Articles of the Day
eBay to Revisit Acquisition Targets - eBay says it may acquire firms that were previous targets, if current US market conditions keep share prices low. eBay’s VP of corporate development, Lorraine McDonough tells Information Week that eBay turned down good strategic deals in the past due to high prices. “With the market readjustment in 2008, maybe we will have the opportunity to revisit some of those,” she says. No details were given on possible targets. The online auction giant closed a number of medium-sized acquisitions over the last year, implying that a truly market-driven sale will be for a large sum. In Jan, eBay bought fraud detection provider, Fraud Sciences, for USD169m in cash. In Apr 2007 it paid a rumoured USD40m to USD45m for online discovery service, StumbleUpon. Meanwhile, in Jan 2007, it acquiring online ticket exchange Stubhub for USD310m cash.
Media, Interactive Services Propel WPP Growth - Social Nets Prove A Boon For PR, Not Advertising - Media investment management, as well as digital and interactive media services, continued to show the strongest growth of any of U.K. ad giant WPP Group’s marketing and communications services during 2007. According to year-end results released early this morning, media services revenues rose 14% over 2006, outpacing WPP’s overall reportable revenue growth rate of 4.7%.
Google Unveils Automatic Matching - Google is quietly rolling out a new program that addresses the drop in click-through growth outlined in a comScore report earlier this week. Called Automatic Matching, the new feature would use up search marketers’ unspent advertising budgets. Automatic Matching is currently in a limited beta test and gives marketers the opportunity to opt-out at any time. Where AdWords gives marketers control of their keyword budgets, the new service gives Google more control. Automatic Matching takes advertisers that haven’t maxed out their budgets and expands their list of keywords to include terms Google deems as relevant. Since Google runs both AdWords and the Google Search engine, the search giant would be pretty good at choosing keywords for advertisers-which could raise ethical quest.
Live Video On YouTube This Year - First rumored in January, YouTube is definitely doing live video, and it’s happening this year. Sarah Meyers got the scoop, transcript as follows care of NewTeeVee: Meyers: “When are you guys gonna do live video on YouTube?” Chen: “2008. We’ll do it this year. “Live video is just something that we’ve always wanted to do, we’ve never had the resources to do it correctly, but now with Google, we hope to actually do it this year.” Now for the guessing game: which live video startup will fold first once YouTube dominates the market? YouTube will be last to market, but the same momentum that has seen YouTube dominate video will now be applied to live video. Like video, content creators want to be on the service that gives them the most exposure, no matter how good the alternatives area (after all, YouTube doesn’t offer the best quality video). YouTube already has the user base; live video streamers will flock to YouTube like a moth to a flame.
IAC’s Gaming Site InstantAction Site To Spend $50M-$100M - That’s a biggish number for IAC, currently in the throes of a split, and major layoffs from the Ask.com side of the business. Its quasi-professional 3-D gaming site InstantAction is about to launch, and the company will spend $50 million-$100 million on the site, reports Variety. The goal is to offer games a bit deeper than online casual games, though not as involved as console games either. The new site comes out of its majority stake in game developer GarageGames.com, which it bought last year.
comScore: About That Google Sell-Off We Started; No Slowdown For Google Or Online Ad Industry - A comScore report indicating a decline in Google’s January click-through rates helped send the search giant’s stock similarly downward earlier this week. Aside from shaking up investors, the comScore report also fed fears of that the online advertising market was tanking as well. Having seen the way the numbers were interpreted by the industry, comScore CEO Magid Abraham has weighed in and issued a memo explaining what its report did and didn’t mean. As comScore’s January 2008 qSearch paid click report showed, Google experienced a 7 percent sequential decline vs. December ‘07. It also showed flat annual growth in paid clicks for Google (NSDQ: GOOG). Moreover, the number of paid clicks per Google search query fell by 8 percent from December to January - which led some to conclude that consumers are clicking less on search ads, possibly indicating a reduced desire to keep up their purchases in the face of a sputtering economy.
RealNetworks annouced it has acquired Trymedia - Casual games syndication technology firm, Trymedia, formerly a division of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Macrovision, provides casual game syndication and monetization platforms for online publishers, retailers and game developers including AOL, Yahoo and IGN. Terms not disclosed.
Hellman & Friedman has agreed to pay $2.4 billion for Getty Images Inc. (NYSE:GYI) - Seattle-based creator and distributor of visual content and other digital media; the price includes the assumption of existing debt. Barclays Capital, GE Commercial Finance and RBS Greenwich Capital are providing debt financing.
Microsoft Acquires Israeli Startup YaData - Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Israeli daily business newspaper Globes is reporting that YaData went for between $20 million and $30 million. YaData’s technology, which Microsoft is expected to implement, is designed to help advertisers discover original customer segments online. YaData, founded in July 2006, is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel and has received funding from Israeli venture capital funds Giza and Ofer Hi-Tech.
TheKnot Acquires TheBump - TheKnot, the marriage and baby lifestyle online media firm, has done another small acquisition: it has bought out The Bump Media, publisher of TheBump local magazine and website dedicated to pregnancy and first-time parents. Financials were not released. TheBump local magazines are guides to the local maternity and baby scene in 11 major tier markets like Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, and others. This new acquisition will complement the company’s TheNestBaby.com offering.
