Articles of the Day
Oversight A Must For Continued Growth Of Ad Exchanges - Earlier this year, Web giants like Microsoft, Yahoo and Google took part in an online feeding frenzy, gobbling up independent ad exchanges. As it turns out, concerns about marketplace competition, transparency and regulation were valid. “The three largest exchanges are now owned by the three largest sellers of online media,” noted one ad:tech attendee. “Should there be some kind of auditing or regulation?”
Wal-Mart to Reveal Holiday Promotions Online - Walmart.com CEO Raul Vazquez estimates many of the 10 million people who visit Walmart.com on Thanksgiving Day will end up in the store on Friday. “The same behavior driving Google’s growth reflects the increase in visitors we see on our Web site traffic,” he says.
Has Facebook Cracked the Code for Social Network Ads? - Marketers are considering the implication of Facebook’s new advertising platform. The social networking site’s expansion of “conversational” marketing opportunities for marketers will help turbo-charge the field, one marketer observes, because “a friend-to-friend recommendation is really about the strongest sales pitch a company can possibly have.”
Quigo Purchase Completes Strategy Shift for AOL - AOL on Wednesday completed the final piece in an ad network puzzle totaling $1 billion worth of acquisitions. The Time Warner company on Wednesday acquired Israel-based Quigo for an estimated $340 million, according to The Wall Street Journal, furthering its shift from a dial-up Internet service provider to an advertising services company. Quigo, a search and contextual advertising firm, is the fourth company AOL has bought this year and the third ad network. Mobile advertising firm Third Screen media and the behavioral targeting firm Tacoda are the other two.
Google Improves Site Targeting, Readies In-Game Ads - As ever, Google has a few announcements today, including an interesting tweak to the way it targets AdWords ads to Web pages. The search giant will now let advertisers choose specific subsections of sites that they want to target. As a result, Google is renaming its “site targeting” tactic “placement targeting.” Introduced a few years ago, so-called “site targeting” enabled advertisers on Google’s content network to target ads by site and demographic. Now, advertisers can choose specific sections of larger sites, like the sports pages of a news agency like Reuters, in addition to choosing a specific ad unit (such as a block of Google ads) on a particular Web page.
AzoogleAds Settles With Florida AG Over Online Ringtone Ads - AzoogleAds came to the attention of the Florida Attorney General’s office as part of a larger investigation into mobile services marketing. State authorities there continue to probe a host of other companies, including Think Partnership, Intermark Media, Media Breakaway, Traffix, W31 and Verisign’s m-Qube. The company promises that future online ads will clarify that the ringtone service it markets isn’t actually free.
Google Gives AdWords Branding Power with Placement Targeting - Google’s AdWords users can target individual sections of sites, such as the college basketball pages of a sports site or a chosen celebrity on a gossip site, in addition to the demographic targeting added in 2006. Users can purchase the ads on both a cost-per-click and the original cost-per-impression basis.
Online Travel Up, Customers Down - The number of North American consumers who take leisure trips is falling even as online travel revenue continues to climb, according to Forrester Research data cited in The New York Times. Forrester found that 9% fewer people will book travel online in 2007 compared to 2005. eMarketer senior analyst Jeffrey Grau said that the drop in online travel customers could prompt change in the industry.
OpenSocial Is Far From Open - Tech guru Tim O’Reilly loses his respect for Google’s so-called OpenSocial initiative following a conversation with Patrick Chanezon, the project’s developer advocate for the program. Incidentally, “open” is a misnomer, he says, because the API does not allow for data exchange between social networks. In other words, when you download an app for MySpace, you’d have to download it all over again at Bebo, and reenter the data. The applications do not communicate. You might ask: what, then, is the point of OpenSocial?
Facebook Ads Could Lead To Friend Cutback - In another New York Times piece on the advertising developments at Facebook, Laura Holson raises a good point about the potential for backlash when “friends” broadcast their favorite brands and purchases: it could very easily lead to people deleting friends, which by extension means fewer page views for Facebook.
Why the Republicans Are Snubbing GoogleClick - Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick continues to hit roadblocks. This week, twelve Republican members of the House sent a letter to the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection demanding a public hearing on the proposed deal, because they worry that “The privacy implications of such a merger are enormous.”
Will PE Money Return to Big Media & Entertainment Deals - The flow of PE-led buyouts in the media and entertainment field have certainly come to an abrupt halt, fueled by increase in deal multiples and the ongoing turmoil in the high-risk subprime mortgage space and this summer’s global credit crunch. But will the money start flowing back again? THR has a detailed story on it, ahead of the parent company Nielsen’s Media & Money conference in NYC this week (we will have detailed coverage from it). Deals are expected to resurface in 2008, but things will never be quite the same both in terms of deal size and buyout targets, the story suggests.
