Google announced plans to buy DoubleClick for $3 billion three years ago and finally closed on the deal a year later. Now the search giant has announced it is finally ready to get serious about display advertising.
Amazon caved to Macmillan’s demands on e-book pricing, and now the online retailer is set to give News Corp.’s HarperCollins a new deal too, says Rupert Murdoch. Meanwhile, don’t hold your breath waiting for Conan O’Brien on Fox.
Is Microsoft is finally ready to a launch its long-delayed advertising exchange? Just barely.
Redmond is set to roll out AdECN, the “real-time” ad exchange it bought in 2007 within the next two weeks. But only in the most cautious of tests: Microsoft will open up AdECN to a handful of ad buyers and says it will only allow them to purchase a “select, limited amount of Microsoft inventory.”
Web publishers love to grouse about comScore’s traffic estimates. But many of them are much happier these days: A new measurement system is giving some sites a dramatic boost in Web visitors.
Eric Schmidt’s tender feelings for Apple won’t stop Google from competing directly with Apple’s iPhone: The company spent much of the time on its Q4 earnings call discussing its large mobile ambitions–without talking about specifics, of course. Meanwhile, the search giant posted a big jump in quarterly revenue. But not enough for twitchy investors, who are pushing shares down in after-hours trading.
Remember Vevo, the “Hulu for music video” service that launched with a lot of fanfare, then earned a ton of lousy press for an error-filled launch?
It has fixed its tech problems and is doing just fine, thank you very much. Vevo says it is generating around 20 million video views a day, which puts it on track to generate some 600 million views a month. Next step: Turning those views into dollars.
Another ad from Yahoo to people who buy ads on Yahoo: Look at all the great ads people have bought on Yahoo! But this clip also works as a pretty good survey of advertising across the Web.
Google has bought six companies since August and has many more in its sights. Here’s one category the company is looking at: “Demand-side platforms,” which help ad buyers work with a new group of ad exchanges, like the one Google itself is operating.
CBS says it will stop doing business with ad networks, which are ubiquitous on the Web, and will offer access to its audience of 60 million unique visitors solely via its own salesforce. The company is one of a handful of big publishers trying to force buyers to pay more for its stuff. Clever or quixotic?
What will “C-Change” do? “It’s too early to tell everyone,” former BusinessWeek.com Editor John Byrne says. But it will have something to do with mobile. Sounds good!
AppNexus, an ad-buying “platform,” has raised $5 million in round led by Kodiak Venture Partners, along with Venrock and First Round Capital. The company is one of many trying to take advantage of “real-time” bidding for Web display ad inventory.
Here’s your daily dose of goodish news about the Web ad business, courtesy (again) of Mark Mahaney, who says display ads are perking up. Or at least some of them are.
Here’s a front-page story the New York Times would rather not be running: The paper is warning readers to be aware of bogus ads running on its Web site.
The paper says “some readers” have seen unauthorized pop-up ads promoting antivirus software on NYTimes.com, and warns visitors who see the ad not to click on it but to restart their browsers instead. While the Times doesn’t spell this out, it has likely had its site hijacked by a “malware” scammer who is trying to trick visitors into installing pernicious software onto their hard drives.
Wal-Mart is the world’s biggest retailer, but online, it’s still a relative piker. Now the company is trying to change that by opening up its Web store to other retailers–just as its biggest competitors already do. But no need for Amazon and eBay to start sweating just yet.
Give this to Steve Ballmer: After getting roundly hammered in the past few years for either missing out on deals (see: AOL/Google) or paying too much for the ones he did land (see: Facebook at $15 billion), he seems to be on a roll.
Last week, Microsoft was roundly praised for the way it structured its Yahoo deal. And today, the company seems to have struck a smart pact with Publicis, which will pay $530 million for Redmond’s Razorfish digital ad agency, which Ballmer never wanted anyway. Just as important: The French ad giant will agree to buy a certain amount of search and display inventory from Microsoft over the next five years.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
