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Microsoft buying Yahoo - what does it mean?
2008-02-02 15:07:00
Ive finally gotten round to having a little think about the big news story of the week, Microsoft tabling a bid of $44.6 Billion in cash and stock to buy its rival Yahoo .  There has been no official comment from Yahoo on the reports but I thought Id document my thoughts on the impace this could have. The portal market Yahoo and MSN are the two big players in the portal market, the one stop shop for all you web needs, search engine, web mail, news feed, weather reports, all in one place.  This is where Microsoft will gain a massive advantage and pretty much gain complete dominance.  Aside from the ISP sites, which gain their visitors through having a default homepage setting in the ISP setup process, Microsoft will have a dominance in this field comparable to Google’s in the search market (more of that in a minute!).  So what does this mean to MSN? Well instantly they will take on board the lions share of the portal advertising revenues around the world.  Yahoo has built a...
More About: Buying , Yahoo!

Breaking news: Microsoft table bid to buy Yahoo
2008-02-01 14:50:00
Exciting news in the world of search engine marketing, more thoughts and comments to come when I have the time! Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo By Franklin Paul and Tiffany Wu - Reuters February 01 2008 NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Friday it has offered to buy Yahoo Inc, the popular Web portal, for $44.6 billion in cash and stock, seeking to join forces against Google Inc in what would be the biggest Internet deal since the Time Warner-AOL merger. Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo for $31 per share, a 62 percent premium over Yahoo’s closing stock price on Nasdaq Thursday. Yahoo shares jumped to $30.75 in premarket trading. Yahoo said the online advertising market is growing rapidly and expected to reach nearly $80 billion by 2010 from over $40 billion in 2007. Yahoo added it is “increasingly dominated by one player,” referring to Web search leader Google. “We have great respect for Yahoo, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting...
More About: News , Breaking News , Table

Google & Publicis transfer programme - is it wrong?
2008-01-28 21:49:00
It was announced on brand republic last week that Google and Publicis have been working closely together for the past year and plan to step up their alliance with a proposed staff swapping system which could see “possibly hundreds of Google employees” taking placements with the huge media giant.  This strikes me as being slightly wrong, seen as Publicis owns Digitas, ZenithOptimedia, Zed and Starcom, all of whom work with the Google system for their clients, trying to get the best from paid and natural search results. Surely there is something wrong with such an alliance which could potentially mean Google staff giving favourable treatment and inside information to agencies who operate in the search sphere, therefore giving them an advantage on the competition.  And if they did, it surely gives the Publicis owned agencies an unfair advantage in their market place.  Im sure the parties invovled are going to claim it is just to learn from each others strategies, process...
More About: Transfer , Wrong , Programme

Adwords to Launch Demographic Targeting
2008-01-25 23:55:00
The adwords blog has announced the launch of a demographic bidding beta test and is offering the chance for advertisers in the UK and the US to sign up for the trial.  Reading into the release the targeting is only going to be available on the content network placement network and is dependent on the publisher site having the capability to provide the information on the users.  If the site has this information, more often than not through a sign in system, then it will be shared anonymously to Google and the appropriate ads. From the detail in this article the benefits of this system over MSN’s own demographic targeting system is that the system will allow you to up weight your bids by a higher percentage (MSN’s limit is 150%) and that you will also be able to choose not to show your ads to certain audiences.  This is certainly an advance on MSN but the impact of it will be limited by the reliance on the publisher site and the fact that the targeting wont apply to the...
More About: Adwords , Launch , Targeting , Demographic

Cadbury plans the Gorilla follow up
2008-01-25 13:56:00
As part of its record breaking 2008 marketing budget Cadbury are planning a follow up to their much loved drumming gorilla advert. According to the latest edition of Marketing the new ad will also feature an animal playing an instrument. The original advert was a major viral success achieving numerous blog postings, massive word of mouth and many a parody on Youtube (you can see some of them here). So the follow up has a hard task following in its footsteps, as do he agency charged with creating the ad. The original one worked well due to the human like actions of a gorilla but I cant see many other animals having the same impact without looking too comical. Answers on a postcard what you think the new animal and instrument will be and heres the original again just for fun!
More About: Plans , Gorilla

EA to launch ad supported online game
2008-01-25 12:56:00
EA have announced that they are going to release a free web only version of its Battlefield title (marketing, 22nd Jan). The version, to be known as Battlefield Heroes will only be available online and will not be sold in stores and will be supported online by advertising within the game and its interface. This is the first major launch in the western market of such a model and the title will spearhead EA’s “play 4 free” model as it moves away from the traditional retail environment. This could be the first in a long line of initiatives by the big gaming manufacturers to produce ad supported gaming environments and reduce the cost of video games. In game advertising is already heavily behind the rise in online gaming through the games consoles markets but this is the first attempt to launch a web based system. It is going to be interesting how they include the ads into the environment as it will be difficult to keep them in the context of the game, as this ...
More About: Online , Game , Launch , Online Game

The battle for stickiness
2008-01-24 13:05:00
Search engine land reported today the release of some new functional by ask which allows a user to upload their own personal background image for the search engine.  The functionality to add a skin to the background has been available since last year but this was only for predetermined images and wasn’t customisable.  I like the idea of customising the results page and this is a much simpler solution than Google’s which involves xml information rather than a simple image upload.  It is also much more flexible and interesting than msn and yahoo’s offerings which only allow the selection of different colour palletes for the page. This functionality is just another stage in the battle for search engine supremacy but also for loyalty within internet users through added value.  Yahoo had this a long time ago through positioning itself as an information portal and one stop shop for your internet needs (email, news, sport, search…) a similar position taken by M...
More About: Battle