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December 2008

December 31, 2008

ClickZ's 10 Most Popular News Articles of 2008

Online marketing news articles about the presidential campaign, social media, industry layoffs, and behavioral marketing were among the most viewed articles on ClickZ in 2008.

Here's a look at the year's most popular news items based on page views:

1. Clinton Needed More Search: Q&A with Google's Greenberger
Google's top political ad man contends savvy search advertising contributed to the success of both Barack Obama's and John McCain's primary season wins.
By Kate Kaye

2. Study: Blogs Influence Purchases More Than Social Sites
Blogs can have more impact on purchase decisions than social networks, a study finds.
By Enid Burns

3. ISPs Collect User Data for Behavioral Ad Targeting
Internet service providers track subscriber activities online for behavioral advertising purposes.
By Zachary Rodgers

4. Obama Spent Most of $3 Million This Year on Google
The search giant scored over 70 percent of money spent on online media buys for Barack Obama's presidential campaign this year through April, according to information compiled from Federal Election Commission filings.
By Kate Kaye

5. McDonald's Sprinkles Digital Fairy Dust with Happy Meal Game
Fuel Industries developed a world with fairies and dragons for pre-teens, adding a digital element to the next series of kids' meals.
By Enid Burns

6. Does the New iPhone Hold More Promise for Marketers?
Apple introduces a faster, cheaper model with built-in GPS and makes way for blogging, e-commerce, and other mobile applications.
By Enid Burns

7. Top Social Networking Sites in May 2008
LinkedIn and Yahoo's Flickr show triple-digit growth compared to a year ago.
Source: comScore

8. ClickZ's Layoff Tracker for Digital Marketing Jobs
ClickZ's ongoing tally of layoffs and headcount reductions in the digital marketing and ad-supported media sectors.
By Zachary Rodgers

9. MGM Deal Brings More Premium Content to YouTube
Video-sharing site signs deal that will bring many of MGM studio's full-length features -- supported by in-video advertising -- to the Google-owned site.
By Douglas Quenqua

10. Top Real Estate Sites in February 2008
Home values may be sinking, but visitors to real estate sites were as curious as ever.
Source: comScore

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

ClickZ's 10 Most Popular Experts' Columns of 2008

ClickZ's Experts draw from a wide assortment of specialties, including e-mail marketing, search engine marketing, online video advertising, Web analytics, and media buying and planning.

And the interests of ClickZ readers vary widely, too, based on a look at the 10 most popular ClickZ Experts' columns published in 2008.

1. Seven Top Online Marketing Trends for 2008
Among the trends identified: social network niches, behavioral targeting, more sophisticated analytics.
By Heidi Cohen

2. Online Games Redefine Gaming
As the death knell rings for gaming's ultimate icon, the console, marketers must transition to the new definition of gaming.
By Kevin Carney

3. How 20 Words Generate a 220 Percent Lift in Response
An old direct marketing trick can help e-mail marketing campaigns today.
By Jeanne Jennings

4. Voter-Generated Content Makes or Breaks Candidates
Voters get out to vote for the next US president after they get out their message.
By Christine Beardsell

5. The Average Conversion Rate: Is It a Myth?
Online marketers have embraced conversion rates of 2 to 3 percent when they should be aiming higher. Here's why.
By Bryan Eisenberg

6. Brands Build Widget Ads; Will Consumers Come?
Kraft Foods, Nissan, and American Express are the latest to bring advertising to these shareable, downloadable applications.
By Anna Maria Virzi

7. Hotmail's People Factor Sets the Rules
Even the most sophisticated spam filters have a human component: users who vote with their mice.
By Stefan Pollard

8. Content Optimization: Keyword Suggestion Tools
How to start optimizing your site's content today using tools from Google, Yahoo, and Quintura.
By P.J. Fusco

9. Never on Sunday? Rethink Your E-mail Schedule
New reports show the best day to send your e-mail is Sunday.
By Karen Gedney

10.Seven Ways to Advertise on Facebook
A media planner's guide to paid advertising opportunities on the social media network.
By Harry Gold

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 30, 2008

The Year in Online Newspaper Advertising: a Brief Overview

Which were the biggest online ad industry stories of '08? Readers can wait for my year-end roundup story tomorrow in ClickZ News to find out which we thought made the cut.

