Scoble posted today about the “Silicon Valley VC Disease”, which can best be summarized as only investing in companies that are addressing markets that are big today and have a good chance at earning revenue over the next couple of years.
(more…)Investing in and Building on New Platforms
Saturday, July 26th, 2008What a Day of News
Thursday, April 10th, 2008Yesterday was a bit crazy. A lot of news hit, and most of it I can’t really say much about. Just a little rundown though:
Yahoo! Acquires IndexTools
This blog originally started with a focus on web analytics, so it’s near and dear to my heart. I’m excited to see how IndexTools is used both internally and externally for Yahoo!. Web analytics expert Eric Petersen has a good post about why this could be a game changer.
Former Yahoo! SVP Tim Cadogan Becomes CEO at OpenX
A great hire for OpenX, as I really enjoyed working with Tim while he was at Yahoo!. OpenX is a very interesting business right now, it’ll be fun to watch what Tim does there.
Yahoo! Tests Outsourcing Search Monetization With Google
No comment.
Yahoo! And AOL To Merge?
No comment.
NewsCorp To Join Microsoft In Yahoo! Offer?
No comment, man this blog is exciting.
AOL and Ad.com Jump Into the Small Publisher Game With PubAccess
Not too long ago I remember it was a bunch of fairly standard ad networks as the only options for small publishers. Then we launched Direct Media Exchange (formerly RMX Direct) at Right Media which was the first “tool” to help publisher manage multiple ad networks and make their lives easier. Since then we’ve seen more in this space like The Rubicon Project, PubMatic, now PubAccess, and Google’s AdManager in a less direct way. I don’t think we’ll see the last of it either.
Definitely not a slow news day in the world of Yahoo!
Yahoo! Announces AMP!, Now I Can Tell People What I Work On….
Sunday, April 6th, 2008Yahoo! has just gone public with AMP!, as pointed out in the New York Times by Miguel Helft.
The nice thing is now when talking with others outside Yahoo! they’ll have a bit more understanding of one of the major efforts I’m working on. Of course, there will be questions and confusion, for example Mashable saying it seems a lot like Google Adsense. I know Mashable is going off of very little information, but I thought I’d just note that’s not accurate at all. Watching the early preview video below should give a bit more feel of the direction the platform is moving.
(more…)Yahoo! Launches Shine, Calacanis Confused…
Monday, March 31st, 2008Yahoo! today announced the launch of their new women’s site Shine. While the site looks great, and as a Yahoo! employee I probably care more about Yahoo! news than most people, I didn’t think it’d really make much of a splash in the tech blog world and the feeds I normally read.
Well, Jason Calacanis stirred up a controversy by claiming that Yahoo! was competing with it’s advertising publisher partners by creating a site that competes with them. Normally, I tend to think Jason is on the ball with a lot of his opinions, but his post on this subject doesn’t seem well thought out.
(more…)Could Advertising Optimization Algorithms Be Crowdsourced?
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008This article in Wired is a good read about Netflix’s competition to improve it’s movie recommendation engine.
I found it interesting for a few reasons. First, as a Netflix user I’ve always felt their movie suggestions for me have not been very good. I usually understand why they recommended what they did, but it’s never stuff I have much of an interest in watching.
(more…)2008 Online Advertising Predictions
Sunday, February 10th, 2008Even though anyone who actively reads blogs is sick of them by now, I must admit I’m a sucker for yearly reviews and prediction articles and blog posts. Even though most of the time I realize the writer is just guessing, it’s interesting to get the perspectives of others on where they see the world going. In past years I’ve made posts with predictions on Web 2.0 companies, and have also weighed in with web analytics predictions. Since the advertising market has really been my intense focus this year, I figured it was long past time to make my own 2008 Online Advertising Predictions.
(more…)It’s Been a Wild Few Days, and Looks to Be a Wild Year
Monday, February 4th, 2008I can’t really comment on all the Microsoft and Yahoo! news as a Yahoo! employee, but I’m not sure I really have anything terribly interesting to say about it anyway. It’s just been an interesting few days reading all the news and analysis, and it looks like it will be an interesting 2008 to see how everything shakes out.
I’m working on an Online Advertising Predictions for 2008 post, and what’s funny is how rapidly some of my predictions change depending what happens. It may be a tough year to predict now.
Online Advertising Taking Over TV Advertising: It’s Happening
Friday, January 4th, 2008HipMojo points to and analyzes a report from WPP’s GroupM unit that Sweden will be the first country where internet advertising surpasses TV advertising in 2008, and it would happen in the UK in 2009. This is major. While I think it will take a bit longer in the USA, it’s happening faster than I would have predicted a couple of years ago.
When Display Advertising Creates More Value
Friday, January 4th, 2008Scott Karp kicked off the new year with a good post called Five Guiding Principles For The Transformation Of Media Companies. It’s a good post that needs to be read by every executive at major media companies today, and in many ways a lot of it seems like common sense to those who have been watching the transformation occur and understand what’s going on.
(more…)JP Morgan Predicts Display Advertising CPMs Will Rise, But Will They?
Thursday, January 3rd, 2008
There are a number of interesting items in the report, but the one that hits closest to home for me is their prediction that display advertising CPM prices will rise from their bottom in 2007 of $3.31 to $3.86 by 2011 through increases each year. The question is, will this occur?
(more…)
