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September 2008

September 30, 2008

Media Buyer Calls Forbes.com Guarantee Low Risk

Wouldn't it be nice if Henry Paulson, Congress, and the rest of 'em would offer the American people a guarantee that – if a bank bailout bill ever passes – we'll get a positive return on our investment?

Ha.

While it'd be tough to trust in a guarantee given by the government anyway, online ad buyers may have better luck. Expanding on its "Brand Increase Guarantee" program, Forbes.com just launched the "Total Guarantee." The promise: advertisers spending a minimum of $1 million over 90 days are guaranteed to hit specified reach and frequency targets. "With the Total Guarantee, marketers can specify how many individuals within their target audience they want to reach and the average frequency with which they reach them at the outset of the campaign," stated a Forbes.com press release.

"They never seemingly lost any money on this," David Smith, CEO of integrated media agency mediasmith told me yesterday. He calls expanding the guarantee program smart marketing, and wondered why he hasn't seen other brand name publishers offer this sort of thing.

Getting an advertiser to move $1 million in a few months time could amount to "a nice piece of business" by the time the year's over, added Smith.

Plus, argued Smith, Forbes.com "knows the level at which [online advertising] will move the needle, so it's a fairly safe move."

"This will be most attractive to new advertisers against this target audience or advertisers who have not advertised on Forbes.com before," he continued. "Those are the easiest to show a short-term increase via research" because they haven't communicated via that venue in the past.

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

McCain Debate Quip Straight from Web Ad

I meant to post about this earlier, but remember way back when on Friday night when, during the presidential debate, John McCain mentioned a study costing taxpayers $3 million to study bear DNA as an example of pork-barrel spending? "I don't know if that was a criminal issue or a paternal issue, but the fact is that it was $3 million of our taxpayers' money. And it has got to be brought under control," he quipped.

Well, he's been running ads with the very same message -- and strangely uncomfortable joke -- since last October. The call to action of the ads, like others focused on pork-barrel projects and high gas prices, is to get people to sign a petition; the real goal is to acquire email addresses, to be used later for donation requests.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 2:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Canada DOJ Retains Litigator to Eye Google/Yahoo on Eve of Marriage

The clock is ticking on the great Google-Yahoo search union of 2008, yet new hurdles keep rising up. The latest challenge: Canada's Department of Justice has retained a big name litigator, David Kent, to look into the deal's underpinnings.

Market Watch confirmed with Kent, an anti-trust attorney with Toronto's McMillan LLP, that he was retained by the DOJ but would say nothing else. As with the appointment of Sanford Litvack by the U.S. DOJ, his involvement doesn't imply the DOJ will sue over the deal, but it does complicate matters.

Below, an incomplete tally of objections and investigations to the deal on the eve of its scheduled implementation:

• Senators Question Deal's Benefit to Advertisers
• ANA Formally Objects
• Global Newspaper Group Pans Deal
• European Commission Inspecting Tie-Up
• World Federation of Advertisers Bashes Pact
• U.S. DOJ Hires Litigator to Look Into Deal

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Music Industry: Internet Advertising Is Really, Really Hard

At ContentNext's EconMusic conference in London last week, music industry executives gathered to discuss the future of the music industry, as physical sales nosedive and P2P sharing becomes increasingly commonplace.

The Social Media session threw up the most interesting ad-related insights, with musician Billy Bragg among the panelists, alongside Last.fm's COO Spencer Hyman and Index Ventures' Danny Rimer.

Bragg's gripe, predictably, was that musicians aren’t seeing enough, if any of the ad-revenue generated from sites such as MySpace, Bebo and Last.fm. "How much does MySpace make from advertising, $800 million? And how much do they pay for content?" he asked. "In order for [musicians] to make a living, the industry has to recognize that the old model doesn’t work anymore, and has to be restructured,” he continued.

Last.fm's Hyman suggested that it was almost impossible to pay artist royalties through models such as Last.fm's, stating, “We’re happy to share the advertising revenue we get, but what we can’t do is to give more than we’re getting in." He added, "Internet advertising is really, really hard."

Intriguingly, Index Ventures' Rimer suggested that it was up to the artists themselves to be shrewder, thinking of themselves more as brands and giving their music away entirely free, monetizing it instead through endorsements and advertising.

Steve Purdham, CEO of ad-supported platform We7 was also present on the panel. We7 came to market with the concept of placing pre-roll audio ads at the start of MP3 track downloads. However, the company has seemingly seen little interest from major labels and advertisers, as it has since leaned more towards the ad-supported streaming model à la Last.fm.

Despite signing a deal with EMI earlier this month, tracks will only be available on We7 through ad-funded audio streaming and paid-for MP3 downloads, rather than the ad-supported MP3 downloads it had originally based its revenue stream on.

It's an interesting model, but it seems at this point that labels are still clinging to higher revenues from paid-for downloads. However, material from a number of independent labels is currently available on the We7 site.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 7:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 29, 2008

Everything You Wanted to Know About...

...the Yahoo-Google partnership -- according to Yahoo -- can be found at this new microsite.

Not to be outdone, Google has its own page, "Facts about the Yahoo-Google advertising agreement," that includes a slide show.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 6:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Obama or McCain? Who's Better for the IAB?

As part of a broader conversation last week, I asked Internet Advertising Bureau VP Public Policy Mike Zaneis what he thought about how the IAB would fare under a Barack Obama administration versus a John McCain administration.

Q: Do you have any sense of what administration might be better when it comes to the IAB's goals?

A: I don't think we really know. Senator McCain obviously has a long history chairing the Senate Commerce Committee, and bills such as CAN-SPAM, and I think Do-Not-Call. I'm not sure what that teaches you. It's regulation of technology and advertising, but they are also bills that industry has been able to largely support and to certainly operate robustly under. I see a balance there. You see some interest in technology. I think he's always been really supportive of staff that really understand the issues, and that's really helped. Under an administration would those same staff be the folks making the calls? I don't know. We'll see.

I don't think it's a high, high priority for Senator McCain; I don't think it's a high, high priority for Senator Obama. And neither one of them has come out with real defined, real detailed specifics around privacy, technology, or ecommerce.

With Senator Obama there would be some education there; he doesn't have quite the long history. But one thing he's shown is he can bring in real substantive experts to educate himself around issues. I don't think he's got the staff to pull from like McCain does, but he's shown himself very adept and has such widespread support he could find a lot of smart people to have on the policy side.

