Online/Interactive

In December, we wrote an Advisory about toolbar strategies employed by portals, IYPs and others. The benefit, in a nutshell, is to cement the brand into a user's browser, or desktop, which all but guarantees repeat use and exposure. The…

Here's an interesting concept that circumvents some of the challenges of integrating advertising in online maps. SEW points out that the rooftop ads probably aren't for the sake of online mapping satellite imagery; they actually target commercial flights as they…

Joining Yahoo!, Insider Pages, Judy's Book, Kudzu, Backfence, Yelp and many others, BeanPool has launched. It looks like they built this on blogger (same colors, etc.). Here's the full release. Search Engine Journal offers a more in-depth discussion.

Here's an AP story exploring the privacy implications of high-resolution online mapping. Nothing particularly new here except that the issue is getting flagged. We may be in an era of new privacy initiatives (we'll see). The consumer zeitgeist may be…

For the past several weeks, I've been receiving tons of e-mails about speaking opportunities at the show in March and I've had to defer people. Our agenda is done and we're going though a quick final review. This is only…

Some/many people are not working in the U.S. today because of Martin Luther King Jr. Here's a piece on "globalizing" his legacy from The New York Times (reg. req'd). And here's bio info from Wikipedia. And here's Google's "I have…

Microsoft Corp. announced Friday that it will step up its adCenter online ad platform to handle all the paid search results that appear on MSN search. Currently about 25 percent of sponsored links come from adCenter, and the rest are…

I had a briefing with Rick Szatkowski of a company called NeoMedia, which has a range of product offerings. What we talked about, however, was a pretty compelling mobile ad infrastructure called "PaperClick," which links the wireless and physical worlds…

The Washington Post's Leslie Walker penned an interesting post-CES piece today about IPTV. From the article: No single company put everything together into a magical product at the Consumer Electronics Show this year, but you didn't need much imagination to…

In addition to the announced button on Motorola phones, BlackBerry says it will support Google Talk IM (among others) and Google Local Maps. Separately, Google filed a patent application in the mobile space that appears to be about delivering calls…

The Wall Street Journal (sub. req'd) has a piece today about the mainstreaming of VoIP through handsets that look and act like traditional cordless phones: A slew of new phones are heading to stores aimed at the millions of people…

I got word today from Verizon that SuperPages advertisers (horizontal links across the top) will appear in MSN local search results. This is an extension of Verizon's existing relationship with MSN, which provides the listings for MSN Yellow Pages. Verizon…

Shawn Riegsecker, president of local media buying agency Centro, wrote a thoughtful commentary in MediaPost (reg. req'd) that argues online editions of local newspapers are far from dead in the water and represent desired inventory from an advertiser perspective. I…

Here's a release that reflects continued traffic growth at Interchange Corp.'s Local.com destination. The company said that for the month of December 2005, Local.com reached 6.9 million unique visitors and over 33 million page views, up from 5 million unique…

Free local classified provider LiveDeal announced a new program, AdTarget, that permits national brands and large advertisers to target its local users across the U.S. and Canada. This represents a new revenue stream for LiveDeal, which has been creatively diversifying…

John Battelle points to an Andy Beal post pointing a Pamela Parker ClickZ story about Google putting sponsored links on the map itself. (Click one of the blue "pushpins.") We knew this day would come (and have been talking about…

Rupert Murdoch has announced the integration of downloadable video, VoIP and IM to MySpace, which News Corp. acquired for $580 million in July. These moves are intended to drive use of the wildly popular social networking site and boost ad…

There are a number of interesting things I ran across today. Given my schedule this morning, here's an abbreviated roundup: Fast Search & Transfer's Stephen Baker points me to a results page on the Denver Post site to show FAST's…

Spot Runner launched today. It presents itself as an ad agency, but it's really an Internet-based TV ad buying network. It's totally local, and it's potentially revolutionary (yes, that's what I said), offering spot cable buying for small businesses. It's…

Thanks to PaidContent for pointing us to a TheDeal.com story (reg. req'd) about bidders for Knight Ridder. Potential suitors include: Thomas H. Lee Partners, Bain Capital, Texas Pacific Group and Hellman & Friedman Blackstone Group, Providence Equity Partners and Kohlberg…