Search Yogi

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2008-05-01T09:14:00.000-07:00

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Rajesh

Funny or Die

2008-04-29T12:05:00.000-07:00

On the heels of my post about Jonathan Schwartz CEO plugging Aggregate knowledge, I was reminded about another event from the past. Sequoia Capital partner Mark Kvamme was speaking at the Stanford Venture lab panel. As part of the discussion, he announced that the site funnyordie was going live. His spin on it was that it was an amateur effort by his teenage son who had spawned the idea and had roped in actor Will Ferrel into the project as well.
This had the intended effect on me and I was wowed by the ingeniousness of the folks involved. However, I later found that it was a well-orchestrated start-up and not a serendipitous accident as it was projected to be. No doubt Mark had full reason to plug his start-up, but I felt hoodwinked on what I perceived to be a mis-representation.

Modular robot reassembles when kicked apart

2008-04-29T09:18:00.000-07:00

New York & Company email spam

2008-04-28T16:25:00.001-07:00

I am checking an email account that has not been used for the past few months. The inbox had a preponderance of emails from New York & Company. I have received 19 emails in April from them. Ditto for March. I wonder what their click through and unsubscribe rates look like, given this spamming.

PR for Aggregate Knowledge

2008-04-28T07:56:00.000-07:00

At the web 2.0 conference, Sun CEO Jonatha Schwartz brought up Aggregate Knowledge's technology and its sophistication. I was quite impressed by the traction that AK was receiving. But later on, I got to know from their competitor Baynote that Schwartz is a Limited Partner at Kleiner Perkins, one of the investors in Aggregate Knowledge. Another connection being that Kleiner Perkins was also one of the investors in Sun in its early days.

Great Public Relations for AK. But the plug did not feel good after knowing the facts.

OLPC

2008-01-10T16:28:00.000-08:00

Undoubtedly an interesting twist to the long running OLPC - Intel saga. See techcrunch article below. Ironically, this new outfit is for-profit and the founder has previously worked at both Intel and OLPC!

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/10/pixel-qi-towards-a-75-laptop/

GOOG and IPTV

2008-01-10T16:02:00.000-08:00

Google announced that it is tying up with Matsushita to launch Internet TV. While this had immediate pop out effect on Matsushita's shares, GOOG did not show the same effect. Perhaps because of market conditions that day, in addition to the fact that this may not have significant and immediate revenue impact for Google.
However, in the medium term, I see this as a tipping point for you tube. Google proactively bundling some of their more TV-friendly offerings (aka video and photos) with TV makers out there is a smart move that will sit well with the natural upsurge in interest in viewing online video content on TVs. One can only speculate on the ad revenue implications for you tube once this convergence gathers steam.

Google Universal Search

2007-05-16T12:15:00.000-07:00

Hot off the press:

Google has just announced "Universal Search" (Sergi Brin was in attendance), a moniker for an effort to integrati several channels into the Google search results: Google local, videos, images, books etc. This is bringing together several parts that seemed apparently disparate until now (You Tube, Publishing project, Google Local etc.).

To make this happen, Google has implemented a new scoring algorithm that will be able to compare information from different media (comparing Apples and Oranges as they put it). An example would be whether to rank a video of Martin Luther King higher than an text article about him. Youtube and Google videos will be integrated into the search. The vidoes will be embedded in the search page and the user can view the video without leaving the page. In the initial phase, they will also be pulling in videos from select video sites like Metacafe. This will be a thumbnail that will direct the user to the third-party video site.

Clearly, this will increase the time spent/user on the Google.com site. It's as if the search results page is becoming a content page to some degree.This may have interesting Advertising implications and may open the door for Google to experiment with display ads on the search page.

Google will also start offering experimental search pieces at www.google.com/experimental
Users will be able to sign up to integrate these experimental features into the search results they see on their screen.

The Google stock is already showing a spike today. It almost seems like Google timed the announcement to prop up the sagging stock price (the YTD growth has been under 2% for 2007).

