Articles of the Day
Publicis Buys Digitas, Moves To Become Dominant Digital Player - In a bold move that reconfigures the digital hierarchy of Madison Avenue, Paris-based agency holding company Publicis Wednesday announced a deal to acquire online and direct marketing powerhouse Digitas for $1.3 billion in cash. Publicis, which already had a highly regarded and strategically oriented digital team, now gains the kind of clout and talent that will force other big agencies to play catch-up–potentially triggering a rush to gobble up the few remaining independent digital agencies.
comScore: Online Retail Climbs To $20.65B - Online retail spending from Nov. 1 through Dec. 18 reached $20.65 billion–up 25% from last year, according to new data by comScore Networks. The biggest day so far was Wednesday, Dec. 13, when consumers spent $667 million on e-commerce, followed by Monday, Dec. 11 ($661 million) and Monday, Dec. 4 ($647.5 million). Last year, the biggest day was Monday, Dec. 12 ($556 million).
Yahoo Scores Most Page Views Of Year - With approximately 354.5 billion page views through Nov. 30, Yahoo was the most trafficked Web property of the year, according to new data released Wednesday by Nielsen//NetRatings. MySpace garnered the second highest number of page views (250.7 billion), while Google placed third (147.7 billion)
Web 2007 Spending Should Surpass Conservative Forecasts - Advertising forecasts for 2007 are mixed, but just about the only constant is that Internet advertising will continue to grow apace, outperforming other media and likely, surpassing expectations. In 2006, Web spending was forecast at 20%; with three quarters now behind us, that number is closer to 50%, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus. Even so, most research firms think Web advertising will grow somewhere between 15% and 20% next year. However, history tells us that number is most likely conservative.
Google Checkout Is No PayPal Killer - The bloggers from Business 2.0 slam yesterday’s New York Times report touting Google Checkout as a PayPal killer. “How unsurprising: Bribe people heavily, and they’ll use your service,” the post says. That piece of logic hardly guarantees that Checkout, which is not used nearly as widely as eBay’s PayPal, will be a runaway success. In fact, Google may not pose any threat at all to PayPal.
Hitwise: Google Captures 63% Of Searches - Google has increased its commanding share of the online search market–garnering 62.79% of searches for the four-week period ending Dec. 16, according to online ratings firm Hitwise. That reflects a one-percentage-point gain from the four-week period ending Nov. 25. Yahoo’s search engine share, meanwhile, dipped slightly to 21.9% in December from 22.43% the prior month. Rounding out the top search engines were MSN (9.28%), Ask.com (4.07%), and AOL (0.59%). All other search properties had a combined share of 1.19%, according to Hitwise. The figures are based on the executed searches of 10 million Internet users across the top 55 search engines.
Loads Of Ways To Improve Google - Google gets lavish praise in the press. But guess what? Google Image Search sucks. It doesn’t have a comprehensive video search, and its Web search engine still delivers too many false pages that are (conveniently) filled with nothing but Google AdSense links. Some pundits believe the search movement is going vertical. Specialized search is an area that needs improvement, namely, better local, health, gaming, video, audio and music search. And Google isn’t there yet. The lure in creating search technology is advertising. Google has proven the model, but there are still many new areas to mine.
