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Click Fraud Competes With SPAM For Title Of "Most Heinous"

Wired: Pay-per-click is the fastest-growing segment of all advertising, reports the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Last year, Yahoo! alone ran more than 250 million individual listings, according to Michael Egan, the company's search-marketing director of content strategy. Yahoo! doesn't break out PPC earnings separately in its financial statements, but Goldman... [MORE]

Majority of Search Users Unaware of Ads

More than half of Internet users surveyed in a poll did not know the difference between natural search engine results and advertising listings.

The Harris Interactive survey of 2,000 Internet users was commissioned by New York search engine marketing agency iCrossing. It found that 56 percent of Internet users said they did not know the difference between "sponsored (paid) and natural (non-sponsored) search engine result listings."

Continue to Adweek

Interactive Agencies Deal With Growing Pains

The once-again red-hot online ad marketplace is causing some headaches for media planners. Certainly, no one is complaining in an industry seeing spending growth rates in the 33 percent range over the past few years.

But along with all of these new dollars comes a host of growth-related challenges. For one thing, the market is not like it was a few years ago, when a smaller pool of online spenders had the medium to themselves.

Continue to Mediaweek

Google acquires Urchin

From John Battelle comes news of another Google acquisition:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - March 28, 2005 - Google Inc. today announced it has agreed to acquire Urchin Software Corporation, a San Diego, California based web analytics company.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Urchin is a web site analytics solution used by web site owners and
marketers to better understand their users' experiences, optimize
content and track marketing performance. Urchin tools are available as a hosted service, a software product and through large web hosting
providers. These products are used by thousands of popular sites on the Internet.

Google plans to make these tools available to web site owners and
marketers to better enable them to increase their advertising return on investment and make their web sites more effective.

Growth In Online Ad Revenue

IAC'S offer of $1.9 billion in stock for a search business that ranks a distant fifth worldwide raises the question: Are these second-tier companies worth all this loot? The answer is a qualified yes. While About.com commanded 23 times this year's expected cash flow, and Jeeves went for about 20 times this year's expected profits, analysts point to strong growth in the online ad market as justification for the lofty tabs. Indeed, the Interactive Advertising Bureau expects Web ad revenue to rise 20%, to $11.5 billion, this year.

Why Second-Tier Sites May Be Worth Top Dollar [BusinessWeek]

IAC to Buy Ask Jeeves for $1.85 Bil.

E-commerce powerhouse InterActive Corp. said it would buy Internet search engine Ask Jeeves in deal valued at $1.85 billion.

The acquisition would combine IAC's Internet real estate, travel and shopping businesses with the No. 4 Internet search engine. Ask Jeeves' properties, which include portal sites iWon and MySearch, are the No. 9 most-visited Internet sites, according to ComScore Media Metrix.

IThe deal would further shake up the Internet search market, adding a fourth well-financed competitor to challenge Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Microsoft has made aggressive moves in search, introducing its own Internet search engine in February and announcing plans last week for its own search advertising system.

IAC said it would issue 1.27 shares of stock for each share of Ask Jeeves. The transaction, which was approved by both companies' boards of directors over the weekend, is expected to close late in the second quarter or early in the third quarter.

IAC said it would keep the Ask Jeeves brand, with the company operating as an IAC business unit. The company said it would integrate some of its 40-odd Internet brands—travel sites Expedia and Hotwire, local guide CitySearch, newly launched shopping site Gifts.com, and Ticketmaster—with the search site. IAC will also integrate Ask Jeeves search engine with its sites, which reach about 42 million users per month.

A sign of the potential collaboration could be a deal struck by IAC and Ask Jeeves last August. CitySearch supplies local content and business listings for local searches on Ask Jeeves.

Ask Jeeves struggled to establish itself as a credible search rival to Google and Yahoo, despite owning its own Web search technology, Teoma. Microsoft's recent foray into Web search highlighted the increasing competition in the search, which has established itself as the Internet entry point for many online consumers. Ask Jeeves operates search sites in the U.S., Great Britain, Japan and plans to soon launch in Spain.

Google, which supplies Ask Jeeves with search advertising listings, accounted for 69 percent of the company's revenue in 2004. In July, the two companies renewed their distribution deal through August 2007. Ask Jeeves last year made moves to diversify its revenues by starting AJInteractive, a marketing arm that sold ad products on Ask Jeeves and its portal sites.

