Articles of the Day
AOL And Verizon In Exclusive Online Ad Deal — AOL has signed with Verizon as its exclusive online ad partner, responsible for all of the mobile operator’s online ads, reports Reuters. The deal marks a boost for AOL’s Platform-A advertising unit, at a time when AOL is due to be broken into two separate business units. The move, which is yet to be officially confirmed, comes a week after Verizon launched a lawsuit against AOL’s parent company, Time Warner over competition issues to do with each firm’s cable TV operations. The agreement reportedly covers all of Verizon’s online ad inventory, as well as most of Verizon Wireless’ web catalogue. The deal, agreed for an undisclosed price, lets AOL represent all Verizon ad space. The deal comes at a time when AOL has been subject to constant rumours that it may come to a merger agreement with Yahoo!. In an effort to avoid Microsoft’s USD44.6bn hostile takeover, Yahoo! has said it is looking for strategic alternatives to the deal, with reports last week that it is close to signing with AOL.
Adobe TV Signs Content Deal With Splash Media — Adobe has signed a partnership deal with Splash Media to produce content for Adobe TV, a free online video resource which launched this week. Dallas-based Splash Media will produces training videos and tutorials for the Adobe TV platform, designed to teach users how to use Adobe software, such as Photoshop. More than 100 training segments have been licensed to Splash Media to appear on the Adobe TV platform. These will be created by xTrain, a Splash Media business unit. The original series tiles include ‘Dr. Brown’s Photoshop Laboratory’, web design guide ‘Taming the Web’ and Flash media instruction ‘Flash in a Flash’.
Mozilla Releases Mobile Firefox Prototype — Mozilla is looking to put Firefox on handheld devices after unveiling a mobile prototype of the web browser, code-named ‘Fennec’. The pre-Alpha software, targeted towards developers, can be downloaded now from Mozilla’s website. The prototype is built on the same core as Firefox 3. The browser is designed for use on Nokia N810 mobiles and is reportedly six times faster than the device’s native browser. Future mobile Firefox users can look forward to a variety of innovative features, including touchscreen support, improvements in URL entry and navigation between multiple pages. Mozilla plans to collect developer feedback before committing to an alpha version of the software.
Rubicon Project Takes On Google For Free Ad Serving — Google dipped its toe into the free ad-serving market when it rolled out the DoubleClick-backed Google Ad Manager service in March, but the giant is far from the leader in what is an increasingly crowded space. Companies like Exponential Interactive and OpenX already offer free ad serving, tracking and reporting, and now there’s a newcomer that aims to take on Google: The Rubicon Project. Los Angeles-based Rubicon’s new Ad Network Ad Server is compatible with more than 300 ad networks–including Google’s AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, as well as networks with CPC, CPM and CPA-based pricing. The platform offers publishers the ability to serve and track ads across multiple networks, with a point-and-click dashboard interface that allows them to pull performance reports from each network.
MSN To Consider Domain Age of Inbound Links — Bill Slawski digs into a new patent application from Microsoft that aims to include the age of the domains that link to a given Web site as part of the site’s overall ranking criteria.The patent, called “Ranking Domains Using Domain Maturity” was published last week (but filed in late 2006), and assumes that newer domains have a higher likelihood of being spam and/or being part of a link farm–and should be judged accordingly. Thus, sites with a high influx of links from older domains would ultimately be ranked higher than sites with a host of links from newer domains.
Salesforce.com Becomes Sales Channel, Showcase For Google Software Applications — Salesforce.com Inc.’s online software service is becoming a showcase for Google Inc.’s e-mail and other widely used applications, deepening a relationship that has spurred speculation Google eventually will buy its smaller partner. Besides selling Google’s programs to its 41,000 business customers, Salesforce.com will integrate the suite of applications into its own service, which helps companies track and identify customers’ needs.The agreement to be announced Monday builds upon several years of collaboration between Salesforce.com and Google, which are trying to persuade more businesses to subscribe to software services over Internet connections instead of buying programs that must be installed on individual computers.
Nets Looking To Extract More Money From Online Video — Broadcasters are still playing the waiting game with online video. The major networks–NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox–have extended their professionally produced shows to the Web, but audiences are still small. According to comScore Media Metrix, ABC.com led the pack in February with 8.5 million unique views of its online video lineup, followed by NBC.com with 7.9 million. By comparison, a popular TV show like CBS’s “CSI” regularly reaches twice as many people in a single episode. In the meantime, the challenge for broadcasters is to make online video advertising as effective as it can be without cannibalizing on the real moneymakers, traditional TV ratings and DVD sales. But at the same time, they’re focused on extracting more money from each online user. Online video ads are interactive, offer better measurement and can lead directly to sales or conversions; because of this, the networks have started charging more per thousand online views (between $35 and $50 according to The Associated Press) than over the airwaves, where the average CPM is $25.
Jingle Seeks To Sell Itself For USD175m (Rumor) — Ad-supported free director provider Jingle Networks is seeking to sell itself for USD175m, according to an unconfirmed report on tech blog ValleyWag. Google, Microsoft and AT&T - which all own directory services - are said to be preparing bids. A source, however, adds that by the look of Jingle’s numbers, its worth maybe closer to USD90m. Launched in California in 2005, Jingle has already raised as much as USD73m in four rounds of funding. The 1-800-Free-411 directory makes revenue by placing targeted ads within phone-calls. It became profitable in Mar this year, according to a report on VentureBeat. ValleyWag, however, says the company is believed to have spent all the funding and is in debt.
Former AKQA Execs Raise USD30m To Launch Digital Ad Shop — Two former senior execs of interactive marketing firm AKQA, J. Pereira and Andrew O’Dell, have raised USD30m in a first funding round to launch a new ad agency that will offer both traditional and digital services. The pair says it may raise an additional USD70m from Brazilian investment fund ABC International, which led the first round according to some reports. Based in San Francisco with 15 employees, Pereira O’Dell plans to grow by acquisitions to create a “network of creative shops”, reports The Wall Street Journal. Targets could include PR and production companies including Anomaly, which, they say, “has a model we like”. The founders, however, are not interested in becoming an ad network, and do not intend to follow in the footsteps of aQuantive in acquiring tech firms.
