Archive for: purchase

Animaroo: The World’s Online Animal Marketplace

Are you looking to get a pet? Why not head over to Animaroo. Animaroo is an animal marketplace in which you can buy and sell dogs. For some reason this website seems a little wrong!

At Animaroo you can buy or sell a dog, see dog related websites and check out what breed you might want to purchase. Additionally, they have information on dog rescue, dog training, dog grooming and more. The site only has USA based ads at the moment but im sure this can be expanded over time to different countries and even different types of animals.

If you are a dog lover and looking for a new companion then Animaroo might be the place to look.

Technorati Media Isnt Moving In The Right Direction

I have been receiving a lot of emails lately from webmasters using Technorati Media as their ad network. Techn0rati is a blog search engine which launched an ad network back in June last year. At the time it was very big news, because Technorati was losing its way a little bit and also traffic at the same time. Thus, they launched Technorati Media which would open up a new revenues stream. At the same time Technorati purchased AdEngage which would be the backbone of the Technorati Media platform. AdEngage is a basic self service advertising platform which deals in CPC display advertising.

Anyways, Technorati Media launched their ad network with a lot of media attention and were offering some amazing CPM rates, in which was going to entice a huge amount of small and medium blogs. However, now since the economy is in a bit of a decline ad revenues have dropped but this is nowhere near the amount Technorati Media’s CPM rates have dropped.

I’m not too sure what Technorati Media is trying to achieve because using the current model they have for advertising, I’m sure they will be in a huge amount of trouble come the end of 2009. The economic crisis is not going to be fixed over night and it will take a couple of years to sort itself out, so Technorati please think of another advertising solution. CPC campaigns are great for advertisers because they get an instant return on investment for their money, but CPM is great for publishers because they can see a return on their investment. Technorati Media is struggling even to sell CPC campaigns even with some great sites on board, so this spells big trouble!

Disclosure: Im CEO of Adphilia which is a site representation company.

YouTube Ads CPC Ad Platform for Sponsored Videos

No more just Google Adwords CPC ads on YouTube cause they have just added a sponsored videos section. Anyone can now start and run a campaign for their videos directly on YouTube and they all based on CPC.

Concerned about costs? Don’t worry – Sponsored Videos puts you in complete control of your spending. There’s no minimum spending requirement–the amount you pay for Sponsored Videos is up to you. You can, for instance, set a daily budget of five dollars and a maximum cost of ten cents for each click on your ad.

Currently they only support users in the USA, but im sure that they will be expanding this very soon to other countries.

you tube advertising platform banner

Seesmic Acquires Twhirl, But Their Still In Alpha Themselves!

Seesmic which claims to be the Twitter for video has just acquired Twhirl. Although Seesmic is still in Alpha this seems to be a good purchase on the outside. Twhirl is one of the most popular Adobe AIR apps and allows users to post to their Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce accounts. This is the first acquisition ever of a pure AIR application and im sure it wont be the last.

For other coverage on this acquisition take a look at BlogHerald and Mashable. Im also interested to see what Arrington has to say about the acquisition, because he is an investor in Seesmic, however Mark Hendrickson did the review for Techcrunch of the story.

Getty Images Is Looking For A Buyer, By The End Of The Month!

The New York times reports that Getty Images is now up for sale. The world’s biggest supplier of pictures and video to media and advertising companies, has put itself on the auction block and could fetch more than $1.5 billion, people briefed on the situation said Sunday.

Getty was founded back in 1995 and current has a catalogue of 3.2 billion images and 4 million unique visitors to its website each month. These figures make the company very lucrative. Goldman Sachs was hired to advise it on a potential sale and Getty has already attracted several potential buyers, mostly private equity firms, including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Bain Capital and others.

Bids for the company are due to be finalised by the end of the month. A sale is not assured, but with this high end company being up for grabs, I wouldn’t be surprised if a few private equity firms join forces to finalise a sale.

AOL Make Final Ad Network Purchase

AOL has been putting the final touches on its new ad conglomerate, Platform A. AOL has confirmed that they have purchased Quigo for a reported $340 million. Quigo is a contextual ad network which has two main services, AdSonar and FeedPoint. Adsonar is very similar to Google’s Adsense in that it provides targeted advertisements on various websites, and FeedPoint is their search engine marketing tool.

AOL Chairman and CEO Randy Falco said, “With Quigo, we are putting the final pieces of Platform A in place. We will be able to offer advertisers and publishers the most advanced set of tools, including contextual and behavioral targeting, superior analytics, and access to the largest display network in the marketplace.”

Quigo will become part of Platform A which already includes Advertising.com, Tacoda, Third Screen Media, Lightningcast and Adtech.

Overall, the purchases that AOL have made has been a bit surprising. All of these ad networks are in a variety of areas and it is going to be very interesting over the next few years to see if they can put them all into one neat package. Targeting users is vital when it comes to PPC marketing and the company that can be the most efficient at this will control the future of PPC.

Google Acquires Jaiku

The news of the day must be that Google has acquired Jaiku. Jaiku is a microblogging site similar to Pownce and Twitter. It is a bit of a surprise that Google has opted to purchase Jaiku (which hails from Finland) instead of Twitter (the market leader) or Pownce (the new kid on the block with the best user interface).

Have a look at what everyone else has been saying about the deal:

Twitter has not long got Series A Funding, so it would have been rare for them to be purchased. Pownce on the other hand seems to be on the downhill slide. Since their highly publicised launch Pownce has never lived up to expectations and with the recent news about Kevin Rose potentially moving Pownce features over to Digg, it has just never recovered. If you look at Alexa data on Pownce you will notice it wont be too long until it dies a death, on the quick slide down. Its seems that Jaiku was an important match with Google because it has more of a presence in activity streams and mobile presence and those are the markets Google is trying to gain more market share. It that last week Google also launched Adsense for mobile, so this will be a nice addition to boost the start of that new service.

Newsvine Acquired by MSNBC.com

It has been reported by Techcrunch that Newsvine has been acquired by MSNBC.com. It is reported that the deal was closed on October the 5th and all in cash. This is MSNBC’s for acquisition in its 11 year history. Look out for the site to become a citizens journal with social media thrown in.

I have always thought that MSNBC was just a copy of news stories from other Microsoft or NBC sites and not a stand alone news site and entity.

Google Acquires Mobile Platform Operator Zingku

The latest news is the Google has agreed to acquire mobile startup Zingku. There is very little know about the company, but according to Zingku themselves this is what they do:

“Our service is designed from the mobile phone, outward, allowing you to create and exchange things of interest ranging from invitations to “mobile flyers” with friends in a trusted manner. On the mobile phone, Zingku uses standard text messaging and picture messaging features that come with every phone. On the web, our service uses your standard web browser and instant messenger. There is nothing to install.”

This is a bit of a strange one, Techcrunch cant even find out much about the company. Come on Arrington im sure you must have some contacts somewhere that can get you some inside information!