It’s all about newspapers today

April 8, 2009 Leave a comment

 

So they held the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) conference and guess who got all the attention…an online search engine.

And so it goes for the beleaguered industry.  PaidContent.org had the best spin on the events, highlighting among other things Google’s Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt’s word of advice to the masters of ink: you are consumer businesses so don’t piss off consumers.  He was referring to attempts by the industry to clamp down on fair use. 

Speaking of clamping down, they also highlighted that the AP is again poised to get more litigious, and cautioned that the industry should look no further than the music business before heading down the path of suing people for infringement.  Good advice.

For more of their coverage on the NAA, click here.

Filed under Editorial/Content, Search Engines Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Is online advertising failing or is it just the recession?

March 23, 2009 Leave a comment

Eric Clemons has just written a very thoughtful article on “Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet” on TechCrunch. His high level argument is that the Internet shatters all forms of advertising because it allows consumers to bypass them. He provides evidence for why people don’t trust ads, why they don’t want them, and why they don’t need them. He then goes on to illustrate how the Internet provides ways for people to meaningfully get the information they need without them.

He then moves quickly from advertising to the ecommerce space where he talks about new monetization models around selling real things, selling virtual things, selling virtual experiences, and selling misdirection (a subject where he expresses a lack of faith in Google’s revenue model and sustainability.)

Unfortunately, he falls short in the end of providing a list of concrete replacements for advertising. Can you really imagine a world without ads? Surely they will exist, perhaps in different forms, but they will be omnipresent.  In addition, he sites declining online ad revenues to support his thesis at a time when the culprit may be nothing more than the current recession. Whatever the outcome, his sweeping approach to the landscape of online advertising bears reading.

Filed under advertising, eCommerce, Marketing, Retailing Tagged with , , , , , ,

Google announces expandable ad units to improve click-through rates

March 6, 2009 Leave a comment

In an industry where display ads enjoy 0.25% click through rates and low CPMs, Google is stepping up the footprint of its Adsense units with the introduction of expandable rich-media ad units that grow larger after a user clicks.

Google is being careful at the moment to restrict the expansion to only when users click on the ads (some competitors allow it happen on simple rollover), and holding the size of the expansion to 2x the original width and height.  In addition, filters allow publishers to opt-out of having certain advertiser ads show up on their site.   This is the second relaxation of standards for Google ads in recent months.  In December the company allowed ads for alcoholic beverages to run in Britain. 

For more information about the new ad units and Google’s overall policies, click here.

Filed under Marketing, Search Engines Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Google Wants Out, Tells Time Warner to Take AOL Public

February 9, 2009 1 Comment

 

And Google isn’t just trying to share some investing advice with an old friend.  Google wants its money back, plain and simple.  Or at least it wants to recover a sizeable chunk of the $1b write-down they took on their 2005 AOL investment.   

googleaol1A lot has changed since Google’s investment gave AOL a $20b valuation.  Economic and advertising pressures have driven AOL’s value down 73% to just $5.5b.  With that, Google recently made it clear that the best way to try and recover its money was to “exercise its right” and see that AOL is publicly traded so that they can sell their shares “when the timing made sense.”

Google was careful to say that AOL remains “an extremely valued partner”, which isn’t surprising because they don’t want to further erode their investment with a vote of no-confidence.  But Time Warner CFO John Martin cut to the chase when he told analysts during their most recent earnings call that Google wants them to either spin off AOL as a separate company or buy back their 5.5% stake.

Now, it could be that Google is a) posturing for a larger role over AOL services (like taking over their search), and/or b) introducing leverage before Time Warner and Yahoo! get too chummy over AOL.  But one thing is certain, a $700m write down is impossible to ignore these days, even among friends.

Filed under Business, Economy Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

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