IAB Approves Privacy Guidelines For Interactive Advertising; ‘Roadmap’ May Not Thrill FTC
February 25, 2008
Late last year, the Federal Trade Commission, rather than impose regulations on online advertising, proposed self-policing for internet marketers and sites. The Interactive Advertising Bureau was already working on its own guidelines and today, at its annual meeting in Phoenix, the board of directors approved "privacy principles" to be followed by its members and submitted to the FTC by the end of the month. The IAB's principles (we've posted all five here) are more relaxed than the FTC's suggestions—for instance, requiring "meaningful notice" rather than a "prominent statement." IAB describes them "as a roadmap for all industry actors who collect and/or use data to deliver relevant ads online or via other platforms."
IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg stressed the differences in his statement: "IAB members understand the relationship between consumers and companies is built on trust. As a result, IAB members have long been committed to guarding consumers' information and privacy. Based on the industry's experience, we believe the FTC is too rigid on the matters of notice and choice." Release.
CNET News.com: "… the IAB guidelines would make it less obvious for consumers that their data is being collected for advertising, with a notice buried somewhere on the Web site where the privacy practices are kept. Also, the IAB favors directing consumers to other places where they can opt out if they don't want their information gathered or used for advertising."
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told News.com (parent CNET (NSDQ: CNET) is an IAB member.): "The FTC didn't just put the foxes in charge of the hen house, the Commission offered up the blueprints."
New York Times Launching Its Mobile-To-PC Content Sharing Service
February 25, 2008
The New York Times Co (NYSE: NYT). is launching a service today called ShifD that sends your content to the cloud to make it easily accessible from your computer, phone or other devices. The service works like this: let's say you see a headline for a news story that sounds interesting, you can clip it and read it later on any device. If you are at a restaurant, you can send yourself a message with the name of the wine you enjoyed, so you can buy it later. Or, when you are at the grocery store, you can pull up the recipe you wanted to make for dinner to ensure you have all the right ingredients. Full story with interview, and screen shots of the service are here on mocoNews.net.
Publishers To Have Tough Time On Online Ad Revs With Increasing Fragmentation: AvenueA
February 25, 2008
Avenue A/Razorfish, the online ad agency which is part of aQuantive, which is now part of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), has come out with its annual report on the state of the digital advertising, and bursts the bubble, sort of, on mobile advertising, social media and Web video, and calling them as "not ready for prime-time," "a work in progress" and "a ways away" from standardization, respectively. At least that what Jeff Lanctot, SVP at Avenue A, told Reuters.
With the recession and its looking effect on the online ad industry, current trends will make it difficult for major Web publishers to increase ad revenue in 2008, as marketers divide their budgets across more sites, the report said. The agency spent client money on more than 1,800 sites in 2007, compared with 863 the previous year, and handled $735 million in ad budgets in 2007, up 36 percent.
The money share spent on big Web portals dropped from 24 percent in 2006 to 19 percent, while search share rose to 31 percent from 28 percent, vertical sites rose to 39 percent from 37 percent, and spending on ad networks was flat at 11 percent, reports News.com.
Vertical content properties were the great beneficiaries of much of the wealth. In addition to share shifts, there was great pricing-growth disparity between verticals, up an average of 30 percent, and portals, whose CPMs grew only 7 percent. The average CPM increase across all online media was 20 percent, reports AdAge. The report can be downloaded here.
Google Launching Beta Of Adsense For Video; To Use YouTube-Like Overlays
February 21, 2008
Following a pilot program that began last May, Google has announced the beta launch of its Adsense for video offering. The company will use the same InVideo, overlay ads that it uses to run ads on YouTube. At types include video-based blocks sold on a CPM basis, and CPC text overlays. For now, the new offering will be available to video publishers that do a minimum of 1 million streams per month. The sites must be in English and based in the US. Going forward, the company plans to expand the program geographically and to publishers of different sizes. More details in the announcement. Read more
NewsClipper Brings All The News Video from Around the Web to One Place
February 20, 2008
Why isn’t there a Google News for video? That is what Onar Vikingstad, a 27-year-old Norwegian Web developer with a day job at Apple, asked himself before he created NewsClipper. The site is a side project of his that brings together news video clips from the Websites of ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, ESPN, Fox News, NBC, and MSNBC. He explains:
What I wanted to create with NewsClipper was a site that consolidates all news clips from the major TV news networks in one location. No more having to run around to different carefully managed and controlled individual websites. Basically it lets you view the latest news clips from the major TV networks in one location, without having to go to their slow sites overloaded with ads.