The short answer is we don't know and I don't think one would be more favorable than the other right now. I think we'd be able to work with both of them to be honest with you. Again it would be education: maybe a little more education around Senator Obama, because there's not quite the history there, but I think he'd be open to it.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Obama Nears $5.5 Million in Online Ad Spending

Barack Obama's campaign is gradually edging towards the $5.5 million mark. The Democratic presidential hopeful's campaign has spent about $5.45 million according to the latest Federal Election Commission filings that report online ad expenditures into August. As always, though, there's some lag time, so expect more August expenditures to show up in future reports, and in turn, in ClickZ's Campaign '08 Obama Spend-O-Meter.

In keeping with the campaign's ongoing approach, Google is getting the lion's share, with a new total of $3,311,253. Yahoo and local media sites (via local media firm, Centro) also top the list. Other media firms that continue to appear in FEC filings: Microsoft (MSN search most likely), Facebook, CNN.com, and Community Connect, publisher of BlackPlanet.com.

Obama for President January-August 2008
Google: $3,311,253
Yahoo: $706,005
Centro: $600,252
Microsoft/MSN: $247,522
Turner/CNN.com: $215,200
Facebook: $111,974
Politico: $97,328
Advertising.com: $80,000
Broadband Enterprises: $80,000
Community Connect (BlackPlanet.com): $64,420

The thing to remember is that with Google, some of the money is trickling down to other sites via the AdSense network.

How do I know? Well, Obama's campaign is running lots and lots of display ad impressions, according to Nielsen Online. However, ad networks are getting very little Obama grease if the FEC reports are any indication (Advertising.com and Drive PM have taken in less than $100,000 all together and Valueclick hasn't been listed at all). I think the FEC reports are the best indication we have, considering the campaign won't talk. So, I've deduced that many if not most of those display ads are running through Google, and since Google doesn't run display on its site, other publishers must be receiving some of that money through the AdSense network.

Hey, what about John McCain's online ad spending? Is this yet another form of liberal media bias? Nope. McCain's campaign hasn't broken out online ad expenditures in FEC filings.

UPDATE: I just got an e-mail from a company that says it's received more from the Obama camp than I've reported here. To reiterate, some expenditures for previous months haven’t been reported yet by the campaign in its FEC filings. There’s only some August data available and no September online ad expenditures reported yet.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 26, 2008

Most Highly-Targeted Message of the Entire Presidential Campaign?

The Great Schlep has launched with this genuinely funny -- and impactful -- video featuring Sarah Silverman exhorting her viewers to get their butts down to Florida to convince their Jewish grandparents to vote for Obama.

Sponsored by JewsVote.org, the microsite offers all the ammunition anyone would ever need to convince Zadie and Nana to vote Obama, down to a talking points PDF download addressing topics such as "He’s Black! Let’s talk about it!"

The viral traction seems to have already kicked in - the video's featured on Time magazine's Web site and is making the forward-to-a-friend rounds.

Sarah Silverman, meanwhile, has got my vote as the next Obama Girl.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Math Prevails Over 'Mad' as Advertising Week Ends (Mercifully)

Sick of it yet? Me too, which is why I'm declaring Advertising Week V officially over one day early, and calling the game for technology.

Despite the Mad Men-driven nostalgia for simpler -- you might say more instinctive -- times that was palpable all over town this week (well, all over Midtown anyway), every meaningful announcement and panel was about their opposite: efficiency, analysis, and above all, platforms. Platforms that help marketers' improve buying efficiency (See: Yahoo's Apt and Platform-A's BidPlace), platforms that help them attribute conversions across channels (See: Microsoft Engagement Mapping).

With all that new technology nipping at their heels, it's no wonder agencies -- even relatively tech-savvy ones -- are dwelling on a time no one working today is quite old enough to remember. A time when copywriters sweated out their hangovers all morning and philandered all afternoon, rather than poring over TiVo Stopwatch reports and optimizing landing pages.

Digital marketing firms in particular seem to be hitting the 'Mad Men' note very hard this week. After all, the most overt homages to AMC's hit series came from the tech companies. Platform-A's cigarette girls above and Yahoo's Don Draper moment are only two examples.

"I'm not a real agency relic, but I play one on TV," was the substance, figuratively if not literally, of the speech by Jon Hamm, who introduced Jerry Yang at Yahoo's coming out party for the Apt display advertising platform.

It was telling, if not surprising, that in the period allotted for reporters' questions, the great Don Draper wasn't asked any.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 25, 2008

Google Muscles Into HopStop's Corner

In New York City Mapquest directions mean nothing, and Google Maps are great for locating what block an address is on, but not so good for directions. I practically live and die by HopStop, and love the mobile version when I'm on the go. It gives directions for New Yorkers, and those in Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. Google this week released a map to plan trips using public transit in and around New York City. It looks like there are some rough edges to be worked out, but Google Maps might just give HopStop some stiff competition for commuting around town, and in the tri-state area since both layer metro New York commuter trains into the mix. I gave Google a few sample routes a try, and will continue to do so, but there are still a few loose ends I want filled in. It was a little unclear how to get from point A to point B on one route. What I did like was the easy way to toggle between alternate routes with Google. Sometimes HopStop likes to hide the alternate route button, or still offers up the same train line with a different number (or letter) train.

Posted by Enid Burns at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

MySpace Music Launches, No Audio Ads for Now

Updated: The curtain went up last night on MySpace Music, a joint venture with major labels and indie distributor the Orchard to provide free ad-supported music streaming.

Simultaneously, the site has finally introduced its self-serve ad buying system, allowing bands and other profile owners to slice and dice its audience and put together low-cost ad buys.

The cool kids say MySpace Music has a good shot. That may be, but at some point it'll have to answer marketers' concerns about the effectiveness of display ads on an audio-based service.

The alternative -- radio-style audio ads -- is anathema to digital music listeners but may be inevitable. After all, digital radio executives sing the praises of companion banners on station Web sites, but I've yet to speak to a marketer who puts much stock in them.

As we reported earlier this month, MySpace Music launch sponsors include McDonald's, Toyota, State Farm and Sony Pictures. The images above and at right show a typical ad placement on the service... overall pretty similar to what you'll find elsewhere on MySpace. Here's hoping it's enough.

The new ad buying interface, available at advertise.myspace.com, has been a long time coming. With a minimum spend of $25, it's being presented as a vehicle for bands and small businesses to drive traffic to their profiles and outside Web sites. It comes with basic ad templates for those without existing creative assets.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Catch this ClickZ Webcast on High-Touch Personalization

Are you using all of your company's customer touch points to reinforce your brand and market your products?

