The other day here on Crenk with did a post about the major Internet giant Google buying AdMob - a mobile advertiser and we predicted that internet advertising was due to come up. Well it seems like it most definitely has – thanks to search.
Google reported the first rise in advertising revenue in over two quarters. The third quarter of 2009 stabilized the sector. However, as I mentioned above it was all due to the advertisements in the search results pages not so much the advertisements on websites.
While this is good news it’ll still be a while until the other advertisers such as AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft recover from the recession – these being the weakest of the search engines.
So it appears that the advertisements on web pages still aren’t doing as good as what they used to simply because there are less ‘big’ companies using them. As such, people don’t want to click on them. Crenk’s advice for bloggers and webmasters? Use Google AdSence to put advertisements on your website’s search page!
It has been a very big day in acquisitions for both Google and Accel partners. Google has announced that they have acquired Admob and Gizmo5. Admob is a mobile advertising network in which cost Google $750 million.
AdMob founder Omar Hamoui sent the following letter to customers:
Today we announced that AdMob has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google for $750 million. We are extremely excited about this new partnership and what it means for our advertiser, developer and publisher partners.
AdMob’s people, products and tools will continue to work to deliver successful campaigns for you and to effectively monetize your mobile traffic – no interruptions. Our product and engineering teams will keep building great products for our customers. Our sales team will keep working with our thousands of advertisers to deliver successful campaigns. Our business development team will keep working to maximize ad revenue for the more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications that make up AdMob’s publisher network.
After our deal closes, AdMob will work with Google to accelerate the pace of innovation in mobile and do an even better job for you. We believe this deal will benefit our advertisers, developers and publishers by:
*Increasing our investment in building innovative and engaging ad units across platforms and to further improve targeting and tracking.
*Building even more powerful relevance and optimization capabilities, and more powerful technology and tools to monetize mobile traffic.
*Increasing the effectiveness of display advertising on mobile devices by leveraging Google sales team, infrastructure and relationships.
*Improving the already high level of service and support we deliver to our advertisers, developers and publishers.
Im very surprised that Admob sold out to Google on this occassion. I know that $750 million is not an average sum of money, but with Googles track record of advertising products that aren’t Adsense is pretty terrible. Back in February 2007 Google purchased Adscape, which still hasn’t really taken their in-game advertising product to the next level. Additionally, Google killed Feedburner’s very profitable advertising network and replaced it directly with a much worse product for the type of market, Google Adsense. Accel partners won out big on this acquisition as they and Sequoia Capital were the early investors.
Gizmo5 Acquisition:
Gizmo5 was the other company in which Google purchased today, but for only around $30 million in cash. Gizmo5 is a VOIP infrastructure. In previous months Gizmo5 was in talks with Skype about a potential sale, mainly because Skype was having big issues with their current infrastructure. This is a very interested move for Google, I’m not entirely sure why they purchased VOIP infrastructure. The only possible solution is that they are thinking about tying it in with their current Google Voice offering.
EA purchase Playfish:
After lengthy negotiations, Electronic Arts closed it’s anticipated acquisition of social gaming startup Playfish for $275 million in cash. An additional $25 million in stock will be set aside for retaining the top talent at the startup, and another $100 million in earnouts are part of the deal as well if the business hits certain milestones. This has no reaffirmed how lucrative this market current is. I would not be surprised to see a Zynga IPO or Playdom acquistion in the first half of 2010.
Here at Crenk we have recently partnered with Adphilia as our new advertising platform. All fixed price advertising will now go through the Adphilia platform as you can already see in our sidebar.
We will be offering a monthly round up article in which will include details about all our sponsors and what they offer.
Over the next few months we really hope to bring in more cheap fixed sponsorship opportunities on Crenk, with the aim of really helping startups grab cheap exposure that can really help drive returns.
I also wasnt too sure whether to offer 300×100 ads or 125×125. What do most readers and advertisers prefer?
For a long time now Gmail (like nearly every other Google product) has had Google Adsense ads in the sidebar. Have you ever wanted to get rid of these ads from your Gmail? Well now you can by simply adding in two fail-proof sentences into the signature of your emails.
All you need to add is:
I enjoy the massacre of ads. This sentence will slaughter ads without a messy bloodbath.
Previously here at Crenk we announced the Spottt launch as well as the fact that Spottt wasnt really moving. Spottt is an advertising exchange for small sites. Basically the site used a widget on your site and it gave the sites reciprocal traffic on other sites that were also using the widget.
Allen Stern has reported that Spottt has been offline for the past few days and it doesn’t seem like the service is coming back online any time soon. I think this is headed straight to the deadpool!