2007-05-10T21:12:00.000-07:00

Google has started showing some sponsored search ads at the bottom of the page i.e. below the organic search results. Here is a screenshot -

2007-05-02T21:39:00.000-07:00

In case you are looking for traffic trends, the following three sites are generally accepted as standard for free sources. Couple of them have traffic growth graphs:

alexa
Data sourced from tool bar downloads by users.

statsoholic
Formerly Alexoholic. It sources data from Alexa, but has better presentation. Amazon (which owns Alexa) is trying to block statoholic from having full access to their API.

compete
Toolbar download by users.

quantcast
Arrive at numbers based on statistical calculations on internet traffic data. Quantcast have a very good interface in my opinion. Taking a different tack from others, they are encouraging and giving companies the capability to correct the traffic numbers that quantcast is reporting for the particular company. However, it is not very clear what incentive companies have to correct/share this data with the general public.

You will see differences in numbers between these sources, but their direction of trend should be in the same direction. However, here is a case where Peter Rip found the numbers were moving in different directions.

"I am Starbucks" Campaign

2007-04-22T21:26:00.000-07:00

Starbucks has received lot of negative publicity lately for not using fair trade coffee. According to consumer watchdog organicconsumers.org, only 3.7% of Starbucks coffee purchases annualy are Fair Trade Certified. This does not bode well for Starbucks suppliers who may hail from Costa Rica, Ethiopia or other developing countries etc. Of course, Starbucks contention is that requiring Fair Trade certification will make their coffee more expensive.

It appears that Starbucks' new Ad campaign, "I am Starbucks" is aimed at deflecting this negative publicity and to promote a farmer-friendly image. Takers anyone? :)

Attachment to a Vintage Necktie

2007-04-18T22:02:00.000-07:00

The WSJ ran an article today (behind a pay wall) about how divvying up family's belongings has the potential to ignite family feuds. These items in question are knickknacks that have sentimental value rather than monetary worth to the parties involved.

The article talks about apparently novel strategies to keep peace. Some notable ones:

Family Auctions: Silent auctions, either online or submitting bids to the estate planner. In one example, three siblings set up a private web based auction to bid for their late fathers personal property, including his vintage tie.

Round Robin Strategy: Heirs draw straws and whoever wins gets to pick out items in a particular room. Repeated for each room.

Rotating Possession: If more than one sibling covets an article, the possession of the article rotates every few years.

In all the above strategies, the common thread is a psychological attachment to the items. The solutions all conform to the rule that this attachment needs to be satisfied and ascribe a certain value (either emotional, financial or both) to these items. However, the attachment to these items itself is never questioned. We need to question the assumptions and the thought structure underlying this attachment. Relationships are nurtured not by drawing up elaborate strategies but by "letting go".

Google Double Click

2007-04-18T21:41:00.000-07:00

Microsoft and AT&T claim that the Doubleclick acquisition by Google violates Anti-trust provisions. As is apparent, this is quite ironic coming from players who themselves have a long anti-trust legacy.

I had pointed out a few months ago that Google could become dominant enough to attract attention in this vein. Here is the post.

Target increases price-point in the $1 aisle

2007-04-14T23:44:00.000-07:00

The familiar Target Aisles in the front that carried $1 goods is an excellent hook for users. And a great way to dispose unsold inventory. However, Target has quietly introduced products that are at the $2.50 price point in the same aisles. The price tag is there, but its unlikely customers are noticing it. Many customers must be assuming that all products are at $1. A classic habitual response.
At least this is what happened to me and another shopper. A Hawaiian style straw hat looked like a very good buy at $1, only to realize later that it was priced at $2.50. Increasing the price point makes financial sense, but I wonder if customers will feel cheated if and when they find out that their purchase was not such a good bargain after all. There has to be some sort of visible delineation/marker between these products. At best, these aisles will lose their effectiveness as a purchase hook. At worst, its an easy way to lose customer trust. A bit at a time.