Digital marketing pro Jack Aaronson will offer some tips during a ClickZ Webcast on Monday, Sept. 29, 2:00 PM EST/11:00 AM PST.

Aaronson, CEO of The Aaronson Group, is a contributing author to ClickZ
Experts ROI Marketing column. He's a sought-after expert on enhanced user experiences, customer conversion, retention, and loyalty.

The Webcast will be moderated by yours truly.

Register now.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 24, 2008

Ripe Time for Mags to Go Digital?

With the cost of paper and fuel rising, will digital magazines take off?

Zinio, a company that distributes over 1,000 digital magazines titles, is betting on that.

As part of Advertising Week activities, I swung by Zino's launch of the "Read Green Initiative." There, David H. Gilmour, an entrepreneur who purchased Zinio last year, and Jeanniey Mullen, Zinio's chief marketing officer and a ClickZ Expert, talked about the the environmental and financial benefits of digital mags.

To promote the Read Green Initiative, up to 50 million subscriptions will be given away -- one per person -- from publishers such as Hachette Filipacchi, Bonnier, and Greenspun.

Gilmour says the breakthrough event for digital magazines will be the availability in coming months of $400 color readers that are thinner than many print magazines.

Zinio executives said ads on the "pages" of digital magazines could be targeted to readers. Eventually ads could be designed to be interactive, though it sounds like it will take some time before that actually happens.

An interesting note: Gilmour's also the founder of Fiji water, a bottled water company. And bottled water companies have been criticized for creating unnecessary waste.

Seems like Gilmour's been able to tap a negative and work on something positive -- and green.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 3:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

September 23, 2008

Social Media, Social Causes

Social causes will get an enhanced profile in social media under an initiative launched today by interactive agency Deep Focus and the Advertising Council.

The goal: to help social causes develop social media strategies.

The Advertising Council develops public service advertisements (PSAs) that have typically appeared in magazines, television, and other offline media.

Participants in the project called the Exponential Action Network will be able to select from an online list of causes identified by the Ad Council. When a person selects a cause, a widget will be generated that can be displayed on a social networking profile, blog, wiki, and a personal home page. Each widget will track and display the size of the network in real-time.

Campaigns participating in the initiative include: Autism Awareness (Autism Speaks); Financial Literacy (U.S. Department of Treasury); Mentoring (Big Brothers Big Sisters of America); and Online Sexual Exploitation (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and U.S. Department of Justice).

Exponential Action Network was developed pro bono by Deep Focus, which is headed up by Ian Schafer. Clearspring’s technology is being used to distribute the widgets, while MySpace, Facebook, and other social media sites will donate ad impressions.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Top Notch YouTube Ad for Wii/Super Wario Land

This sort of playing around won't help much with YouTube's little monetization problem, but gosh I like it. (thx david berkowitz)

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

T-Mobile to Unveil Its Google Phone

Word is T-Mobile today will unveil its new mobile phone, called G1, that uses Google's operating system called Android.

PC World mag speculates the phone will include free Gmail from Google. Update: Indeed, TmoNews says it's confirmed the phone comes with Gmail, YouTube, Calendar and Google Talk. Memory is expandable up to 8 gigs.

Analysts predict the Google phone will unlikely match last year's debut of Apple's iPhone.

"I doubt that anything can match the hoopla that has been created by Apple,'' IDC analyst Shiv Bakhshi told Bloomberg News.

ClickZ's Enid Burns will be reporting on this development today at IAB's Mixx conference today. Look for more coverage -- and what this means for advertisers.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

September 22, 2008

Yahoo Hopes Council Can Quell Advertiser Concerns

Yahoo's taking it from all sides over its impending search ad partnership with Google. The latest group to complain is The World Federation of Advertisers, which has requested that the European Commission's Directorate-General for Competition block the deal. The organization of organizations believes it will be a detriment to competition and increase ad prices worldwide.

In part to foster a dialogue with advertisers concerned about the deal, Yahoo has launched a Digital Advisory Council which "will work collaboratively to explore the continued evolution of digital media and online advertising," according to a press release.

"As questions emerge about how Yahoo will implement [the Google agreement], the Advisory Council will provide a forum for us to engage in a dialogue with key customers on those issues," stated Yahoo EVP Hilary Schneider in the release. The group will convene for the first time in Q4 of this year.

According to a Yahoo spokesperson, unnamed advertisers have already joined, including "large advertisers and agencies; small to medium-sized advertisers; and SEM-only agencies."

Posted by Kate Kaye at 5:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chrysler CMO: 30 Percent Goes to Digital

Chrysler CMO Deborah Meyer said the auto and truck maker has dedicated 30 percent of its advertising budget to digital.

"We think it's a good number. Now the challenge is to optimize on digital and what's in other media as well," she said in an interview with ClickZ after addressing the Interactive Adverting Bureau's Mixx conference in New York. She declined to disclose Chrysler's annual advertising and marketing budget.

Chrysler, she said, uses an assortment of technologies including Specific Media's targeting tools and Vibrant's in-text video.

Chuck Sullivan, director of Chrysler Interactive, said the company's investments in search engine optimization are paying off, too. "The better we do with SEO, the more effective we can be with our ad dollars," he said.

So what success metrics does Chrysler track? They include a dealer's performance on closing leads, response times to customer inquiries, and more. Chrysler has tested these metrics for several months and is about to expand the initiative soon.

Automakers have been hard hit by tightening consumer credit, and automakers are tightening their belts, too.

"Every dollar has to work 10 times as hard as it used to do. This is why [the shift to digital] is moving at an incredible rapid pace. There's no fat left in the system," Meyer said.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 5:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Yet Another Association Bashes Google/Yahoo Pact

Another international group has come out against the Google/Yahoo search agreement, calling it a raw deal for global as well as U.S. advertisers.

The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) is asking the European Commission's Directorate-General for Competition to block the deal on the grounds that it will have a "detrimental effect on competition, result in price increases and reduce the options available to advertisers worldwide."

The WFA is an international blanket organization made up of 55 national groups. Its membership includes the Association of National Advertisers in the U.S., which has already declared itself opposed to the search advertising pact.

It's also the second international organization to speak up, the first being the World Association of Newspapers (WAN). The difference here is the WFA's position essentially echoes that of its U.S. tentacle, whereas WAN's declaration ran counter to that of its U.S. member, which has taken no official stance.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What's eBay Filming in NYC?

