DigitalMediaTrends.com

Do Web Ads Lack Credibility?

A new global study of consumers found that the most popular forms of Internet advertising score at the bottom when it comes to consumer trust. More ...

Portals Extend Reach via Ad Networks

In late 2004, Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel, speaking at the Association of National Advertisers, used a familiar metaphor for the company's strategy: a digital theme park that tempts visitors with endless attractions to get them to stay inside the gates. Analysts credited the strategy for reviving the company's fortunes following the dot-com bust. Fast-forward three years. Yahoo!, badly trailing rival Google and in the midst of a corporate reorganization following Semel's exit, is breaking with that vision. Instead of relying solely on the many features designed to keep people around to view the ubiquitous ads, Yahoo!, and other first-generation Web portals, are taking a page from Google's playbook to remake their businesses to focus not just on attracting eyeballs (and ad dollars) but to find them across thousands of sites and other digital destinations. Yahoo! illustrated its embrace of a network strategy by inking a deal last week to buy ad network BlueLithium for $300 million in cash. The deal came less than two months after it closed another deal to buy ad network and exchange Right Media for $650 million. More ...

Banner Blindness Continues

Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen said users continue to ignore ad placements to focus directly on Web page content. "Users almost never look at anything that looks like an advertisement, whether or not it's actually an ad," he writes. The confirmation comes as some up-and-coming Web destinations, like Facebook, are starting to place ads that mimic content. More ...

The Great, Inexorable Advertising Shift

In the second quarter, the Web's big four, Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN-eMarketer expects to make up more than two-thirds of online advertising in 2007, which saw a collective ad revenue increase of $1.3 billion or 42 percent in the second quarter of this year. Meanwhile, ad revenue at the 15 biggest traditional media companies shrank 3 percent over the same time period, a loss of $280 million. The result: among the 19 companies, online's share of the total pie grew from $3 billion to $4.2 billion, or from 23 to 30 percent, while the traditional companies saw a drop from $9.9 to $9.6 billion, or from 77 to 70 percent. Online gained 7 percentage points of market share in a single year. Among the traditional company set, outdoor advertising was the only sector to report a gain, up 13 percent. TV fell one percent, print fell five percent, and radio fell a hefty 7 percent. To appease shareholders, traditional companies will blame the current economic climate for the losses--but the same factors (i.e. the real estate downtown) affect Google and MSN. Unfortunately for traditional media, this trend's here to stay. Witness the towering collective market capitalization of the Web media firms, compared to their traditional cousins; advertising's future really is online. More ...

The Digitas Vision for Publicis

The New York Times sums up the view of Digitas now that it is part of Publicis: act as a platform to match up the right ads with the right ad with the right person at the right time. No real surprise there. The key is that there is now enough data available about consumers and digital delivery systems to make this a reality, Digitas chairman David Kenny says: There is a massive transformation happening in the way consumers live and the data we have about them, but very few companies have stepped up to it yet. More ...

Microsoft to test ad-supported version of Works

Taking a page from the Google playbook, Microsoft on Wednesday said it would start offering a free, ad-supported version of Works, its basic spreadsheet and word-processing software, as part of a testing program with computer manufacturers. The free Works would be a rival to Google Docs and Spreadsheets, which is Web-based, although Works is not. That means ads would be stored in users cache folders, refreshed each time a user logs onto the Web. Microsoft is yet to disclose its partners for the new software, which used to go for $40. More ...

Microsoft to Buy Ad Exchange

Microsoft has moved to fill out its digital ad platform through a deal to acquire Web ad exchange AdECN. The acquisition brings Microsoft a stock market-like exchange in which ad networks bid for publisher inventory. The real-time auction system is meant to be a more efficient, transparent way to allocate ad space rather than publishers selling their extra ad space directly to networks. More ...

AOL Reels in Behavior Targeting Network Tacoda

Time Warner's AOL, conspicuous by its lack of participation in the recent ad network feeding frenzy among the Internet's giants, has acquired New York-based Tacoda. The move follows Google's $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick, Microsoft's acquisition of aQuantive for $6 billion, Yahoo's purchase of the rest of Right Media for $680 million, and WPP Group's addition of 24/7 Real Media for $649 million. Tacoda, which operates a network selling behavior-based audience segments, will reportedly go to AOL for between $200 million and $300 million. This could be a very significant move for the behavioral targeting industry as privacy concerns have long kept big portals like AOL from partnering with behavioral targeting providers. However, given the recent spate of data-marrying ad buys -- notably Google and DoubleClick -- the addition of anonymous user data from such a large publisher to a behavior-based network may no longer be controversial. Indeed, the addition of AOL will not only add richness to each user segment, the portal's massive reach could even lead BT beyond the "remnant inventory" status pegged to it for so long. More ...

Study: Link Between Ad Spend, Blog Buzz

For new brands, there is a strong correlation between ad spending and buzz generated in the blogosphere, one that shouldn't be ignored when it comes to making media planning decisions. That's according to a new report issued jointly by Nielsen BuzzMetrics and Nielsen's BASES research division, which finds that marketers that treat tradtional advertising and word of mouth management as two separate animals do so in error, since the two are closely connected. Nielsen's research - which analyzed factors such as buzz volume in blogs, spending, purchase intent among consumers and actual sales - has found that a big advertising budget is the best predictor of significant blog buzz, rather than tactics that attempt to specifically influence such online world of mouth. More ...

Yahoo! Completes Right Media Deal

Yahoo! said it completed its $650 million acquisition of Right Media. With the deal completed, Right Media CEO Michael Walrath will become svp of the Right Media Exchange. He will report to Yahoo! president Sue Decker. More ...