CBS inks deal with online video players

2007-04-14T23:24:00.000-07:00

In the latest sign of the networks going the way of distributing current/recent content to online viedoe networks, CBS has announced that it will make available previously shown episodes of CSI, NCIS and others. The deals are interesting in that it covers several online players, both mature start-ups and those that are just taking off. The players are:

CNET - Text content + video

Brightcove - Youtube like model

Joost - in private beta (need an invite from a current user). While Youtube focuses on UGC, Joost seems to focus on syndicating content from TV networks.

Netvibes - Just made their US/"universal" debut after making their name on their hometurf in France. This deal will fit very nicely with Netvibes strategy of providing as many feeds as possible to users.

Sling Media - It will be interesting to see how Sling will use CBS content, since the Slingbox out in the market now is essentially to enable "location shifting".

Comcast - Online video play for a cable company?

Veoh Networks

Compete.com registeration

2007-04-02T12:46:00.000-07:00

I was trying to get some traffic stats and I went to Compete.com to get it. The links on the home page were not working and so I decided to register. They asked me some prickly questions:

Salary

Gender

Year of Birth

I was a bit unnerved about being asked for these tidbits, but since I wanted the data, I continued with the registeration. After the registeration, I checked my account options. It turned out that they decided to sign me up for their newsletters, without asking for my permission.

So they are follwing an auto opt-in strategy. I had to take myself off their emails.

While start-ups need traffic, I think its unethical to sign-up users on email lists without asking their permission. When a company adopts this approach, it runs the risk of getting caught by spam blockers. Its much easier to press the "report spam" button (in Gmail for example) than it is to unsubscribe. Overall, an unhealthy approach to increasing traffic.

Inserting Ads seamlessly into Video

2007-03-30T11:31:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal (behind a paywall) reported today Advertising.com, a subsidiary of AOL will be Ad distributor for the as-yet-unnamed NBC - News Corp. joint venture for online video. It seems like advertising.com is leveraging some of the IP it got through AOL's acquisition of Truveo back in Dec 2005. The technology allows advertising.com to insert ads into video clips seamlessly at any point in the video. I can see advertisers being very interested in this. Imagine a Kellogs ad right as a family sits for breakfast in the video or a Circuit City ad just as viewers are in the middle of watching a football match.

Adwords on Gmail

2007-03-29T10:13:00.000-07:00

The ads that appear at the top of my emails in my Gmail account have become extremely targeted lately. I can't seem to stop clicking on the ads that show up. Google has figured out my interests in start-ups and travel. I get mostly content links from Business week, NY travel and others that are right down my alley. Scary on one hand, but superb targeted,relevant content on the other.

Green Efforts

2007-03-27T10:34:00.000-07:00

http://sustainlane.com/

VC Anti-Portfolio

2007-03-26T20:48:00.000-07:00

Check out this page from the Bessemer Venture Partner site. An interesting (and witty!) profile of missed opportunities.

http://bvp.com/port/anti.asp

Full Disclosure: Bessemer is an investor in the company I work for.

The Dissent from Within

2007-03-26T12:31:00.000-07:00

Are corporate-types finally waking up to the need for enviromental responsibility?

Here is an extract from a Wall Street Journal article (behind a pay wall)

NONDALTON, Alaska -- Soaring in his private plane above the pristine tundra here two years ago, Robert B. Gillam experienced a conversion: The money manager and pro-business Republican became an impassioned conservationist.
He took the flight after reading reports that a Canadian company planned to build North America's largest open-pit gold and copper mine in Southwest Alaska's Bristol Bay region. The proposed Pebble Mine would stretch two miles across and be deep enough to swallow the Empire State Building. And it would be scraped from the headwaters of rivers that feed the world's largest wild-salmon fishery.
So Mr. Gillam -- whose Alaska investment firm holds more than $1 billion in mining stocks for clients -- launched a second career. He has become the unlikely front man for a band of Native Alaskans, fishermen, hunters, environmentalists and business leaders opposing the project. Mr. Gillam, 60 years old, has helped pay for ads, lobbyists and polls to convince Alaskans that Pebble Mine could be an environmental disaster.
"Mining is no longer the ideal of a prospector with a pick-ax and pan," he says, "but a dirty, industrial business."

