Lots and lots of stories were written about MSN's promised PPC platform launch. Danny Sullivan's written a comprehensive overview at SEW.
The most innovative dimension of the new product (beyond adding a major competitor to the marketplace) is the demographic reporting: gender, age group, geographic location, lifestyle segment, etc.
We're interested in all of …

Today Vonage, a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) provider, which serves both residential and small business customers, announced it would begin offering Wi-Fi service through an agreement with UTStarcom beginning this Spring.
While UTStarcom will provide the portable handset, Vonage will provide the broadband service so that users can have a portable phone service they …

I'm late to the party, but results from the NextSearchSurvey, an online survey of search engine users about the current state of search and its future direction are available here. The survey was conducted from August, 2004 through November, 2004. Questions were answered by 2500 to 3000 respondents. Drawing inferences from the channels that pushed …

Search marketing firm Oneupweb released data showing that four-keyword queries were correlated with the highest conversion rates, compared with shorter and longer strings.
Over a roughly six-month period, average conversion rates for paid search ads appearing in response to those four-word queries were 36%. So what do we make of all this?
On the one hand …

There was an article today in the NYTimes about click fraud. The piece is pretty balanced: it's happening but the search engines are dealing with it. I think that's the reality in the marketplace; it's there but it's not terribly widespread and there are pretty strenuous, though not widely understood, efforts to combat it. …

No doubt Google's acquisition of Urchin Software (rumoured by Battelle to be worth $30 million) was in the works for a while, but MSN's AdCenter announcement (with its enhanced analytics) might have given the deal whatchya might call a "nudge."
Less noticed was the simultaneous acquisition of Web analytics provider WebTrends by private equity firm …

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the Internet as an advertising medium has surpassed radio in the U.K.
Ad spending on the Internet in 2004 was 653.3 million pounds, or US$1.2 billion, representing 3.9 percent of total advertsing in the U.K. By contrast, radio captured 3.8 percent.

Traditional media, including TV, Yellow Pages and newspapers, face a central paradox and challenge that was explored in Lincoln Millstein's keynote at Drilling Down on Local. In a very thoughtful presentation, he advanced a skeptical view of the revenue potential for online media.
He made the point that there were "community newspapers" doing more than …

Like Yahoo! before it, Google announced a significant increase in Q1 revenues. Profits were US$369.2 million on revenues of US$1.26 billion (vs. revenues of US$651 million in Q1 last year), beating analysts' expectations.
Growth appeared to be driven in part by international expansion. Here's the full release with financial data.
The revenues break down as …

The conventional wisdom is that there is little or no search-engine loyaltyâ€"Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, Jeeves, InfoSpace/DogPile, Lycos, etc. are “just a click away“ from Google. I hear this argument again and again — and as a hypothetical matter it's true.
However, I want to challenge the conventional wisdom with two separate pieces of data that …

Interesting to read that in a period of time when companies of different shapes and sizes are finding ways to lower prices – Delta Airlines, SBC Internet, Apple iPod, Google search appliance, SF Chronicle classifieds – eBay is going the other direction – raising prices.
Yesterday eBay announced that they would be raising the …

I find it interesting to see how other media portray the Yellow Pages.
NewsAdvance.com, a product of The Lynchburg News & Advance, covered the planned introduction of Yellow Book into the Lynchburg area with the confusing headline, “Competitors Seeing Yellow.â€� If I weren’t in the industry, I’m not sure I would have read …

The latest round of Pew consumer research concludes that most search engine users are still confused about what's paid search and what's not.
According to a report issued yesterday, 62% of respondents to Pew's telephone survey were "unaware" of a distinction between paid and unpaid results. However, 70% of respondents were "okay" with the idea …

Microsoft formally (and finally) launched its search engine on Monday. What happens now? Of course the market will tighten to some degree. Keynote Systems found that

One of the questions being asked in the wake of the stock hits that Google, Yahoo! and FindWhat took last week is: Can search engine marketing growth be sustained? If the attendence at this year's SES show is any kind of anecdotal evidence or answer to the question, that answer is "yes."
By my …

For years after it was effectively dead, the At Hand URL still allowed access to the front door of a failed experiment. That experiment was an effort to create a nationwide, Internet Yellow Pages network.
The idea was a single online destination that would be the front door to local Yellow Pages listings drawn from …

Truth be told, I don't much enjoy watching awards ceremonies, which can be mind-numbingly dull if not done well. The YPA hired entertainer Roy Firestone, who did his best to liven up the evening. He was fine (although his show didn't change much from last year), but no one can make the reading of what …

Following in the footsteps of other "small business aggregators," (e.g., Yellow Pages publishers, Web hosts, Newspapers) real estate vertical HomeGain.com has launched a simplified search engine marketing program for local brokers and agents.
Dubbed "SearchMaximizer," it will encompass Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL, among other sites. HomeGain currently has a wide variety of marketing and …

We were alerted via Paid Content that Classified Ventures (CV), owners of Cars.com and recent buyers of HomeGain, have acquired NewCars.com. Unlike HomeGain, which is the No. 2 or 3 real estate site, NewCars.com is not among the top automotive sites.
It's not clear whether the site will merely serve as a front door to …

Lots has already been written about what a big win Live8 was for AOL and, interestingly, how traditional TV botched the coverage.
The timing couldn't have been better for the new AOL portal, which has a huge stake in the competitive success of its broadband video search/offering and establishes the company as the de-facto leader …