2005: The Year of the Local

Good news about the local markets from Borrell:

There is a strong uptick in local online ad spending that we began seeing toward the end of 2004. It is continuing into 2005. We're projecting that local ad spending will increase a 46% over last year, more than twice the growth rate for all Internet advertising....This follows the early pattern of other media (i.e., broadcast TV in the 1960s, cable in the 1990s) that saw a surge in spending by local advertisers when household penetration hit critical mass. For the Internet, we believe that point came at the end of 2003. More than 75% of U.S. households currently have Internet access.

Local Online Ad Spending Grows 28% Year Over Year [IAB/Borrell]

Online to overtake magazines in '07

More from the "good for us, bad for them" news department:

Jupiter announced that paid search led the online advertising rejuvenation of 2004, rising 34 percent in the year. Jupiter's Gary Stein also predicted the general online ad market would about double to $16.1 billion in five years, which represents a significantly slowed growth rate. Paid online display advertising grew 27 percent in 2004 and, combined with paid search, will overtake magazine advertising in gross billings in 2007. At that point, online ads will represent on of every 16 dollars spent on advertising.

Jupiter: Net Ads to Overtake Magazines in '07 [MarketingVOX]

Advertising people hate

The always-informative Jakob Nielsen has a report on the web's Most Hated Advertising Techniques...well worth a read. Amongst the ads that lead the pack:

• Ads that pop-up in front of your window


• Ads that load slow


• Ads that try to trick you into clicking

Vibrant Media Signs Online Publishers

SAN FRANCISCO Keyword advertising firm Vibrant Media has added 210 publishers to its IntelliTXT network since April, when it became generally available, a company representative said. The technology was in the news last week when Forbes.com said it was removing the links from its news stories [Adweek Online, Dec. 2]. Editors at the online business magazine said the links blurred the line between advertising and editorial content, according to sources.

Vibrant Media, based in San Francisco, said that it has had Forbes.com as a client since August, and the site still uses the IntelliTXT links on company profiles and tear sheets, which are not considered editorial content. IntelliTXT ads require the reader's interest to generate, the company said. When a user rolls his or her mouse over a green, double-underlined word, a small ad pops up that relates to the copy.

Vibrant said its new clients include Entrepreneur.com, MedicineNet.com, IDG Entertainment, Rotten Tomatoes, Askmen.com and Stock House Network, bringing the total number of publishers to 330. The overall use of the pay-for-performance advertising has nearly tripled during the same period, the rep said.

Doug Stevenson, CEO of Vibrant Media, said the company has had a strong year and continues to work with Forbes.com. "The Forbes.com decision is an important and very positive one for us because it demonstrates that IntelliTXT can play a role on every major content site, even if it doesn't appear in every area of every site," he said.

MedicineNet.com has been a Vibrant partner since July and has had no negative feedback on the ads, said David Sorenson, vice president of marketing. "We've been very happy with Vibrant," Sorenson said. "We are very aware of health and medicine and very in tune with our viewers." He added that MedicineNet.com limits the number of ad links to five per article.

Web Notches Double-Digit Ad Gains

The Internet recorded the largest advertising gains of any medium in the first nine months of the year, according to the latest figures from TNS Media Intelligence/CMR, with U.S. online ad expenditures increasing 25.8 percent from the year-ago period.

TNS Media Intelligence/CMR, the New York-based company that tracks ad spending in major media, reported that Web ad revenue was $5.6 billion from January to the end of September, up from $4.4 billion during the same time the year before. For the first half, TNS Media Intelligence/CMR reported that online ad spending reached $3.7 billion [IQ Daily Briefing, Aug. 24], putting Q3's number at $1.9 billion.

Total U.S. ad spending in the first half came in at $102.5 billion, a 10.3 percent rise from $92.9 billion in the first nine months of 2003. Steven Fredericks, president and CEO of TNS Media Intelligence/CMR, said, "Third-quarter spending for the Olympics and the political season elevated the volume of overall dollars brought into the advertising market."

Other media categories showing strong year-over-year ad spending growth in the first half included outdoor, national syndication television and cable TV, up 17.6 percent, 17.3 percent and 16.1 percent, respectively.

Also enjoying first-half boosts: network TV (14 percent), local magazines (10.3 percent), consumer magazines (10 percent), national newspapers (9.7 percent), spot TV (9.4 percent), Sunday magazines (8 percent), local newspapers (6.6 percent), Hispanic media (5.4 percent), freestanding inserts (4.7 percent), network radio (2.6 percent), local radio (1.9 percent) and business-to-business magazines (1.5 percent).

