Cashing Out: Week of November 6th – 12th 2011 in Online Marketing News
AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo sign three-way ad deal
In what is being touted as a “mega display ad deal,” and “the newest ad exchange on the block,” AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo announced a new deal November 8 that will allow all parties to pool their unsold display ad inventory and sell it at scale, starting in early 2012.
With their premium inventory consolidated, the three companies stand a better chance of challenging the recent stranglehold Google and Facebook have had on the display ad market.
As AdAge notes, the agreement has been rumored for some time now, though “some parties had been surprised by AOL’s willingness to participate and open up its inventory to competitors’ platforms after historically being unwilling to do so.”
AdAge says that about-face may be due to AOL’s “fear of losing preexisting access to inventory,” offered by Yahoo, had AOL not signed the deal. However, AOL’s Chief Revenue Officer Ned Brody told AdAge that was not a determining factor.
Instead, he says, “the hope is that the partnership will allow AOL to better scale its rich-media Devil ad units, which AOL is working to have adopted outside of its own media properties.”
As for Microsoft and Yahoo, this agreement is in some ways an evolution of their 2009 ad deal which was also said to be motivated by a mutual desire to better compete with Google. In the simplest terms, in the face of such big competition, there is safety in numbers.
“Enhancing choice and scale in today’s display advertising market is ‘a rising tide that lifts all boats,’” TechFlash quoted Rik van der Kooi, Microsoft’s Advertising Business Group VP as saying.
Of course, the partnership doesn’t mean the trio is inseparable, and the three companies will continue to compete for publishing and advertising partners, independently operating their own ad businesses.
And while Yahoo and AOL are planning to extend the deal to Canada, Microsoft will only participate in the US.
Google+ brand pages arrive (no promotions, please)
Soon after launching, Google+ had to break the news to brands that they would have to wait for official pages before joining the new social network.
On November 7, that patience was rewarded with the announcement that Google+ pages for businesses and brands have finally arrived.
The launch of Pages has largely been viewed as one more way in which Google is trying to compete with rival Facebook, though Google+’s Pages for brands won’t be quite like Facebook’s.
For one thing, “Google won’t attempt to derive any direct ad revenue from Pages, though they will be tightly integrated into search, Google’s ad products and analytics,” says AdAge.
And users of Google+ Pages won’t be able to “buy” fans for their brands, though people will be able to join a brand’s circle in one click via a new button. Google+ Pages will also appear in search results, and users will be able to directly connect with Pages by adding a “+” in their search query before the name of the brand they are searching.
Another marked difference between Google+ Pages and Facebook Pages is that, on Google+, brands won’t be allowed to run any “contests, sweepstakes, offers, coupons or other promotions,” though, according to TechCrunch, they will be able to display links to any of these as long as they are hosted on a separate website.
Google’s Senior VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra says this is by no means the finished version of Google+ Pages, and promises adjustment and refinement in future:
“Today’s initial launch of Google+ Pages brings us a little bit closer, but we’ve still got lots of improvements planned, and miles to go before we sleep. So stay tuned.”
Disney inks deal with YouTube
After the announcement last week of separate (albeit very similar) content licensing deals with Amazon and Netflix, Disney has just made yet another deal, this time with YouTube.
In a press release November 7, the companies announced that they are “joining forces to bring family-friendly video entertainment to the web [with] co-branded video destinations for both Disney and YouTube.”
The two partners will reportedly spend between $10 million and $15 million to produce an original series of short videos to appear exclusively on Disney.com and YouTube.com.
According to the New York Times, what is most telling about the deal is “what it tacitly reveals about each company’s weaknesses.”
Disney Interactive has lost over $300 million in the last four quarters alone, struggling to draw children to their online platform. And a partnership with YouTube should help in this area. As Jimmy Pitaro, Co-President of Disney Interactive Media Group put it:
“With online video consumption exploding and YouTube at the center of that trend, we see an opportunity for Disney Interactive and YouTube to bring Disney’s legacy of storytelling to a new generation of families and Disney enthusiasts on the platforms they prefer.”
Meanwhile, YouTube will benefit from the credibility that Disney, a beloved and long-standing brand, has to offer. According to the New York Times, many parents “aren’t thrilled at setting their younger children loose on a site where videos can be ragged and provocative and the comments even more so. The company wants to compete with cable television for ad dollars by adding more professional videos.”
This is something even Robert Kyncl, Vice President, TV and Film Entertainment at Google, acknowledges. “Disney has established itself as one of the world’s most loved brands,” Kyncl said in the Press Release. While Search Engine Watch quoted him as saying “It’s an acknowledgement that we want to work with the best brands and, yes, we expect this partnership to attract new advertisers.”
Google encrypting 33 percent of search data says Econsultancy
A new initiative by Google has prompted Econsultancy to decry: “the horror!”
“A few weeks ago Google started to encrypt search data for logged in users,” begins a November 11 article on the website. “This essentially means website owners will see no keyword data for visitors referred from Google.