One that was certainly important but not necessarily of sweeping impact for the industry as a whole was the ongoing saga of online newspaper advertising. The launch of quadrantOne and Yahoo's APT platform were probably the most significant events.

In February, Gannett Co., Hearst Corporation, Tribune Company, and The New York Times Company launched quadrantOne. The goal was to grab more national ad dollars from large brands.

The network soon added several new Web sites and publishers to its network, all of which are also partnered with Yahoo.

Now, it's been two years since Yahoo began signing ad and search deals with newspaper publishers as part of its newspaper consortium project -- another one that's meant to save them through higher display ad revenue from brand advertisers, among other things. Though the partner group has grown significantly, there's much work to be done, including getting all of Yahoo's paper partners on its APT ad management platform, which finally launched in September.

The consortium in a way let go of the Yahoo apron strings in August when it appointed a Tribune man, Michael Silver, as its new executive director. The partners also formed deals with Zillowin '08, creating a real estate related ad network.

Adding another wrinkle to the drama, Centro's acquisition of McClatchy-owned newspaper ad network Real Cities ended an era begun by the now-defunct Knight Ridder. The buy ended the existence of Real Cities as an entity; Real Cities was a division of Knight Ridder until McClatchy acquired KR in 2006.

Despite the fact that the industry has joined hands in various network efforts, the outlook is grim as paper publishers grapple with falling online ad revenues -- the ones that were supposed to counteract the bleeding on the print side.
Indeed, after its first ever reported drop in online ad revenue in Q2 2008, the industry drifted another few notches in Q3. According to the Newspaper Association of America, online paper sites brought in $749.8 million in Q3, a drop of 3 percent from a year before.

Newspaper industry layoffs abound and will probably get worse in 2009. At this point, it's not clear whether those have affected online ad sales teams. But if digital media is truly a last hope for newspapers, they'd do well to keep their digital ad sales operations strong.

What did I forget?

Posted by Kate Kaye at 4:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Politics and Financial Crisis Dominated the Year in Search

Obama was on the minds of the U.S. in terms of search in 2008, according to Google. But the fastest-rising search term for Google's global results in its Zeitgeist was Sarah Palin. That's what's listed in this year's top search term recaps from Google, Yahoo, AOL, Ask.com, and Lycos. The election weighed heavily in several categories including fastest rising, overall searches, influential women, and top news stories.

The financial bailout ranked high on search, too. On Google people searched for "financial crisis," "bailout," and "mortgage crisis," while Yahoo saw top economic terms such as "oil prices," "gold prices," and "Sallie Mae." AOL visitors looked for financial terms "Wachovia," "Washington Mutual," "Merrill Lynch," and "AIG," among others. The top news stories on Lycos related to the economic collapse and bailout, though stories of the death of actor Heath Ledger, and the Eliot Spitzer scandal were also popular.

Posted by Enid Burns at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

December 29, 2008

Digital Revenues Fall at New York Times Co.

Digital ads just won't suffice to save the struggling newspaper business. That's been clear since early this fall, when the Newspaper Association of America reported its members' second quarter revenues shrank for the first time in Q2, following weak Q1 growth. Those revenues declined again in Q3, shattering the pipe dream that rapid Web growth would support the publishers' huge cost structures.

So perhaps it shouldn't come as a shock that The New York Times -- itself an NAA member -- is also feeling a digital ad pinch. Long known for its culture of innovation, particularly at NYTimes.com, the company last week reported results for November, and were they ever bad. The dismal report includes a 21.8 percent overall revenue drop, led by spending declines in a bunch of major sectors and in all its divisions.

While grim, that big picture pain is less disheartening than this tidbit: Online ad revenues for the month contracted 4 percent compared with November 2007, owing to the continued flight of real estate and job classifieds advertising. The collapse of those two bedrocks of its ad model appear to have trumped all the company's smart synchronized banners, its surround sessions and its 10th place ranking among the largest Web players (Nielsen Online). Even for the Grey Lady, it would appear based on these numbers that rapid adoption and innovation in new channels just aren't enough to sustain a business mired in old ones.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 22, 2008

Political Web Pioneer Dies in Plane Crash

A pioneer of Internet consulting and Web development for Republicans is no longer with us. Founder and CEO of New Media Communications, and a partner of Connell Donatelli, an affiliated Web consultancy, died Friday in a plane crash on his way to Ohio, according to Connell Donatelli's Eric Frenchman. Apparently Connell was piloting the plane.

I never met Connell, though I've known his close colleagues Frenchman and Becki Donatelli for some time (both drove online ad strategy for the 2008 McCain campaign).

You can read more about Mike here.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 2:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Retail Woes? What About Subscriptions to Stuff?

120 cans of cat food per month.

There aren't a lot of constants in life, but one of mine is that my two cats go through 120 cans of cat food every four weeks, come hell or high water.

That's a lot of cat food to lug home, particularly in New York City, where we residents tend to be car-less. But recently a friend of a friend turned me on to Amazon's subscribe-and-save feature. Voila! Now, each month like clockwork, those 120 cans magically appear on my doorstep. I get a 15 percent discount on the product, and there's no shipping fee (the major pet retailers such as Petco offer subscriptions as well, but the shipping fees make their version of a subscription service prohibitively expensive).

In this, the most dismal era of consumer consumption in memory, why isn't Amazon doing more to promote this indispensable service? And why don't more online retailers follow suit?

Diapers. Over-the-counter medications. Grocery items. Personal care items. Snacks. Office supplies. Everyone's got a product they can't live without. Most consumers have products that require regularly scheduled replenishing, from blades for razors to filters for humidifiers.

Guaranteeing this level of service and savings doesn't just make sense for consumers, but also for online merchants, who can bank on a lock on this portion of consumer spending. The trick is to make it economically worthwhile for buyers, with flexible options to change, cancel, accelerate or postpone orders (as Amazon does via a simple interface).

Guaranteed customer loyalty is nothing for retailers to sneeze at. If you're selling online, what portion of those sales can you market as a subscription? And how will you promote that service? We all know the power of word of mouth marketing, but even mighty Amazon isn't going out of its way to spread the word on its subscription services.

There's some serious opportunity here for retailers to subscribe to customer loyalty by allowing their customers to subscribe to their services.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Chrysler CMO Steps Down

Deborah Wahl Meyer has stepped down as Chrysler's CMO after a 16-month stint.

Steven Landry, executive vice president of North American sales, marketing and Mopar parts and service, will assume responsibility for brand marketing, media and events, advertising, interactive and customer relationship management, according to a report on autonews.com.

As CMO, Meyer had allocated 30 percent of the auto manufacturer's marketing budget to digital initiatives. A major campaign during her tenure was the Dodge Ram Challenge, an online video reality competition, directed by Hollywood's Tony Scott.

The struggling automaker is about to receive a $4 billion federal loan while it looks for ways to cut costs and fend off bankruptcy.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 19, 2008

Sign of the Times: Coping With Financial Loss

A search on nytimes.com for "Bernard Madoff," the Wall Street trader accused of running a multi-billion fraud scheme, turned up this text ad from Renee J. Scheiber, a psychotherapist based in Fort Lauderdale, FL:

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 8:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

December 18, 2008

Layoffs Mount in Agency Land. Help Us Pinpoint the Digital Losses

As job losses mount at ad agencies of all stripes, it's getting harder to figure out how digital divisions are fairing. We've already learned of many interactive agencies -- including Razorfish, Digitas, and Organic -- that have eliminated positions. However the cuts at large, integrated agencies are as opaque as they are frequent. Today brought reports of a 3,500 person headcount reduction at Omnicom, including 189 U.S. jobs lost at BBDO, and middle-management reductions at WPP. Are those cuts affecting Web creatives, planners and buyers? The holding companies aren't saying.

And so we're relying on you, readers, to tip us about staffing changes at your agencies. Send a quick note and let us know how you're fairing.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 5:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

EPrize Lays Off About 20

Nine-year-old digital promotions firm ePrize has laid off "under 20" individuals to control costs as marketers cut back on spending. The Pleasant Ridge, Michigan-based company provides interactive sweepstakes, quizzes, and giveaways to many sectors, including some that are in a world of hurt -- count automotive, retail, travel and financial services among those.

"We're seeing some softness in the market but still expect our growth to end up at about 30 percent for the year," a spokesperson told ClickZ. "This was a proactive measure to ensure the long term success of the company."

AgencySpy first reported.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 3:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Entire Novels on Japan's Mobile Phones

japan%20mobile%20novel.jpg Move over, Kindle. The Japanese (women in particular) are reading - and writing - entire novels on mobile phones. It's been a shot in the arm to several Japanese publishers, and some of the novelists are becoming hot media properties, branching out into film, television and of course, video games.

An articles in the current New Yorker magazine offers a fascinating glimpse into this phenomenon. Only a summary of the piece is provided on their Web site, but it's well worth picking up the current issue to read over the holiday break.

And you thought your phone was smart!

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 17, 2008

Pheedo Offers Video Ads in RSS Environment

Video ads have begun popping up in all kinds of places we haven't seen them before. Goodmail last week talked up a new video-in-email offering. This week the format comes to RSS advertising, courtesy of Pheedo.

The feed management firm and ad network has begun offering video ads that can reach the users Google Reader, Bloglines, NewsGator and other feed readers. Universal Studios, National Geographic and Fox Searchlight are among the early advertisers to use the product, according to the firm. Pheedo represents ad inventory inside feeds owned by New York Times, CBS, Huffington Post, and a great many smaller publishers.

"The challenge as in anything with RSS ad serving is making it work with syndicated traffic," Pheedo CEO Bill Flitter told me today. "Now, video advertising in RSS is scalable and possible hasn't been done before."

Question is, is it a good idea to inject video ads into the feed environment? As with all video executions, that depends on how it's handled. I do see a potential problem with ad positioning. Most RSS interfaces offer an exceedingly vertical reading experience. Therefore ads must appear either above or below the desired content. Video ads, owing to their 4:3 aspect ratio, are both tall and wide, and would only be appropriate at the bottom of an RSS item. Unfortunately that's where they're least likely to be spotted -- at least by me. But I'll look forward to hearing about Pheedo's experience selling this format.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 5:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

New Logo, Site Look for IAB

Looks like the Interactive Advertising Bureau is doing a little re-branding. They've got a nice new logo, and some design/color scheme changes on the site to match.

I don't think they've officially called attention to this yet.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 12, 2008

Auto Ad Outlook Deserves Nuanced View

So, what can we really expect from online auto advertising during the recession? The outlook isn't exactly crystal clear. Take a recent Wall Street Journal story which predicts hard times for auto advertising online.

"Auto Web sites have commanded some of the highest ad rates online, and they typically have sold out a year in advance," wrote Emily Steel in a story published Tuesday. "Now, those online ad dollars appear to be leveling off as the auto industry slashes costs and prunes its brands. At the same time, traffic is on the wane, as consumers put their car-buying plans on hold and curtail visits to auto-research sites like Edmunds.com, Yahoo's auto section and KBB.com."

The story notes that Forrester Research "expects a big decline in spending on display ads next year," and "visits to auto-research sites were down 2% in October from a year earlier," with steeper traffic decline for some sites.

"Now, many of the sites haven't been able to deliver those viewers for ads they have already sold, and are scurrying to find ways to compensate advertisers," continued the story.
There's no question that auto advertisers have been spending less with some sites that are accustomed to their typically-reliable ad revenue stream. For instance, in Q3, Yahoo cited auto (along with finance, travel, and retail) as the hardest hit ad verticals for that quarter.

However, some think there's room for a nuanced outlook. "This week, a new article by Steel noted the 'tapering off' of ad spending on auto sites — another bold statement (although the article itself was measured and balanced)," wrote Kelsey Group's Peter Krasilovsky on the local research firm's blog.

He asked AutoTrader about the prognostication. The company expects its 2009 revenues to be "solid." The company told him, "Because automotive media sites such as AutoTrader.com, Edmunds.com and Cars.com cater specifically to in-market car shoppers, we expect that there will be continued growth in spending for advertising and marketing through these sites — something that will be happening at the expense of traditional media."

And let's not forget: auto advertisers don't advertise strictly on auto sites. They buy through behavioral ad networks, and also do lots of search advertising. I spoke with Ben Boles, director of digital media for Damson Automotive Group, in October, and he told me his digital ad spending would not be scaled down as a result of the recession.

"Now, rather than necessarily innovating in what we're doing, we are just simply looking for efficiencies that online affords….We're doing it as function of survival," he said.

Plus, big auto brands are recognizing the Web as a place to spend money for things other than just lead gen. As noted by Steel in a previous WSJ story, "Ford Motor, General Motors and Chrysler have launched campaigns on several Web sites, including Google and its YouTube video site, various blogs, Facebook and the social-messaging site Twitter, trying to make their case for a bailout as quickly and widely as possible -- on the cheap."

I wrote earlier this week about the search marketing components of bailout-related campaigns. And one thing that Ford made clear to me was it's starting to see Web advertising as beneficial for branding, and reaching people before that almost-ready-to-buy phase.

"Historically we were focused on the end of the buying process," Ford Digital Marketing Manager Scott Kelly told me. "In the past year we've been more focused on changing consideration up front in the buying process, and search and online tools can help us do that."

Posted by Kate Kaye at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Social Media Marketing Webinar: 1,500 and Counting

Come join us for the Webinar, "Conversational Marketing: Developing a Successful Social Media Strategy," on Monday at 3 PM ET / noon PT.

Dave Evans, author of "Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day," and a ClickZ Experts contributor will present and my colleague, Zach Rodgers, will moderate.

As of this afternoon, more than 1,500 people had registered, ensuring this will be a social event!

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 1:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 11, 2008

Afternoon Mystery: Google Banishes Self From SERPs

This post has been updated.

Google appears to have wiped two of its important products from its own search results pages. As of this writing, searches for "Google AdWords" and "Google Analytics" do not appear in the first page of organic search results. A search for AdWords turns up a sponsored listing, but no natural one. The top two results for both terms are the products' Wikipedia pages, followed by their official blogspot blogs.

Check it out:

(hat tip Bryan Eisenberg)

UPDATE: Google informed us that the SERPs for Google Analytics and Google AdWords were resolved within an hour of this blog post. A quick check confirmed this to be true.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 6:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

YouTube's Guitar Hero

As a marketer, what YouTube video do you wish you had dreamed up?

I posed that question to participants of the SES Chicago panel, "The Next Wave for Online Video," which I moderated yesterday.

Gregory Markel, founder/president, Infuse Creative, pointed to this one featuring JerryC, which has 55 million page views and counting. It's snagged the number-two spot on Google's search engine results page for the search term "guitar," appearing higher than Gibson, Fender, and Guitar Hero.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Facebook en France

Earlier this week, Facebook announced it is opening a Paris-based sales office to help capitalize on its rapidly expanding European user base, and to better serve mainland European advertisers.

Via the Facebook blog, the firm's Commercial Director for Europe, Blake Chandlee, revealed the operation would be headed up by Damien Vincent, who will build a sales force there in the next few months. Though it's unclear exactly what size that sales force will be, the Facebook recruitment site currently lists 11 sales-related vacancies in Paris, including ones for Spanish and Italian speakers.

According to Chandlee, a number of blue-chip firms, including the likes of Peugeot and Dell, already have campaigns running on the French language version of the site.

The social network opened its London office late last year, and has been recruiting sales staff consistently since. However, it announced in October that it plans to open a new European headquarters in Dublin, presumably for tax reasons.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 10, 2008

The Rich Are Different Than...

An examination into the online behavior of the most affluent or "upper crust" people was an eye-opener for Bill Tancer, Hitwise general manager.

He shared this following anecdote during the SES Chicago keynote on Tuesday to make the point that online marketers have access to information that can inform marketing strategies:

Online brokerage accounts for E-Trade, Schwab, and Fidelity were among the top sites visited by the upper crust last year, according to Tancer.

A year later, guess what? The upper crust was seeking out diversions, taking stock of celebrity news instead of checking on their financial portfolios.

Under this scenario, online brokerages might be making a better bet advertising on PerezHilton.com than on business sites. Or if the market continues its meltdown, CNBC could replace Jim Cramer with Perez.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yahoo Layoffs Commence, What's the Impact on Sales?

Layoffs of 1,400 Yahoo staffers are expected to begin this morning. As CEO Jerry Yang stated back in October, the reduction will affect about 10 percent of staff with the goal of reducing annual costs from $3.9 billion to less than $3.5 billion.

We at ClickZ are trying to learn as much as we can about who's being let go -- specifically in the company's sales operation. As you might imagine, standard PR operating procedure at times like this is to share no details directly with the press. That's where you come in, dear readers.

Are you a media broker at Yahoo, or do you have insight into the company's sales organization in your capacity as a buyer? We'd be eternally grateful for whatever information you can share. Please reach out to us through our News Tip contact form.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 9, 2008

TiVo Gives Marketers Pause

A new advertising product from TiVo addresses advertisers' concern that TV viewers skip over commercials.

As you might imagine, the offering works by displaying ads while programming is paused. Among the first advertisers to take advantage of it are Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and Mercedes-Benz USA. A campaign for the entertainment company began today for the DVD and Blu-Ray release of Dr. Seuss' "Horton Hears a Who." In the New Year the luxury auto manufacturer plans to target football viewers with a campaign for its GLK SUV. Marketers can target ads to a show, genre or keyword.

The pause menu is linked to TiVo's Swivel Search feature, which the company claims "creates value for viewers and effectiveness for advertisers."

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 8, 2008

Online Ad Spend Predicted to Continue Growth through Downturn

Written by Jack Marshall

Ad spend forecasts released today by ZenithOptimedia and GroupM suggest internet spend will prop up a struggling global ad market in 2009.

WPP-owned Zenith predicts global ad spend across all mediums will decline by 0.2 percent next year, with spend in North America and Western Europe declining 5.7 percent and 1 percent respectively. Online, however, is expected to experience 18 percent growth, aided by growing spend in regions such as Latin America, Asia Pacific and Central & Eastern Europe.

Publicis-owned GroupM also forecasts a 0.2 percent drop in overall spend for '09, but remains slightly more conservative in its outlook for online, predicting just 10 percent growth worldwide. Predictions for the U.S. market mirror those released for the U.K. last week - four percent online growth in '09 compared to 22 percent in '08.

Quoted in a press release last week, Adam Smith, GroupM's Futures director, summed up the outlook nicely last week when he said, "Past recessions have lasted one or two years. This one feels like a two, and we are evidently some way from the bottom. Any sign of recovery in 2009 would be a nice surprise. But it is a surprise we should prepare for. We were fast into this recession and we could be fast out."

In other words, we can predict all we like, but nobody knows quite how hard this recession is likely to hit, or when it will hit hardest.

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

Adidas Adicolor Campaign

The friend who forwarded this final entry into Adidas' Adicolor viral campaign on YouTube wrote, "viral advertising that I can relate to in a way that doesn't make me want to buy "product" at all."

Yep. That about sums it up. Even if it is compelling enough to make you spend tons of time with the brand, you don't feel as if you're really spending any time at all with the brand. That doesn't mean the films aren't terribly compelling. But are they terribly compelling advertising, or is viral getting too soft?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 4, 2008

Jokes.com Relaunch, McDonald's Sponsorship

I'm not sure how many hours of my adolescent and teenage life I spent watching standup comedy on TV (it seemed like every channel had a standup show). But I don't think it was a waste of time, and expect to spend more hours browsing through the newly launched Jokes.com site.

