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Google to Offer a Tool To Measure Web Hits

As soon as Tuesday, Google plans to unveil a new service that measures Internet use, according to advertising executives who have been briefed on it. The tool is intended to help advertisers identify the best places to buy online ads by telling them which Web sites their target audiences visit.

Google’s approach, aimed at bolstering its ad-sales business, could pose a major threat to the Web measurement services that are available now, ad executives say. The two main players in the business — comScore and Nielsen Online — gather data on Internet use largely by tracking what panels of people do online or by conducting surveys, and their results can be inconsistent and incomplete. Google’s new offering will be based mostly on data from Web servers, allowing for a deeper and broader view of Internet use. And unlike the services from comScore and Nielsen, Google’s will be offered to marketers free, according to ad executives.

Separately, Google this week is expected to roll out a new tool aimed at showing how Web surfers respond to online ads. It will compare groups of people who are exposed to an ad with others who haven’t seen it, taking into account such factors as search activity and site visitation.

The services are a logical next step for Google as it moves into other parts of the advertising business, including television and newspapers, where the company has begun selling ad space. Marketers are hungry for research that helps them compare the results of offline and online ads so that they can allocate their marketing budgets more intelligently. Google could be positioned to serve this one-stop-shopping role.

With its new service, Google, like comScore and Nielsen, will offer marketers demographic details about potential customers, such as age, gender and income. Google’s new tool, which will also rely on some data gleaned from panels of human users and other sources, is similar to one developed by New York-based start-up Quantcast, which has been gaining popularity among media buyers. But because of its size, Google has the potential to shake up the Web-measurement business.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Technorati Launches Blog Ad Network, Technorati Media

Blog-focused advertising networks are all the rage right now, with both Federated Media and Glam pulling down big valuation financing rounds in the last few months based on very early growth metrics. Other startups, like Six Apart, have launched their own blog advertising networks as well.

As we predicted, Technorati now joins them with the launch of Technorati Media later this morning, their own blog advertising network. This comes just a couple of days after news leaked of their new round of financing.

The company has been testing the new sales product with a number of partners, including BlogTalkRadio, BlogCritics, BlogCatalog, BlogTV, Technabob, GPSMagazine, GeekAlerts and NerdApproved. CEO Richard Jalichandra says these blogs reach a combined audience of approximately 17 million unique monthly visitors.

Early advertisers on the network include Honda, Acura, Toyota, t-mobile, Adobe, HP, Sandisk, MSFT, Verizon, Sun, Sony, Visa, Nike, Scion, Chevrolet, Paramount, Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox and Best Buy.

Technorati has explored selling ads for third party sites for some time, but this is the first time they’ve opened the service up to anyone. Unlike Glam and Federated Media, they will take all comers, and say they expect blogs, from the large players on down through the long tail, will find they do a better job monetizing sites than the current options.

Ads are sold on a CPM basis. They will not make revenue guarantees, says Jalichandra, but the split between parties is negotiable. He declined to state what rates have been negotiated with beta partners. This is similar to what Six Apart promises, which is also targeting the long tail of blogs.

Jalichandra also says Technorati is uniquely positioned to sell ads at premium rates, even through small blogs, because they will be able to use descriptive tags/keywords, along with their existing blog indexing technology, to better match ads with content.

Technorati’s has seven sales professionals, led by VP Sales Tony Pribyl, a new hire. They also hired a new marketing lead, Jennifer McLean, away from Glam recently.

For now Technorati is only working with larger blogs, although it will be open to all comers in 2-3 months.

Source: TechCrunch

MySpace: My Portal?

News Corp. wants its popular social networking site to be a gateway to the Internet—and go head-to-head with Yahoo and Google

Just as Yahoo! (YHOO) gets one competitor off its back by quitting merger discussions with Microsoft (MSFT), the Web portal may soon find itself going head-to-head with a new rival. Starting June 18, News Corp.’s (NWS) social network MySpace is introducing design changes it hopes will make it look and feel a lot more like Yahoo.

If all goes to plan, MySpace would go beyond being a site where people build personalized profile pages and hang out online with friends, and become more of a gateway to the Web, where users can read news headlines, listen to music, watch videos, and more easily communicate with pals. “What we want to do is make MySpace the start page of the Internet,” says MySpace co-founder and President Tom Anderson. “When we talk about competition…I think about Yahoo and Google.”

Source: BusinessWeek

IM Platform Meebo Tries Shareable Ads

Browser-based IM platform Meebo has come up with an ad format that allows its users to easily share advertiser assets, for instance movie trailers, branded crossword puzzles, or product photos.

The new “MediaBar” ad unit is an expandable 728 x 90 banner that appears at the bottom of the browser window and supports video, games, news, or other content. Once a person is exposed to an ad, an icon is saved in their application menu interface, after which he or she has the option to share it with contacts. Meebo users can also personalize their IM experiences with branded backgrounds, buddy icons, and emoticons provided by its advertisers.

Initial advertisers include Havaianas, Sony Electronics, Universal Pictures, and the band Weezer. Meebo plans to sell the MediaBar using both a CPM and performance-based pricing.