Say No to Skiing at Heavenly

2007-03-26T12:20:00.000-07:00

The Heavenly ski resort at Lake Tahoe is planning to cut-down hundreds of trees to make way for a chair lift. Here is an extract from an article in the Wall Street Journal (behind a pay wall).

...ski resorts, which cut down forests to create ski slopes and build condos, still haven't completely won over environmentalists. A group called the Sierra Nevada Alliance recently condemned a proposal by officials at the Heavenly Mountain Resort at Lake Tahoe to chop down hundreds of ancient fir trees to make way for a new chairlift, even as it praised the participation of Heavenly and its parent, Vail Resorts Inc., in the global-warming campaign. "While some of the resorts are thinking globally, they aren't thinking locally," says Autumn Bernstein, land-use coordinator for the alliance.
Officials at Heavenly say they plan to mitigate the loss of the trees by working to protect old trees in other parts of the forest. "What environmentalists need to understand is that we are excellent stewards of the environment," says Heavenly spokesman Russ Pecoraro.

Bangalore Real Estate

2007-02-26T05:01:00.000-08:00

I was in Bangalore recently and could not help but notice the apartments that are popping up everywhere. Real estate prices are at an all-time high. So are the stock market valuations for apartment builders. The IPO of 'Soba builders', a local builder, was oversubscribed 108 times.

Finding 5-star hotel rooms is also difficult. There are only 5 such hotels in Bangalore and apparently they get booked a year in advance. The availability of 5-star hotel rooms is also at an all-time low. A silicon valley VC I was chatting with a couple of days ago mentioned that he paid $650/night to stay at the Leela palace (which is close to one of the IT hubs in Bangalore). More than what he pays to stay at the Waldorf! Another bay area company that has a substantial presence in Bangalore pays $350/night for its senior execs to stay at the Leela. The reason they got a better deal?:) They have a long term contract for the rooms with the Leela!

Given this pressure on land prices (and on cost of talent), some of the capital is likely to move (or is already moving) to Tier 2 cities near Bangalore or to Hyderabad, Chennai (Madras), Poona among others. Mysore is likely to benefit from this capital flight. It is about 3 hrs from Bangalore. But with a new multi-lane highway being built between Bangalore and Mysore, the commute time will decrease. Moreover, Infosys already has presence with a large training center in Mysore.

SEMPO Survey

2007-02-22T15:24:00.001-08:00

A recent SEMPO Survey says that Yahoo is on a solid footing on the SEM front. To substantiate this claim, it cites the survey statistic that 4 out of 5 or 86% of the respondents run SEM ads on Yahoo.
I think this is misleading. Historically speaking, Overture (which was acquired by Yahoo) was the pioneer and advertisers have always run ads on it. Moreover, Yahoo continues to retain approx. 20 - 25% search market share. Given this fact, advertisers have no choice but to advertise on Yahoo, no matter how unweildy the platform. A more relevant question to ask advertisers would be "what % of your SEM spend is on Yahoo?"). Responses to this question will likely show a skew that corroborates Yahoo's woes in the SEM space (atleast until the Panama launch).

On a positive note though, the new Panama platform will finally give advertisers the flexibility they need and will mean increased SEM revenues for Yahoo. Yahoo is well aware of this and therefore has given an upbeat revenue forecast for Q1.

Survey: $10 Billion Spent on Search Marketing in '06

Mike Shields

FEBRUARY 08, 2007 -

Advertisers in North America laid out close to 10 billion dollars on search engine marketing in 2006, a year that saw a 62 percent spend increase versus 2005, according to an annual survey conducted by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO).

