This device doesn't have cookies, but it does have a phone number, and a GPS address. It's going to be great for an advertising perspective, but we have to measure it and we're woefully unprepared."

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September 20, 2007

Rumor: Google Buying Sirius?

A high profile source is pretty convinced ol' Goog is on the verge of snapping up Sirius Radio. Heard anything of the sort? Do get in touch.

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Broadband Video Roundup: AOL, NBC, Beet.TV, ScanScout

Investors may still hate the company, but AOL is steadily becoming Web's top source of many things near and dear to advertisers' hearts -- search not included. Three days after forming its monster Platform A ad network unit, the company has signed a deal to carry ABC television content. Considering that AOL is a founding network partner to NBCU/News Corp's Hulu online video network, the news means AOL will in short order have among the largest collections of premier video on the Web. Of course, syndication rights are cheaper by the minute. Audience is what counts.

NBC meanwhile will let consumers download its prime time and late night shows for a week after their initial broadcast. Included programs include "Heroes," "The Office," "Bionic Woman," and "30 Rock," as well as Conan's and Leno's late night shows. The company pointedly said its downloadable player will contain filtering technology capable of blocking copyrighted material, a jab at YouTube, which has struggled to produce such technology at the request of networks and music labels. And the news comes shortly after the company nixed its relationship with iTunes, so the announcement is chock full of swipes at NBC's Internet frienemies.

In video overlay news, B2B video blog Beet.TV secured a sponsorship with VeriSign, which will bring overlay ads to the show, and will also begin carrying such ads on its YouTube channel. Additionally, contextual video targeting firm Scanscout went public with its first notable publisher relationship, with Handheld Entertainment. The deal potentially involves a lot of inventory, as Handheld expects to close its recently announced acquisition of eBaum's World next month.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Google Scooter Etiquette

This morning Google's New York office opened its doors to media. A pre-session conversation with Tim Armstrong, Google's president of advertising and commerce, revealed a certain scooter etiquette practiced around the NY office, after a few incidents. He said because the hallways are so long, people really pick up speed. The perfect storm occurs when someone walks out of a room, which has a sliding door and is not so easy to detect when wheeling down those hallways. Armstrong also said there are parking racks for scooters. A few people upgraded to motorized scooters, which is no longer allowed.

Posted by Enid Burns at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 19, 2007

Google Reminds FTC of Online Advertising's Good Sides

Do Google ads foster freer, more robust and more diverse speech? Google thinks so, and the company wants the Federal Trade Commission to know it. The Web giant sent the FTC, which will delve into the worlds of online advertising and behavioral targeting and tracking in a November “Town Hall,” suggestions for topics to consider in addition to what the FTC has already laid out as its discussion points. The FTC already plans to consider how online behavioral advertising works, companies in the sector, types of data collected and how it’s used, data security and disclosure, consumer understanding and regulatory standards.

Mainly, Google wants the commission to consider the role of online advertising in “providing free, accessible, user-friendly, and high-quality content to consumers,” according to Google’s Public Policy Blog. “The growth in online advertising has also spurred innovation, competition, and investment in the online advertising space – all of which produce consumer benefits in the form of more online resources and more relevant information,” wrote Google Policy Counsel Pablo Chavez.

The firm also stresses the “vibrant small business community” that is enabled through online advertising. Not only can individual publishers earn part-time and full-time funds through online ads, Chavez writes, “Our advertising network helps small businesses connect in an affordable and effective manner with otherwise unreachable consumers, including consumers in small, remote, or niche markets.”

Of course, Google’s DoubleClick purchase and subsequent outcries from privacy advocates has spotlighted issues surrounding data privacy in the online ad space. At the end of the post, however, Chavez claims the proposed DoubleClick acquisition “provides an opportunity for us to bolster privacy even further,” which prompted a couple blog comments wondering exactly how.

One suspects the FTC will be wondering the same thing.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 8:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Facebook Shopping

Following the release of the Facebook API availability, micro-advertising company Chitika took the experienced it developed with its eMiniMall ad unit, which runs on numerous blog sites, and created similar unit for Facebook. Using the Facebook platform, Chitika built an API, which Facebook application developers can use to integrate and display revenue-generating eMiniMalls directly on their applications.

The advertised products will show up alongside paid merchant listings from Chitika's merchant partners and allow users to search and compare stores to find the best price. The existing network for the eMiniMall unit is primarily comprised of blogs and smaller publisher sites. Chitika felt the Facebook opportunity was a good way to expand its offering. "The excitement here is that social networking sites are being looked at as a very fertile ground, as new horizons for advertising and the advertising industry as a whole is exposing ways in which we can make this advertising model work," said Chitika CEO Venkat Kolluri.

Chitika provided information on the Chitika Facebook API and how developers and other advertisers can access its new channel.

Posted by Enid Burns at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

And Now It's Done: The Death of TimesSelect, Brought to You by AmEx

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 18, 2007

See Spottt Run

Does this sound familiar? A new company initiative launched today at TechCrunch 40 Conference 2007 in San Francisco called Spottt is setting up a system where like-minded Web sites can post ads on each others sites for free. If you've been around the Internet for awhile it might, and even Spottt founder Philip Kaplan owned up to it very early in his presentation.

