Google finally takes advantage of 2007 Adscape purchase

Google is the undisputed king of internet advertising and it is always looking for the next big advertising market to jump into. Expanding its advertising market is one of the main reasons Google introduced the open source Android OS for mobile phones.

In March of 2007, Google plunked down $23 million to purchase video game advertising firm Adscape. Everyone knew when the purchase was made that Google would be entering into the video game advertising market sooner or later.

In May of 2007, Google filed a patent for video game advertising technology that would monitor the player's in-game behavior and attempt to serve ads based on their needs. Privacy advocates took issue with the patent because Google said that monitoring would include in-game chats. Presumably, on Google's part, the in-game chat monitoring would be used for serving up ads for something like Taco Bell if a player said they were hungry.

Read more: dailytech.com 

Labels: Adscape, advertisements, advertising, games, video

A Washington think tank devoted to antitrust issues has issued a 19-page analysis of the Google-Yahoo deal that warns that the transaction has the potential to become "a black hole that swallows up Yahoo."

"We believe that the transaction could be blocked on antitrust grounds," according to the report by the American Antitrust Institute, which conducted its analysis based on briefings with the companies and publicly available data.

Under the deal announced on June 12, Google would provide some of the ads for Yahoo's search engine, yielding as much as $800 million annually for Yahoo. Yahoo says it will pour that money into improving its own search engine -- in other words, partnering with Google to get more competitive with Google.

Read more: washingtonpost.com 

Labels: ads, advertisements, advertising, Yahoo

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) is not happy with the fact that Google will start serving ads to Yahoo, and they’ve asked the US Department of Justice, the European Commission and the Competition Bureau of Canada to block the deal. This is pretty much along the lines with what Microsoft’s been saying about this deal, and they’re likely to support WAN on this one, so Google and Yahoo now have some very strong opposition working against them.

WAN’s president Gavin O’Reilly is surprisingly factual in his comments about the complaint: “The proposed advertising deal between Google and Yahoo would seriously weaken that competition, resulting in less revenues and higher prices for our members. WAN is also concerned that this deal would give Google unwarranted market power over important segments of online advertising. Advertisers will increasingly migrate to Google since they will see diminishing price advantages to advertising through Yahoo.

Read more: mashable.com 

Labels: ads, advertisements, advertisers, advertising, Yahoo

Google has spent $140 million to acquire Russian ad company ZAO Begun as it attempts to penetrate the Russian market.

Google wants to make headway in the Russian market, where it lags behind the portal Yandex. To help it increase penetration, CNET reports that the search giant is acquiring ad company ZAO Begun for $140 million in a slightly unusual deal.

Just over 50% of Begun is currently owned by Russian site Rambler Media. It’s agreed to buy the remained from another company, Bannatyne, and then sell it for cash to Google.

Begun has 40,000 advertisers and 143,000 Russian-language sites in its network, according to Rambler.

Full article: digitaltrends.com 

Labels: ads, advertisements, advertising, Russia

Logo: koutuk.blogspot.com

2008 may be the year that Google’s innocence ends, as media and governments start to cast a less forgiving eye at the behavior of the company that controls 60% of the search market and perhaps as much as half of all online advertising revenue.

In 2007 the Federal Trade Commission opened an antitrust investigation into Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick. The deal was eventually approved, although the EU took a lot longer to give their stamp of approval (The EU in general isn’t a fan of Google).

This year, though, things might not go so well. Politicians are lining up to question Google’s recent search marketing deal with Yahoo. The deal was clearly structured to try to slide past regulators, but it isn’t clear that this time Google will get a pass.


Full article: techcrunch.com 

Labels: advertising, DoubleClick, search, Yahoo

Yahoo has agreed a deal with Google which will see Yahoo use the search engine giant's advertising technology.

Under the agreement, Google ads will appear alongside some Yahoo search results in the US and Canada.

The announcement came after Yahoo said it had failed to persuade Microsoft to renew its bid to buy all of the internet company.

Recent talks concluded after Yahoo rejected a Microsoft proposal to buy just its online search business.

