Articles of the Day
Google Defends DoubleClick Deal As Benefit To Industry - In a hearing before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, Google’s legal counsel defended the search giant’s purchase of the leading ad serving network as a deal that would benefit the industry rather than stifle competition. Begging to differ was Microsoft, whose acquisition of aQuantive is already a done deal.
Microsoft Expands Search - Still intent on capturing market share from Google and others, Microsoft has expanded the scope of pages spidered by its search engine by 400%, revamped its query response technology, and deepened the breadth of its core verticals–including health, local, shopping, and entertainment.
Marketers Bank on Google Competitors To Increase Search Share: Study - New data from MarketingSherpa’s annual Search Marketing Benchmark Guide found that while most search marketers think they get the most bang for their buck with Google, ROI expectations for their investments with Yahoo, MSN and Ask’s search offerings are on the rise.
Microsoft Extends Into TV Initiatives - Microsoft will begin marketing media extenders to enable Web content viewing on the TV and also announced “Internet TV” with ads powered by YuMe.
Sony Execs Open Studio For Digital Content - “Non-traditional” studios focused on content for the digital age are popping up left and right. Continuing the trend, a couple of Sony Pictures execs, Michael Wayne and Chris Kimbell, have launched a studio named Deca to identify, develop, finance, market, and distribute interactive entertainment concepts and properties across emerging media platforms.
Panel Talks Around Question Of Interactive Leadership - What does it take to be a leader in interactive advertising these days? Good question–and one that did not necessarily get answered during Thursday’s AOL-sponsored Advertising Week discussion on the topic. But one thing was apparent: Buying up as many digital ad properties as possible isn’t a bad start.
Hollywood Goes Online - Some film industry pundits feel Hollywood is reeling down. The key revenue streams that have traditionally driven the Hollywood economy—box office receipts and DVD sales and rentals—have hit a plateau. “In 2006, studios spent an average of 3.7% of their marketing budgets on Internet advertising,” Mr. Verna said. “While that is a small fraction, it is on the increase, and eMarketer projects that by 2011, an average of 11% of film marketing budgets will go toward new media channels.”
AOL Preparing For Advertising IPO? - Time Warner may be preparing to spin off AOL’s advertising businesses through an IPO early next year. All of those businesses have been grouped together under the name “Platform A,” which includes the collection of outward-looking ad networks that AOL has bought over the past few years: Advertising.com, Tacoda, Third Screen Media, Lightningcast, and AdTech.
CBS EyeLab Offers Short Clips - To cater to what it believes is the short attention span of online audiences, CBC Corp. today is launching CBS EyeLab, a digital-production studio that will create and distribute short clips cut together from the network’s most popular shows. Preliminary network research shows that less than one-third of CBS’ Web audience is interested in watching full-length episodes of shows online.
Microsoft Updates MSN Video Platform - Microsoft is rolling out a new version of its video service across its Web properties — including a range of fresh ad formats — to take a larger share of the booming online advertising market. The company will introduce the video capability “horizontally” across its entire MSN network as well as to Windows Live, the personalized Web page users can set up which includes its instant messenger. Microsoft is also unveiling three new video advertising formats that will work in conjunction with the new video player services. Advertisers will be able to choose pre-rolls — ads that run before a user watches a piece of video content — a format that Google decided against when it unveiled its first in-video advertising for YouTube clips. The second format is a large box-like ad that slides out of the side of the video player, and the third is a smaller banner-style advert that drops down from the bottom of the video player.
Note To Small Businesses: If You Get Indexed, They Will Come - A recent study by Opus Research found that 59% of small business owners do NO online marketing. Clearly video and rich media may be out of their budget range - but not even a lousy PPC campaign or blog? What about search engine optimization?
Marchex acquires VoiceStar for $28MM - Marchex Inc., a local online advertising company and publisher of local content, has entered into an agreement to acquire VoiceStar, a call-based advertising services firm in a $28 million deal. The acquisition extends Marchex’s technology offering from search and online into voice-based services. Marchex will pay about $20 million in transaction consideration and $8 million in company investment for the acquisition, which is expected to be completed in October. The transaction consideration consists of about $12.9 million in cash consideration and Marchex will issue about $7.1 million in restricted stock that is subject to vesting over two and a half years from closing to certain employees of VoiceStar. In addition company investment consists of $8 million relating to products, infrastructure, human resources and other items through 2008.
Sugar Publishing Acquires Social Shopping Pioneer ShopStyle.com; Changes Company Name to Sugar Inc. - Sugar Publishing announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire ShopStyle, the leading social shopping website for women who love fashion. ShopStyle will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Sugar Publishing and continue to operate independently at ShopStyle.com. The company also announced today plans to change its name to Sugar Inc. to better reflect its growing reach and expansion over the past year.
New Motion merging with Traffix - It’s rare that a firm with bulletin board-traded stock picks off a Nasdaq company, but it happened Thursday, Sept. 27, when mobile entertainment company New Motion Inc. agreed to buy interactive marketing company Traffix Inc. in a deal originally valued at $159 million. Shareholders of Pearl River, N.Y.-based Traffix are set to receive 0.683 of a share of New Motion for every share of Traffix they own. At that exchange rate, shares of Traffix were valued at $10.59 based on New Motion’s closing price of $15.50 a share on Wednesday, more than double Traffix’s closing price of $4.76 on Wednesday. Traffix shareholders will own 45% of the merged company.
RealNetworks Buys Supplier Of Online Game Tools - RealNetworks Inc. has reached an agreement to acquire Game Trust Inc., as part of a plan to marry its growing games business to social-networking capabilities. A person familiar with the matter said RealNetworks is paying about $20 million to acquire Game Trust of New York, a start-up that supplies tools to online game sites that let them add social-networking features such as chat, multiplayer gaming capabilities and competitive tournaments. Game Trust’s customers include Time Warner Inc.’s America Online and Miniclip Ltd., a European games site.