"Yeah, LinkExchange," he nodded, referring to the now defunct network of Web sites that was launched in 1996 and purchased by Microsoft in 1998, primarily for its mailing list, according to Kaplan.

LinkExchange had a successful run in the early days of the Internet, and even claimed eBay as one of its first ten listings, as Kaplan reminded the audience. Now it seems that he and Spottt are looking to replicate that system, with the help of parent company and ad network AdBrite. They're hoping to attract small and long tail publishers looking for easy advertising options.

With the logo "You pet my back, I'll pet yours," Spottt itself will make its revenue through selling inventory in a two-for-one system. When a publisher places two ads from a Spottt partner, the reciprocating company will run one ad from that publisher and one from Spottt, Kaplan said.

Already the site seemed to have some support in the form of TechCrunch 40 forum contributor Guy Kawasaki, the CEO of early-stage venture capital firm Garage Technology Ventures. "I like it because as a blogger and a Web site owner I truly understand the pain you are solving," he said.

Posted by MatthewNelson at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Location-Aware Mobile Search

When you leave your neighborhood, or even time zone, your phone can sense you're in a different service area, yet targeting for advertising and search defaults to your home area unless you tell your phone otherwise. Through a partnership between Sprint and Microsoft, users on the Sprint network can opt-in to an integrated GPS location-aware mobile search service. Additionally, Microsoft will include a version of voice search with visual results by Live Search using Microsoft property Tellme available for download. GPS-enabled search is a permission-based service, subscribers do have to acknowledge the GPS functionality of the phone in order to take part.

While there was no advertising immediately announced about GPS-enabled search, it's ripe for geo-targeted ads. Sprint was an early adopter among U.S.-based carriers to allow advertising on deck. On the Microsoft side, it can't be too hard to make inventory available to advertisers here.

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

E-Mailing Moms - When's the Best Time?

Just got through moderating a panel on New Media Platforms at the HBA Expo. BSM Media's Maria Bailey shared some interesting insights about marketing to moms on the Web, much of it based on research she's publishing in a forthcoming book.

According to Maria, fully 30 percent of moms are online between the hours of 8-10 p.m. If your e-mail targets moms, forget blasting at 4 a.m., she implored the crowd. Send between 6-8 (after the kids are tucked into bed) so your message will be at the top of the inbox.

And speaking of e-mail, hope many of you can make it to our own e-mail marketing event in New York on October 2.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Google Seeks Global Privacy Standards as DoubleClick Deal is Challenged in EU, Australia

Google said last week it would advocate for global standards on privacy protection, which could ease the privacy outcries and regulatory snags that tend to accompany its product and business moves around the world.

Speaking at a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) meeting on ethics and human rights in France Friday, Google global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer put forward proposals for new global privacy rules protecting consumer data. In a blog post earlier today he stated that “as long as there are no global standards for privacy protection, individuals and businesses will remain at risk as they operate online.”

Fleischer went on to suggest that the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) framework laid out at the 2004 conference provided an appropriate foundation on which to build, arguing that “if privacy principles can be agreed upon within the 21 APEC member economies, a similar set of principles could be applied on a global scale”.

Cynics may point out the timing of the announcements in light of hostility towards the proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of Doubleclick. In an e-mail sent to ClickZ, the Executive Director for the Center for Digital Democracy Jeff Chester stated “It's clear that this is motivated in part to dampen the growing opposition to the takeover. Google is attempting to head-off a global regulatory digital train-wreck.”

Fleischer played down links between today’s announcements and the pending deal however, describing a “sustained multi-pronged effort by Google to improve privacy practices”, and stating that “We would do this regardless of whether DoubleClick were part of the equation or not.”

Of course, Google is no stranger to Internet privacy concerns. Worries about its practices date back to 2004, when Privacy International filed complaints against targeted ads in Gmail. Doubleclick or no Doubleclick, it seems that Google has learned its lesson, and this time round is rather sensibly adopting a pre-emptive, rather than reactive approach.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 9:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 17, 2007

SpiralFrog Crawls Out from Under its Lily Pad

SpiralFrog, an ad supported music downloading site, officially launched today with approximately 800,000 songs and 3,500 music videos available to download to media players, and the company said it will add more content every day. All is well in the world of SpiralFrog.

Well, maybe.

It's been a tough road for SpiralFrog since it initially got traction for its ad supported music sharing model through a deal with Universal Music Group. It wasn't long before things went wrong when the company failed to sign any additional major labels and then many executives and sales staffers left in December. Still, it's up now, and company executives are touting it as a piracy-free means of downloading music, since a share of its advertising revenue is provided to publishers. It also intends to bring users to its service by providing additional artist bios, reviews, discography and album art, among other rich content features, according to the company. All of which is meant to make the site a "Web-based music experience" rather than a music downloading portal.

But on the other hand, SpiralFrog will play on Windows PCs running XP and Vista, and will download songs to "up to two portable music players or music-enabled phones that support Windows Media DRM," it said. Which means, as many Apple iPod users know, it requires using WMA files with DRM software which won't work on the Apple devices. So there goes 70 percent of the portable music player market. And there's even some question that SpiralFrog will work on Microsoft's own Zune player.

Yup, it looks like the frog has an uphill battle ahead of it.

Posted by MatthewNelson at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack