Articles of the Day
Facebook reshuffles management structure - Social networking site, Facebook, is changing its management structure with COO, Owen Van Natta, becoming chief revenue officer and vice-president of operations. The recently appointed former AOL executive, Chamath Palihapitiya, is the new vice-president of marketing and operations and Gideon Yu, who was also only appointed a few weeks ago, is the chief financial officer.
Google invests in more Chinese companies - Google is investing in another four to five unnamed Chinese internet companies to compete with rival Baidu.com, according to Google’s China president, Kai-Fu Lee. Lee says the companies are involved in search, online communities, online entertainment and other spheres. One of Google’s first moves into the Chinese marketplace was an investment in Shenzhen-based Xunlei Network Technology, a file-sharing company.
Hearst closes digital-only magazine - Hearst is slashing its digital-only magazine, Jellyfish, after just five months. The UK branch of the National Magazine Company publishing group says the cut is due to “distribution challenges,” according to the Guardian. The newspaper suggests corporate firewalls and anti-spam impacted heavily on the teen title.
IAB Tackles Lead-Generation Best Practices - Priorities include security, common format and setup. ValueClick Media is among the members on board.
Can SmartAds Right Yahoo’s Ad Slip? - It’s no secret that Yahoo’s flagging display business could use a shot in the arm, and SmartAds, introduced a month ago, could be the ticket. The tactic, introduced a month ago, offers advertisers a combination of personalized and behaviorally targeted ads. Because finely targeted ads command a higher premium from advertisers, the new format could be a boon for Yahoo. But the the tactic could be an even greater success for the company’s other display ventures, the newly acquired ad exchange Right Media, and its partnership sites like eBay.
The Great, Inexorable Advertising Shift - In the second quarter, the Web’s big four, Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN-eMarketer expects to make up more than two-thirds of online advertising in 2007, which saw a collective ad revenue increase of $1.3 billion or 42 percent in the second quarter of this year. Meanwhile, ad revenue at the 15 biggest traditional media companies shrank 3 percent over the same time period, a loss of $280 million.
Traditional Media In More Ill-Advised Buys - Traditional media firms have gone Web hunting again. In the past month, Hearst purchased the social shopping site Kaboodle and The New York Times Co. reeled in bookmarking startup Clipmarks and the Freakonomics blog. Earlier in the year, Discovery Communications bought the eco-blog TreeHugger, and CBS Interactive added Last.fm and the finance video blog Wallstrip.
Yahoo’s Monetization Dilemma - D: All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher gives kudos to Yahoo for its lifted ranking this week on the customer satisfaction front. While that’s positive news, she notes, the niggling point remains that Yahoo cannot monetize its ad search as well as Google. The state of its search and search-ad business will remain at the center of attention, and she revisits with depth the speculation that Yahoo might offload some of its search and ad business back to Google.
Display CPMs Dropping? - There’s been a lot of talk over the past two months about “softening” growth in the online display ad marketplace. Destination Web sites and portals, accustomed over the past year or two to 25-40% year-over-year revenue growth in their display ad revenues, found themselves facing flat or moderate year-over-year increases this past quarter. While the second quarter continued to deliver explosive growth at Google, the other search players, and many of the online ad networks, for some reason many of the destination sites were left behind. What happened? Should we all be surprised? Is the online display ad market really slowing down?
