Microsoft’s proposed bid for Yahoo was its fastest way to gain the scale necessary to compete against Google for online advertising dollars. Even before pulling the Yahoo offer, the company he had begun laying the groundwork for a strategy to compete with Google in online advertising. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is convinced that online advertising is crucial to its future. So much so that he sees online advertising making up as much as 25% of the company’s business within a few years. Google generates approximately US$ 22 billion versus Microsoft’s US$ 3.3 billion from online More»

Labels: displace advertising, Microsoft, Online Advertising, web applications, Yahoo

Google has filed a patent application for “Targeted Video Advertising” with the USPTO, for “a computer-implemented method of providing targeted video promotional material”.
The process being patented includes transmitting a promotional item for display on a video terminal, monitoring a viewer’s interactions with particular advertisements, such as skipping advertisements and presenting advertisements determined to be similar to those that the user has watched and less like those the user has skipped. The “Targeted Video Advertising” patent application suggests it may go into set-top boxes.
The patent also covers the following More»

Labels: Online Advertising, video

Although one should maintain a healthy skepticism of the values given to many of the companies listed in Adnomics extensive review of Facebook applications, the site offers great insight into the Facebook development landscape as it shows how many users and how many installs for thousands of applications.
Top of the pile is Slide.com, the most successful widget builder for Facebook that started as a photo application with enormous exposure across Facebook. Slide has already enjoyed investment of about $75 million and a spectacular market valuation of over half a billion dollars, actually far more than More»

Labels: Advertising, Facebook, Online Advertising

Newspapers are in trouble, and things keep getting worse. With circulation dropping and currently at the same level as 1946 (!), papers sold per capita are at a fraction of former levels. The death spiral could become fairly dramatic since newspapers have a lot of fixed costs and many are already losing money. Unlike internet enterprises, papers cannot easily scale back expenses as advertising revenues flow online. This will likely lead to continued consolidation of local papers and probably will become a death knell for many others.
Newsosaur has More»

Labels: Advertising, Newspapers, Online Advertising

Adify, the white-label online ad network, has been acquired by Cox Enterprises, for about $300 million reports paidContent.org.
Adify is a self-service ad network for web sites interested in developing their own ad network. The service allows a publisher to negotiate ad rates, and to reject an advertiser if wanted, with Adify taking in about 20 percent of the revenues in. Clients include Guardian, Forbes.com, NBC WeatherPlus, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and others.
Adify had raised a total of $27 million in funding and made about $7 million in revenues More»

Labels: Online Advertising, white label

Morgan Stanley has made available their Internet Trends report for 2008. The 72 page report covers:1) Usage Patterns2) Social Networking3) Widgetization4) Measureability5) Monetization6) Facebook Apps7) Online Ad Spend Online Video9) Mobile Outlook10) Emerging Trends11) Recession Impact
Click to view report on Internet Trends
More»

Labels: Facebook, internet trends, Mobile, Online Advertising, social media, social networks, video, widgets

Inside Facebook has pulled together an excellent post noting the claimed CPMs by several Facebook developers for their Facebook Applications.
Here are the numbers:
$0.60 CPM with Social Media
$1.50 CPM with VideoEgg
$0.27 CPM with Cubics, down from $0.43 earlier this month
$0.40 CPM with Cubics
$4.78 eCPM with Social Media[? This is so out of line with the others I think great skepticism is called for here]
$0.50 CPM each with AdSense, FB Exchange, Social Media, and RockYou (and by combining 2 units on a page is making $1.00 CPM)
$0.125 CPM with Lookery ($0.25 with 2 ads above the fold)
$0.10 CPM with Cubics, More»

Labels: Advertising, Facebook, Online Advertising, social networks

The Valley is indeed a small place. On Sunday I was at Brian Solis’s party where the who’s who or the glitteratti of tech converged. I was speaking with Jean Sini, co-founder of Activeweave and as I started to ask him indepth questions about this company he became silent. I finally asked him “What would the exit strategy for Activeweave look like?”, he responded “I am not even thinking about”. Oddly enough I received an email from him yesterday and the next thing I know is that Activeweave is being acquired by BuzzLogic More»

Labels: buzzlogic, Online Advertising, social media

Cyber Security sleuths Dan Kaminsky and Jason Larsen have found significant security vulnerabilities in some affiliations that large ISPs have with ad serving companies. The Washington Post reports on their recent findings:

ISPs like Earthlink, Qwest and Verizon have outsourced at least portions oftheir ad-serving technology to BareFruit, a London-based company thatspecializes in helping ISPs monetize wayward Web searches. The trouble is thatuntil late this week, BareFruit’s ad servers were vulnerable to what Kaminskycalled a “trivial to find and exploit” vulnerability that would make it simplefor fraudsters to trick users of those ISPs More»

Labels: ISP, Online Advertising, online security

ad:tech is set to roll into town April 15-17. The conference will feature the heavy hitter in the digital ad industry and Digg’s Kevin Rose is set to deliver one of the keynotes. This year’s conference will focus on four core areas;
1) Performance Marketing2) Emerging Platforms3) Media and Branding4) Exchange Series
I found the itinerary builder very interesting. It is a simple interface that incorporates AJAX that allows conference attendees to customize their itinerary, save it to their account and print it as well.
The conference will also More»

Labels: displace advertising, Online Advertising