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August 3, 2008 - August 9, 2008

August 8, 2008

Yahoo Responds to House Inquiry, Allows Behavioral Opt-Out

In response to last week's request by the House Energy and Commerce Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee, Yahoo has announced opt-out capability for behavioral targeting. In a letter to Subcommittee Members, the company said it "will offer consumers even greater choice by allowing consumers to decline customized advertising(8) on Yahoo.com. This is in addition to our existing opt-out when Yahoo! serves customized advertising on third party networks."

That (8) leads the reader to a footnote explaining that Yahoo's internal term for behavioral targeting is "customized advertising."

The legislators sent letters to over 30 firms, mostly ISPs, inquiring about their online advertising practices, data privacy policies, etc., a week ago. Today's the deadline for them to respond.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Florida AG Spoils Fun for FunMobile

The Florida AG strikes again. This time Sunshine State Attorney General Bill McCollum has darkened the day for MobileFunster, a company that does business as FunMobile and sells mobile content like ringtones and wallpapers.

After penalizing ad networks like Azoogle and telecom AT&T Mobility for their alleged roles in enabling deceptive ads for "free" mobile content and other items, the AG's CyberFraud Task Force has gone after its first mobile content provider.

The Hong Kong-based FunMobile has agreed to cough up $1 million, and like other companies the diligent AG's office has settled with, the firm will "lead mobile content providers in setting new marketing standards that will benefit Florida consumers and cell phone users nationwide," according to the office's press release.

Full settlement in PDF form here.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 7, 2008

Seeking Nominations: ClickZ Marketing Excellence Awards

Got a favorite marketing tool or service that gives you an edge? We'd like hear about it and spread the word.

Nominate your favorite for a ClickZ Marketing Excellence Award. We're interested in hearing how the tool or service helps you achieve success goals and execute campaigns better than before -- and makes your tough job just a little bit easier.

See the entry rules and send in your nomination before the August 14 deadline.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 6, 2008

AOL's Display Dollar Dwindle May Be Sign of Things to Come

AOL told investors yesterday during its earnings call that Tacoda and Quigo are now fully Integrated in Platform A and can be used across all of AOL and third party network inventory (read: Advertising.com).

Whether that integration will assist AOL's Platform A in garnering more premium, guaranteed ad dollars is another thing. The company experienced a drop in display ad revenues of 14 percent in Q2 from Q2 2007. Apparently they sold more ad units, but at lower CPMs.

One thing Tacoda's behavioral targeting system enables publishers to do is drive higher prices for non-premium inventory that is tougher to sell than premium placements. Oh, and Quigo offers text ads, not display.

In addition to "continued effects of the acquisition integration issues," the company chalked up the display decline to "pullbacks in some ad categories," including autos, financial services, telecom and travel. And then there's that pesky economic downturn, too.

The firm expects its Platform A organizational changes to take a positive effect in the second half of the year. Still, you've got to wonder what this big split of their online access and ad/publishing businesses will do when it comes to maintaining order.

As for AOL's paid search revenues, those rose 10% over Q2 2007.

Sure, forces such as internal re-orgs and external economic pressure are taking a toll on CPM-based display advertising. But the fact is advertisers are gravitating more and more towards performance based advertising. Not only are we hearing about display ad declines from other large online ad sellers like Yahoo, we're seeing agencies beef up their own performance ad knowledge and services.

Case in point: Publicis Groupe's acquisition of search marketing firm Performics today. The head of its "VivaKi Nerve Center" operation Curt Hecht told me brand clients are demanding performance-based offerings more and more. "Increasingly, they're asking us to go into acquisition and response-based media," he said.

Even when ad budgets are replenished, the shift away from CPM-based display to something more accountable (whatever form it takes – display, text, whatever) may just turn out to be permanent.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 3:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 5, 2008

Newspaper Consortium Solidifies with New Head Exec

It looks like The Newspaper Consortium, the growing bunch of paper publishers, is becoming more of an official entity. The group -- borne of a series of relationships between newspaper firms and Yahoo – has appointed a Tribune man, Michael Silver, as its new executive director.

According to a press release, "Silver will report to the Newspaper Consortium Board of Directors and Executive Committee and begin developing new opportunities for the Consortium across the digital media landscape, as well as to grow the Consortium's existing relationship with Yahoo across content and advertising."

