Archive for: Advertising
The soap opera that is Microsoft bid for Yahoo is continuing. Firstly it is reported by the WSJ that Yahoo is closing in on a merger with AOL. If the deal goes through, the two companies would combine their web and internet based services. Yahoo! would reportedly use some of the revenue from a merger with Time Warner/AOL to buy back a whole bunch of stock which woudl help the company fend off any further unwanted advances from Microsoft.
While at the same time it is reported that Yahoo has begun testing out Search Ads from Google. Then Microsoft hit back with the following statement about the search testing:
From Brad Smith, Microsoft’s General Counsel:
“Any definitive agreement between Yahoo! and Google would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google’s hands. This would make the market far less competitive, in sharp contrast to our own proposal to acquire Yahoo! We will assess closely all of our options. Our proposal remains the only alternative put forward that offers Yahoo! shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers.â€
Well, what can I see happening? I expect that AOL and Yahoo will potentially merge, but this it might happen in about 6 months time. In terms of search advertising between Google and Yahoo, im sure this cant continue because of the amount of marketshare they will have between them. Finally, Microsoft have no chance of purchasing Yahoo, I cant see it happening because Yahoo shareholders and directors would have already agreed if there was something that was going to happen.
More news from around the world.
Over the last few months the market of ad serving has really heated up. Firstly, it was the acquisition of DoubleClick by Google, which was really supposed to accelerate Google into the display advertising market. While at the same time Open X announced funding, basically so they could turn their ad server from self hosted to hosted and controlled by Open X. Then comes the very recent announcement that Google is launching Ad Manager. Finally, this week it was announced that Yahoo are entering this competitive market and are soon to launch Yahoo AMP!.
The overall fight seems to be about control and more importantly information. Google has always been a company that is hungry for knowledge and information, but it seems that everyone wants to know all about advertising, be it long tail or short. Each option has its own unique selling point, DoubleClick is for huge volume clients, Google’s Ad Manager is just simple to use (especially if they have Google Adsense as defaults), Open X has a great free service for self hosted companies and with the inclusion of a hosted option im sure they will see even more interest, then finally there is Yahoo and AMP!, this service has had amazing early reviews and im very keen to get my hands on it.
Thus, who will win this race? Well, it has always been hard to look away from Google, but I do think that Yahoo might be on to something here. Yahoo has a very strong display advertising business already, and if they make a Ad Manager that ties in hundreds of other ad networks and offers great transparency, then im sure they will be in the box seat.
Back in early November of last year, I preempted the launch of Spottt. Spottt is a free link exchange between sites via a 125 x 125 widget. Spottt is developed by the guys over at Adbrite, so they have a product that needs to work and actually launch into something worthwhile. Since Adbrite has had a lot of VC Funding, they will be really expected to not just launch a product for the sake of it, and actually turn it into a commercial entity.
This brings me to the all important point, is Spottt actually going anywhere? Currently, the site is so simplistic and has a lot of competitors doing exactly the same thing. So where is it unique selling point? If I was the VC in Adbrite who put in a slice of the money, then I would expect an out strategy for Spottt and within a year or two at the most. Will this actually happen? and what features are really missing from Spottt or sites like Spottt?
It has been reported that Chinese social network QQ made $523 million in revenues last year, which actually is almost four times more than Facebook. Facebook only turned over a revenue of $150 million, and while they reported a $50 million loss in 2007, QQ reported a profit of $224 million.
However, the most surprising stat is that QQ earned only 13 percent from online ad revenue. The majority of their revenues come from virtual goods, games and even mobile services made them 21 percent of the total. Facebook, wake up, this is the way forward. Services will always make more money than advertising.
Today Forbes.com have officially announced the creation of a Business and Finance Blog Network, comprising of a community of pre-screened, influential business and financial blogs.
The network will allow advertisers to target a highly engaged, exclusive niche audience of senior business decision makers and affluent investors easily and effectively. Four hundred-plus blogs have already joined the network, with many more expected to sign on before the official launch in the next few weeks.
Nick Ricci has been appointed General Manager, Sales. He will be responsible for overseeing the sales, marketing and promotion for the Blog Network as well as the Forbes Audience Network (FAN), which launched in November 2007. Nick joins Forbes.com from About.com, where he served as Senior Vice President, Sales and Ad Operations. He has also held senior sales management and marketing positions at Times Mirror Magazines, Cox Interactive Sales, and Hachette Filipacchi Media US. Nick is already in the process of hiring and building a dedicated network sales team.
“I’m thrilled that Nick has joined Forbes.com to oversee the sales efforts for the Blog Network,†added Spanfeller. “He is a seasoned executive with several years of sales and marketing experience who will play a key role in driving the network’s success.â€
Crenk is one of the four hundred blogs that has already signed up to the Forbes.com network. Im not too sure how the network will perform, but the expectations are high and from all reports so is the CPM rates that we can expect. Overall, this initiative seems to be a step forward for Forbes, who are trying to cash in on selling advertising across their network and then potentially grabbing millions more impressions from these blog partners.
If you dont already know Crenk has partnered with our sister site Adphilia to provide advertising for our site and for a very hand selected network of publishers. Adphilia currently has some sponsorship opportunities still available for Aprilso please contact them if you are interested. The network currently includes, Crenk, MakeUseOf, Xfep, BlogHerald, BloggingPro and ForeverGeek.
If you are interested please contact Adphilia via their website.
Towards the end of December I received an email from the nice people at Forbes.com asking me to join their blog network. The blog network is focused around the Business and Finance sector and there are some nice benefits that come with this partnership.
First, some of your posts / articles can be published on Forbes page which lead for higher readership. Second, you will be involved in Forbes advertising program.