So all of a sudden, my West 55th Street block in NYC is lined with those dreaded "no parking due to film shoot" signs attached to every available lamppost.

Project name: eBay.

A quick check with the mayor's office of film & tv would doubtless shed some light, but perhaps you readers can, too. Wassup? A feature film? TV show like maybe the show eBay announced six years ago? Commercial?

Share any info in the comments section, please.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Correction: IAB Prefers Cuddly Pups

Well, I was wrong. Staffers at the Interactive Advertising Bureau apparently are dog people, according to IAB VP Public Policy Mike Zaneis. Not only did he correct my original claim that the IAB likes fluffy kitties, he called me out in front of an entire room's full of people at last week's OMMA show! (He spoke on a panel about the IAB's approach to self-regulation and enforcement of online advertising guidelines.)

It's a dog-eat-dog world, folks.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEM Is Maturing, and So Is Search Engine Strategies

Congratulations are in order for my colleagues over at the event programming team at Search Engine Strategies (SES) and Search Engine Watch who've been promoted.

They are part of the team that works to develop the global SES Conference and Expo series, Webcasts, and training initiatives. And, they work with search marketing experts to ensure the events offer the highest quality learning opportunities.

So here's the scoop -- straight from Gary Lynch, managing director,
 Incisive Media's Interactive Marketing Group, North America.

Stewart Quealy, has been promoted to VP, content development. "Stewart will become the senior person responsible for creating conference program content for all events in the group and will be involved in the overall strategic development of our conference business," according to Lynch.





Second, Marilyn Crafts has been promoted to senior program director. "Marilyn with the help of Jackie Ortez, conference program coordinator, will continue to work closely with Stewart in program development, speaker selection and event strategy," Lynch said.





Third, Kevin Ryan will become chair of the SES Advisory Board . That means he will continue to contribute his thought-leadership while remaining an active and visible presence at SES events, according to Lynch.

"A little over a year ago Kevin took on the assignment to stabilize and build the SES brand during a critical transition phase for the business, a year later our events, including the global SES conference and expo series, are still the dominant brand in the industry with a strong global presence. 



All of us here at SES are excited about these promotions and we look forward to seeing you at an event sometime soon," Lynch continued.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 19, 2008

Google on Antitrust: Trust Us

In case you were wondering what Google's stance is on whether or not its deal with Yahoo is bad for competition, it's official! It's all good.

Following his comments on ad pricing concerns related to the Yahoo/Google search ad pair up, Google President, Advertising and Commerce, North America Tim Armstrong responded to questions regarding competition today.

Armstrong also managed to jab arch nemesis, Microsoft, noting, "This agreement - unlike Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Yahoo - means that Yahoo will remain an independent company in the business of search and advertising. Yahoo has stated that it will reinvest the additional revenue from this agreement into improving its user services and competing vigorously against Google, Microsoft and other companies. "

Is anybody else having trouble understanding why Google would want to prop up its competition?

Armstrong answers that, alluding to co-opetition relationships between companies like Toyota and GM.

OK, wait a minute. Armstrong is now equating the flourishing search advertising industry with the sputtering auto industry? I suppose he'd also cite Yahoo's Newspaper Consortium as an example. Oh yeah -- that's another seriously ailing industry. When I see McDonald's giving BK its special sauce recipe, his argument might hold a little more weight.

On concerns that the combined search businesses would wipe out the competition, Armstrong pounded the virtual desk: "No. This agreement is not a merger. This is about expanding the pie, not dividing it differently. Yahoo! will continue to run its own search engine and advertising system."

As for data sharing, he stressed "neither company has access to personally identifiable user information from the other company." Take that privacy crusaders!

Sidenote: Indefatigable privacy activist Jeff Chester fired off an e-mail to the press today stating, "Armstrong and Google, we believe, aren’t being candid here. When an online ad company dismantles (or turns over) a core part of its search function to its leading competitor, it becomes fatally wounded. As Google knows all well, search and display (and online content) are all intertwined. Yahoo’s future, in my opinion, as a full service online ad company is endangered, as more businesses realize that its search ad business relies increasingly on Google." Ouch.

But wait! According to Armstrong, Yahoo "will use extra revenue from this deal to improve its ad platform." He goes on to state, "Yahoo also has a strong economic incentive to keep serving as many of their own ads as possible, since they get to keep all of the revenue from those ads, while Yahoo will only receive a part of the revenue from ads served by Google."

Note to Yahoo's Panama: Remember to sell your own stuff!

Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 18, 2008

iTV Elite Meet

Mitch Oscar, who knows more about iTV than practically anyone else, recently moved from Carat to MPG. He took his Collaborative Alliance with him.

Once a conference-room size event, today's powwow of media executives, analysts and technology providers from both sides of the analog/digital divide spilled into the street outside NYC's Helen Mills Threatre. They gathered to share learnings, research and hands-on experience in interactive television advertising (and a bit of Web video, to boot). Speakers included eMarketer's Geoff Ramsey, MediaBank's Brad Keywell, Sequent Partner's Jim Spaeth, OTX's Bruce Friend, TelevisionWeek's Daisy Whitney and a host of others including, of course, Mitch himself.

Anyone interested in getting in on the ground floor of the next big digital advertising channel owes it to themself to try to get on Mitch's list for this quarterly gathering of the who's who from both sides of the media fence.

Need to make connections within the industry? He's the man with the iTV Rolodex to end all Rolodexes.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 8:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wired's Anderson and Time's Quittner on Single-Sponsor Content

"It's a little bit scary [from a traditional publishing perspective] to see one advertiser paying for the whole endeavor." -Josh Quittner, Editor-at-Large, Time Inc.

"I'm over that." -Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, Wired magazine.

The two conversed for an hour at OMMA today, touching on new ad models, Google Chrome and social news sites like Digg.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 2:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Hulu's Hurrah

Since launching six months ago, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar said the online video site has picked up 90 advertisers.

The site, a joint venture between NBC Universal and Fox Corp., has also partnered with 90 content providers.

"Content partners are seeing a dramatic lift to overall online business. Fox has seen overall online business more than triple since March 12," Kilar said while speaking at the OMMA conference today in New York City.

Other success metrics he shared with the audience: Hulu has eight million monthly users and 119 monthly video streams since its launch. Hulu videos have been embedded 500,000 times on over 27 sites, he said.

What's contributing to Hulu's success? Kilar attributes it to an obsession for quality.