Comedy Central has revamped the site in a big way. It's not just a facelift. They literally had multiple editorial people plowing through standup video from their archives going back about 10 years, attributing metadata to countless clips, and slicing and dicing shows into individual jokes, or thematic riffs.

Watch Bill Hicks mocking creationism on the "A-List." Or check out Bob Odenkirk in his early (awkward?) standup days. You might have to sit through an in-stream ad first. (Sadly, they don't have that old Brian Regan bit about little league.)

Of course, there are lots of younger (and living) comedians, too. And one of 'em, Christian Finnegan, was at the launch lunch at Comedy Central HQ yesterday (pictured here in his cool 'Mats shirt).

Sure, all that editing and metadata-ing work facilitates SEO. But there's another interesting and potentially revenue-generating outcome. The site's content -- which also includes text jokes and text versions of the video bits (yes, more SEO) -- can be readily organized according to theme. The Comedy Central folks created hundreds of tags for Jokes.com content (George W. Bush, Gross-Out, Marriage).

That means they can easily generate a page dedicated to a certain theme or themes for a sponsor. Take McDonald's, which will sponsor a football-themed video section in conjunction with the Superbowl.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

DOJ Was Rarin' to Sue as Google Scuttled Yahoo Deal

Just how close did the Justice Department come to filing anti-trust charges against Google and Yahoo over their search advertising deal?

About three hours close, according to an Am Law Daily interview with Sanford Litvack, the bulldog litigator hired by the DOJ to investigate the outsourcing agreement.

"We were going to file the complaint at a certain time during the day," Litvack told Am Law. "We told them we were going to file the complaint at that time of day. Three hours before, they told us they were abandoning the agreement."

After the deal was scuttled, an apparently disappointed Litvack went back to his firm, Hogan & Hartson. "We felt pretty good about it, we felt pretty confident. Yeah, I would have liked to have done it."

December 3, 2008

New York Post: Miller Not on a Yahoo Hunt After All

The New York Post has called foul on a Wall Street Journal report claiming Jonathan Miller is scraping together funds for a possible Yahoo bid.

The former AOL chief exec is indeed raising cash, according to the story, but not to acquire Yahoo. Rather the moves are part of his capitalization efforts on behalf of his investment firm, Velocity Interactive. The story adds Miller has entertained a Yahoo investment in the past, but nothing is imminent.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 2, 2008

Jonathan Miller Said to Pursue a Yahoo Stake

Former AOL chief executive Jonathan Miller is raising money to support a potential bid for Yahoo, the Wall Street Journal has heard from sources. (Update: A conflicting story in the Post says Miller is indeed fund raising, but that the money is for Velocity Interactive rather than Yahoo. More details.)

According to the story:

Mr. Miller has been talking to private equity investors and sovereign wealth funds for months in hopes of raising money for a Yahoo deal, and it is unclear whether the talks have progressed or are just continuing, these people say. Mr. Miller believes he can do a deal that would be worth around $20 to $22 a share to Yahoo shareholders, these people say, which would involve raising about about $28 billion to $30 billion to purchase the entire company.

As WSJ points out, the general palsy in lending activity right now makes such a fund raising job seem like a pipe dream.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Newspaper Web Revenues Drop Again in Q3

People who report news for a living don't like hearing about other news operations doing poorly. It just doesn't bode well. Until less than a year ago, though, newspapers seemed to have a glimmer of hope through their online businesses.

Not anymore -- at least for the time being.

After its first ever reported drop in online ad revenue in Q2 2008, the industry drifted another few notches in Q3. According to the Newspaper Association of America, online paper sites brought in $749.8 million in Q3, a drop of 3 percent from a year before.

At that time, Internet ad revenue reached $773 million, having risen a healthy 21 percent over Q3 2006.

Overall, combined print and online spending fell 18 percent in Q3 2008 to $8.9 billion.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Quote of the Day: Michael Wolff on MySpace's Audience

"…If you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people."

