This makes a great deal of sense for both A9, which was having trouble getting traffic, and Amazon, which has a great deal of traffic and is apparently seeking ways to expand beyond its core e-commerce model.
A9 has the technology and imagery and Amazon has the brand and the traffic. It will be very …

Following Scripps, Gannett Buys PointRoll. PointRoll creates rich media ad banners. Speculation is that the deal was worth US$100 million. Here's the Financial Times on the TM buying IM trend (traditional media swallowing Internet media).
More consolidation/acquisitions on the way.

Articles today in the WSJ and Friday in the DM News argue that the recent acquisitions of Shopzilla and Shopping.com reflect that online comparison shopping is hot and speculate about further consolidation. Empirical and anecdotal evidence suggests that while many consumers visit these sites, which are PPC lead generators for their merchants, many more use …

AOL distribution brings a report of success with Ingenio's pay-per-call for a Cruise Operator. Calls are ultimately a key to local for SMEs, but this model will likely be adopted by large advertisers (i.e., the cruise operator) sooner than mass adoption by SMEs.
Note that in the article the interviewee sees pay-per-call as something of …

Kevin Ryan has a good column today summarizing consumer research about awareness and attitudes toward online advertising. Are consumers interested in online ads as additional, relevant "content," or are they duped by them and confused about what is advertising and what is not?
In a very strange juxtaposition, Mediapost reported the results of two contradictory …

Because "war" is the metaphor business journalists like to use for competition and almost everything else. . . welcome to "Map Wars." (Cue John Williams' music.)
According to Battelle and SiliconValleyWatcher, Google is going to "A9" its mapping but with laser-generated 3-D imagery. (I use "A9" as a verb to mean drive trucks around and map …

Riddle: How is advertising like politics? According to MediaSpan CMO Mark Zagorski, they're both local. And he sees more geo-targeting in the future.
We obviously agree that local is very important, but it's complex and there are major issues in terms of bringing SMEs online and in terms of inventory before promise of local can …

While IAC has said it's basically done with major acquisitions after Ask.com, consider that it just sold its stake in Vivendi Universal for US$3.4 billion.
Although the deal is complex and convoluted, it should give IAC the ability to do just what it says it isn't likely to do — make another major acquisition. For …

Not exactly. There are profits this time around and consumers have embranced the Internet. But consider this:
Google has a market cap of just over US$81 billion. In 2004, the company had revenues of just over US$3 billion. By contrast, Time Warner had revenues of US$42 billion in 2004 and has a market cap of …

Why anyone is paying $61.90 per month for broadband connectivity now that SBC and Yahoo! are offering it at 15 bucks a month is a fine question. I pay my bill to the same company Greg does and I pay only $42.95 per month.
So why does Greg continue to pay $20 more per month? …

There's an interesting piece, "What eBay Could Learn From Craigslist," in the NY Times. The piece contrasts the growth curves and cost structures of the two companies. It implies certain principles could be extracted from the experience of Craigslist that could be applied to other online businesses, specifically eBay in this case.
That may be …

No real surprises here:
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) today announced that Internet advertising totaled over $2.8 billion for the first quarter of 2005 making this the highest reported quarter in nine consecutive growth quarters. Q1 2005 revenues represent a 26 percent increase over Q1 2004 ($2.2 billion) and a 4.3% increase …

Today I tripped over an offer from Weather.com for a personalized weather report called weather.com “gold�.
For $19.95, weather.com gold will get you more speed for downloading radar maps, the ability to customize “yourâ€� weather page and add your exact location (house or office) to the radar maps; view weather in 11 other cities of …

Right on the heels of eBay's costly acquisition of Shopping.com, Cincinnati-based, "diversified media" company E.W. Scripps buys Shopzilla (formerly BizRate). The price was reportedly US$525 million in cash.
Scripps owns newpapers, cable networks and local TV affiliates. Now it's made a high-profile purchase in the competitive shopping search arena.
Shopzilla/BizRate is consistently in the top two …

As blogged by Greg Sterling earlier today, E.W. Scripps, the Cincinnati based media company known by some for its sponsorship of the National Spelling Bee, announced plans to buy online shopping site â€" Shopzilla for an estimated $525 million. Scripps is making a bet on the future growth of online shopping â€" today estimated at …

Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Chairman of the NY Times Co., spoke at the 58th World Newspaper Congress in Korea, which was covered in The Korea Herald. According to the article, Sulzberger argued that the Internet did not represent a crisis for newspapers, but rather a growth opportunity.
That's partly true. But Sulzberger's upbeat assessment doesn't acknowledge …

Why did it do this?

More distribution for eBay merchants
Popularity of comparison shopping/shopping search
Moving beyond the auction model
ePinions reviews/ratings/community
The growth imperative — its stock has taken a beating in the past few quarters for not showing Google-like growth. And its umpteenth effort to raise sellers' fees has met with a mutinous response
It's still in a …

AdMission Corp. issued a press release that announces the granting of a patent for its "media-submission" technology, which is in widespread use in both the online newspaper and directory industries.
The wording of the patent is fairly broad and could hold significant implications for numerous ad networks and publishers in the market.
From the release:
AdMission Corporation, …

The Kelsey Group agrees that it is important to include IYP and local search products offered by publishers to help national advertisers make informed local Yellow Pages buying decisions. Our concern was that a method for including online look-ups could not be agreed upon quickly and that the syndicated program would be slowed down or …

AOL’s MapQuest unit announced it was going “back to the future� today with plans to publish printed maps and guide books, and AOL announced the formation of MapQuest Publishing business unit. Perry Evans, CEO of LocalMatters, Inc. must be having a good laugh.
Perry used to work at R.R. Donnelley & Sons' original mapping company …