Spottt was launched and owned by the team over at Adbrite. If you are from Adbrite it would be great to hear the news about Spottt.
Previously here on Crenk we have discussed the Top CPM advertising networks, but in the current economic climate we have seen a lot of changes of late. I wanted to introduce our sister site called Adphilia. Adphilia is a site representation firm that is focused on providing premium CPM based advertising. At the moment there are also a lot of changes at Adphilia, we are always looking for Technology and Gaming related sites to add to our network, but we are also about to launch an entirely new platform which we hope will help many sites automate the buying and selling process.
The new Adphilia platform that is scheduled to launch in the next few weeks will be focused around fixed placements with the following features:
Publishers will be able to choose their own ad sizes and prices and dates they would like to run campaigns
Advertisers will have access to over 100 million people per month
The entire process will be automated and publishers can withdraw their earnings in the same way a bank works
The process is completely transparent so Advertisers can see their stats and ROIs, while Publishers can see and control all ads on their site
Also launching a VIP program which will be focused around CPM based advertising
Look for the new platform to be launch on the 1st of October.
In the meantime we are always looking for technology and gaming based sites interested in premium CPM advertising. Just leave a comment or drop us an email for more information.
Undoubtedly, the recession wasn’t really hitting the internet as hard as what it was other industries. Sure we has a bit of trouble over at Microsoft but that’s because they are also a trading company in the real world. What I mean to say is that the online world was fighting off the worst of it.
In fact, companies such as eBay and Amazon actually didn’t do so bad. People began to sell their stuff when they needed the cash and others bought them because they didn’t have too much cash to splash. It was all making perfect sense until the internet could take no more as real companies started to turn their back on it.
Advertising is plummeting. A new report states that advertising on a worldwide scale is down by five percent. In America, the figure is even bigger at 7% worth an estimated 0.4 Billion dollars. Companies who usually do quite well from advertising such as Monster reported that they lost 31% compared to last year.
Wouldn’t you know it; internet giant Google is the only ad publisher to report a growth, however even this is in single digits.
Now that advertising is failing the next sector to be hit will be entertainment. Big companies that have real world trading have more of a chance of survival but for online magazines and games where they often depend on advertising alone to keep the ship afloat – there may be trouble ahead indeed.
The IDC, who released the report did have some good news however.
“We think the industry will continue to see losses in the third and fourth quarters, but the growth rates–or the loss rates, if you will–will eventually begin to improve,” Karsten Weide, program director for digital media and entertainment at IDC, said in a statement. “However, we also believe the industry may have to wait until mid-2010 until it sees real growth again.”
I came across this excellent list of social networks with their user bases and projected ad spending for 09. The list was put together by Borreall Associates and is a great resource. On the list are 118 networks that accept advertising and media buying.
Of course, Facebook and Myspace count for the majority of social media advertising, but there is still enough good traffic on other sites to be worth testing.
The download system is kind of a pain But since the report is free and this kind of data is valuable, its worth it. Download PDF or Excel version here.
For a long time now a lot of people have been using Adblock firefox extension, however when people use this tool publishers lose their key source of income. Svetlana at Profy thinks that she may have found the key to unlock this issue, CancelAds.com. CancelAds is a very basic idea in which allows publishers to signup and add their sites to the service. Users are then able to signup and choose which sites they want to see without ads, in which they can pay a small subscription fee to view the sites without ads. Publishers have the ability to control the price of subscriptions and this is a very simple way for sites to add a new revenue source.
However, is CancelAds really a new revenue stream or is it just taking revenues away from advertising and just redistributing it. The idea of CancelAds is a good one, however practically im not too sure if it will take off, as users will only be likely to purchase a subscription for a major site in which have high quality content. Thus, this product isnt for the masses, it just for the high end publishers.
I was wondering how O&M created the popular Zoozoo ads for Vodafone without using computer animation, here are some behind the scenes video clips that will give you some good idea about the whole production process.
You may also want to check these photographs from a studio in South Africa where these videos where actually shot. Pictures are courtesy the official group of Zoozoo on Facebook.
For instance, here’s the original Zoozoo phone backup ad that’s currently getting aired on television during IPL cricket breaks:
For the last few days I have been seeing a lot of new reports about Google’s new Chrome ad in Japan. Im not really sure why this is now big news, because this ad has been running since January! If you want to read more about the ad then head to Techcrunch, Mashable and Startupmeme.
The other day here on Crenk with did a post about the major Internet giant Google buying AdMob - a mobile advertiser and we predicted that internet advertising was due to come up. Well it seems like it most definitely has – thanks to search.