Silver most recently served as an independent consultant to Tribune Media Services; before that he was VP corporate development there.

Those following the newspaper consortium, its work with Yahoo, and the emergence of newspaper network quadrantOne, will note Silver's Tribune connection. Not only is quadOne partly-owned by Tribune (along with Gannett, New York Times Co. and Hearst), its own interim CEO until last week is Tribune Interactive's SVP of Sales.

QuadOne and Yahoo certainly seem to be in direct competition. But it's all much more grey than that. The thing is, many if not all of the Yahoo consortium members also have display and video inventory in the quadOne network. The fact that the paper consortium is establishing its own ground as a full-fledged entity, coupled with its ties to both Yahoo's and quadOne's networks, means this game has only just begun.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Valueclick Joins Gang-up on Tacoda

Valueclick has filed suit against AOL's behavioral targeting firm Tacoda, claiming patent infringement. As Congress and the Federal Trade Commission sharpen their focus on the sector, the continued flow of lawsuits over behavioral ad targeting technologies indicates the potential for success outweighs any government threats.

According to Federal District Court filings, Valueclick filed a patent infringement suit against Tacoda in California District Court on July 15. Not much seems to have occurred yet besides judge reassignments. Valueclick beefed up its behavioral capabilities last month.

Whether Valueclick has a chance with this one is anyone's guess. The company settled a patent infringement case against behavioral targeting firm Revenue Science in February. The docket notes on that case state, "ValueClick and Revenue Science shall each bear their own costs, expenses and fees. IT IS SO ORDERED."

After AOL bought Tacoda, it became subject to a patent suit – almost exactly a year ago -- from a little known firm that seemed to be pushing its way into the behavioral space with little history in it before that. That suit, filed in New York by Modavox, an online broadcasting media production firm-turned-software provider, appears to be ongoing without much movement.

Of course, neither AOL/Tacoda nor Revenue Science would comment. No one is available from Valueclick to speak at this point, either.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Click Fraud As A Career?

Stumbled upon this salary benchmark information on Indeed.com.

No mention of benefits, but $93K to click? Not bloody likely.

Sounds like click fraud perpetrators are scamming the clickers as much as they are search engines and their advertisers.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Older Voters Click on Political Ads Most

Burst Media surveyed likely voters about how they use the Web for political information and related topics. A few interesting online political ad-related findings from the ad network:

• Over 54% of voters recall online ads for a presidential candidate.
• About 24% of voters who said they recall seeing an ad for a presidential candidate clicked on it.
• And how's this for interesting? Voters 55 years and up were most likely to click -- 27% said they have clicked on a prez campaign ad.

“Political advocacy and information provided via the Internet serve as a great touch point for voters of all demographic groups,” said Chuck Moran, VP of Marketing for Burst Media. “The targeting capabilities of online resources can also serve to granularly present information to niche constituents. Candidates that present interactive, content rich information in a variety of formats will be able to reach the broadest array of voters.”

Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

YouTube Olympics Ad Cash May Be Limited

YouTube is joining NBC and MSN as an official provider of Olympics content. While NBC, and online Olympics content partner MSN get the lions share of live streams and on demand video from the Beijing games aimed at the U.S., YouTube will feature about three hours a day of exclusive content on a dedicated channel. But that channel will be blocked to U.S. users and available in 77 territories including South Korea, India and Nigeria, according to the The Wall Street Journal.

"YouTube will be able to sell ads around its Olympics channel, but only to Olympic sponsors," noted the story. It also suggested, "the financial benefit will be minimal" because the online ad markets in the affected countries aren't advanced. Oh, and of course, considering the Olympics start in a matter of days, time is tight.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

McCain’s Celeb Obama Bash Tops Viral Chart

According to Viralvideochart.com, (which, funnily enough, compiles viral video charts), recent political ads from U.S. Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama have been amongst the most talked about videos across the net over the last week.

Viralvideochart.com scans "several million blogs a day," according to the site, and compiles its charts according to the number of times each video is linked to, and embedded from, YouTube, Google Video, and MySpace.

On Friday, McCain's ad branding Obama "the biggest celebrity in the world" topped the chart, racking up 168 new posts in 24 hours. In the same period, Obama's "Low Road" T.V. ad clocked up 42 new posts, managing only eighth place.

The only other actual ad in the site's top 20 today is Snickers' speedwalker ad, at thirteenth place.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 6:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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