"We obsess over every pixel in this service," he said. For instance, the Hulu team had a healthy debate over the size of the site's logo because no one wanted it to detract, for instance, from the logo for Battlestar Galactica, a television program available on the site.

Kilar said his obsession for quality grew from a love of the Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL, where he visited as a child. "I've had a lifelong fascination with what made this guy [Walt Disney] tick," he confessed. And after a college, he landed a job at Disney where he learned that street sweepers held an exalted position at the theme park.

"If Hulu can create and foster a culture that’s as obsessive as Disney was with its theme park in 60s, that’s what we would be thrilled to do," Kilar said.

Sounds like Kilar could be cast as Bert, the chimney sweep.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Sony PS3 Comes to Life

Sony just released Life with PlayStation worldwide to owners of the PlayStation 3. This is a new lifestyle service that offers a visual and interactive way to access information from around the globe.

The first installation will be Live Channel, which will have a place and time world map with cloud imagery, which is provided in participation with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Space Science and Engineering Center. The channel will also have weather information from The Weather Channel, news headlines from Google News, and live camera images of nearly 60 cities around the globe provided in part by The Earth Television Network.

It looks like Sony plans to deliver interactive content through Live Channel and other channels, and possibly open the door for branded partnerships down the line. Life with PlayStation is made available through Sony as part of Stanford University's distributed computing project Folding@home.

Posted by Enid Burns at 1:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Smith Barney's Brand Goes 404

As one Wall Street behemouth after another topples like so many houses of cards, consumer confidence in large financial institutions is shaken -- if not utterly shattered.

And today, a 404 error page from SmithBarney.com. Servers that go down or overload are never a good thing, but the brand message subtext in this 404, this week, is jarring indeed.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

King of Search to Meet Queen of England

It seems the Queen's interest in the digital world has evolved since admitting, as she awarded Bill Gates with an honorary Knighthood in 2005, that she didn't own a computer.

Following the success of a dedicated RoyalChannel on YouTube, Her royal highness Queen Elizabeth II will pay a visit to Google's London headquarters on October 16 to tour the offices and meet staff, with husband the Duke of Edinburgh in tow.

The YouTube channel itself has racked up over 22,000 subscribers since launching in December, Google says. A statement from the search giant and YouTube owner read, "The Queen has a keen interest in technology and we're looking forward to showing our guests some of the exciting projects we're working on."

I had wondered if Elizabeth herself would be quite as excited by the prospect, but I came across a statement from Buckingham Palace stating, "The Queen supports all forms of new technology and pays interest to the latest developments."

That pretty much clears that up then: The Queen loves search.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

New Microsoft Ads Seek to Undercut Apple's Bite, Minus the Jerry

No one expected Microsoft to tackle Apple's Mac/PC ads directly in the next wave of the new Windows campaign created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky. But that's just what it's done.

Not only that, it dug up a John Hodgman look-alike from the ranks of Microsoft engineers to try and undercut Apple's biting portrayal of the company's stodgy image. "Hello, I’m a PC, and I’ve been made into a stereotype," he says.

Other ads feature Eva Longoria and Deepak Chopra, among others, but the campaign's really about the Windows pride of everyday users. (Visit the campaign site.)

Conspicuously absent from the new ads is Jerry Seinfeld, dropped after negative reactions from ad critics and bloggers. A rep of Microsoft's PR firm, Waggener Edstrom, characterized his removal as planned in a comment to Valleywag.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 17, 2008

IAB Says "No" to Spyware, also Likes Fluffy Kitties

The Interactive Advertising Bureau yesterday put out a press release commending Congress for passing the Identity Theft Enforcement and Restitution Act, which provides for enforcement for nabbing and prosecuting cyber criminals and spyware purveyors.

In other news, The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association has praised the removal of lead from interior paint.

Am I missing something here? Don't get me wrong, there is a connection between the industry and the scourge of spyware. But it's not exactly the issue of the moment. Are there not some really important things going on in the online ad industry right now that might warrant some attention?

It seems like every week a new advocacy group, government body or regulator expresses concern about behavioral targeting and ISP-based targeting firms like NebuAd and Phorm.

The IAB has barely made a peep about this stuff. Meanwhile, IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg has appeared before Congressional Members urging them not to regulate the industry. As concerns about ISP-based ad targeting and behavioral targeting mount, the IAB needs to get serious about self-regulation before the government steps in to do it for them. And, as anyone who's ever heard the types of questions asked during an online ad related congressional hearing knows, our friends in the House and Senate might not be the best suited for that task.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Can Sex Sell a Search Engine?

Really, Ask.com?

I'm trying to get some decent seats for the Neil Young show at the Garden in December and here I am, minding my own business on the Garden's site, when all of a sudden the seating chart page starts giving me a lap dance. OK, not quite, but it does automate a video ad for Ask.com featuring a chick in next-to-nothing gyrating on a pole.

"What are the Best Aerobic Workouts?" The ad inquires. "Need Answers? Just Ask.com." Hey, if I were getting my daily fix of Maxim, I'd expect this sort of ad. But sitting here in the middle of an open office trying to accomplish a utilitarian online task with a poll dancer going at it on my monitor is not what I bargained for.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 16, 2008

Facebook, Not Just Another Pretty Face

Facebook's redesign is not sitting pretty with more than one million -- or about 1 percent -- of its members.

Several Faceboook Groups have been established to protest the social network's redesign.

In the "Petition Against the "New Facebook" group with 1.35 million members, there's a list outlining 10 things wrong with the "new" Facebook results. In the ultimate insult, Scott Sanders wrote: "the new layout is starting to look more and more like MySpace."

Another group called, "Please Keep the Old Facebook," has 355,000 members, while "1 000 000+ to bring back old facebook," has logged 265,000 members.

Facebook, for its part, has said the redesigned member profile page is intended to make the site simpler to use and present more relevant information to its members.

One noticeable change: advertisements on a member's profile page appear in the far-right hand column, typically considered prime real estate in the publishing world. Under the old design, ads appeared in the left-hand column, and sponsored ads showed up in a news feed located on the center of a member profile page.

Last month, Facebook also announced it's testing new ad formats to enable users to interact with their Facebook friends within the ads themselves.

Will Facebook members start to defect? Likely not, suggest sources interviewed by William Wong of the Chicago Tribune.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 15, 2008

Best Buy Nabs Napster, Will Market Devices to Downloaders

Best Buy has agreed to buy Napster, partly for the chance to sell tech products to its user base.