The lone category posting a decline was national spot radio, which was down 2.6 percent in ad revenue.

Ad Revenue Forcast

JupiterResearch forecasts rich media ad spending will grow from $500 million in 2003 to $3.2 billion in 2009. Rich media's share of total online ad spending during that period will increase from 8 percent to 20 percent, according to the research.

More Holiday Dollars Go to Web

NEW YORK Ease of purchase and new product discovery are among the chief reasons consumers are shifting more of their holiday shopping budget to the Internet this season, according to a study released today.

The survey was directed by DoubleClick and conducted by Nielsen/NetRatings during the first week of November.

Sixty-four of the 613 respondents said they planned to shop online, up 15 percentage points over last year. Eighty-four percent said they expect to make purchases at retail stores; while still a significant percentage, that's down 6 percent year-over-year. About 30 percent plan to shop via catalog, mail or phone, which is relatively unchanged from 2003.

The main drivers for the shift online were "ease of purchase" and ability to "learn about new products." Price came in at a distant third, with better sales promotions and better product selection also coming into play. The heavy shifters to online shopping proved to be predominantly female (60 percent) with 54 percent of that group having incomes over $50,000.

Amazon.com Debuts Interactive Web Films

NEW YORK Web retailer Amazon.com today begins a short-film series on its Web site created by Fallon. The films, which star Minnie Driver, Darryl Hannah and Chris Noth, among others, feature interactive credits, which link back to Amazon, where consumers can purchase the products and clothing seen in the programs.

The first film, Portrait, is directed by RSA's Jordan Scott and debuts today on Amazon.com. It stars Driver as a dictatorial boss who pushes around her assistant Esther. When Esther goes to a photography session for her birthday, however, she's magically transformed into a beauty, shedding pounds instantly and becoming glamorous. Sephora bath and beauty aids, Nokia and Motorola phones and BCBG clothes are among the products featured in the film.

"What we hope [the campaign] does is add another dimension to Amazon, that it draws attention to the fact that there's so much more to Amazon than just books and CDs," said Bruce Bildsten, creative director at Fallon, who became involved in the project during the editing stages after cd David Lubars left in June. "And like BMW Films [which Fallon and RSA also created], it does it without hitting you over the head."

The films, which range in length from four to seven minutes, will debut each week through Dec. 7.

Minneapolis-based Fallon and Amazon staffers could not immediately be reached. Amazon.com, based in Seattle, spent about $6 million on advertising in 2003, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMR.

Chrysler Reports Big Brand Lift on Advergames

This article doesn't specifically mention the games that we participated with, but it does talk about WildTangent and the successes of their advergaming. Worth a peek, to see what some think is the "future" of the Web.

[from ClickZ]

When P&G talks, ad agencies listen

So when Procter and Gamble says this:

In a move that could affect network television and magazines, consumer products giant Procter & Gamble on Wednesday said it is changing the way it allocates its media dollars because the company believes it's no longer efficient to reach consumers just through TV and magazine advertising.

[via Poynter Online]

HOT NEW TREND: INTERACTIVE AGENCIES

Reading headlines like Another New I-Agency Pops Up sure makes it feel like 1999 all over again. Coupled with all this Clinton-related news, let's do the time warp again.

Coke takes over MSN, Yahoo

To launch their new, lower-calorie soda C2, Coke has taken over MSN & Yahoo for Monday.

The MSN takeover is the most dramatic, turning the entire site red, and featuring extensive Flash animation throughout. Yahoo is a bit more subtle, with more of an Eyeblastery approach to the takeover/roadblock.

Either way, both are worth a look, if you happen to be surfin' around on Monday (6/14).

Forbes and the CueCat

Just stumbled upon Forbes.com's old CueCat page. Isn't it fun to look back on 4+ years ago in Internetville?

[via Poynter.org]

Gawker & Nike team up on

Gawker Media and Nike have teaned up for a new Blog Promotion, called Art of Speed.

Everyone please take a look--I'd very much love to discuss ideas similar to this in a big-time, old-school Pinacol brainstorming/concepting session.

Online Reemerges As Fastest-Growing Ad Medium

From the good-news department:

Online ad spending expanded at six times the rate of the overall advertising economy during the first quarter of 2004, proving that it has reemerged as the fastest-growing segment of the media economy.

[from MediaDailyNews]