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Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Bloomberg Buys BusinessWeek For a Song, Plus Up to $5 Million

newstandWhat’s one of the biggest names in magazine publishing worth? These days, maybe $5 million.

That’s the high end of the range Bloomberg will be paying for BusinessWeek, reports BusinessWeek. Next question: How many of the magazine’s employees stay on once the deal closes later this year? BusinessWeek publisher Keith Fox can’t make any assurances. But he does call the deal “exciting.”

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Fighting Words! Time Warner Says Comcast/NBCU as Dumb as…Time Warner/AOL.

bewkesJust in case anyone thought Time Warner had any lingering interest in NBC Universal, this ought to put it to rest: Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes just compared the proposed Comcast/NBCU deal with the disastrous one his company made with AOL nearly a decade ago.

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Thursday, October 8, 2009

Has YouTube Finally Figured Out How to Play Nicely With Big Media?

roadrunnerYouTube sneaked up on big media, then scared the hell out of them, then tried to do business with them, more or less unsuccessfully.

Now, three years after Google plunked down $1.6 billion for the video site, it seems to have figured out an approach that works for at least some big players: Hand over a chunk of the site to content creators, who get to control it, sell ads on it, program it with their stuff and share some of the ad dollars. Newest example, reportedly: Britain’s Channel 4.

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Another Ad Exchange Boss Leaves: Jeff Green Out at Microsoft’s AdECN

jeff greenAd exchanges–giant, automated markets for online advertising buyers and sellers–are supposed to be a huge deal. So why doesn’t anyone want to run them anymore?

Last month, Google lost Michael Rubenstein, the head of its ad exchange, shortly before the ad giant formally rolled out the service to the public. Now Jeff Green, the top guy at Microsoft’s AdECN exchange, is out as well.

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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Why Google and Yahoo Will Have to Keep Waiting for Mobile Money

phone boothGoogle and Yahoo both expect mobile ads to provide big boosts. Time to rethink that notion, says Bernstein Research’s Jeffrey Lindsay, who says mobile will be a modest niche business for the big guys.

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Monday, September 28, 2009

This Just In: YouTube Is Ginormous!

kingkonglivesYou already know this, but it’s always good to be reminded: In online video, there’s YouTube, and then there’s everybody else. Today’s data point: ComScore’s August video report, which shows Google’s video site generating 10 billion views and owning 39.6 percent of the market. That’s 10 billion views, and that’s just counting Web surfers from the U.S. Factor in international visitors and…it would be a lot bigger.

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Thursday, September 24, 2009

Good News, T. Rowe Price! Twitter Users Really, Really Love Ads.

times-squareGood news (potentially) for T. Rowe Price and the other investors plowing $100 million into the revenue-free start-up: The service’s users absolutely love clicking on ads, says a new study.

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Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Live From New York: Yahoo Introduces “You”

newyahoo

CEO Carol Bartz explains what Yahoo is getting for its $100 million ad campaign, its first global marketing effort, which was launched today in New York during Advertising Week.

Here’s the rundown of Bartz’s press conference on the branding blowout.

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Friday, September 18, 2009

Microsoft Goes Hunting for Malvertisers. Are They the Same Guys Who Hacked the New York Times?

dr-evilThe hackers who duped the New York Times into serving a bogus ad last week may be part of a growing trend. Or they may just be very active: Microsoft says it has been hit by a similar attack and is suing the people behind it.

But first the company needs to figure out who the culprits are.

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Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Here Comes the Google Ad Exchange

wall street buttonwood treeGoogle is about to flip the switch on its long-awaited Ad Exchange.

The search giant will reportedly open up its AdX service, which is supposed to bring together ad buyers and sellers the same way a stock market does, within the next two weeks. AdX isn’t a surprise, but it is a big deal.

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Friday, September 11, 2009

Are You Ready for Some Football on Your Browser? You May Have No Choice.

Lucy FootballPumped for some pigskin this Sunday? Me too. But actually watching a game this weekend, or most of the year, may be tricky for a big swath of the NFL’s fans. Will they be forced to look in the Web’s dark corners to get their fixes?

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Thursday, September 3, 2009

Another Video Site We Don’t Need: AT&T Entertainment

lots_of_tvsThere is no shortage of places to watch TV shows free on the Web. There’s a glut of them, really. But here comes another: AT&T Entertainment. How is it different than Hulu, TV.com, Sling.com, Fancast, etc.? It’s not.

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Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Is There Anything We Won’t Watch? Web Video Booming, but TV Still Growing, Too.

poltergeistSure, you’re watching lots of video on the Web. But that doesn’t mean you’re cutting back on your boob-tube time. At least not yet.

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Monday, August 31, 2009

Rolling Stone’s Web Failure Wasn’t So Shabby, After All. But Now What?

lennonConventional wisdom of the day: Magazine mogul Jann Wenner, the man who made his mark with Rolling Stone in the 60s and 70s, and then again with US Weekly in this decade, has blown it on the Web. And now it’s too late for him to catch up.

And who knows? It may even be true. But here’s one bit of nuance to chew on: Magazine mogul Jann Wenner has made money–as in, a profit–on the Web for the last five years.

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Thursday, August 13, 2009

Another Hint of (Very) Cautious Optimism for the Ad Market

tunnelEconomists may be declaring that the recession is over, but declarations won’t do much for media businesses that have seen their ad dollars disappear. But here’s a bit of (very) cautiously optimistic news for them: Two reports from Wall Street research shop Sanford Bernstein noting the mildest of turnarounds.

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About Peter

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 »

Ethics Statement

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.

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