Washington Post Becomes Ad Agency

ClickZ reports that "the line between publisher and ad agency blurred a bit further today with the announcement that The Washington Post Company had launched SocialCode, a subsidiary that will help brands build and monetize their presence on Facebook."

Google Expands Its Ad Network into the Mobile Market

ClickZ reports that "A year after it agreed to buy mobile ad network AdMob for $750, Google has taken its first step to integrate the unit with its own ad business. AdMob's Android and iPhone application publishers will soon be able to fill their unsold inventory with Google AdSense ads, letting advertisers extend their mobile campaigns across AdMob’s network."

People Paying for Online Content--Madness or Not

FT reports that "digital subscriptions for Pearson’s Financial Times, a newspaper which charges for online content, grew more than 50% in the first nine months of the year." News Corp., which owns the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, which owns the Boston Globe, are using the FT as a subscription model.

Google's Push for Display Ads

Google Experiments with a New Search Results Page

Taking a page from Bing's search results format, Google is experimenting with a new format. You can see an image of the page on Blogstorm.

Online Boston Globe Now Costs You

ClickZ reports that the Boston Globe is dividing up its media empire, transforming its Boston.com, which is a digital version of the Globe today, into  a shopping/classieds/social media site. Meanwhile it will launch BostonGlobe.com, which will have the serious news from the world of business, politics, sports, finance, and the arts, and hide it behind a paywall at BostonGlobe.com. Subscribers to the print edition also could access BostonGlobe.com at no additional charge. These companies are owned by The New York Times, which will charge for online reading of some New York Times content in 2011, following the example of the Wall Street Journal.

What is the significance to marketers? What becomes more valuable to a marketer--a website that allows  any individual to visit or a website that allows only individuals who are willing to pay to gain access to the site?

Facebook's Thumbs Up Mean What?

"Facebook has been collecting thumbs up on everything from Levi's black denim leggings to Sarah Palin videos since April. But where do all those clicks of approval go? And when are brands going to benefit?" asks AdAge.

Advertising on Twitter an Experiment

The WSJonline reports that advertisers have mixed reactions to their ad campaigns on Twitter. They had expected to take advantage of Twitter's popularity,  as did Twitter. The social network had signed on "30 big-name brands, including Coca-Cola Co., Virgin America and Starbucks Corp., to test [advertising on Twitter]. Some marketers say that early results are promising but that advertising on Twitter remains an experiment." (You will need a subscription to the WSJ to read the rest or you can access the publication through the school's data base.)

comScore Ranks Top 50 US Websites

comScore Top 50 Properties (U.S.) August 2010 Total U.S. – Home, Work and University Locations Source: comScore Media Metrix
Rank	Property	Unique Visitors (000)	Rank	Property	Unique Visitors (000)
Total Internet Audience (000): 212616
1	Yahoo! Sites	179002	26	iVillage.com: The Womens Network	35289
2	Google Sites	178782	27	Gannett Sites	34923
3	Microsoft Sites	165271	28	Technorati Media	34818
4	Facebook	148048	29	Federated Media Publishing	34562
5	AOL, Inc.	107165	30	WeatherBug Property	33424
6	Glam Media	97948	31	Disney Online	31046
7	Ask Network	88281	32	Break Media Network	30965
8	Turner Network	84541	33	Verizon Communications	30665
9	Viacom Digital	81456	34	AT&T Interactive Network	30028
10	Fox Interactive Media	80210	35	Superpages.com Network	29019
11	Amazon Sites	79188	36	Expedia Inc	28334
12	CBS Interactive	79062	37	Target Corporation	27856
13	Wikimedia Foundation Sites	73685	38	Tribune Interactive	27811
14	eBay	69500	39	YellowBook Network	27217
15	Apple Inc.	69383	40	Photobucket.com LLC	26437
16	New York Times Digital	68901	41	YellowBook Network	27940
17	Demand Media	58798	42	The Washington Post	27711
18	craigslist, inc.	53400	43	Photobucket.com LLC	27396
19	VEVO	49386	44	ESPN	27197
20	Comcast Corporation	44106	45	Warner Music	27151
21	Answers.com Sites	41254	46	Everyday Health	26645
22	NetShelter Technology Media	40584	47	WorldNow Sites	25630
23	Weather Channel, The	39074	48	NBC Universal	25357
24	Wal-Mart	36683	49	Bank of America	24986
25	Adobe Sites	35345	50	Twitter	24798

Digital Media Throws Down the Gaunlet to Traditional Media: Yahoo Vs. TV

AdWeek reports that "Yahoo's competition is television. That's what Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said yesterday at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference. 'The real competitor is TV,' she said, promising that online advertising will not only get more rich, interactive and accountable, but also simpler to purchase." She also discussed the future of online advertising.

