Articles Archive for July 2005
Online/Interactive »
Here's the press release. Here's the after-hours performance.
Even though Google beat estimates, expectations were really really high. Maybe everyone will take a deep breath now.
Online/Interactive »
According to Amy Healy of the YPA, the public policy committee covered this topic in its Las Vegas meeting. She said that there are towns that have "do not deliver" proposals pending, but they stemmed from an effort to reduce litter. "This is the first one to our knowledge that stems from an unsolicited advertising …
Online/Interactive »
Idealab's new search engine, Snap.com, offers advertisers a cost per action model and is presenting itself to would-be search-engine marketers (and those using existing PPClick models) as an antidote to click fraud.
The notion of "action" varies by business model — it can be a conversion, a registration, a download or any other event defined …
Online/Interactive »
"In the three short days that we owned [Shopzilla], the business contributed about a million dollars in revenue and about $350,000 in segment profits," said Scripps CEO Ken Lowe (quoted in MediaPost).
Scripps bought Shopzilla for US$500+ million in June.
Here's the earnings press release.
Online/Interactive »
This is a potentially big deal, although there were many such free Web site offerings as recently as 2000-2001. To my knowledge, all of them failed.
But none of them were Yahoo!, which can subsidize the service as something of a "loss leader." And the market is now ripe for this offering: http://local.yahoo.com/freesite.
Quick thoughts …
Online/Interactive »
In the emerging tradition of "old media" buying "new media," Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. announced today that it was acquiring Intermix Media Inc., which owns the wildly popular MySpace.com (the new "it" site for the youth demographic).
According to comScore, MySpace ranks at No. 30 in overall Web traffic.
This April, Rupert Murdoch told the …
Online/Interactive »
I got a press call today about Blinkx's newly announced RSS video/multimedia feed. That quickly led to a broader discussion about video search and the online advertising marketplace.
Blinkx is an impressive upstart that has, through scrappy innovation, been able to put itself in contention with the likes of AOL, Google and Yahoo! in …
Online/Interactive »
Successor to Friendster among the highly coveted youth demographic, MySpace seems to have found a business model. Sites such as LinkedIn and Insider Pages have combined social networking with "traditional" models, such as classifieds and directory advertising. However, MySpace has evolved into something different — based chiefly on the connection between the music industry and …
Online/Interactive »
A9.com, the search subsidiary of e-commerce giant Amazon, has launched a Yellow Pages/local search directory
A9.com, the search subsidiary of e-commerce giant Amazon, has launched a Yellow Pages/local search directory that features millions of photo images of businesses and buildings in major U.S. cities, including New York, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles, among …
Online/Interactive »
New text messaging and other upgrades from Yahoo! on the Mobile-Local front.
Here's the official statement.
Online/Interactive »
The Online Publishers Association (OPA) released a study that showed the ascendancy of video viewing online. Rich Media has generated tremendous buzz as an online branding vehicle and the findings of this survey would further confirm that.
The basics:
27,841 Internet users age 13 and older surveyed online.
51% indicated that they watch video online at least once …
Yellow Pages »
A survey from eMarketer reveals some interesting data on the Swedish online advertising market. Swedish advertisers are moving full force into online advertising in Europe’s most wired country. But there is fairly widespread dissatisfaction with online advertising among Swedish Internet users.
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1003483
This item has both good and bad news for Sweden’s directory industry, which has …
Online/Interactive »
Courtesy of Paid Content, we've discovered TimeWarner Cable's "Broadband TV" experiment in San Diego, CA:
Q. What is Time Warner Cable Broadband TV?
A. Broadband TV gives you the flexibility and convenience of watching TV on your PC. Access your favorite live channels on your PC while your kids are watching TV in the living room.
Just …
Online/Interactive »
One of the points former Tribe CEO Mark Pincus made in his keynote address at Interactive Local Media '04 was that there were too many silos in local and across the Internet — "disconnected marketplaces," he called them. Pincus argued for interoperability and open standards to allow users to interact with members of different networks …
Online/Interactive »
Google launched a new feature that enables users to find out local movie showtimes. You can search using city or zip and sort by movie or by theater. Ratings/reviews are provided by what appears to be a partnership with the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). The information can be delivered via SMS/wireless as well.
This is …
Online/Interactive »
When I spoke a couple of weeks ago with Justin Osmer of MSN, who was giving me a demo of Virtual Earth, he said to me that improving local was the biggest piece of user feedback they received about their beta search launch. Even I was somewhat skeptical as I heard that statement. This is …
Online/Interactive »
The first of what may become many Google Earth plug-ins, a Prudential real estate office in Chicago makes Chicago area open houses and listings available on the Google Earth client.
I don't think the mainstream will be downloading and using Google Earth vs. Web-based mapping tools (including Google Maps), but we'll see.
Just put out …
Online/Interactive »
Earlier this week a jury awarded $1.6 million to a couple in Oregon that claimed that they found a rather unscrupulous plastic surgeon in their local Yellow Pages. Odd, I thought there was something about "buyer beware" that applied to all transactions between buyers and sellers.
You begin to wonder if the couple – and …
Online/Interactive »
Not wanting to be "disintermediated" by Oodle, SimplyHired, WorkZoo, Indeed and other existing and potential classifieds aggregators, Yahoo! — as reported on several sites — has developed its own metasearch for jobs.
As the copy on the site suggests, and notwithstanding all the rhetoric about vertical search, consumers fundamentally don't want to search "dozens of …
Online/Interactive »
Yesterday there was a very interesting AP (Michael Liedtke) interview with IAC's Barry Diller. From the interview:
Diller ultimately wants to transform Ask.com from a second-tier search engine to a serious threat to Google. He is mulling the possibility of breaking away from Google's highly profitable online advertising network after Ask Jeeves' current contract expires in …
