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May 13, 2008

May 13, 2008

Entrepreneurs: Random Musings on Web's Past and Future

A group of top tech entrepreneurs paneled in New York tonight. Talk was lively, if not deep, given the audience ofINSEAD alums hailed mainly from the relatively distant shores of Wall Street.

Discussion encompassed online media and marketing. Some highlights:

Start-up vet Kevin Ryan was anything but bullish on mobile. "Not one single company in mobile is valued at $1 billion. The carriers are blocking all the innovation."

Moderator Henry Blodgett asked the panel how to fix newspapers. Bain Capital Group's Daniel Allen thinks they ought to capitalize on their relationships with local advertisers and teach them the ropes of online marketing.

What's hot that should be not? The Ladders co-founder Alexandre Douzet thinks Ning's value lies primarily in co-founder Marc Andressen's name. Indeed's Paul Forster votes for Twitter's lack of a business model.

And while there was general agreement things are about to get a little grim, none of these entrepreneurs believe online is on the verge of a recession that even approaches the severity of the last bubble, or dot-bomb. Ryan laughingly reminisced about a week in 2000 when he went skiing and DoubleClick's market cap soared $1 billion while his out-of-the-office e-mail auto-responder was, essentially, running the company.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

FTC Clarifies Single Sender CAN-SPAM Rule

The Federal Trade Commission amended four CAN-SPAM Act provisions. The new rules stipulate that companies don't charge users to opt-out of receiving e-mails. They also alter the definition of the term "person," according to the FTC press release, "to clarify that CAN-SPAM’s obligations are not limited to natural persons."

The term "sender" was also redefined in an effort to clarify who's responsible for enabling opt-outs when multiple parties advertise in a single e-mail. According to the Act's full document:

The final Rule provides that multiple 'senders' of a commercial email, under certain conditions, may identify one among them as the 'sender' who will be deemed the sole 'sender' of the message (the 'designated sender'). Thus, under the final Rule, the designated sender, but not the other marketers using the same email message, must honor opt-out requests made by recipients of the message. Moreover, under the final Rule, the physical address of the designated sender, but not the addresses of the other marketers using the same email message, must appear in the message.

Apparently, the FTC received nearly 60 comments regarding this proposal.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 4:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Epic Intros View-Through-Like Metric

You've heard of induced labor. Now there are "induced visits!" At least that's what Epic Advertising, formerly Azoogle Ads, claims it can measure with its new Performance CPM metric. According to the company, an “induced” site visit is one resulting "in any way from an ad," even if there's no direct click-through. The metric also considers CPC, CPM and CPA tracking and brand impact.

Being a performance marketing firm, Epic serves direct-response advertisers who pay on a cost-per-click or per-action basis. It looks as though the company may now want to branch out by better serving brand marketers, or perhaps by demonstrating that there's value even if an ad isn't clicked.

This "new" metric reminds me quite a bit of something developed by DoubleClick years ago, called view-through. That metric gauges user activity after a user has been exposed to an ad but hasn't clicked on it.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 3:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Yahoo Political Ad Guy Moves to Westwood One

It's official: Richard Kosinski, former VP of political advertising for Yahoo, is moving to Westwood One. As SVP, Chief Digital Officer, Kosinski will head up Westwood's digital products such as news, sports and talk as well as all digital product and business development. While the Westwood name is synonymous with radio, the company is branching out to all platforms.

As I reported in April, Kosinski is replaced by Yahoo vet Diane Rinaldo, who apparently had done some work with political advertisers before taking the new role.

A source of mine -- a big name in the online political ad space who is responsible for planning online media buys for advocacy groups and candidate campaigns -- told me after Kosinski's departure was made public, "I miss him already."

Posted by Kate Kaye at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Quote of the Day: Monster.com Chief Sal Iannuzzi

"I think the ad business has slowed down because we slowed it down. We took a lot of ads down... I think there is bigger opportunity putting the ads on a wider band of sites. Suppose I create a Military.com [a Monster site in the U.S.] for France, for the U.K., for the Netherlands, Germany, etc. Not only is it growth in my recruiting businesses, but that's where I can get a lot of growth for my advertising business."

-Monster.com Chief Sal Iannuzzi, responding to a question from the Wall Street Journal about the outlook for advertising on its sites.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

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