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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
According to Classified Intelligence, as reported in Paid Content, Knight Ridder Digital will make all online private-party merchandise ads free in almost all of its markets. Cars, Jobs and Real Estate will still cost money for advertisers in KRD sites.…
Both LiveDeal and classifieds aggregator Oodle are offering alerts -- you plug in the product description/criteria and you get matching alerts to your email box. This kind of functionality is very compelling -- especially if consumers can add even more…
When John Kelsey and I were in Denver several months ago, Simon Greenman, Dex vice president of Internet operations, told us that Dex was ahead of its competitors in its region, according to comScore's traffic data. Today, the company formally…
B2B publisher Thomas Industrial Network, Inc. is discontinuing all print publications in favor of the Internet exclusively. From the press release: Following the 2006 edition of the Thomas Register® of American Manufacturers, Thomas Industrial Network will cease publication of this…
John Battelle's blog points out a new search offering from Yahoo! Labs called "Mindset." At the top of the results page you get a bar with a "slider." On the left is "shopping" and on the right is "research." What…
According to Reuters, the NYTimes will pay Primedia $410 million for the network of content sites. That's a lot of money. Presumably the newspaper publisher will use the site for content distrubtion, as a traffic driver and an advertising network/vehicle.…
Over the weekend, Chris Gaither wrote an interesting and entertaining piece in the LA Times about the role of the Google Maximizers. These are the folks who help (mostly large) advertisers improve their campaigns and CTRs on Google. At the…