Quigo to be Acquired by AOL for $300 Million - Quigo, a New York/Israel-based company that specializes in ad targeting, is in the process of being acquired by AOL, according to a report in Haaretz, an Israeli daily newspaper. Time Warner Inc. is purchasing Quigo for $300 million in an attempt to better compete with Google and Yahoo.
PlattForm Holdings Inc. Acquires Beauty Inter-Network Co - PlattForm Holdings Inc., an Olathe, Kansas-based provider of Internet marketing and enrollment solutions to the post-secondary education industry, has acquired Beauty Inter-Network Co., a recruitment and enrollment lead generation company that publishes beautyschools.com and other websites for the education industry. No financial terms were disclosed. PlattForm is a portfolio company of Arlington Capital Partners.
LookSmart Announces Sale of FindArticles.com - LookSmart, Ltd., an online advertising and technology solutions company, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell the Company?s FindArticles.com property to CNET Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:CNET) in an all cash transaction valued at approximately $20.5 million.
Forbes Media Acquires Majority Stake in RealClearPolitics.com - Just in time for the upcoming stampede to the White House (aka, the presidential election), Forbes Media has acquired a 51% stake in RealClearPolitics.com. The Web site selects and publishes choice commentary, news, polling data, and links to important resources from all points of the political compass. RPC joins a growing Forbes digital network, which already includes Forbes.com, ForbesTraveler.com, ForbesAutos.com and Investopedia.com.
TechTarget Inc. has acquired KnowledgeStorm Inc - TechTarget Inc. (Nasdaq: TTGT) has acquired KnowledgeStorm Inc., an Alpharetta, Ga.-based provider of qualified leads for IT vendors. The deal is valued at approximately $58 million, including $52 million in cash and 359,820 shares of unregistered TechTarget common stock. KnowledgeStorm had raised over $16 million in VC funding since 1999, from firms like Apex Venture Partners, LiveOak Equity Partners, Sterling Partners, Imlay Investments, Gefinor Ventures and Total Technology Ventures.
Forbes Media has acquired Clipmarks - Forbes Media has acquired Clipmarks, a New York-based developer of an online service that lets users clip and share text and other content from Web pages. No financial terms were disclosed. Forbes Media was formed last summer by Forbes and Elevation Partners.
Behavioral Targeter AdKnowledge Buys Online Ad Network Media Run - Adknowledge, a Kansas City, MO-based behavioral targeter, has acquired the UK and Australian divisions of online ad network Media Run for an undisclosed sum. In those areas, Media Run will operate as AdKnowledge, while remaining under its original name in Italy and Asia. Overall, the company claims 3-plus billion ad impressions per month.
10-Q Watch: CNET: 15.6 Million Spent on Three Q3 Acquisitions - CNET (NSDQ: CNET) spent $27.4 million on seven acquisitions through the first nine months of the year, according to its 10-Q filed with the SEC Monday. (The breakdown: $24.6 million cash, $0.6 million in direct acquisition costs and $2.2 million in deferred consideration costs.) At the midpoint of the year, the company said it had acquired four companies for $11.8 million, meaning it’s spent $15.6 million on three deals since then. Though not mentioned by name in the filing, the three reported deals this quarter were sports video game site Sportsgamer.com, Chinese fashion site OnlyLady and the TechTracker family of IT-related sites.
High School Sports Social Net BeRecruited Gets Acquired By RVS Ventures - High School sports social net BeRecruited.com has been acquired by PE firm RVS Ventures. Financial terms were not disclosed. The investment company is headed by Raymond Sozzi and he will take the post of CEO of BeRecruited. As we’ve noted with last month’s purchase of online athletic community Schedule Star by Gannett, this past year has seen increased investment and acquisition activity for these kinds of high school sports social nets.
10-Q Watch: Yahoo: Q3 Acquisitions; Alibaba.com Stake - Through the first nine months of the year, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) spent $58 million on four deals described as asset acquisitions, according to the company’s latest 10-Q. As of Q307, the company had spent $54 million on three such acquisitions, with $4 million in spending unidentified. This may have been BuzzTracker, a news aggregator purchased in September. Yahoo also did two bigger deals, described as business combinations, worth $108 million during the quarter. Though unidentified, one of these deals was likely college sports network Rivals.com, which went for $100 million. Right Media also closed in the quarter, although that is mentioned separately.
