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August 5, 2008

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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