dave liu dot com

Connected Consumers Love Web 2.0, But Not On Mobile - Findings from a new Avenue A|Razorfish study confirm that brands and advertisers aiming to reach “connected consumers” need to focus on targeting their niche with easily distributed, customizable, socially charged content–but not necessarily on their mobile phones.                              

Turner Partners With Kaneva On Virtual World Extensions - Turner Broadcasting System’s New Products Group has signed a one-year deal with Kaneva to build and test virtual world extensions of its entertainment properties.                 

Industry Pros Weigh In On Yahoo’s Search Upgrade - Yahoo rolled out new search upgrades on Tuesday–giving consumers the option to refine queries on the fly with the Search Assist feature, as well as bundle images, video and other rich media content into the organic search results. It’s the blended search feature that’s got search pros talking.                    

Product Placement Moves Online - Although product placement has been around for a long time, it is taking on greater importance in the marketing mix as studio executives ponder their options in a shifting media landscape. Online properties are finding ways to leverage intense consumer interest in product placements. As mentioned previously, sites such as SeenON! and StarStyle offer visitors information about the apparel, accessories, furniture and gadgets that appear in the latest movies and on television shows.             

Retail E-Commerce Eyes Retention - E-commerce spending in the United States is expected to grow 18% in 2007 to $259 billion, reflecting increased consumer comfort with online shopping. That is almost $1 of every $10 spent across all retail channels. But with such growth comes higher shopper expectations. In a Q&A, eMarketer discussed e-commerce and retailer issues of the day with Scott Silverman, executive director of Washington-based online retail lobby Shop.org.          

Google to Hit $600 on Strong Web Spending - Unrealistic valuations in the blogosphere haven’t hurt Google shares in early morning trading on Wednesday, which continue their upward trajectory towards $600 per share. Reaching that milestone would be in line with Wall Street’s thinking, as 33 of 36 analysts recommended buying Google shares.                 

Microsoft Sees Future In Media - Thirty-two year old Microsoft Corp. has been a software company for most of its life, but media is its future, CEO Steve Ballmer said at a media event in Paris on Tuesday. As growth in operating system and desktop software slows, Microsoft expects that within four to 10 years, 25% of its revenues will come from advertising. Part of the reason for the change is the growth of free, ad-supported Web services offered by Google; consumers no longer need desktop software to write documents and create spreadsheets, which has left the technology giant searching for new sources of revenue. The other reason is opportunity: “All marketing will be digital sometime in the next 10 years,” said Ballmer.                      

Publishers Eyeing Blogs As Takeover Targets - The next Internet land grab could come from the blogging sector, as major publishers swoop in to take over the Web’s big name brand blogs. Many cover the tech sector: TechCrunch, GigaOm, Boing Boing, Ars Technica. Time Warner’s AOL, for example, recently bought the consumer technology blog, Engadget. Blogs have a terrific business model (the name brand ones do at least): They’re cheap to set up and run, reach large, loyal audiences and make money.           

Google Valuation Sparks Blog War - Silicon Valley Insider Henry Blodget, a former Wall Street analyst who was banned from the securities industry for life for giving Web companies’ valuations he knew were outrageous, started a blog war on Tuesday. He outlandishly predicted that Google, nearing $600 per share, could be on its way to $2,000. According to Blodget, “$2,000 a share would mean a market cap of about $750 billion, which-given a reasonable time horizon-just isn’t that far-fetched.”

Online Video, Local Search Drive 30% Internet Ad Growth: ZenithOptimedia - Online video and local search will drive a 30% growth in worldwide Internet ad spending to $33.72 billion this year, according to the latest forecast from ZenithOptimedia.                        

WPP In Talks With Blast Radius - Seeking additional new media assets, WPP is in talks with the Vancouver-based interactive shop Blast Radius, according to sources close to the deal. As of Monday, however, no agreement had been reached.                     

ComScore Launches Enhanced Search Analytics Service - A new suite of competitive search analytics tools from comScore allows companies to identify high-performing search terms on a site and category level, analyze searchers and specific terms by demographic segment, and determine prime keyword and search term competitors.              

Content Sponsorship Model Yields Huge Click-Through Gain - A recent campaign using Answers.com ‘Content Sponsorship’ ads garnered average click-through rates that were 300%-600% higher than those of the typical banner ad, according to a Media Contacts executive.               

TiVo Creates Unit To Help Direct Marketers - TiVo on Monday unveiled its latest attempt to endear itself to the advertising industry: the Interactive Direct Response Advertising Group, a unit that will help direct marketers better reach TiVo customers.                             

How To Save The Internet - The long-running debate over whether the over-extended Internet will one day slow to a crawl continues. Some experts say a crisis is looming and that the worldwide Web is even in need of replacing, while others, like networking giant Cisco Systems, believe their networking technology will help Internet Service Providers and others cope. Among those who believe in doom is ABI Research’s Stan Schatt, who says that increasing bandwidth demands will inevitably lead to a traffic crash.                

