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Monthly Archives: June 2007

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blinkx Launches Contextual Video Ads, I’m Not So Sure

June 28, 2007 2:47 pm / Leave a Comment / Pat McCarthy

It was only a matter of time, because it’s seemed obvious to many that a good video advertising solution would be for an automated system to match video content to commercial style video ads. blinkx has announced their solution called AdHoc (honestly, must every advertising solution be “Ad-something”?) that does this.

A few players, including Google themselves, have started matching contextual text ads to videos, but this is the first I’ve heard of matching TV-style commercial ads contextually to the video in an automated way.

Naturally, this leads to a big question in my mind. Will the advertiser volume be there for blinkx to make this work? In order for contextual advertising to work you need enough advertisers to cover all the possible contexts that exist in this niche world of the web. It’s the main reason why it’s been nearly impossible for any ad companies to break into contextual advertising against Google and Yahoo!. Google and Yahoo! have the advertiser volume (primarily thanks to their search results to advertise on) that draws advertisers to their platforms by the thousands.

Are there going to be enough video commercials made by advertisers in all the different topics out there for blinkx’s system to actually have a decent coverage of contextually relevant ads? Even if Google or Yahoo! was launching this system today, I’d still wonder if their huge advertiser bases would be making video commercials to make this fly.

This idea will work, but is it too early to get the necessary advertiser coverage?

Posted in: Advertising

Flickr Images Added to Yahoo! Image Search

June 26, 2007 12:31 pm / Leave a Comment / Pat McCarthy

Thomas Hawk reports on it, and it’s very cool and adds a ton of relevancy to Yahoo! Image Search. In the past when searching for images I’ve usually had to try searching Flickr directly and then also using Yahoo! or Google image search. Now it can be done in one place. The Flickr acquisition is turning out to be a great one for Yahoo!.

Posted in: Yahoo

Ad Serving Free For All On The Way

June 23, 2007 10:43 pm / 1 Comment / Pat McCarthy

When we launched Direct Media Exchange (formerly known as RMX Direct) last year it was to our knowledge the first free ASP ad server for publishers. Although at that time, and still today, it’s a very basic ad server which has some unique abilities focused on getting monetization for inventory from the Right Media Exchange as well as allowing publishers to manage other ad networks who buy from them.
Read More →

Posted in: Advertising

Yahoo! Acquires Rivals.com

June 20, 2007 10:12 pm / Leave a Comment / Pat McCarthy

As an avid reader of the Oregon Ducks Rivals site, it was with great interest that I read tonight that my soon-to-be employer has purchased Rivals.com.
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Posted in: Yahoo

Semel Out, Yang In

June 18, 2007 12:58 pm / Leave a Comment / Pat McCarthy

Since I haven’t even started working there yet I don’t really have an opinion on this, but Yahoo! announced big news today that Terry Semel is stepping down as CEO and Yahoo! founder Jerry Yang will be stepping up to the CEO job with Sue Decker moving up to President.

Seems like this will have a positive effect on Yahoo’s stock as Wall Street seems to have fallen out of love with Semel. Will Yang bring more of an engineer focus to the company?

Posted in: Yahoo

Battle of the Advertising Superpowers: Who’s Got What?

June 18, 2007 10:14 am / 5 Comments / Pat McCarthy

adpowers.jpgIt’s been a crazy couple of months. Not only did my employer agree to be acquired by Yahoo!, but our competitive landscape has changed dramatically with Google acquiring Doubleclick, Microsoft acquiring aQuantive, WPP acquiring 24/7 RealMedia and AOL acquiring AdTech AG to go along with what they already own in Advertising.com.

Additionally, there are still some other large players who are also in the game such as News Corp./Myspace/Strategic Data Corp, and IAC/Ask.com.

Obviously this is a big land grab for these large companies, combined with trying to get innovative companies who are pushing things forward in online advertising. The Wall St. Journal talks about the ad exchange concept and how it relates to these acquisitions.

The media and blogs have been covering these stories quite a bit, but I’ve seen a lot of writers and commenters really not having a great gasp on what pieces of the advertising business each company has now, how they all stack up, and what it all means going forward. So, I’ll try and help out.
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Posted in: Advertising, Google, Microsoft, Right Media, Yahoo

Here Comes Another McCarthy!

June 7, 2007 10:33 pm / 11 Comments / Pat McCarthy

My wife informed me today that she’s pregnant with our third child! Great news, and I really feel more excited than the previous times we learned she was pregnant. I think I’m just so comfortable as a dad now and understand how great my kids are and I can’t wait to have another one. Now it’s time for the wait to see if it’ll be our third girl, which I’d love, or our first boy, which I’d also love.
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Posted in: Personal

Yahoo Search Marketing Goes Open with APIs

June 4, 2007 4:13 pm / 3 Comments / Pat McCarthy

Yahoo! announced today that the Yahoo Search Marketing advertising platform (Panama) will be opening up to give developers and companies free and open access to their APIs.

Exactly the right move in my opinion, even if I may be biased on this one. By making it as easy as possible to build software, tools, and systems to buy advertising through the Panama platform Yahoo! can really only win more market share with the move. You can’t make everyone happy with your user interface, and there are search engine marketing companies out there who build their own custom software for clients to work with advertising platforms. Giving these companies a free and open API almost ensures they will build upon Yahoo’s platform.
Read More →

Posted in: Advertising, Yahoo

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