The music retailer plans to cross-sell devices and other products to Napster's 700,000 subscribers. By doing so it expects to "capture recurring revenue by offering ongoing value over a mobile digital platform," it said in a statement.

Interesting notion, but is it logical? From a marketing standpoint, what can Best Buy achieve owning Napster that it couldn't by simply partnering with it? $121 million is an awful lot to spend on an ad deal, after all.

And from a business standpoint? I'm no music industry analyst, but considering Napster lost $16.5 million last year and faces accelerated innovation from behemoth competitors (See MySpace Music's news this morning), it's definitely a gamble.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

WSJ.com Redesign Triples Article Ad Inventory

At Ogilvy's powwow for their IBM clients today, WSJ.com General Manager Daniel Bernard stopped by to show off a sneak peak at the eagerly-anticipated site redesign, slated to launch tomorrow.

It's loaded with new features, including community functionalities that require users to log-in with their real names to network or comment on content. But what's most impressive is how WSJ.com has combined usability and interface with monetization.

Beginning tomorrow, each article page will contain two additional tabs, one for video and one for user comments. This not only enables readers to find and participate in additional content faster with no need to navigate off the page, but benefits the publication as well. Because two tabs on each article page means effectively three time the ad inventory, right?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 12, 2008

Jeffries & Co Pares Back Online Ad Expectations

If any more investment or research firms plan to lower their 2008 and 2009 forecasts for online ad spending, I don't want to know about it.

Jeffries & Company today became the latest in a long string of firms to trim (albeit slightly) their expectations of the online ad market. Jeffries now declares the channel will grow to $50 billion (20 percent) in 2008, down from its earlier prediction of $52 billion (25 percent). Next year it expects the market to grow to $58 billion (16 percent), down from $61 billion (19 percent). The guesstimate assumes lower growth in display (14 percent in 2008 and 7 percent 2009).

Analysts Youssef Squali and Naved Kahn were taken aback by meetings with European marketing execss, "many of whom were in a pretty somber mood."

With Germany and Spain in recession and the UK and France struggling, they say advertisers are delaying their ad plans. "We've heard of new inquiries down by as much as 30 percent," they say. Additionally, Web development projects are frequently being put on hold.

Jeffries does name some areas of continued strength, and no surprises here either: Paid search, SEO and analytics are expected to retain marketers favor til the flood waters recede.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Amazon Grabs Microsoft Exec

What sort of ad selling plans does Amazon have up its sleeve? There must be some, since the ecommerce king has hired longtime Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions GM Lisa Utzschneider. Amazon wouldn't confirm the news, which was reported by the New York Post.

Amazon has yet to make any big splash in the online ad industry. This certainly signals interest in building out that side of the business. So far, big players like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL – and if we're talking ecommerce, eBay – haven't had to worry much about Amazon as a competitor in the online ad arena. They might have to now.

UPDATE: I have confirmation from a Microsoft spokesperson that Utzschneider plans to leave the company "to pursue other career opportunities." She's done at Microsoft September 15th and no replacement has been named.

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

September 11, 2008

Mashup: 200 PR Execs, One Blender

How do you engage a group of more than 200 public relations professionals?

Bring in George Wright, marketing manager of Blendtec, a company known for viral videos on its site, WillItBlend.com.

Wright did not disappoint. With a garden rake and Blendtec blender as his props, Wright spoke at the Public Relations Society of America's T3 PR in NYC, a conference for PR professionals representing tech companies.

Wright has been on the speaking circuit, promoting the story of how he got Blendtec CEO Tom Dickson, pictured above, to don a white lab coat and agree to have his testing work be featured in a video shown online. A $50 investment resulted in a 700 percent increase in blender sales, according to Wright. (He didn't disclose the actual dollar change.)

And, the blender chewed up the wooden handle of the yard rake, no problem.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 8:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AOL's Ad Network Business Looks Weak

Time Warner's AOL has spent much of the past year revamping its advertising operation, consolidating it under the Platform A brand, and restructuring staff at the unit. But the firm's ad business is suffering, according to Time Warner CFO John Martin.

Speaking at an industry event yesterday, he said ad contract cancellations and sluggish third-party network revenue (read: Advertising.com, and other AOL-owned networks like Tacoda and Quigo) are to blame. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, the company doesn't have high hopes for the second half of '08.

Earlier this year, the company cited downward pressure on CPMs and the ongoing fallout from the loss of its ad deal with Apollo Group, which owns major online marketer University of Phoenix. Whether these factors are still taking a toll is unclear. I was unable to get a hold of anyone today at AOL or Time Warner to provide more detail.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 3:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ads Stand Out in Seth MacFarlane's New 'Cavalcade'

Seth McFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy has made its official debut, and the sponsor placements for Burger King are a good sight better than we've all been trained to expect from video. The reason: McFarlane's team created them, so they feel homegrown... part of the entertainment package.

The videos are also being syndicated to BK's YouTube channel, where visitors can enter a contest to buy Seth dinner at Burger King. (From the rules: "That's right, the winner will buy the meal. But, you know, in the end you're still coming out on top. How many hours has Seth given to you?")

Now has anyone seen these in the wild? As you'll recall, Google and McFarlane struck a deal to distribute the content in ad space on the AdSense network. First person to email me a screen shot gets a prize: a free hard copy edition of a certain celebrated social marketing book that was released over the summer. Send to zach[at]clickz.com.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 10, 2008

Click or No Click, Google Says Paid Search Pays

Position matters in paid search, according to Google.

The search engine released findings of custom research performed by Millward Brown on its behalf. And Sprint was the guinea pig in this project.

The goal was to determine the value of an impression beyond the click, measure the impact of paid search ads, and find out how much search placement matters.

Brand recall was greater in the top-sponsored position, and was reduced in lower positions, the study found. You don't even need a click to increase branding. "When you get a search impression, it's free," a tech commerce marketing manager at Google told me. "It's an expanded way to use search in strategy."

The research reinforced a conversation I had with another Google executive. In a recent interview, Google Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik, said on any given day Google is conducting around 150 to 200 experiments worldwide. To hear about the study and how the team tested search engine results pages (SERP) with sponsored links from Sprint high on the page, or not there at all, is just another example of how the Google continues to tune its engine.

Posted by Enid Burns at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Brightcove to Drive German Video Network

Video technology platform Brightcove has partnered with OMS, a German online sales and marketing network for regional newspapers, to create an ad-supported online video network for its member publishers.