SEMPO found that, based on its survey of 587 search agencies and advertisers, spending in the medium will double by 2011, reaching $18.6 billion (SEMPO counts both paid search advertising and spending on companies' internal search engine optimization in its dollar estimates, while other firms do not). According to the report, The State of Search Marketing 2006 Executive Summary, that rapid growth will be driven by continued advertiser demand, rising prices and a new wave of small-to-midsize businesses discovering the medium.

Not surprisingly, Google dominates the search advertising business. Among the marketers and agencies surveyed, 96 percent of them report using Google AdWords to promote their brands.

Yet despite its recent urgent push to improve its own search ad technology, Yahoo is on solid footing according to SEMPO respondents. More than four out of five advertisers--86 percent--say they have run ads on Yahoo's search product.

Meanwhile MSN, which has struggled in a distant third-place position in the search race, even losing some market share in recent months, has made great strides among advertisers, found SEMPO. Sixty-eight percent of advertisers said they used MSN for their search campaigns in 2006, up from just 29 percent in 2005.

The reason for MSN's surge is that despite low usage, the search engine's ad environment is less cluttered, and it tends to deliver the right ads to users. "The ROI on MSN is extremely strong," said Kevin Lee, co-founder of Did-it.com and chair of the SEMPO research committee. "And there is not anywhere near the competition, as it's a less mature marketplace."

Another less-than-mature marketplace is that of search advertising for brand advertisers. Despite claims that more and more brands are using the medium for branding, as most respondents reported, just 21 percent of search advertisers actually track or measure the branding impact of search for their campaigns.

Lee said that in practice, more brands are looking at a combination of search and branding metrics. "A lot of search marketers are being more holistic."

--
www.SearchYogi.com

Adwords Editor

2006-12-02T17:47:00.000-08:00

The Adwords editor is one of the most useful Ad applications that Google has come up with in recent days. From a search advertiser's stand point, it gives a great deal of flexibility in making large scale changes relatively quickly. The tool is specially useful when dealing with complex accounts where keyword characteristics tend to be multi dimensional in nature.

This is one more place where yahoo has not been able to deliver. Search ad spend tends to be correlated to the ease with which changes can be made to campaigns. It is to be seen how Yahoo V2/ Panama will affect the search ad spend share of google and yahoo. V2 is likely to put Yahoo on par with Google in relation to the main Adwords application. Most likely the average ad spend per advertiser is likely to increase in Yahoo because of V2. However, I do not see Yahoo coming up with an Adwords Editor like application at least until August 2007.

Bit torrent raises 25 million

2006-12-02T17:43:00.000-08:00

Bitorrent has managed to raise quite a tidy sum of money for funding their growth. One of the biggest challenges they face is to have anti piracy controls in place. Their VP of business development definitely seems to be spending a fair bit of time in Hollywood trying to make sure that they are in the RIAA- movie industry's good books. This seems to have paid off.

It would be interesting to see how this development affects Skyrider's fortunes. Skyrider has developed an advertising platform for P2P networks, with a search marketing twist to it.

Google: Taking over your Desktop?

2006-12-02T17:30:00.000-08:00

Google is taking over your desktop. Probably not surprising, given the fact that it appears to be part of their strategy for couple of years now. Increasingly, Google is rolling out services that require a single Google log in and password.

Take orkut for example.
http://www.orkut.com/

Orkut has gained wide popularity among users in Brazil and India. It seems like Google is finally being proactive about making changes in the application that make life easier for the users. Of course, they have started putting ads on Orkut, which is great from advertiser perspective. If you are an advertiser looking to target the Indian or Brazilian Diaspora, Orkut would be a great addition into your content targeting portfolio. A more significant change from a user perspective is that users now can reply to a scrap they have received right from their scrapbook. Earlier, users would need to actually navigate to their friends scrapbook to write their entry.

