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Google In Major Display Partnership With Ad Holding Company Omnicom

Written on July 15, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, Object

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Google will announce a deal with Omnicom Media Group, one of the major global ad holding companies. The Google-Omnicom deal is focused on display advertising and the DoubleClick Exchange specifically. According to the WSJ Ominicom will be spending “hundreds of millions of dollars to buy display [...]



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Google In Major Display Partnership With Ad Holding Company Omnicom

Cup of Joe: Facebook Hates Girl Scout Cookies

Written on May 15, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Object, book, marketing

Facebook is now against Girl Scout cookies. That’s right, from this point forward Facebook is banning all discussion promotion and dialogue regarding all of our favorite treats (Thin Mints included)!

Okay, so that’s not true. As far as I can tell, Facebook doesn’t care one way or the other about Girl Scout cookies. However, if the recent surge of dialogue revolving Facebook’s changes to privacy is anything close to reality, one could assume that Facebook has signed a deal with the devil. To put it simply people are angry with Facebook. Many of Facebook’s new critics sound like a heartbroken teenager who has been cheated on. The talk of betrayal runs rampant through most of the criticizing blog post and comments. Most are asking why would Facebook betray us?

To all those that feel betrayed by Facebook it’s important that you understand one thing:

It’s your own damn fault.

Since when did we think it was okay to trust any one company with all of the personal details and information about our life? Since when did people start to develop real relationships with corporations based on trust and respect? Social media has fooled us into believing that companies can participate with their users in a transparent and authentic way. But in reality every company has an agenda that it must pursue. Every company’s chief motive is its own survival and if that means exploiting their customers contributions then they will do it.

The magic of social media marketing is that for the first time it gives corporations the ability to be more authentic than any other time in history. For example Facebook could have avoided most of the media backlash by simply being transparent about their intentions from the beginning. The tag line could have read, “Join Facebook, where we will collect information about your life and share with the world.” Sure they wouldn’t have as many users with that tag line but in the end they would be executing real authenticity.

The lesson for users:

Don’t assume that corporations engaging in social media have the best intentions just because they’re utilizing a trendy feel-good medium to engage you. You should exercise the same amount of caution engaging them that you would when you engage companies off the Internet. In other words Facebook, Google, MySpace, Twitter and all of the other companies online are not your friends. Their primary objective is to make money not to build trust. Trust, authenticity, and all of the other feel good marketing buzzwords are tools to open your wallet and your guarded privacy.

The lesson for marketers:

State your intentions in crystal-clear language at the beginning. And, throughout the company’s development reiterate those intentions on a regular basis. Make sure that your users are well aware that your primary objective is your own survival. Make sure they understand that if needed you will use their contributions for your own profit. In doing so you will only attract users that truly believe in what you’re doing and will be more likely to contribute to your success.

Now, that we have gotten that out of the way, everyone needs to relax and have a Samoas!

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Cup of Joe: Facebook Hates Girl Scout Cookies

Yahoo Sells “Non-Core” Asset HotJobs For $225 Million

Written on February 4, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Object

The HotJobs for sale rumor has been around for some time. Yesterday a deal with Monster was finally announced. It is being widely hailed as a smart move by Yahoo to gain cash and divest itself of another “non-core asset.” Except for payment and other terms the deal is conceptually analogous to what Yahoo is [...]



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Yahoo Sells “Non-Core” Asset HotJobs For $225 Million

Yahoo Moving in on Twitter

Written on December 10, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

Yahoo (moves toward the little blue bird, the center of attention at the party): Well, hello there, baby. You sure are popular here.

Twitter (BIG SMILE): Yep! And I have #friends @overthere and @overthere and—

Yahoo (slips an arm around the bird): How would you like to come back to my place for a little . . . integration?

Twitter: Whoa, buddy—this is why I carry an API at all times!

Back in July, Twitter was popping up everywhere: first a deal with Bing, then a deal with Google. Not to be left out, Yahoo made a real-time foray with OneRiot, but apparently they still had their eyes on the life of the party: Twitter.