-Michael Wolff, author of new Rupert Murdoch biography “The Man Who Owns The News," in an interview with Jon Fine.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Virgin Media Joins T-Mobile, Adopts Yahoo Mobile Search Tool

U.K. mobile network operator Virgin Mobile has partnered with Yahoo to power search functions on its re-launched mobile portal. As of December 8, the portal will take on the branding of its parent company, Virgin Media, and will integrate Yahoo's oneSearch technology.

Yahoo also said today that it plans to deliver mobile sponsored search results and contextually served sponsored listings via the portal early next year, and that it is focusing on, "creating the monetization engine for the mobile Internet."

Despite its troubles, the Internet giant appears to be making decent progress in the mobile search sector, having secured an exclusive deal with T-Mobile in February, representing 11 European Markets. At the time, a Yahoo spokesperson described mobile search as a "key area in the future of Yahoo."

Search results via the Virgin portal will now include photos from Flickr, financial data, integrated information from Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers, and downloadable content such as ringtones and mobile games.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 7:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 1, 2008

McCain Online Ad Spending Up to $2.36 M

The election is over but the Federal Election Commission reporting ain't. I just finished going through additional online media expenditures reported by the McCain campaign. The new estimate is $2.36 million. (I reported last month that the McCain camp spent $1.53 million according to 2008 FEC reports representing expenditures into October.)

As I noted then, McCain’s FEC reports are really cryptic - unlike Obama's which were quite transparent. So, the most I know is John McCain 2008 and McCain-Palin 2008 paid around $2.6 million for "media" to its Web ad consulting firm, Connell Donatelli. (I shaved off around 10 percent to account for fees and other ad charges that didn't go towards actual media buys.) Just to make it even more opaque, the McCain campaign lists the firm as "CD, Inc." But, my understanding of how the campaign operated is that Connell Donatelli, a.k.a. CD, handled the Web media.

Meanwhile, Obama's campaign reported individual expenditures to media firms, so I've been able to decipher much more about where they spent.

There's another wrinkle in that the McCain campaign also created a Victory Fund and a Compliance Fund to circumvent those pesky campaign finance regulations. I haven't seen any payments to CD in reports from those entities yet, though I've been told to look for them.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Media6degrees Launches, Fusing Behavioral and Social Marketing

When someone claims a digital network of 400 "friends," undoubtedly including everyone from middle school girlfriends to office acquaintances, it's not easy to tell who the real buddies are.

With this in mind, the founders of Media6degrees two years ago set out to build an ad platform that could trace an individual's real circle of friends. It did so by engineering a combination of cookies and ad server logs to pinpoint a person's interests and generate anonymous profiles of his or her real friends. The resulting ad network, which entered trial-mode back in May, has now been commercially released.

According to the company, any individual connected to an advertiser's existing customer respond to ads two to thirty times more often than consumers targeted with simple demographic and geographic targeting.

Media6degrees chalks up the propensity of these individuals to buy similar products to the psychographic likenesses that naturally exist between friends. While that may be so, I'm more inclined to credit simple word of mouth. Whatever. If the company's internal research is to be trusted, it would appear Media6degrees offers a compelling fusion of behavioral targeting and social marketing.

As CEO Joe Doran, an ex-Microsoftie, put it to me last spring, "The most important thing is not to look at the content but to look at the interactions between individuals. I'm defined not by my interactions on MySpace or on Facebook. I'm defined by my interactions with my friends."

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chad White Leaves EEC, Joins Seattle Agency

Chad White, director of retail insights at the Email Experience Council, has headed to Smith-Harmon, a Seattle-based e-mail marketing agency.

White, author of the Retail Email Blog, will assume the newly created position of research director at Smith-Harmon. The agency's headed up by Lisa Harmon and Aaron Smith.

The agency's clients include Costco, Williams-Sonoma, BabyCenter, and Leapfrog.

White will continue to work out of New York City, where Smith-Harmon has three team members, according to Harmon.

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

Oral-B: Power Ads for a Power Toothbrush

The New York Post's Page Six gossip section, including the Post nameplate, cleaned up with these ads from P&G's Oral-B promoting the Triumph electric toothbrush. In another era, a newspaper's nameplate was sacred territory untouched by ads. But those days are apparently long gone.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 7:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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