Google spreadsheets and MS word - like applications hosted on the web is taking a shot at Microsoft's core desktop applications market. With the acquisition of jotspot.com, Google has acquired some good technology that should help it to stay ahead of other rivals in this space. These applications are again enticing the user to move away from the client to the server for creating and storing documents. Microsoft is sure to be affected by this general trend.

We have not heard much about the Gdrive lately. Gdrive is apparently an tool that is Google is experimenting with internally for document and storage and retrieval on the web. So, just as with Google Spreadsheets, you could retrieve your documents from anyplace, as far as you have an Internet connection.

Other examples of Google slipping into the desktop could be Google calendar, Gmail and Google Pack. The pop up announcing the arrival of new Gmail is as obtrusive as that from MS outlook.
The Google pack is a bunch of applications that are installed and updated automatically on a regular basis. This will definitely help Google stake their ground and enable them to continue pushing new applications through this.

Google Acquires YouTube

2006-10-09T15:29:00.000-07:00

Its official. Google has acquired Youtube in a $1.65 billion stock-for-stock deal. The company had a analyst call today at 1.30pm PST. The webcast is available at http://investor.google.com/webcast.html

It will be interesting to watch how Google Video and YouTube will be integrated. This acquisition also means that Google will possibly increase its emphasis on Video ads by pitching it more to advertisers. They will have 4 times more inventory than before (based on Google and YouTube market share).

Pay Per Call

2006-10-09T11:01:00.000-07:00

Ingenio signed a deal with MSN yesterday to place pay-per-call ads on MSN search service for mobile devices. Ingenio's service enables advertisers to set-up pay-per-call ads. A pay-per-call ad is one where the user is connected to the call center rep when he clicks on the ad.
With this deal, Ingenio seems to be strengthening its presence in the pay-per-call market. It already has a deal with Google and AOL (AOL's search service is powered by Google).

The biggest potential for pay-per-call would be in the mobile devices market. For search through mobile devices, a pay-per-call model is likely to be much more effective than a pay-per-click model. Search or internet surfing on Mobile devices happen in an entirely different context when compared to search on a PC. Many searches will be geo-centric (restaraunts in a particular area) and making a call (reservations, are you guys open now?) is an easier option than peering at content on a small screen.

Google and YouTube

2006-10-09T10:39:00.000-07:00

With the impending $1.6 billion acquisition of YouTube, Google is set to become the biggest behemoth in the online video space. TechCrunch and NY Times has reported that the deal may be announced tonite. Google video now has a 10% share while YouTube has a 46% share. If the deal goes through, Google will have a 56% share of the online video market. Should this not raise potetial anti-trust concerns?
Reed Hundt, the ex-chairman of the FCC, gave a talk in the bay area last week where he mentioned that goverment is following an unstated and implicit policy of allowing large merger deals (the likes of AT&T and SBC) to go through. In this environment, I would not be surprised if Google will grow to be as big and dominant in a few years as Microsoft used to be.

Verizon on track with Internet TV expansion

2006-09-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

I am very excited about the Internet TV Boom that is on the horizon. And the opportunities that it will bring. Verizon is leading the race to have a extensive fiber-optic network and replace copper wires with Optic fibers, especially for the "last mile" i.e. the edge of the network leading into people's homes. Verizon will spend about $18 billion (!!) by 2010 to make this upgrade and expects to sign up 175,000 TV customers by year-end. It expects to introduce product-placement based advertising on Internet TV.

Nikon Coolpix S7c

2006-09-29T11:35:00.000-07:00

remember taking all those pictures on your digital camera during your holiday? and coming back home to download them on your computer before sending it to family and friends?

Nikon is making it easier. I mentioned about T-mobile launching cellphones that can roam into wireless networks at home or other hotspots. Now Nikon has released a camera, the $350 Coolpix S7c, that can log into the nearest wi-fi network and sends the photos in thumbnail images in an email. Recipients can download the photos or watch them on Nikon's coolpix connect website.