Econsultancy says they initially made little of Google’s new policy, the impact of which they wrote off as”not critical” in October.
However, the website says that things have considerably worsened in November. Whereas the site had previously reported just 0.68 percent of their visits were affected by the change, they now say that the referring keywords for about 33 percent of their visitors in the US during November are “not provided.”
“November spawned a monster [...] my jaw has dropped to the floor,” the website writes, positing the theory that November is when Google rolled out the the changes on a widespread basis.
And though Econsultancy admits they might be more greatly affected than other sites as they are “aimed squarely at the digital industry [and] might attract a greater proportion of users logged into Gmail and Google Plus,” they argue there is a problem notwithstanding, “any which way you look at it.”
Econsultancy is inviting website owners to offer their own opinions on the matter by leaving a comment in response to the article.
Amazon and eBay at odds over nationwide tax bill
The Marketplace Fairness Act, a new bipartisan bill that would allow states to close the sales tax loophole, was introduced in Congress November 9. And while Amazon is standing by the legislation – in keeping with their promise to support a nation-wide system of taxation for sales made online – eBay is less than thrilled.
In a statement cited by TechFlash, Amazon’s VP of Global Public Policy, Paul Misener, said that “Amazon strongly supports the enactment of the Enzi-Durbin-Alexander bill and will work with Congress, retailers and states to get this bi-partisan legislation passed.”
But even as the Alliance for Mainstreet Fairness argues that the legislation will ensure a level playing field between small and large retailers, eBay is claiming the bill will negatively impact small businesses.
A statement cited by TechFlash from Tod Cohen, eBay’s VP for Government relations and Deputy General Counsel reads thus:
“This is another Internet sales tax bill that fails to protect small businesses and will unbalance the playing field between giant retailers and small business competitors. It does not make sense to expand the Internet sales tax burden at a time when we want entrepreneurs to create jobs and economic activity.”
If passed, the new national online sales tax legislation would offer states two options: States that join the multi-state agreement can require Internet retailers to charge and remit sales taxes, while states that don’t can collect sales taxes “if they adopt minimum standards.”
Google continues its acquisition spree
Google is at it again with two new acquisitions to boast about this week, one of which will enhance their Chrome browser experience, while the other will improve the algorithm of Google+.
Apture, which deals mainly with in-page search and analytics announced they will be joining the Chrome team “to continue driving innovation and continue a better user experience on the web.”
Meanwhile, with the acquisition of one year old Kantango, Google will gain social algorithms that Kantago says “improve people’s online social interaction.”
Google has been in a bit of a buying frenzy of late, and these two most recent acquisitions are but the last in a nine-month stretch that has included the purchase of 57 companies at the cost of $502 million total, says Gigjets. “The company is estimated to have acquired 100 firms in the last decade,” says the website, “with an average of 10 companies a year.
iPhone battery complaints keep coming
PCWorld reported November 13 that, rather than improving the battery life of iPhone 4S devices, Apple’s iOS 5.0.1 update is in fact making the problem worse.
Quoting a thread on Apple’s discussion forum, the website found comments like “After upgrading to 5.0.1 my phone is draining the battery even faster!” and “After installing 5.0.1 I charged it up fully before going to bed and after 7 hours just sitting there lost 79 percent, and have lost a further 5 percent while logging in and typing this.”
And though some said the update has made their battery life “significantly better,” others who had not initially had a battery problem complained that the update had now given them one.
Apple has yet to issue a response to this new slew of complaints.
This week in marketing studies and reports:
This week has been chock-full of studies and reports including statistics and findings of great interest to marketers. Here is but a brief overview of the major highlights:
- According to research from Google’s Enterprise Division and Vanson Bourne, 90 percent of marketing managers in a variety of industries say “they are using, or have plans to use, mapping and geospatial technology as part of their marketing strategy.” Such technology displays geographical information related to businesses their customers and staff. 46 percent of those using this technology say it has improved productivity while 62 percent say it has led them to “reconsider their product strategy.”
- Econsultancy’s State of Social 2011 Report found that 64 percent of companies “have moved beyond the experimental phase of their social media strategies,” and are “now focused on the ‘big four’ networks. The study also claims the likelihood of asocial media strategy being integrated with other marketing channels has increased.
- Data collected by comScore showed that US ecommerce spending increased 13 percent during the third quarter of 2011, reaching $36.3 billion. “This is the eighth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth and fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth rates in eCommerce,” TechCrunch noted. Spending was also up during the second quarter of this year, with an increase of 14 percent since last year.
- Answers to a survey question posed by Affiliate Tip’s 2011 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report indicated that less than half of affiliates use paid search. Only 40 percent responded “yes” to the question “Do you promote your affiliate links in PPC search engines?”
- A Jumptap study found that tablets may soon become the preferred ecommerce device. 63 percent of tablet owners use those devices to make purchases, compared to 83 percent of PC owners. Jumptap is calling this “a dramatic rise” in the use of tablets for ecommerce.
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