According to Jupiter Research, the average cost for a paid-search keyword rose from 39 cents in 2004 to 44 cents in 2005 and is expected to hit 58 cents by 2010. (These are industry averages; Jupiter does not break out Google from Yahoo and other search competitors.)
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WatchMojo NewsletterARLINGTON, Va., Sept. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Slate Magazine today announced a new video initiative on the award-winning site. “Slate video” will feature a wide range of original video projects, ranging from humorous analyses of campaign ads by Slate chief political correspondent John Dickerson to interviews by literary critic and long-time British television broadcaster Clive James of public figures such as actress Cate Blanchett and author Michael Frayn and Slate comments on developments in news and culture. As part of the new project, Slate recently presented video pieces on Katrina survivors and on fiction in ABC’s “The Path To 9/11″ program.
“We are pleased to be expanding our delivery of Slate content through this video initiative,” said Slate Editor Jacob Weisberg. “With the popularity of our podcasts, we’ve seen that there’s a deep desire for Slate’s unique voice in different media.” Slate’s multimedia editor Andy Bowers, who has led Slate’s successful podcast efforts, is overseeing Slate’s new video project.
Microsoft is the launch sponsor for Slate’s new video series. “We are delighted to have Microsoft as our partner for this exciting new series,” said Slate Publisher Cliff Sloan. “Slate video will have the distinctive, fresh take that Slate users love. Like other Slate content, it will make people think and make them laugh.”
BRISBANE, Australia, Sept. 28 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ — osCommRes, developer of the first open source eCommerce system for businesses selling services announced today the release date for osCommRes 2.0 as October 10, 2006. osCommRes is poised to take advantage of the huge growth in eCommerce for businesses selling services. osCommRes 2.0 represents a new generation of e-Commerce functionality focusing on services, the bulk of world trade. Small to medium businesses can now take their bookings and appointments online, sell ticketing and subscriptions online and add online products sales all using the one database and at a fraction of the cost of custom built applications.
Designed to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of selling services online, osCommRes delivers all the core e-Commerce functionality required to succeed. From dance schools to car rental and from ticketed events to online subscriptions all with powerful automated e-Marketing and SMS-Marketing, osCommRes solves the problem services business have in getting online. Together with features like a call centre backend, osCommRes has no peer outside highly expensive bespoke applications.Yogababy, an early adopter of osCommRes has deployed osCommRes since March 2005 for its class and product e-Commerce sales. “The other products in the small business arena don’t support e-Marketing or SMS-Marketing. We’ve cut our admin overheads dramatically and received an ROI in 90 days,” says Suzanne Swan, Owner.
osCommRes is available as an On-Demand solution. “Most businesses don’t have the internal skills and resources to implement and manage fully featured eCommerce solutions. The On-Demand model with its integrated payment solution is the best way to reduce time to market from months to days,” says Hickey.
About osCommRes Pty. Ltd.:
osCommRes creates open source eCommerce software licensed under the GPL for small to medium business selling services and was founded in 2004. osCommRes is an Australian company and is funded by private venture capital. The company is headquartered in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Visit the website http://www.oscommres.com/ .
Interesting seeing how both IGN and MySpace slipped through Sumner Redstone’s fingers and into Rupert Murdoch’s hands. Those deals took place in 2005. That same year, Viacom split from CBS Corp., since then, Viacom shares are down about 16%; News Corp. shares have risen 25% since the beginning of this year, with much of that momentum coming from Wall Street’s positive perception of MySpace, whom today RBC analyst Jordan Rohan said could be worth $15 billion by 2009. Earlier this month, on September 5, Viacom replaced Tom Freston with Philippe Dauman (at the time Viacom’s shares had slipped 24% since the separation from CBS). That same day, some called for a Yahoo!/Viacom deal (more on that in the end of this article).
Playing Catchup to News Corp. While Mr. Daumann has at his arsenal some of the most powerful brands in media - notably MTV and Comedy Central - he may find his biggest challenge will be figuring out how to succeed in online media. Fittingly, Mr. Dauman is a lawyer and dealmaker, skills that will come in handy for Viacom if they are to narrow the gap on the Web with News Corp., whose COO and President Peter Chernin this week called the “most powerful media company on the Web.” Time Warner notwithstanding/included, he might have been right. If you needed validation, look to Google’s $900 million deal with News Corporation’s Fox Interactive Media’s properties.
Look Online for Growth?
“The new management at Viacom will be judged on which Internet acquisitions the executives have their sights on,” said Aryeh Bourkoff, entertainment analyst at UBS Securities, who has a neutral rating on the shares. It’s a fait accompli that Viacom will look towards beefing up its online portfolio, which includes Neopets, iFilm and other notable Internet brands. But if the rumors are true, Viacom has not been as successful as it should be with its acquisitions, mainly, it has injected too much bureaucracy in some of the upstarts it has acquired. As such, it might make more sense to invest in, and not outright acquire, digital companies.
Small is Beautiful
“The sense is that they’ll be small, fill-in acquisitions,” Bourkoff continued, “but given the need for a change from Tom Freston, the issue will be whether they can catapult the company into the Internet era, and if not, will that be an overhang?”
