Articles of the Day
Microsoft kicks the tires on Revver - Don’t expect Microsoft to stand pat in a video-sharing sector dominated by Google’s YouTube. — A week after a test version of Microsoft’s video site, Soapbox, went live, the company sized up at least one potential acquisition target, sources say.
IBM To Media Companies: Loosen Grip On Content - To deal with threats from new digital competitors, IBM’s media-consulting arm recommends that traditional media companies focus fanatically on consumers and embrace new technologies and business models. In its new report, “Navigating the Media Divide,” IBM says that mainstream media companies should allow the legal reuse of content for mash-ups, overdubs and other ways “that celebrate their favorite branded content in new and creative ways.”
PayPerPost Recruits ‘Link Love’ - Controversial viral marketing firm PayPerPost has launched an affiliate program aimed at recruiting new bloggers who will link to existing entries. The initiative, unveiled Wednesday, was met with criticism from some word-of-mouth marketing experts.
Times Online Ad Revenue Grows 26% - Thanks to strong growth in both display and classified advertising, Web ad revenues for The New York Times Company’s major media groups rose 26.2%. Overall, however, revenue at the company was nearly flat.
ValueClick Q4 Profits Nearly Double - Beating its own guidance, online ad network ValueClick on Wednesday reported fourth-quarter revenues of $160.4 million, up from $116.6 million in the year-ago period. Net income was $22.1 million, or 22 cents a share, up from $14.2 million, or 14 cents a share, in the year-ago period.
DoubleClick: Four In 10 Rely On Web For Political Info - Americans are increasingly turning to the Internet for political information, according to a study released Wednesday by DoubleClick. Forty-two percent of 1,047 U.S. adults surveyed by the company’s Performics division said they intended to use the Web for information about the 2008 elections more than they did in 2004.
IAB Launches Monthly Magazine - The Interactive Advertising Bureau has launched a monthly magazine, MIXX, in conjunction with Adweek Magazines and custom publisher Media Ventures Inc. The magazine, which appears as a supplement in Adweek, Brandweek and Mediaweek, and online on the magazines’ Web sites and the IAB’s site, www.iab.net, will look at different platforms’ impact on the future of advertising.
Advertisers Demand More Accountability For Digital Media - Even while U.S. Internet advertising revenues grew more than 30 percent last year, topping $16 billion, corporate advertisers and advertising agencies are concerned that their online ad impressions may not be properly counted. A recent survey sponsored by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), shows that less than half of ad-agency respondents and only one-third of advertiser respondents said they were confident that their companies’ online ad impressions were measured and reported accurately.
Google Goes After Microsoft’s Enterprise Market - Google is moving farther into Microsoft territory, enhancing its rudimentary Web-based communication services by combining its email, chat and calendar services. The company is specifically targeting the corporate crowd by offering the applications program, which includes bigger email storage and more support for companies’ technology staff — for the low-cost price of $50 per user per year.
Online Measurement Moves Offline - The 21st century may come to be known in the media industry as the advertising measurement century. Nowadays, it’s not just Internet advertisers and publishers that want more accurate digital data; magazine, TV, outdoor and radio firms also want to make their information more accountable. Enter Google, which is making an aggressive push into selling measurable advertising to traditional mediums.
MMOG Take Lead In Ad-Supported Online Sports Games - If there are two omnipresent elements in media, it’s sports and advertising. These elements converge as much as possible. It follows that marketers should carve out new opportunities in new media. Even in the world of video games, one such medium, sports publishers have taken a lead in selling ads. It’s only a matter of time before the genre moves online, becoming massively multiplayer, like the virtual worlds of Second Life and World of Warcraft. In-game ad providers like Double Fusion are banking on that convergence.
Study: Video Downloads Have Lucrative Future - The market for TV and film downloads is expected to far outweigh that of ad-supported online programming, according to industry researcher Adams Media Research. Right now, the market for ad-supported programs is four times larger than pay-for video downloads — $409 million compared to $111 million — though it’s expected to surge to $4.1 billion by 2011. Ad-supported video will grow to $1.7 billion over the same length of time. The reason is that the ad-supported model will mainly be used on the Web sites of major U.S. television networks. Video download services, on the other hand, will be able to offer a broad array of programming from one location
Google, Microsoft Play Follow The Leader - Microsoft apparently is gearing up to enter the video-sharing space in a much bigger way. The company, which is testing the video site “Soapbox,” also apparently recently mulled purchasing Revver, according to a report in CNET’s News.com. While the article also says it doesn’t look like a deal’s going to happen any time soon, Microsoft still appears interested in at least exploring whether it can hire any Revver staff or harness the company’s ad technology.
AOL Switches Strategy, Pulls Back On Possible Kids, Teens JV, Spinoff; SVP Malcolm Bird Leaves - You’re reading it here first … Last fall, we broke the news that AOL was looking for possible JV partners for a spinoff of its kids and teens businesses, KOL and Red. They had some inquiries and were exploring options. But that strategy isn’t part of the new AOL management team’s plans, a source at the company tells me “there has been a strategy shift” and the company has decided “kids and teens are core to our business.”
Armstrong: Google Looks For More Integration Between Its Products And Advertising - Since the web is open 24 hours a day, why shouldn’t its advertising be open, too, Tim Armstrong, VP for Google’s national sales, asked during an investors’ Q&A at the Bank of America Technology Conference in New York. He also discussed the need for better metrics to help propel ad activity on mobile devices and hinted at plans of integrating products like Google Maps with advertising campaigns.
WaPo Expands On Its Blog Ad Network - Last summer Washington Post launched a blog ad network called “Sponsored Blogroll”, to help WaPo online advertisers find blogs to advertise on, and in return, blogs got shared-revenues as well as links from WaPo website. Now some further results and expansion of the effort, still among the only of its kind among major news companies.