Requirements for participation are:
- to have business or finance related blog
- to run two banners ads on your blog (728×90 Leaderboard and 160×600 Skyscraper or 300×250 Rectangle)
All ads management is done via online account at Adify. Pricing is based on eCPM (effective CPM). Blogger receives 40% of all net revenues collected by Forbes. It has also been rumoured that the eCPM rate that you can expects is between $10-20. Thus, working out to be $4 CPM for the publishers, which is a lot higher than most other networks.
However, this all being said and done, the blog network was supposed to be launched at the end of January and now we are just about to be at the end of March and still no news! I think this network is a great idea by Forbes to capitalise on a growing section of the internet, but they are quite poor at keeping the members informed about their network.
Here is a list of other discussions about the Forbes.com network:
It has been reported over at 901am that Adconion, an online advertising network, has secured the largest financial funding of an online media venture in European history. The investment of $80 million was led by Index Ventures, who were joined by existing investor Wellington Partners, and represents the first investment made from Index’s recently announced growth fund. Index partners’ Dominique Vidal, former CEO of Yahoo! Europe, and Giuseppe Zocco, the firm’s co-founder, will join Adconion’s board of directors.
Spottt has finally launched! As I predicted last week the free advertising exchange has finally launched their product. It has been a long time coming for Spottt, since the product was launched at the Techcrunch40 Conference.
The service does everything it says on the can, it provides a 125 x 125 advertising exchange in which you upload your 125 ad to their site and place a widget on your site. This calculates the amount of impression on your site and exchanges them for other impressions on other sites with the widget. Thus, hopefully providing your site with more free targeted advertising and readers.
At present the site is very simplistic and is quite similar in many ways to Entrecard. Hence, im very interested to see if it takes off the same as Entrecard has!
Picture this – you are a blogger. Your traffic is limited so the major ad networks don’t want to touch you. CPM ads yield too little and CPC ads just.. well, they aren’t getting clicked, and if you click them, Google will ban you.
What do you do? Well there’s good news. You can sell ads, especially those popular square button (125×125) image ads on a Pay Per Day basis. Pay Per Day is a new pricing model that allows bloggers to earn money for each day an ad is displayed on their blogs. In other words, if you are the kind of blogger who can’t deal with the issues that surround validating whether clicks are valid or not, or if an impression was actually delivered, pricing your ad inventory on a PPD basis will most likely be the best fit for you.
The Status Quo
There are so many companies that will offer to optimize your ads or analyse the most effective places to place your ads in order to generate a lot of clicks. While I am not knocking any of these services, I believe the PPD pricing model is more simple and far superior because your earnings are predictable and guaranteed as long as you display the ads.
A lot of bloggers currently sell their ad inventory by either placing an “Advertise Here” link on their site. The disadvantage here is that the chances of selling inventory via an Advertise Here” link is wholly dependent on whether a potential advertiser happens to visit your site. Selling remnant inventory through ad networks can be worse if the ad network just delivers untargeted, low paying so called “run-of-network” ads to your blog.
The Way Forward
Okay, now that you get the picture, what is the way forward. Well ideally, you want to sell your ad inventory directly to the advertisers. It is worth noting that the advertisers who are likely to pay the big bucks will most likely want to track the performance of their ad campaigns, so claiming your site generates 10,000 unique visitors a month without an independent affirmation will (most likely) not sway the big money advertiser.
This is where Aductions comes into play. Aductions is a new and cool advertising platform that allows bloggers to sell their ad inventory on a Pay Per Day basis and crucially, it also allows advertisers to find your ad space easily, buy your ad inventory and track their ad campaigns.
In addition to tracking their ads, advertisers can also see the geographic and demographic reports on the ad space they want to buy. This is very advantageous to the bloggers who do not generate a lot of traffic but have a highly concentrated audience from a particular area, or that fit a specific demographic.
Finally, there is an option that allows you to continue monetizing your blog via other networks if an advertiser hasn’t bought your ad inventory. In other words, you can still display Google ads through Aductions. All you need to do is select the 3rd party ad option when creating your ad space.
Oh yeah, this is where it gets really interesting. You can also withdraw your earnings as soon as an ad has been served to your ad space. This means that if you sell 10 days worth of ad inventory at $1 a day, you can start withdrawing your money on the first day.
You can register or find out more on how it works by visiting Aductions.com.
It has been reported that Buy.at has been purchased by AOL. Buy.at is a UK based affiliate marketing network which has been sold for an undisclosed amount, but it supposed to be based around the $150 million mark. This will be a nice win fall for DFJ Esprit who backed the company (who also backed Skype, SugarCRM and Technorati).
It has also been reported that Buy.at will now operate as a wholly-owned business unit of Advertising.com. Both companies will now be attached to the upcoming Platform-A, which will be launched by AOL. There are 4 other key companies within the platform, including Tacoda, AdTech, Third Screen Media and Quigo.These are companies are strictly related to ad service, but buy.at arent, they are based around closer customer and retailer relationships. This is a nice boost for the Platform-A that AOL is trying to develop, but im worried that after all of these purchased can AOL actually get it right and product an advertising Platform that can control the market and even challenge Google in the areas they already dominate. Im sure AOL will control the display advertising section of the market and Google will continue to control the text/search based end of the market. This being said watch out for Platform-A to launch and then 6 months later IPO!
FinditQuick.com has just released Quick Shots with a completely new design. Quick Shots is similar to YouTube in which users can upload original movies or short video clips and share them with their friends on the site. Within the Quick Shotss new design comes the more options for advertising, within and also outside the videos. Advertisers will have more avenues to advertising and this can only lead to more exposure and increased traffic.