The network will feature content licensed by OMS from third parties, alongside video published by the regional newspapers themselves. Ad sales will be handled by OMS.

Speaking with ClickZ News, OMS Media Consultant Kim Kriegers said, "The German online video market is still very fragmented in terms of reach, content quality and technical standardization. With this deal, OMS is trying to address these problems to make the market more attractive and efficient for advertisers."

After the video platform has been rolled out across the network's 60 sites, Kriegers expects it to serve in excess of 10 million streams a month, attracting existing OMS advertisers, as well as traditional TV advertisers looking to cut back on ad spend. Together, the network sites reach around 9 million unique visitors each month.

Targeting possibilities for the platform will be limited to content categories, or channels, such as national news, sports, and entertainment.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 9, 2008

Government Fans Flames Under Google's Hot Seat

As I sit munching on a decadent brownie that came straight from Google's renowned cafeteria (don't be evil? ha!), I'm mulling the company's status in the eyes of U.S. and European lawmakers and regulators.

Two regulation-related instances have occurred recently. Officially, Google has responded to concerns voiced by EU regulators by slashing in half the amount of time it stores user search data to nine months.

Certainly potentially more significant, but not confirmed by ClickZ News, is the Wall Street Journal's report that the Department of Justice has hired an outside litigator to look into Google goings-on. In particular, the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the stalled Google/Yahoo search ad deal.

However, it's unknown whether the new DOJ hire, Sanford Litvack -- "one of the nation's best-known litigators" according to the WSJ -- will focus only on the that deal, or inspect other aspects of Google's business (or Yahoo's business for that matter).

Let's not forget previous government scrutiny of the partnership by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Surely, the heightened inspections of Google are reminding observers more and more of Microsoft's longtime antitrust troubles. Indeed, the WSJ reports, "It is relatively rare for the Justice Department to hire a special counsel from outside the department. David Boies was brought in as a special counsel to build the landmark antitrust case against Microsoft in 1998."

Posted by Kate Kaye at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 8, 2008

AT&T Mobile Portal to Carry Yahoo OneSearch Results and Ads

In its ongoing push to collaborate with carriers, Yahoo has signed a deal with AT&T that will put OneSearch on the carrier's portal. AT&T's on-deck MEdia Net portal will be powered by OneSearch, bringing media assets such as news, financial information, weather conditions, Flickr photos, and Web images to AT&T user handsets. OneSearch also provides users relevant results for ringtones, wallpapers, games, and other content in the same browsing experience.

Despite the variety of content, oneSearch ads consist solely of sponsored search text ads on results pages. Through a strategic alliance made in January, Yahoo has the ability to serve display ads but hasn't done so yet.

AT&T has about 70 million wireless customers, though not all of those use the mobile Web. The reach for oneSearch is in the tens of millions, and a portion of those are using the iPhone. However, iPhone users likely don't start on the MEdia Net portal, and may not use the service at all, narrowing the reach just a little bit more.

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

McCain Still Wants Your Web Donations

John McCain 2008 is no longer able to solicit or spend private donations now that he's accepted the Republican nomination. But that doesn't mean the co-author of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law can't get around that pesky roadblock. The latest ad – launched 9/3 -- from the McCain-Palin Compliance Fund, asks supporters to "Invest in Victory" by donating $50 to the Compliance Fund.

According to a disclaimer on the McCain campaign site, "Because the McCain-Palin Campaign is participating in the presidential public funding system, it may not receive contributions for the any candidate's election. However, federal law allows the McCain-Palin Campaign's Compliance Fund to defray legal and accounting compliance costs and preserve the Campaign's public grant for media, mail, phones, and get-out-the-vote programs. Contributions to McCain-Palin Victory 2008 will go to the Compliance Fund, and to participating party committees for Victory 2008 programs."

That Victory fund is operated by the compliance fund, the Republican National Committee, and the Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Pennsylvania GOPs.

Hmmm…I wonder what states are in the most contention this year….

Thanks to The Media Trust Company for the ad.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 5, 2008

Obama/McCain Ad Number Confusion

Yesterday, comScore released a report on the number of online ad impressions run by Barack Obama's and John McCain's presidential campaigns in 2008. As regular readers of ClickZ's Campaign '08 section know, we've been getting ad impression data among other related info from Nielsen Online's AdRelevance for months now. I figured I'd delve into previous AdRelevance reports and compare ad impression info from the two. I put together a chart displaying comScore's and Nielsen's ad impression data for the last 6 months (below).

Discrepancies? Oh yes.

Now, to be fair, comScore and Nielsen usually don't see eye-to-eye on anything. So, variations between the two can be expected. However, there are some real whoppers here when it comes to disparities.

Perhaps the most glaring difference is in the June numbers. AdRelevance says the Obama camp ran around 80 million, but ComScore pegged it at around 244 million ad impressions -- three times the AdRelevance number. And check out January '08. AdRelevance said McCain ran 19 million ad impressions, while comScore says it was more like 4.5 million. Confused?

I would be too. Though I'll continue to report this stuff, the impression numbers truly have to be taken as broad estimates. No matter whose numbers you look at, you'll find Obama's campaign is running more Web ads -- a lot more. And if you haven't seen my story today on how much he's spending on online ads, it hit $5 million sometime around July.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Seinfeld Plays Opposite Man of Silicon in New Windows Spots

The first of Crispin Porter + Bogusky's ads for Windows Vista, starring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates, has aired, and the result manages to charm without packing much punch. The biggest thing missing: any hint of a reason the viewer should, oh say, try the OS.

In the ad, Seinfeld catches Gates shopping in a discount shoe outlet. The dialog is surreal in true Crispin fashion: Seinfeld asks Microsoft's outgoing chairman if computers will ever be "moist and chewy like cake." To this Gates replies with a secret, hands-free adjustment of his boxer shorts.

Funny. But not to the level of John Hodgman's PC in Apple's worshiped Get a Mac ads. Which have the additional advantage of being all about the products.

You may recognize this version of Seinfeld from American Express ads from 2004
in which he plays opposite the man of steel. They pal around together in a restaurant, visiting the Grand Canyon, watching movies. Once again, here we have Everyman Seinfeld mucking it up with a legendary hero.

Not that there's anything wrong with that (to steal a line). The comic's aimless banter is legendary; it's why he pulls the big bucks (Seinfeld's reported take here is $10 million).

