Articles of the Day
Search Marketing’s Long Tail to Get Longer, Says Study - Investment firm William Blair & Company partnered with AdGooroo for a keyword-based advertiser-side analysis of the global search industry, authoring a report that pegs the number of advertisers at more than 500,000 and growing–with 90% of them currently running search campaigns with Google.
eCrush & OTX: Teens Learn About New TV Shows From TV, Not the Internet - Whatever teens are discussing on their social networks, it isn’t the new fall TV season, according to research conducted by Hearst Magazines Digital Media’s own teen social networking site eCRUSH, in conjunction with OTX. Their “Teen Topix” study found that most teens (51%) still learn about new TV shows the old-fashioned way: from on-air ads and promos.
How High Can You Count: New Facebook Fundraising? - Here’s an interesting idea if you don’t want to get bought and you can’t quite IPO yet and you need to have a tidy war chest for expansion or perhaps a choice acquisition or two: Bring in more investors and raise more money at a huge valuation. That’s a concept that the top dogs at Facebook are seriously mulling over now, according to sources, after getting so many inquiries from investment funds and several bigger companies–such as its ad-serving partner, Microsoft–about grabbing a stake in the fast-growing social-networking Web site.
Once Considered a YouTube Rival, MTV Does Away With IFilm.com - In the pre-YouTube era — you know, that ancient, halcyon time of 2005 and before — one had to be very resourceful to find pirated clips of the previous night’s awards show highlights or “Daily Show” monologues. But if there was any single destination for online video back then, one would be hard-pressed to disagree it was iFilm.com. SpikeTV.com and iFilm.com will be no more by first-quarter 2008, forever rebranded together under the name Spike.com.
Apple In Talks For Movie Rental Service - The Financial Times breaks the news that Apple is in talks with the Hollywood majors about launching an online film rental service to challenge the likes of Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Netflix, Microsoft’s Xbox Live and just about anybody else in the movie rental/video-on-demand business. However, Apple would certainly have the edge in distribution through both its iTunes media store–which reaches millions worldwide–and its suite of consumer electronics offerings, like the iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, and its line of Mac PCs. Apple already sells movies from Walt Disney and Paramount on iTunes, but it doesn’t yet rent them out.
SpiralFrog Files For IPO - Remember SpiralFrog? It would be entirely understandable if you didn’t (in part because of the terrible name), but the New York-based company burst onto the scene last year with the promise of offering consumers free ad-supported music. SpiralFrog may have signed a few deals with big record labels, but the company has failed to get off the ground. It also needs to raise money. CNET says the company’s top dogs are now turning to an IPO–albeit through a 10SB filing, which is usually reserved for small companies with, um, no other options–to do the trick.
Web Advertising Weathers August Credit Storm - The argument has been made that a recession would be bad for Web advertising, and it certainly could be if advertisers decide to cut spending across the board, but the Silicon Valley Insider’s Peter Kafka says new data from Nielsen//NetRatings supports the counterargument that despite tough economic times, financial advertisers still have to spend to attract new customers–and it’s cheapest to attract new customers via the Web.