Walmart promoting low-premium, high-deductible plan

2006-09-29T11:19:00.000-07:00

Walmart is promoting a low-premium, high-deductible plan for new incoming employees. Premium can be as low as $11 a month with a relatively high deductible of $1000.
Roughly 46% of Walmart's 1.3 million store-level workers are enrolled in its health care plans.
This new plan is not helping Walmart's image. Critics like wakeupwalmart contend that the new plan discourages unhealthy people from seeking work at its stores.

Intrusive Marketing?

2006-09-27T14:46:00.000-07:00

Retailers already use bar-code data to understand consumer behavior and to create and segment customer profiles using purchase data. This data tells the retailer how often you visit, whether you visit the same store or different ones in the chain and ties individual users to their purchases during each visit.
Now retailers are going a step further. They want to understand what customers do inside the store. A consortium of major retailers (including Walmart, Coca Cola and P&G) is testing a system that uses infrared rays to track which exact aisle shoppers visited and which ones they ignored. This will help them refine their in-store marketing initiatives like aisle displays or for buying ads on in-store TV networks.

Do you think this is a bit intrusive?

Potato Burial

2006-09-27T14:44:00.000-07:00

A WSJ article (subscription req) talks about how a growing co-op of farmers is trying to boost potato prices by controlling supply. In the process, farmers are destroying part of their crop to avoid oversuppy. The article gives an example of one farmer who buried $10,000 worth of perfectly fine potatoes.
Hello! Are we losing perspective here?? There are millions in the developing world without food to eat. And here we are trying to influence demand-supply by intentionally destroying food. It seems to me that our perspective is being heavily skewed by economic gain, at the cost of being blind to the broader Human context.

T-Mobile

2006-09-27T14:42:00.000-07:00

I use T-Mobile for my cell phone service. However covereage in my area is practically non-existent. I am planning to switch but T-Mobile's big expansion plans is giving me second thoughts.
T-Mobile has commited more than $4 billion for new radio frequencies in FCC auctions. Its launching a new generation of interet phones that can roam into wireless internet connections at home and T-mobile hotspots. This seems to be a first among all the wireless carriers. I am somewhat excited about this since it might finally give me a chance to be connected, if I stay with them.

AOL lawsuit over Search Data Breach

2006-09-27T14:40:00.000-07:00

Three subscribers have sued AOL. Their search data was released as part of an intentional release by AOL of some 19 million search requests made by 650,000 users. The three subscribers are seeking a class-action status for their lawsuit. My guess? This lawsuit will soon gain class action status.

Leveraging the Power of Internet

2006-09-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

Threadless.com sells T-shirts. Pretty simple, isn't it? Yes, but they are doing something that leverage the community aspect of the internet. Users submit designs for T-Shirts. The Threadless.com user community votes on these designs. The best designs win prizes. And of course, you can order T-shirts with any of the designs.
Sounds like a cool business model? I think so!

Sony's New Ad to engage TIVO users

2006-09-27T14:37:00.000-07:00

The number of people who use TiVo and other DVRs is growing at a healthy rate. This presents a rather unpleasant challenge to advertisers: How to get users to watch an Ad when they are skipping through to the next program?
The Answer: Engage them. KFC did it earlier this year by hiding a clue in it's ad that can only be seen on recording and playing back the video (aka TiVo users).
Yesterday, Sony launched an ad targeted at TiVoers for its new line of LCD TVs. The ad has two different endings. One for men and another for women. The engagement part? Viewers will have to click on one of the two radio buttons presented to them on the TV screen: "ending for men" or "ending for women". Of course, after this point, imagery appealing to each gender is presented.
Will this work? we shall find out soon. KFC saw a 40% increase in traffic to its website when it ran the Ads!