But is aimless banter enough to stem the tide of consumers to Apple products, or to head off the looming threat of Google's hosted applications? It's too early to draw big conclusions, given the new spot is just an icebreaker to "reintroduce Microsoft," the company said. But, well, Jerry's only work since 2005 was the unloved Bee Movie. With respect, shouldn't Microsoft try something, or someone, with a bit more sting?

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

First Seinfeld/Gates Microsoft Spot

The first of Crispin, Porter's highly anticipated spots is about .... nothing.
But the infamous teenage mugshot of Gates is a nice touch, no?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 8:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 4, 2008

U.K. Marketers Neglecting Site Usability, Blinded by Paid Search

Businesses are focusing too much of their online marketing budgets on paid search instead of ensuring they have usable and customer-friendly Web sites, according to research commissioned by U.K. digital consultancy Rawnet.

The company's 2008 Online Conversion Report, released today, suggests that 78 percent of British consumers have been put off from dealing with companies because of usability flaws on their sites. In addition, one in five people have found that the most creative and spectacular sites are usually difficult to navigate, the report says.

Rawnet's managing director, Adam Smith, believes that marketers are too "preoccupied" with search rankings and expensive paid search listings, than they are with converting subsequent leads to sales.

Speaking with me yesterday, he said, "It's easy to just throw money at Google, but marketers can put their budgets to better use. In tighter economic conditions getting that lead, sale, or enquiry is far more important than simply boosting your Web site's traffic."

He added, "A shocking number of companies are losing out on a massive amount of potential business simply because their Web design agency has focused too much on what looks great, or too much on non-essential technical features, and failed to actually produce a Web site that works for the business."

The research report was commissioned by Rawnet and conducted by YouGov, which polled a sample of around 2,000 U.K. adults.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Indispensible (Free) Tool for Media Buyers, Sellers and Planners

Do you buy, sell, or plan media? Then you owe it to yourself to download the incredibly nifty Swiss Army knife of calculators the Laredo Group is giving away...for free.

It slices. It dices. It calculates Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)...and so much more. This nifty JavaScript tool also can figure out reverse ROAS, compare scenarios, total campaign impressions, CPM, effective CPM and media cost.

Interactive advertising sure requires a lot of figgerin'. This nifty tool takes a lot of work out of that brain-busting chore. You can download it here.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 3, 2008

Gannett Takes Controlling Interest in CareerBuilder

Gannett's now the majority owner of CareerBuilder, having picked up a 10 percent stake in the recruiting site from Tribune for $135 million. The purchase gives it a 50.8 percent controlling share of the firm.

The transaction is reminiscent of Gannett's acquisition in July of its rivals' ownership shares in ShopLocal, the online shopping circular provider previously owned by a triumvirate of newspaper publishers. In that purchase, Gannett bought all outstanding interest in the firm from McClatchy and Tribune.

Tribune, which previously held a share of CareerBuilder equal to that of Gannett's, now possesses 30.8 percent of CareerBuilder. McClatchy meanwhile owns 14.4 percent, and Microsoft has 4 percent.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Quote of the Day: Google as Agency Virus

“...they’re almost like a virus, going to work their way into specific agencies and replace the DNA of those agencies with a more analytic orientation while trying to maintain some of the client relationships.”

-Peter S. Fader, professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, quoted in the New York Times.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Google Chrome Should Force Some Soul Searching on Tabbed Browsing

While Google's entry into the browser wars has few, if any, direct implications for advertisers, indirect ones are easy to spot.

Take the elevation of tabbed browsing to the core of the user experience. While Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 both support simultaneous tabbed navigation, Google Chrome is built on it. Tabs have been elevated to the top of the interface, and Google has introduced separate processes for each tab, so one tab's glitch doesn't crash the whole browser -- as is the case with IE 7 and Firefox. Here's a screen grab from the comic book, created by the great Scott McCloud, that Google used to unveil Chrome:

Clearly Google believes the future of the Web lies in toggling -- between static pages and rich applications, between entertainment content and productive tasks. If it proves to be correct, and consumers increasingly channel their attention through numerous tabs residing shoulder to shoulder in the narrow confines of a browser, marketers will be forced to reconsider how they deliver -- and measure the impact of -- their display ads.

Among the questions such a presumed future raises: What is the impact of simultaneous browsing on metrics like page exposure time and ad exposure time? How does it affect the overall number of ads served to any given Web user, as well as the effectiveness of those ads?

Also, what are the best ad placements to leverage a tab-addicted society? For instance, some publishers claim users of IE7 and Firefox have exhibited higher click-through rates on horizontal banner ads at the top of Web pages. But the evidence is anecdotal. Very little research exists on the effect of tabbed or simultaneous browsing on digital ads.

That may change. JupiterResearch hasn't yet looked into the phenomenon, according analyst Emily Riley. However she indicated it hopes to do so in the future.

Until that happens, advertisers can only guess at the impact of tabbed browsing on their ads.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 2, 2008

Sadly, Michael Palin's Wiki Entry Left Untouched

So, over the past few days everybody's been abuzz about Sarah Palin, and more specifically alterations made to a wikipedia entry on the new GOP vice presidential nominee. A whole bunch of changes were made to the page by a user with probable connections to the campaign right before the announcement that the Alaskan Governor would be John McCain's choice for running mate. Or, maybe it was Palin herself.

Then again, maybe it was Tina Fey....

TechPresident lamented the lack of speed with which the McCain camp got search ads up and links to pages with relevant biographical info on the candidate. Quite possibly, the news may not have been made privy to McCain's search ad folks soon enough to make that happen as rapidly as it could have. Now a search on "Sarah Palin" or "Palin" brings up an ad reading, "Get The Facts on Governor Sarah Palin. John McCain's VP Choice!" It goes to a Palin-centric page.

Stories in the Washington Post and NY Times also analyze the wiki situation. The Times report notes, "In modern politics, where the struggle is to 'define' yourself before your opponent 'defines' you, Wikipedia has become an important part of political strategy. When news breaks, and people plug a name into a search engine to find out more, invariably Wikipedia is the first result they click through to; it is where first impressions are made."

That pretty much hits the nail on the head; there's not a heck of a lot more to say than that, really. But now that political observers will be watching wiki entries of all likely VP nominees for changes, in four years campaigns may have to alter all of them to the same degree just to throw the bloodhounds off the trail.

As for the coverage this seemingly insignificant online occurrence is getting, I guess we can expect every single use of every single Web application (candidates on Facebook, Obama's VP text announcement, Palin twittering, etc.) to be over-analyzed by just about everybody – except the majority of voters.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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