Full article: news.bbc.co.uk 

Labels: advertising, share, technology, Yahoo

'A whole new industry' could be created around video advertising on the web, Google said, but it's not sure how

Google has said that it is still unsure how to make money from YouTube, the enormously popular video-sharing website it owns, but hopes to be able to do so soon.

Eric Schmidt, the search giant's chief executive, said it "seemed obvious" that Google should be able to generate "significant amounts of money" from YouTube, on which hundreds of millions of videos are watched every day, but that as yet it hadn't figured out how to go about it.

He also rejected suggestions that Google dominated the web, saying that it was outperformed by Yahoo!, the internet portal, in some areas, and added that in any case the company's goal was not "to monetise everything".

In an interview with The New Yorker writer Ken Auletta, Mr Schmidt was cautious about how profitable YouTube might be, but said he believed the site could lead to "the creation of a whole new industry." He said his optimism was based on two facts: "We know people are watching it" and "We have the luxury of time to invest."

Full article: timesonline.co.uk 

Labels: advertising, video, youtube

Google, Looking to Monetize Video Site, Is Letting Content Producers Sell Advertising on Their Branded Channels

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Google has struggled to find the best way to monetize YouTube. The latest idea: Let content creators sell ads.

Professional content producers -- those who come equipped with their own ad-sales teams -- are now able to sell advertising on their YouTube channels. That includes the click-to-expand overlays that run across the bottoms of YouTube videos and display units on the page that hosts the video player. The revenue is split between the content creator and YouTube, just as it would be if YouTube sold the ads.

Full story: adage.com 

Labels: ads, Adsense, advertisements, advertisers, advertising, video, youtube

Interesting article about Adwords (with pics):

Text ads can be smart, funny, and sometimes unintentionally hilarious when they show up in the wrong context.

The idea here is CREATIVITY like in any other ad format that differentiate you from others in the otherwise cluttered environment.

Somebody asked what you can do with words other than writing a small copy in Google adword program and making it most relevant to the keyword punched in.

Result of this thought: All the ads look just the same.


Read more: likeiknowit.wordpress.com 

Labels: ads, Adsense, advertisements, advertising, ADWords

The Google content network now accepts display ads served from qualified third-party vendors. Third-party ad serving has been a longstanding request from top brand AdWords advertisers who use third parties to create and manage their online campaigns. Initially, we will be only accepting third-party ads in English, but we hope to expand to other languages soon.

Making the Google content network more accessible to large brand advertisers also benefits AdSense publishers and end users. Third-party ad serving will introduce a greater variety of advertising into the Google content network, increase the inventory of quality display ads competing to show on AdSense publisher sites, and offer more engaging ads for end users. In the long run, we believe the increased inventory and ad competition will result in increased revenue for many AdSense publishers.

Read more: adsense.blogspot.com 

Labels: ads, Adsense, advertisements, advertisers, advertising, Publishers

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Yahoo Inc. is now more likely to outsource its search advertising to Google Inc., according to a person familiar with the situation.

Yahoo (YHOO) moved closer to the deal with Google after initial tests of the system proved promising, the person said.

Yahoo had earlier announced that it was testing Google's (GOOG) online advertising technology on a limited basis, prompting more speculation that the beleaguered Web portal was seeking a deeper partnership with Google as a way to fend off Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) takeover bid.

Read more: marketwatch.com

Labels: advertising, microsoft, search, Yahoo

A set of policy position documents reportedly authored by Microsoft made the case that Google could use DoubleClick's advertising network to peer into competitors' traffic -- a position the FTC apparently rejected last week.

Last week, The New York Times blogger Louise Story released copies of a series of documents reportedly shared between Microsoft and US Federal Trade Commission members prior to their decision on the Google + DoubleClick merger. The documents reveal that Microsoft was willing to characterize its own competitive position in the Internet advertising market, both before and after a merger took place, as tenuous and perhaps even unsustainable, in order to distinguish itself against what it described to be a larger, perhaps predatory, competitor.

Full story: betanews.com 

Labels: ads, advertising, DoubleClick, microsoft

Sony BMG Music Entertainment has agreed, in exchange for a slice of Yahoo’s advertising revenue, to let Yahoo’s users upload videos and music clips containing its produced content.