The site is dead simple. Read more
Online News Readership Helps Offset Print Losses: Report
February 20, 2008
Newspapers have been attracting larger audiences with their websites, partly compensating for the decreased readership of their print editions, according to a new report from Scarborough Research. The analysis of data from 88 newspapers in the top 50 local markets August 2004-March 2007 showed web site growth making up for print losses by 28 percent. Interviews with newspaper executives brought out several common themes among successful news sites, including local coverage, unique and interactive content such as blogs, videos and podcasts, and cross-promotion. Among the highlights:
-- Online audience has grown 14 percent, making up print audience losses by 28 percent.
-- Readers aged 18-34 who view only the online editions increased 21 percent.
-- Online readers are increasingly wealthy and educated; readership among adults with annual household incomes of $75k increased 33 percent. Readership among adults with a college degree or higher increased by 16 percent.
The full report isn't available online but the release has some details.
Skype: 100 Billion Free Phone Calls And Counting
February 20, 2008
Since launching four and half years ago, Skype users have talked to each other for 100 billion minutes, and that is just counting free Skype-to-Skype phone calls. Of course, many of those calls would never have been made if Skype didn’t exists, so you cannot count the entire 100 billion minutes as a loss for the phone companies. But a significant chunk of that has got to be eating away at phone company profits.
Skype’s owner, eBay, is not necessarily the winner here either. While Skype has been a boon for consumers, it’s eBay that is footing the bill. Even at the reduced $3.1 billion acquisition price after the write-down, eBay still ended up paying roughly 3 cents a minute for all of those calls. I think I pay less with Verizon.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Newspond takes a shot at Digg and Techmeme
February 20, 2008
Mashable is writing about a new news site called Newspond. Their about page boasts that the site is, "...the most advanced news site on the planet." That's certainly a big statement to make, given the competition that already exists. Its main function is similar to that of Techmeme, with some of the social features of Digg thrown in for good measure.
At first glance, it appears that the content that is floating to the top of Newspond is very different to what is atop Techmeme right now. It's not clear whether this is due to the sources that Newspond is drawing on, or due to differences in their algorithms. I tend to think that it is a result of the algorithm, since many of the sources for popular articles are comparable on both sites. I think that the content needs to be tweaked, although it may improve as the site matures.
Read moreMicrosoft To Announce WorldWide Telescope On January 27
February 18, 2008
A source close to Microsoft says the company will launch new desktop software called WorldWide Telescope on January 27 at the TED Conference in Monterey, California. Our guess is that this is what Robert Scoble was talking about last week when he said he saw a new Microsoft project that brought him to tears.
The service will be accessed through a downloadable application - Windows only for now is what we hear. Users will be able to pan around the nighttime sky and zoom as far in to any one area as the data will allow. Microsoft is said to be tapping the Hubble telescope as well as ten or so earth bound telescopes around the world for data. When you find an area you like, you can switch to a number of different views, such as infrared and non-visible light.
Read moreLaid Off From Newspapers? Join Marketing Consultancies
February 18, 2008
That's where the jobs are...really. AdAge has done an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, and come up with some interesting numbers about employment in the media and marketing sectors. U.S. media employment in December fell to a 15-year low (886,900), led by cuts in newspaper industry. On the other hand, jobs in advertising/marketing-services broke a record in November (769,000), and in that sector, the marketing consultancies powered that growth. These consultancies over the past year added 14,500 jobs (up 10.8 percent), nearly matching staff cuts at newspapers (down 16,900 or 4.7percent), according to the analysis. Why? Well, in time of chaos and change, anyone who ties to make sense of change still wins. That's where consultancies fit in.
On the media side, employment peaked in 2000, and since then media companies have eliminated one in six jobs (167,600). The only media sectors to add jobs: magazines (up a meager 400 jobs) and internet media companies (up 9,200).