Meanwhile another post in AdWeek shows a weakness in online advertising. Solbright Digital Media Index shows that the cost per thousand (CPM) page views (one of the ways Websites are paid by advertisers for display ads) "climbed 9 percent during the first six months of this year compared to the same period in 2009. [The second quarter] ...was particularly strong, as CPMs jumped 17 percent over last year. Even so, CPMs over time have consistently declined as the Web has become saturated with inventory, according to Solbright. Data presented to Mediaweek showed that while CPMs have spiked with regularity during each fourth quarter over the past four years, overall display CPMs have slipped from a $16 average in 2006 to a $10 average this year."

Display Ads Larger for AOL

Earlier this week I referred to the increased emphasis on display advertising (compared to search ads). This ClickZ story supports that notion.

AOL will launch a super-sized ad format across its properties next week. The company will design it to minimize ad clutter and maximize advertiser impact. Recently the Online Publishers Association (OPA), conducted tests with similar sizing with online publishers such as Hearst and the New York Times. The story added that "according to AOL, both the effectiveness of advertising and the accessibility of content on the Internet are being diminished by ad clutter. Its solution is to bundle the ad real estate on its pages into one large-scale ad unit, enabling brands to occupy a much larger portion of the page and limiting clutter from banners, brand logos, and text ads."

OPA recently released “A Sense of Place: Why Environments Matter.” The research ferreted out how 2910 adult Americans "perceive content in different online environments, an whether these perceptions impact advertising receptivity and consumer response." The study assessed perceptions and responses in the following online environments:  "1) media properties (e.g., ESPN.com, iVillage, NYTimes.com, Wall Street Journal Digital Network; 2) portal channels (e.g., AOL News, MSN Money, Yahoo Sports) and 3) social networks (Facebook, MySpace)."
 
Top findings include the following:

• Sites with relevant content correlate strongly with audiences being loyal to these sites (a correlation score of .445).
• Sites with trusted content correlates strongly with the sites’ advertisers being perceived as reputable (a correlation score of .388).
• Brands perceived as relevant are more likely to have a response to their online ads (a correlation score of .353).

Video Viewing Takes Off, Says Study

"Over the past year, the amount of time American audiences spent watching video for the major live video publishers has grown 648% to more than 1.4 billion minutes, according to comScore." That's the word from MediaPost. 

Keep this in mind when you read Nick Bilton's New York Times blog. Here's a piece of his blog:

Facebook’s half a billion users were uploading "20 million videos each month, many of which are shared through mobile phones." These same users were consuming more than 30 billion videos online each month.

As Josh Wiseman, an engineering manager at Facebook, explained when I discussed these staggering numbers with him, these videos are primarily user-generated, illustrated by the fact that they are uploaded from a mobile phone. In other words, they are the “amateur hour” Mr. Jobs said customers don’t want.

If we look beyond Facebook, research from ComScore found that 135 million Web surfers are consuming 13 billion videos on YouTube each month. Although the report didn’t break down the amateur-vs.-professional split of those videos, vast numbers of YouTube’s videos are not from professional sources.

The rating/research company Nielsen uncovered this information: "Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase)...Americans spend a third their online time (36 percent) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging." That does not include time spent surfing websites, watching tv, or playing video games. 

Google Taking on Facebook?

Google purchased Social Deck, which makes games people play against opponents who could use mobile devices or PCs. Google has purchased five companies since the start of August. Reuters reports that "most...[of the purchases] have been related to social networking and games, fueling speculation that the company plans to release a new social-networking service."

Watch Out! The Old Folks Are Coming!!!

Old folks, such as individuals such as myself and your parents--as well as ancient people like your grandparents, are turning increasingly to social networking, such as Twitter and Facebook. OMG.

Fox, MySpace Working Together

News Corp.--owners of Fox Television Network and MySpace--is combining the two audiences for advertisers, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Twittter Looking for Advertising

Twitter is not making money. The company is solving that problem. The NYTimes.com blog, Bits, notes that "Twitter is getting more serious about making money. On Tuesday, Twitter announced that it had hired two new sales executives, continuing its pattern of plucking top sales executives from other Web companies."

The Internet marketing research company, emarketer.com, asks if Twitter can create a revenue stream.

Google Joins the Phone Business

NYTimes.com reported today: "Google entered a new business beyond Internet search on Wednesday with a service within Gmail to make phone calls over the Web to landlines or cellphones." The service puts Google in competition with Skype and provides it with more information about its users. Additionally, Skype has just started looking for ways to get advertising.