VeriSign, the e-commerce infrastructure provider, announced that Mother's Day-related spending hit US$4.4 billion this year, during the period from April 25 through May 8. That represented a 24% increase over Mother's Day 2004. I didn't see a detailed category breakdown (i.e., flowers vs. apparel, etc.), although apparently jewelry purchases increased by 79%.
So does this …

At any rate, what is germane to this blog is that Harris asked about online search engines, Internet service providers and online retailers, all of whom did pretty well with 79%, 72% and 70% of adults saying they are doing a good job of customer service. Somehow comparing search engines and ISPs with packaged food …

Google acquires Dodgeball. More from Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal. Yet more from ClickZ and from PC World.
Twenty-four hours ago almost no one had heard of this company/site and now you can't get it to come up 'cause it's probably being overloaded with hits.
Unfortunately, Google declined to comment to me beyond what's …

The nature of local search and its potential for usurpring the strong position Yellow Pages holds here in Europe dominated the morning session at the EADP’s spring meeting in Rome. Jean-Marie Guille, who runs online directories for France’s PagesJaunes, laid out with great clarity the situation publisher finds itself in as local search emerges in …

Google CEO Eric Schmidt told shareholders in Google's first annual meeting that the company would focus on developing overseas markets, where growth is outstripping the U.S.
Approximately 66% of Google revenues are generated from U.S.-based advertisers. Currently, most of its international revenues come from Europe and Japan. (Google recently got formal approval to begin operating …

Take a look at Chris Gaither's LA Times now widely circulated piece about how the Web is stealing advertising from TV. Competition from online and cable, declining audiences, rising prices and a lack of accountability are a kind of perfect storm of factors putting pressure on broadcast TV ad rates if not advertising in the …

The Gray Lady will introduce "TimesSelect" in September. TimesSelect will require users to pay $49.95 annually to get access to "Op-Ed and news columnists on NYTimes.com, easy and in-depth access to The Times's online archives, early access to select articles on the site, as well as other exciting features."
Subscribers get automatic access to the content …

Largely because the Internet (and cable, which started it all), television will be forced to move from reach to targeting. (See related online broadband "channels.")
It's somewhat more complicated than that statement suggests, but, directionally, that's what's going to happen. This is something we discussed on our TV panel at Drilling Down.
The TV audience is …

Saw this today: Lostclicks.com. It's been set up by the lawyers in the click fraud class action.

The two U.S.-based trademark actions against Google (Geico, American Blinds) are being allowed to proceed to discovery. Discovery is a phase of litigation after the initial documents are filed that requires the parties to exchange information and, as the term suggests, generally involves the unearthing of facts to determine whether a case will go …

Although it was announced in January, Yahoo! has formally rebranded Overture as Yahoo! Search Marketing (wisely apparently dropping the "solutions" from the name [YSMS]).
Local figures prominently on the new site.

Here is a snippet of what we have to say about the Yell acquisition of TransWestern Publishing in an Advisory that will be issued tomorrow to clients of The Kelsey Report: "…a private equity buyer might have found it difficult to increase [TransWestern's] value through new efficiencies. Instead, it would have faced the prospect of …

Yell (owner of U.S. directory publisher YellowBook USA) has entered into an agreement to buy TransWestern. Here's the press release.
More later.

The spin being given to a new report by Pew and marketing firm BuzzMetrics entitled, “Buzz, Blogs and Beyond: The Internet and the National Discourse in the Fall of 2004" is that blogs have not displaced traditional media in terms of influence. (That's the clear expectation based on all the hype blogs have received.)
So blogs …

There's a way in which the breakdown of traditional advertising (at least on TV) may result in more interesting/thoughtful ads online. Two such examples are BMW's "Respect" campaign and the parody film "Store Wars" promoting organic food.
This is ad content as entertainment. But they're very creative and, in the case of the latter, very …

Here's the online moving offline — "podcasting" on local San Francisco radio. CNET has the story.

InfoSpace launched a new version of its Dogpile metasearch engine.
The new site, which is cleaner, more prominently highlights the fact that it delivers results from Google, Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves and also suggests ("Different Engines, Different Results") that it delivers more comprehensive information than these individual engines.
Metasearch, though it has obvious benefits, is …

From the AOL press release:
Reuters and AOL's Singingfish announced today that the industry-leading Singingfish video and audio search engine will have access to Reuters extensive video content. Hundreds of breaking and archived news clips produced by Reuters global news network will now be easily accessible via the multimedia search engine.
This and other deals recently …

The question is, why can’t the big telco publishers participate in the revenue growth? If the U.S. Military Academy that trained Generals Grant and Lee can change to meet the needs of their country, surely telco publishers can change to get back on a growth path. Companion books, IYP, larger ad items, awareness products and …

I read today about a very interesting experiment that the Boston Globe, which is owned by the NY Times, is trying. According to Editor & Publisher, The Globe is going to auction the front half-page ad in its Sunday jobs section.
That's the newspaper, not Boston.com.
Inspired by the Internet and the auction ad model, …