HP's Dunn Resigns

2006-09-27T14:35:00.000-07:00

Finally! The writing was on the wall for a few days now. The question now is if Mark Hurd will survive the storm. His testimony next week in front of the house comittee will be an interesting turn of events in this saga.

Yahoo's Revenue in bottom half of forecast

2006-09-27T14:32:00.000-07:00

Yahoo's Q3 revenue is going to be in the bottom half of the forecast range. Yahoo has attributed this to a drop in online advertising revenue from its automotive and financial services clients.
Does this mean a slowing of growth for the online advertising as a whole? I don't think so. As the WSJ (subscription reqd) notes, a confluence of factors may have made Yahoo more vulnerable than its competitors to the slowing growth of ad revenue from the auto and financial industries.
It is interesting to note that the slowdown was largely in the dispay ad areas. Yahoo's Search advertising is growing at expected levels. This suggests that US auto makers (think GM) who have been having financial difficulties may have cut down on branded advertising. These ads are generally more expensive and it is harder to pin-down the ROI from these ads.
Another factors may be the delay in the release of Yahoo's new ad platform. The market thought so too and amply demonstrated its displeasure by hammering Yahoo's stock by more than 22% last month. Yahoo's existing ad platform is incredibly difficult to use, especially when contrasted against Google Adwords. I expect that Google and its online ad revenues will continue to grow at expected levels.
What Yahoo has going for it is its strong presence in content. Yahoo properties like deli.cio.us, Yahoo finance, photos and others have tremendous amount of traffic. With a more effective ad platform (due for release in early Q4), online advertisers will be able to leverage this audience better.
Google, while having a strong presence in search, lags behind on the content respect. Google Finance, Video and gmail have gained significant traction, but do not have #1 position in most areas.

Audio and Video Advertising

2006-09-27T14:29:00.000-07:00

With the proliferation of Audio and Video content on the internet, advertising on these media will likely be part of the next surge in online advertising.
Visitors will access this content in two ways. The user can visit a website and download the podcast/movie. For example by going to iTunes.com or youtube.com. The other alternative is to have have the content directly streamed to them on a non-PC device. For example, Sonos has just released a device that connects to Rhapsody's trove of songs and plays it on the Sonos whole-house system.
There are two advertising avenues possible here. Audio and video ads can be seamlessley integrated into the content at appropriate points, much like the Ads we see today on TV before/after or in-between a show. There is technology that allows this seamless integration (AOL aquired a company which developed this technology a few months ago). The other possibility is that relevant text ads relevant are shown on the webpage where the content is being streamed.
Both of these require sophisticated technology that allows for understanding/transcribing the content. Companies like Podzinger, TVEyes and Blinkx offer voice-recognition software that translates spoken words into text or audio waveforms that can be searched. Once this is enabled, then text and image ads can be served to users using the Google Adwords or Yahoo ad platform, much like the way it is done today for text content.
It is worth noting that this new technology looks at the complete content in a audio or video clip. Most audio/video search technology today relies on the text tags associated with these clips.

New Ads in New Places

2006-09-27T14:18:00.000-07:00

Interesting take on where the furture growth of ad industry is going to come from.
http://www.venturebeat.com/contributors/?p=17

September 11th Gaffe

2006-09-27T14:10:00.000-07:00

Today is September 11th. Naturally, many ads in the Wall Street Journal are commemorating the Sept 11th 2001 aniversary. However, emirates airlines seem to have been caught off-gaurd. Look at the snapshot of page A3 from today's WSJ.

The Tiffany and Alger ads (right side column) both speak to the Sept 11th tragedy. The Emirates airline Ad (bottom left) however is the usual one they run on this spot on a regular basis.

This Emirates ad seems inappropriate for today, not only because it is an airline, but also because UAE based. Readers (aka customers) on seeing the ad in the context of the other ads on the page, would probably have a negative reaction to it. The ad is most definitely doing harm rather than good for the airline. In my opinion, this is a PR gaffe for Emirates!