At any point in the session, users can close the banner to opt out, and will not see ads until the next login, Meebo said.

Meebo also plans to expand advertising through its partner program, which has resulted in chat windows on sites like CNET, blip.tv Showtime and NBC Universal. It has begun selling text ads within many of those chat windows for publishers that want them. Revenue is shared with partners, who can dictate the frequency of ad placement.

Source: ClickZ

Narrowstep sold for $19 Million

Onstream Media Corp, a Florida-based digital media communications and applications company, has bought Narrowstep, a UK-born provider of Internet TV and IPTV services, in a deal worth up to $19 million.

Onstream will immediately execute a restructuring plan designed to significantly reduce or eliminate substantial costs related to Narrowstep’s facility leases and other costs. Then Onstream will be able to offer a single platform.

Narrowstep’s customers include ITV, Fox International, Outdoor Channel and Torque TV. For 2007, Narrowstep posted $6 million in sales and a net loss of $7.1 million.

Source: IBLNEWS

Simyo tests ad-funded mobile news service Squeeze

German mobile discount service provider Simyo is testing a new personal information service for mobile phones called Squeeze. The trial is currently running among a selected number of Simyo customers, whose feedback will be used to improve the service. Squeeze is developed by UK-based company AditOn and uses the same business model as the free dailies around Europe: advertising pays for the news to be free. Squeeze offers texts and pictures from twelve themes including politics, sports, news and showbiz. The service can be used by Symbian-OS and Java-enabled phones. The current trial involves 300 customers and will run until the end of June.

Omnifone claims UK music crown

Omnifone claims its unlimited downloads mobile music store ‘MusicStation’ is now the UK’s largest digital music subscription service, overtaking PC-centric services in terms of subscriber numbers. A Mobile Entertainment report notes that would effectively mean MusicStation - available exclusively in the UK via Vodafone - has more subscribers in the country than services such as Napster UK ( available via O2 ) and Nokia’s rival Music Store . Apple’s iTunes does not offer a subscription service.

Vodafone UK users pay £1.99 a week for access to unlimited mobile music downloads from a catalogue of 1.8 million tracks. Unlike other offerings, MusicStation’s business model does not allow users to keep the music once their subscriptions cease. Omnifone did not provide any statistics to back up today’s claim. Its service is also available via partners 3 Hong Kong, Telenor (Sweden) and Vodacom (South Africa).  

Nokia’s MOSH Gets Ads

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) said today it added advertising to its MOSH portal that’s used by people who are interested in creating and sharing mobile content. The portal is tapping into the Nokia Media Network, which provides reach to more than 100 million consumers by advertising on mobile publishers, operator partners and Nokia properties. “The MOSH audience, comprised of the heaviest users of mobile content around the world, is particularly desirable to many of our top advertisers,” said Mike Baker, VP and head of Nokia Interactive Advertising.  On the MOSH site, there will be paid placement ads, where brands are highlighted and placed above results from browsing, searching and contextual placements, Nokia said. The ads appear on both the mobile version and the PC version of the site. The first customer, video-sharing community Vringo, said downloads increased by more than 100 percent after its ads appeared on the site. BLUE LION mobile, a Germany-based company that has developed a mobile social network called “qeep” said downloads increased by more than 95 percent after advertising. Nokia said Universal Pictures plans to launch a campaign to promote the studio’s new film, Wanted.

U.S. Internet will shrink to 2 strong players

Tue Jun 3, 2008 6:39am EDT

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An Internet analyst for a major Wall Street firm argues in a new report that Google Inc and Amazon.com Inc will be long-term winners, while Yahoo and IAC InterActiveCorp fall by the wayside and eBay Inc becomes a merger target.

Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay argues in a 310-page report entitled “U.S. Internet: The End of the Beginning” to be published on Tuesday that Google and Amazon are best placed to withstand the current economic downturn.

“We expect two players to continue to perform strongly, Google and Amazon,” Lindsay writes. “Both Google and Amazon.com are still racking up annual growth rates in the 30-40 percent range, with only a relatively modest slowdown in sight.”

Lindsay reiterates his previous positions that Yahoo eventually will be sold to Microsoft Corp and that Barry Diller’s IAC e-commerce conglomerate will go ahead in August with its five-way split-up, as planned.

“Arguably the weakest players have strayed furthest from their original competences and have been operating largely as conglomerates,” the Bernstein analyst says of Yahoo and IAC.

In the short-run, however, Lindsay believes Yahoo will see gains if it reaches a deal to turn over some part of its search advertising sales to Google to run or if Microsoft resumes acquisition negotiations.

He argues that eBay “could potentially attract a Microsoft-like suitor in the future,” especially if growth in its core auctions business fails to resume and because eBay could spin off its PayPal or Skype units to make a deal work.

Even the strongest companies have weakness, Lindsay argues. Google has yet to articulate a compelling strategy to achieve the same level of strength on the emerging mobile Internet that it has on the computer-based Web.

Amazon and eBay are likely to be forced eventually to pay state sales taxes. Ironically, he notes, this may work to their advantage as large companies, because they have more resources than smaller e-commerce players to collect such taxes.