Yahoo Search Changes Won’t Improve Revenue - First thing’s first: Yahoo’s unveiled several new changes to Yahoo Search, adding video, audio and picture results to text searches, and drawing on user data collected across its sites to help refine searches. Considering that Yahoo has a larger breadth of content and a bigger overall user base (right now) than rivals Google and Ask.com, the changes could be significant. However, they’re not likely to help Yahoo deliver more revenue per search. According to a Compete study, Yahoo is already more effective at getting users to click on its results, but it simply can’t compete with Google when it comes to scale.                   

IAC Moves Into Social Gaming With iWon - The exhaustive social-networking trend continues: IAC/InterActive Corp. has added social media features to its iWon online gaming portal, announcing that it will allow consumers build to profiles, chat and use Facebook widgets on the site. As part of the online gaming site’s relaunch, IAC is incorporating a search toolbar that uses Ask’s search technology, part of a broader push to make Ask “the glue” that brings IAC’s otherwise disparate Web businesses together.

Facebook: New Threat to LinkedIn? - Now that Facebook has expanded beyond its college audience roots, the site is about to make a big push to capture a business audience as well. The social networking site’s “in the works” section states that it will soon allow members to organize contacts into groups and then choose which groups see what information. Fortune and other publications have interpreted this change as a direct challenge to LinkedIn because it will potentially let members create different profiles for business and social purposes. In other words, people will more easily be able to separate their personal lives from their business identities on the same site.

CBS ‘EyeLab’ Will Give Consumers Bite-Sized Clips - If someone’s going to be mashing up CBS content, it might as well be CBS. That’s the rationale behind “EyeLab,” a digital production studio just launched by the network to creatively edit its full-length shows, news programs, and sports coverage into bite-sized clips for a generation of YouTube-obsessed dabblers.                                                

Friendly’s iScream Attracts Younger Target - Friendly’s Restaurants tapped Valassis–known for its newspaper insert couponing–to create a summer campaign blending mobile, video and UGC. Called iScream, it successfully reached a 13- to-25-year-old target, and also demonstrated how Valassis is extending its business into digital media.                              

Citi Cautious About Advertising On Social Networks - Financial services giant Citi, which does considerable online advertising, is a long way from exploring opportunities involving consumer-generated content or social networking sites, despite other blue-chip brands dipping a toe in. The company is concerned about adversely affecting its brand value.                                

Web Video Viewers Logging More Hours - Time spent watching video on the Internet is increasing, according to a study sponsored by AOL and Google. Viewers said they still favor free ad-supported content. Three-quarters of online video viewers watch more video than they did a year ago, and more than one-half expect to watch even more next year, according to a study conducted by Taylor Nelson Sofres and sponsored by AOL and Google.             

Search Insider: Who’s The Best Facebook Fit? - In what’s become something of a quarterly ritual, Google and Microsoft are now dueling to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. The fight this time is over Facebook, for which Microsoft is reportedly looking to pay up to $500 million for a 5% stake — and over which pundits are on the lookout for a Google countermove. Let the games commence. But whether Facebook ultimately migrates towards Google, Microsoft, or neither, it’s still worth evaluating which of the two competitors could go furthest with the social network.                    

The Future Of Impulse Buying Is Mobile - Like the music being played at your local Starbucks? Well, starting tomorrow, you can instantly download any song you hear through iTunes, which has become free to access from Starbucks locations in New York and Seattle. The New York Times says the Apple-Starbucks partnership, announced several weeks ago, is part of a larger technological trend aimed at baiting the impulse buyer.                          

Facebook Meets VOD - TechCrunch UK has an interesting profile on UK-based Tape it Off The Internet, which it calls “Facebook meets TV on-demand.” Sort of. TIOTI indexes professionally produced TV content, but doesn’t wade into the murky waters of hosting it at the site. Instead, the startup sends users who click to watch a show to the primary source. So far, the site contains 75,000-plus TV shows and more than 500,000 episodes.           

New Line Of Thinking Means Good Times for eBay, Amazon - Amazon.com and eBay have enjoyed a solid year on Wall Street, thanks in part to a change in the way financial analysts and investors assess their performance, says The Wall Street Journal. Both are members of the Internet’s Old Guard; as such, their growth is slower than other companies, prompting analysts to weigh metrics like operating margins and revenue per user more heavily.               

NBC, Other Networks Enjoy iTunes Leverage - It’s less than a month after NBC decided to pull its new season shows from Apple’s iTunes, and the media giant’s executives say they’re just not worried about the companies’ inability to come to an agreement on pricing. “We’d love to figure out something with Apple, but frankly, we have a lot of other alternatives,” J.B. Perrette told Wired.