Articles of the Day
Google closes its online video store - Google is closing its online video store, Google Video, this week, having launched the service in beta in Jan 2006. When the service, which enabled customers to rent and buy online videos, was launched, Google said it would grow into a thriving marketplace where video producers could sell or rent their work. According to Forrester Research analyst, Charlene Li, Google Video failed due to the service’s concentration on video rather the community around video, which YouTube successfully focused on.
Yahoo! president buys 47,000 company shares - Yahoo! president, Sue Decker, is buying around 47,000 of the company’s shares for approximately USD1.1m, a day after the share price fell to USD22.44, the lowest it has been for three years. Decker’s purchase was revealed in a US SEC filing. She now holds around 424,700 company shares.
BlueLithium Delivers Voters With New Behavioral Ad Network - BlueLithium’s new Voter Network launches today, offering political candidates a way to leverage the Web’s geo-, demo- and behavioral targeting abilities to promote their campaigns.
Q&A With Marchex Chief Media Officer Bill Day - Marchex shares sank to their lowest point in almost three years on Friday as analysts questioned the company’s investment in local while adjusting its revenue outlook downward. It was Bill Day’s first on the job as Chief Media Officer. Here’s how he sees the opportunity.
Online Video: Seeing the Whole Picture - Video images are flooding across the Internet. No longer an unknown quantity or merely a sidekick to television, the online video medium is fast becoming a formidable viewing factor. eMarketer projects that the number of online video viewers in the US alone will rise from 114 million in 2006 to 183 million in 2011. Currently, eMarketer estimates that news is the leading type of video content viewed online, with a nearly 14% share of the total. Movie and TV trailers are a close second, at 12%, followed by music videos, at about 11%.
Free WSJ.com Service Offers Benefit - Dow Jones buyer Rupert Murdoch has said he wants to see The Wall Street Journal forgo its $65 million subscription business in order to reach more people. While many Web critics applaud the proposed switch, newspaper purists say the come-one-come-all approach won’t generate the usage or ad revenue to justify it.
Slide.com Plans Widget Revolution - In just a few months, Slide.com has become the most popular widget maker on the Web; its embeddable products allow users to easily post video, pictures and anything sparkles and moves to their Web sites, blogs or social networking pages. The latest Web 2.0 fad, widget use, continues to grow apace according to comScore, which says that some 220 million widgets were consumed in May alone.
Study: Newspapers In Big Trouble - As the newspaper industry continues its slow decline, Silicon Alley blogger Henry Blodget explains why The New York Times cannot escape a future of downsizing and depreciating returns. Its offline business accounts for just 13% of monthly readership but generates 90% of its revenue, while NYTimes.com’s 7.5 million monthly uniques covers the remaining 10.
Google’s Ulterior Economic Motive - If charts and bell curves make your mornings, this post’s for you. A visitor to Seomoz.org analyzes Google’s change to its advertisement algorithm that makes the top ad position determined by the maximum bid rather than the highest actual cost-per-click. The blogger pegs this as a very smart move for Google’s potential revenue; using charts galore, he looks at the impact it will have on business bidding behavior. This change is an important development and one anyone who cares about their search ranking needs to understand.
Everything You Wanted To Know About Geolocation - Chris Silver Smith does a long, deep dive into geolocation — just what it is, how it works, and how it’s being used. Geolocation tends to be used to discuss various aspects of online marketing with location-specific components. It is becoming a vital component to the policing of fraud — particularly credit card validation and filtering of PPC advertising clicks.