Last month, Yahoo News integrated Twitter into its results for breaking news via a tabbed shortcut:

Apparently this went well, because now more of these Tweet results will be directly integrated into the SERPs—and they just might be doing this right:

However, Yahoo won’t be adding Twitter to all its results. According to the Yahoo Search blog,

So how does this work? We continuously keep track of queries searched on Yahoo!, and when there is a spike in interest in a topic, our search algorithm selects relevant tweets to show on the search results page, either as a part of the Yahoo! News shortcut or in a Twitter section, like in the examples above. The age of the tweets will vary – some will be a minute old, while others may be hours old. Our goal is to feature interesting Twitter content that is relevant to your query and complements the other results you find on the search page.

And if they do that, that might be just the way to integrate Twitter into SERPs: filtered for relevance, used only for topics generating a lot of discussion, and sequestered in a section of the SERP.

What do you think? Is this too little, too late for Yahoo? Or is this more than you want to see of Twitter in your SERPs?

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Yahoo Moving in on Twitter

Jim Lanzone: Vengeance in Video?

Written on September 15, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, marketing

In January 2008, Ask CEO Jim Lanzone stepped down. He moved to Redpoint Ventures, a VC firm, to be their entrepreneur-in-residence. But his latest project brings him back to search: Clicker, an online TV video search engine. Kinda.

Lanzone is CEO of the video service, which launched yesterday at TechCrunch50 into private beta. Clicker aims to be a TV guide for online video—”the most comprehensive way to find the video content you’re looking for on the web.”

What makes Clicker different from the myriad other video search engines out there? TechCrunch reports:

[Clicker] creates a structured database of programming, organizing shows by things like network, genre, and show name. This type of data not only allows for better search results, but it allows you to browse content without having to do text-based searches, which you probably won’t be doing when television and future web-enabled tablets start to serve up this content. Clicker already has a deal with Boxee.

The goal is really to be the best search engine for video content. Clicker will point you in the direction of whatever you are looking for (and will do embeds if they’re available), but won’t serve up the videos themselves. They will also delve into surfacing content not explicitly produced for television, but is still high quality web video content. But they don’t want to be YouTube, which is cluttered with user-generated content. Clicker is going for a different market.

Clicker will also allow users to edit and submit information about shows wiki-style.

My question: what’s with all those vowels?! Are you sure you didn’t mean “clickr”? Way to shoot yourselves in the foot, guys.

Naturally, the first real question is what’s their business model. And the answer is typical of search engines: advertising, both search and display. However, they also plan to offer premium accounts, “which the company envisions might be used for storing your favorite videos online, kind of like a DVR of sorts.”

We’re obviously still learning new things about how to do online video all the time, as Hulu has shown us. But is there room for another video search engine—and if so, will Clicker be it? What do you think?

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Jim Lanzone: Vengeance in Video?

Google To Get Hardware to Take on eBooks?

Written on September 2, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing

This year, Google has made no bones about the fact that they’re looking to take on Amazon in the eBook arena. First, they made a deal with Sony (maker of the Sony eReader, top competitor to Amazon’s Kindle reader) to provide more than half a million public domain titles. Then in June, Google “signaled its intent to introduce a program by that would enable publishers to sell digital versions of their newest books direct to consumers through Google.” A couple weeks later, Google Books came out with new viewing and embedding features, including mobile-compatible features.

But still, all the embedding and viewing features in the world aren’t much competition for the eye-strain–preventing, ultra portable, WiFi connecting Kindle. Without some awesome hardware, Google’s eBook revolution would probably remain just a pipe dream.

So it’s a darn good thing they’ve partnered with Interead, makers of COOL-ER eReaders. Designed as a cheaper eReader, the COOL-ER is an up-and-coming Kindle competitor. Of course, Google’s partnership with their parent company only extends to the public domain books in Google’s repository (the first such deal that will have effect outside the US).

