Articles of the Day
New Yahoo Dashboard Handicaps Candidates for Political Junkies - The new feature pulls polling and funding data together in one handy Web guide, revealing some intriguing insights about the top candidates’ current odds of winning their party nomination, their buzz quotients and the depth of their pockets.
NBA Extends New-Media Strategy With Joost Partnership - The Joost NBA Channel will feature highlights and complete replays of classic games. “We want to go where the eyeballs are,” said Attila Gazdag, NBA’s senior vice president, global media distribution.
Marketers Missing Out on Word of Mouth? - Advice from friends, family and experts is consistently cited as an important factor in consumer-purchase decisions. And the Internet has made it easier to spread word of mouth quickly. Yet fewer than one-quarter of marketers surveyed in September and October 2007 by Ketchum and the USC Annenberg Strategic Public Relations Center for their “Media, Myths & Realities” report said they had a word-of-mouth program in place.
Facebook Beacon: What Should Have Been - An unnamed source discusses the shame that was (is?) Facebook’s Beacon and posits an interesting theory on the right way to roll out a peer-to-peer recommendation system. For starters, piling such a system on its users without first making an attempt to warm them up to the idea was foolish. If Facebook had offered a non-commercial version of the program, which tracks your purchases and then broadcasts that information to your friends via your profile news feed, focusing on what users published themselves–like video clips, for example–Beacon might not have been so bad.
U.S. Deal Shuts Out Online Gambling Cos - Online gambling companies in the European Union were dealt another harsh blow yesterday after regulators agreed to a compensation deal with the U.S. for shutting foreign companies out of the country’s gambling industry. Sadly for gaming companies, they benefited in no way from the trade. The U.S. extended opportunities for European businesses to compete in the following sectors: U.S. postal and courier, research and development, storage and warehouse. Members of the disappointed online gaming industry said the EU had now lost the chance to open up the $15 billion a year U.S. gambling market.
Confusion Over Web Measurement Curtails Ad Spending - The online advertising industry continues to grow apace, expected to hit $20 billion this year; yet Web executives say the Internet ad biz is under-performing, due to unreliable ratings. Web measurement is a complicated issue. Whereas TV and radio have one main source for ratings, there are several on the Web. And not only does their data conflict, there are disagreements over what measurement criteria to use-is it page views, monthly uniques, click streams, or average time spent per user?
Source: Digg hires bank, hoping to sell for $300 million or more - It’s been a little more than a month since the last rumors surfaced about social news site Digg trying to sell itself for at least $300 million.A reliable source just confirmed the company’s plans, noting the company has hired Allen & Company, a tiny but influential private investment firm, to help broker a deal. The asking price is still $300 million, the source said.
Google Wants To Index Your Videos - Google has launched Sitemaps for Video, an extension of their webmaster sitemaps program that will assist webmasters in having their videos indexed by Google. To be indexed, webmasters must create a sitemap page that provides a list of videos on each site that is compliant with Googles sitemaps protocol, which since November 2006 is standardized with Yahoo and Microsoft as well. Webmasters then simply submit the URL of their video sitemap to Google for indexing.
eBay’s Angry Sellers - Sellers no longer need eBay like they once did. They’re finding more success at their own sites and third-party retailers like Amazon.com. Meanwhile, eBay has raised its seller fees, angering sellers, who have increasingly become “disenchanted” with the online auctioneer. Last week, the NYT said Amazon should buy eBay. “EBay has gone from the channel of first resort to the channel of last resort” for merchants, says Scot Wingo, chief executive of Chanel Advisor, a company that helps large firms sell through eBay and other online retailers.
Automakers Will Steer More Spend From TV and Print Toward Digital - Next year could be a banner year for auto advertising — online. Beleaguered U.S. automakers are in for another rough road in 2008, with Detroit worst hit. Unit sales are expected to fall below 16 million, and researchers are predicting ad spending will be flat to down. To move that metal, experts believe the industry will continue to put a lot more emphasis on digital and out-of-home. Network TV dollars also are predicted to migrate to spot as regional dealer associations take a firmer grip on spending.
Web Research Could Gain Clout Via Virtual Currency - Online research — derided by some as a hotbed of professional respondents giving unreliable answers — could get a second life thanks to social media and virtual currency. Real money has proven a real problem for online research, helping breed professional respondents and incentives for people to cheat so they can qualify for cash payments — not to mention that it gets expensive to pay hundreds or thousands of people real money to take each survey.
Digital M&A Trends for 2008 - Article predicting M&A trends for the digital space in 2008.
