Cashing Out: Week of May 29 – June 4 2011 in Online Marketing News

Twitter follows third party developers into photosharing

Twitter announced June 1 in a blog post that it is launching its own photosharing service, in partnership with Photobucket. The feature allows users to upload images, hosted on Photobucket, and attach them to a tweet directly from Twittter.

As for photosharing on smartphones, the post says they’re “working with mobile carriers around the world so you can also send photos via text message.”

The service isn’t exactly the first of its kind, with a few third party developers, like Twitpic, Yfrog and Lockerz already in the photosharing space, but it is the first such feature to come from Twitter itself.

While Twitter has already suggested developers focus on “areas outside of the mainstream consumer client experience,” and cautioned against “apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience,” it will be interesting to see if Twitter thinks this applies in cases where the third-party services came before their own.

New round of funding sees OpenX competing for a share of DoubleClick’s market

Reuters reported May 30 that OpenX, an independent online ad exchange and server and Google DoubleClick competitor, has secured $20 million in its latest round of funding,

The series D round, led by German software outfit SAP’s venture fund, along with AOL Ventures, Mitsui Global Investment, Presidio Ventures, and investors from previous rounds, raised the total investment in OpenX to $50 million.

OpenX CEO Tim Cadogan says the funding will be used to help the company “grow pretty aggressively internationally,” in keeping with their plans to enter South Korea sometime soon, and China within the year.

Similar to DoubleClick, OpenX facilitates the real-time sale and trade of online ad spots, but SAP Ventures believes their newest investment could see OpenX surpass Google’s service within a market that is still developing.

“DoubleClick has been dominant for so long,” Nino Marakovic, SAP Ventures’ Managing Director said to Reuters. “It is a just a question of time until somebody comes along with a bigger, better mousetrap, and we very much hope OpenX will do that.”

Affiliates get flexibility through integration with new campaign management system

In a May 31 press release, Adknowledge announced a new campaign management system that could simplify things for affiliates.

The system, launched through their Affiliate Division, includes a dashboard integrating Cost-per-Action (CPA) as well as Cost-per-Click (CPC) offers.

The interface unifies a number of features that affiliates would otherwise have to seek out across more than one network, such as a filter for singling out the most effective campaigns, search and reporting for combined campaigns, and the option to view campaigns by channel, and to switch campaign type in real-time.

“We can offer the power of a hybrid solution with more flexibility and less complexity,” says Adknowledge’s Greg Bayer, General Manager for their Affiliate Division. “Affiliates normally spread their risk over several networks but this is a labor-intensive approach. This interface brings a new level of efficiency for our affiliates.”

Groupon and Expedia partner for travel deals service

A June 1 press release confirms that Groupon and Expedia have partnered to form Groupon Getaways, a travel deals site that functions along pretty much the same lines as Groupon’s existing model.

Users are given a limited amount of time to take advantage of discounts on travel, which the site claims will be “significant [at] typically around 50 percent off retail rates found at other online travel sites.”

For now, the service is launching in the U.S. and Canada, offering deals from over 135,000 hotels partnered with Expedia.

While there’s certainly something in it for users of the site and travel suppliers, the arrangement is even more beneficial to Expedia and Groupon, whose growth in their respective markets will likely be encouraged even further by the cooperation.

As Expedia Worldwide president Scott Durchslag sees it, “Everybody wins with our new partnership with Groupon [...] Groupon gets to extend its business into new markets; and we advance our new ‘Expedia Everywhere’ strategy with a powerful new high growth channel to deliver daily deals.”

Bing, Google and Yahoo cooperate for better SERP

A high-power partnership was announced June 2 that will see Google, Bing and Yahoo join forces on an initiative “to create and support a common set of schemas for structured data markup on web pages.”

A post on the Google Webmaster Central blog claims this new standardized set of over 100 markup types will improve searchability for website developers and programers, by helping “search engines better understand their websites” They also promise it will “help people find your content more easily when searching.”

However, the fact that adding markup is time-consuming and tedious work for webmasters has come under fire. Econsultancy notes that “This will be especially true for publishers using content management systems, as many would need to update their templates and administrative interfaces to support Schema.org markup.”

And though Google addresses this problem with the argument that “adding markup is much harder if every search engine asks for data in a different way,” adding that, now, “site owners can improve how their sites appear in search results not only on Google, but on Bing, Yahoo! and potentially other search engines as well in the future,” there remains the issue of possible abuse of the system.

Naturally, any tool that claims to improve SEO can and will be misappropriated for black-hat tactics, and widespread abuse “would render Schema.org as worthless as meta tags for SEO purposes,” according to Econsultancy.

Twitter introduces new Follow button for websites

Anyone can have a button, but one only needs to think of the pervasiveness of the Facebook Like to be reminded that all buttons are not created equal.

And though it’s nowhere near the popularity level of the ever-present Facebook feature (yet) Twitter’s new Follow button, introduced May 31, might be invading many of the arenas where Facebook’s button has reigned for so long.

Unlike Twitter’s previous and already popular Tweet Button, the new feature will enable more than just sharing individual pieces of information but will also allow users to Follow entire profiles, right from an outside website.

According to the Twitter blog post, the new Follow Button will offer even more marketing potential than did the Tweet Button:

“For publishers and brands, adding the Follow Button to your website and using Twitter to stay connected with your audience is a powerful combination. People who follow your account are much more likely to retweet and engage with your Tweets, and to repeatedly visit your website.”

About Emily Wilkinson

Emily Wilkinson is a Montreal writer and editor who recently joined ReveNews.com. Her experience comes largely from her work at print publications like La Scena Musicale, where she alternated between positions as content manager, copy editor and journalist.
She believes in the importance of strong writing, be it in journalism or in other media, like blogging or even social networking. Her prerogative: though language will and ought to evolve, a good writer need never sacrifice the communicative power of text that is written with thought and care, whatever the venue.
Find Emily on Twitter @EditorWilkinson