The deal comes just over a year since Sony made a very similar agreement with Google that also entailed the release of “thousands” of music videos on Google Video (and, soon after, YouTube as well). While Google has actually secured distribution deals with all four major labels by now, this deal is Yahoo’s first and it does not suggest that Sony will actively release produced content onto Yahoo Video.

Read more: techcrunch.com 

Labels: advertising, BMG, entertainment, Sony, Yahoo

When you think Google, you probably think search engine, and, with Google trying to move into the wireless industry, it may be a bit confusing as to what Google’s doing with itself. Let’s not forget one thing: the core of Google’s business is advertising. With that in mind, it would make sense why Google would want to redefine TV.

The company is currently researching methods to get Google in, on, or under your TV, and it has little or nothing to do with the Google TV ads being tested under EchoStar.

Yet Google’s not denying anything either. Vincent Dureua, Google’s TV technology boss, couldn’t state the company’s goal for the medium any more clearly: "We are confident we are going to revive the television advertising industry by bringing new advertising to it."

Read more: blorge.com 

Labels: advertisements, advertising, Android, TV

Google has announced a number of changes to its key Adwords product that will provide a more rounded product offering to Adwords’ advertisers.

Google has tweaked its site targeting feature to give advertisers the ability to run their campaigns not only on the front page of sites, but also on specific pages on each site. The feature now has a new (and appropriate) name: placement targeting.

Read more: techcrunch.com 

Labels: Adsense, advertisements, advertisers, advertising, ADWords

ONLINE video search service blinkx has taken on Google, launching a video advertising platform last week to challenge the one released by the internet giant one day earlier.

The blinkx AdHoc platform lets people embed ad-laced videos in their websites and then share in advertising revenues in the same way that Google's AdSense video units work.

Blinkx promises website operators half the money taken from advertising, but Google has not disclosed the percentage of revenues going to publishers.

Although Google provides the advertising option only with video from YouTube, which it bought last year in a $US1.65 billion stock deal, blinkx offers content from varied sources, including YouTube and DailyMotion.

Read more: australianit.news.com.au 

Labels: advertising, Blinkx, service, video, youtube

Google today launched Gadget Ads, a new interactive rich media ad format which will allow advertisers to measure users' responses to the ads, as well as updating ad content in real time.

The new ads designed for use across Google's network of sites, and aims to offer a way for internet users to interact with ad content in a way that is not possible with standard web ads.

The measurability of the Gadget ads will appeal to advertisers, and goes beyond merely measuring how many people clicked on an ad.

Instead, advertisers will be able to see how many users interacted with the ads in a number of ways. For instance, in the case of video ads, advertisers can see how much of a video has been watched, whether menu controls were used, and so on.

Full article: e-consultancy.com 

Labels: ads, Adsense, advertisements, advertising, widget

Yahoo has moved to further strengthen its service to advertisers by buying web marketing business BlueLithium for $300m (£149.4m).

Set up in 2004, BlueLithium provides technology enabling websites to better match adverts with users' interests.

The purchase is the latest in a series of deals by Yahoo as it seeks to regain ground on market leader Google in the web search sector.

Full article: BBC News 

Labels: advertisements, advertisers, advertising, BlueLithium, Yahoo

8/28/2007 10:02:38 AM Tuesday morning, Internet search solutions provider Google Inc. (GOOG) revealed a multi-year advertising deal with Time Warner Inc.'s (TWX) news website CNN.com, which would enlist Google's AdSense advertising program to deliver site targeted advertising to CNN.com. The company noted that the collaboration places contextually relevant advertisements alongside CNN.com content, enabling advertisers to target CNN.com specifically and connect with high quality content and traffic. Under the terms of the deal, Google will serve as the exclusive provider of auction-based text advertisements throughout CNN.com.

Full article: rttnews.com 

Labels: Adsense, advertisements, advertisers, advertising, CNN

Google India has started the display of advertisements in Hindi under its contextual Adsense service. Under this contextual service, website publishers earn a portion of the advertising revenue for placing Google sponsored links on their web sites.

Read more: techshout.com 

Labels: Adsense, advertising, contextual, local