Online/Interactive

Missed this one when it came out. But the NextSearchSurvey folks found that when they asked online respondents "If you were to choose one search engine out of the four major ones, which one would it be?" Eighty-seven percent of…

USAToday has an overview of cable companies working on delivering more targeted local advertising. Is it going to be a reality or simply more hype? We're going to explore this, as well as Internet TV and video search, on April…

Most every traditional medium today faces challenges from new technologies. Yellow Pages and newspapers, the primary print directional media, are being affected mostly by the Internet. Radio faces the double whammy of iPod and other portable digital audio players and…

The Interactive TV revolution€"long on hype, short on execution€"may not be "televised." It will be online instead. Yahoo!'s announcement that it will stream the full Showtime-produced "Fat Actress" is a milestone and ups the ante for Web companies doing video.…

Very interesting story in the NYTimes today re Philadelphia becoming one big wireless hot spot. Many implications . . . There are implications for ISPs (although the regulators seem prepared to protect the economic interests of corporations vs. the public),…

Google is offering more people the chance to open gmail accounts. Formerly this was a viral affair (which was very very smart marketing). Now, Google appears to be seeking to leverage gmail as the basis for an expanding relationship between…

This is sort of amazing. I was reading about pinot noir wines on the NYTimes' Web site (perhaps I was too influenced by Sideways). The Times liked a particular New Zealand pinot, Peregrine Central Otago 2001, better than the other…

Two interesting articles, one by Brad Stone of Newsweek on the data providers behind mapping sites/functionality. Another by the NYTimes about 3-D mapping. This is where it's going. Just wrote about maps today and we'll be covering this at Drilling…

Published reports confirm that direct marketing company and database provider infoUSA (which provides the data for many of the top IYP/ local search properties) is seeking to buy online marketing firm Digital Impact. Digital Impact, which previously acquired search engine…

Both MSN and Ask Jeeves have announced that they're going to spend money on TV to try and grab some search market share. Yahoo! has been spending (on TV, outdoor, etc.) for some time on search (and local). Several surveys…

For a very nice overview of the entire local search space, check out the Local Search Guide. More profiles and resources have been added. Here's the new stuff: "The Search Tools section of the Guide, which now includes a Mapping…

DoubleClick and comScore released the results of a study about the relationship between search and e-commerce. This is similar to the comScore-Overture study conducted last year. The new findings underscore those of the earlier Overture study and reinforce the idea…

So Fathom Online reported a crash after the holidays in keyword prices. But over the long term, they're going up up up (so implied Google in a BizWeek article ). The trend of branding dollars entering search means continued price…

Will telcos be able to do to cable TV (IPtv) what cable TV is starting to do to telcos with IP telephony? And with the possible exception of SuperPages, will the remaining U.S. telco-YP owners spin off their directories to…

Here's an interesting piece in Wired News about the very real impact of ranking higher in search engine placement. It's mostly about optimization, but the same goes true for SEM. There's lots of data that show CTRs drop off significantly…

Google may begin to require users to register or otherwise provide personal information to use certain of its applications. An AP report attributed that idea to comments made by Google CEO Eric Schmidt during a four-hour meeting for Wall Street…

In addition to seeking personal information, Google representatives said they would do more direct sales (probably for larger advertisers) but would also focus on acquiring more local advertisers and creating tools to make it easier for those advertisers to adopt…

Empirical research has a habit of confirming what people already know. In this case, ShopLocal and The Dieringer Group released a study, which tracked consumer shopping during the final three months of 2004. The study found that so-called Web-to-Store shoppers€"those…

AOL is upgrading its search functionality and interfaces and taking €œbaby steps€ toward personalization (i.e., saving recent searches). An extensive discussion of the enhancements is available at Search Engine Watch. The company is bringing together many disparate elements to create…

Gary Rivlin wrote an interesting piece in today's NYTimes about Friendster's fortunes and how it's been eclipsed by MySpace in the critical 18 to 29 demographic. That demographic, right now, is Friendster's entire value proposition to advertisers. The article suggests…