The COOL-ER is a cheaper alternative to the Kindle—both in price, and, according to the reviews I’ve watched, in quality and durability. (If I’m going to plonk down $250 for an eReader, I might as well spring for the full-featured Kindle.) However, the COOL-ER has the greatest file compatibility range—19 in all, from PDF to EPUB to MP3. (And I’m most inclined to wait at least one more generation on any eReader, at the very least.)

The next logical step might very well be Google influencing the COOL-ER itself—and in keeping with the Google way of doing things, keep it affordable, make it accessible and make it quality. Also in keeping with the Google way—get someone else to do your hardware.

What do you think? Will this be Google’s back door into the eReader industry? Or are they only interested in selling the books themselves?

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Google To Get Hardware to Take on eBooks?

Facebook: An Internet unto Itself

Written on September 2, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, book, marketing, seo

Facebook has a lot going for it lately. They’ve got more than 250M users worldwide, they’re the most popular social network in almost every country in the world, they’re hiring in a down economy, and according to a new comScore report, 8.2% of all Internet ads are served on their site.

But, then, maybe this all makes sense. Since Facebook is so popular, it’s not entirely surprising that they serve one out of every twelve online ads. Even better? At least some proportion of their on-site CPC ads lead to another page on the site—so they’re getting money and traffic.

This isn’t a recent development, of course—we’ve all seen ads to “Become a Fan” of something on Facebook. But as smart as it sounds to make your advertisers pay for generating traffic to your site, the underlying logic is pretty much a stroke of genius:

Facebook is an Internet unto itself.

Facebook has long been accused of being a “walled garden”—with its fan pages, apps and other utilities, FB is almost a subset of the offerings of the Internet. If your brand is prominent enough, you’re on Facebook (or you should be!). Driving paid traffic from a personal page (personal) to a branded page only makes sense on that kind of paradigm.

Of course, that kind of advertising is good for advertisers, too, or they wouldn’t do it. JCPenney went from 22,000 fans to 500,000 fans with these advertisements in the run-up to back-to-school shopping (though Bloomberg didn’t say if JCP saw increased revenue from this).

And something seems to be working for FB, too. Last month, Bloomberg said the most popular social network in the world should post at least $500 million in revenue this year.

What do you think? Is Facebook a subset of the Internet, and is internal paid advertising a natural extension of that mentality? Can Facebook sustain this kind of revenue?

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Facebook: An Internet unto Itself

Mandatory Commercials Have Come to YouTube

Written on August 11, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: blackhat, book, seo

It finally happened. You know those mandatory commercials you get before a news clip when you go to a site like abcnews or foxnews.com?

Well today I clicked from this discussion thread to this youtube link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMknKXfbyt8

When I got there, I had to sit through a Chili’s restaurant Commercial For 30 Secs before the Video would start. This is the first time I have ever seen this on youtube and it’s probably a trial run. They have all this Geo-Targeting and user information but feed me Chili’s restaurant commercial . . . when I’m surfing the Net from Brazil. I would love to go to a Chilies - but the nearest one is 3000 miles away.

It’s bad enough when you’re watching a youtube spot and you get that annoying adsense ad that covers 1/3 of the video screen for completely irrelevent crap like “Photojurnalism Canada” or “Used Printing Machines”. Now those timesuck commercials have arrived to Youtube as well?

It IS a CBS news clip, so it’s possible that Google has struck a deal with this network requiring the commercial before showing copyrighted clips. Regardless, it shows that they are comfortable with the revenue format so expect to see more of this in the future. If this catches on, expect a Tivo-Like application to be developed for tube sites that predownloads all the clips to your computer so you can watch them ithout commercials.

Youtube does need to turn a profit. This is NOT the way to do it. The way to do it is to rank Youtube #1 in Google Searches for every TV show and movie ever made and sell the video download for $1. Give half the money to the copyright holder and make it an “Opt-Out” system like they did with books.

Is that evil? I donno. But it would win and it would be what people actually want.

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Mandatory Commercials Have Come to YouTube