Win-Win Partnership?
During a conference call held when Dauman’s appointment was announced, he said he was aware of a number of innovative Web-based startups that “view our brands and the marketing talent, the creative talent that we bring, as a tremendous asset to them to transform their companies.” In fact, Dauman added that Viacom will “enter into partnerships with them” or “bring them inside.” Indeed, as a business journalist (can I call myself that?) and entrepreneur (what about that?), I can tell you that if Viacom comes knocking (of course, I am not saying that…), I’d almost prefer if the deal was a partnership or an investment leaving our company autonomy to grow it while tapping into Viacom’s strengths.
Integration, Culture
Having been involved in an acquisition by a large media company, any reasonable entrepreneur sees the great upsides of a large media company serving as a big brother; unfortunately, I also saw first hand the not-so-great aspects first hand. Point of the story is, in Viacom’s case, the last thing they should do is aim for the fences with one hit-or-miss company.
Was Facebook a Steal?
And admittedly, it is impossible to know which online companies will be hits or misses. In hindsight, MySpace.com’s “anything goes” environment and viral/word-of-mouth marketing benefits helped it bury Friendster and company. Other newer sites like YouTube and Facebook could become MySpaces, but let’s face it, they can turn out to be Friendsters as well. That is not a knock at anyone, not even Friendster, let alone YouTube or Facebook, it is just a fact that it’s hard to know who will be who. In this context, it makes a lot more sense to make small investments in a number of startups and not wait for one to get too big, and too expensive. Such was the case with Viacom’s overtures to Facebook, who asked for a whopping $2 billion earlier this year. I give all of the credit in the world to Facebook and its founder, but Viacom did the right thing by balking.
Of course, a cynic would say that what if Facebook goes on to scale like MySpace did and $2 billion becomes a bargain.
Well, good for the cynic, let him pay that fee.
Viacom/Yahoo! Hookup?
And when it comes to home run swings, what about the rumor of a deal with Yahoo!? First’s thing first, the tale of the tape: according to Google Finance, Viacom’s got a market capitalization of $27 billion while Yahoo! is worth some $34 billion, so it would not really be an acquisition, rather, it would be a merger of equals. The problem, really, is that Yahoo! is not in the content business, while Viacom is. While Yahoo! has some content initiatives, the company is largely a distribution play. Incidentally, Viacom has numerous distribution channels offline, so maybe a combined company would be a distribution powerhouse. But the real problem lies in the fact that Yahoo! has autonomy to work with any media company, including Viacom’s competitors. Yahoo! has advertising relationships with the largest Fortune 500 companies including the big media firms… with Viacom as its new sibling, that would probably change to some extent. In fact, the same way that I humbly argue that a company like IGN would be worth more outside and not inside News Corporation (as a stand alone company, in fact), Yahoo! would be worth more independent than tied down to one media company. Furthermore, I am sure that Terry Semel could do wonders for Viacom’s Paramount, but the simple fact is that Yahoo!’s culture is too large and too unique for it to be molded into Viacom. The odd thing is that after the split from CBS, Yahoo has 9,800 employees while Viacom has 9,200 (again, according to Google Finance). All to say, while both Yahoo! and Viacom need a good tonic, I personally doubt that two negatives would make a positive in this case. When the ink from Mr. Dauman’s pen dries up, it will be Viacom’s new digital initiatives - and the structure of those initiatives - that will define its role in this ever-changing media landscape.
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Of the companies mentioned, I own shares in Yahoo! - but that does not mean you should too.
In a note to clients, RBC Analyst Jordan Rohan said that he now believes MySpace’s worth as a company will increase tenfold to somewhere around $15 billion by 2009, given the value attributed recently to smaller social-networking sites, MySpace’s “massive” international appeal and its ability to inexpensively meet the surging demand for its features.“The trajectory for profitability of MySpace is every bit as steep as that of Google,” the search giant that generated about $6.1 billion in revenues last year, the analyst wrote Wednesday.That’s not bad for a company that at the time of its purchase was barely generating a profit, and three years later is still wrestling with the ways in which it will make money.“Ridicule is part of the job description of a sell-side analyst, particularly when he is more bullish about a business model than even the management team of a hot Internet property,” according to Rohan. “We are acutely aware that some media investors will try to punch holes in our thought pattern, or at the very least, disagree with our valuation.”Aside from going out on a giant limb, Rohan’s valuation also spotlights the struggle financial analysts and Internet executives now have putting a price tag on companies like News Corp.’s MySpace — where users create and manage their own Web sites, instantly communicate with each other and share music or other kinds of media.With audiences of hundreds of millions of people, MySpace, Facebook and other social-networking sites have become red-hot commodities. They are generating lots of interest from larger companies hoping to either buy them or partner with them to serve up ads on their pages, or in the case of digital-entertainment providers to sell their content to their users.
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RESTON, Va., Sept. 27 /PRNewswire/ — comScore Media Metrix, the leader in digital media measurement, today released an enhancement to its U.S. Video Metrix service, with the inclusion of Flash video content as part of the monthly rankings for streaming video sites. Video Metrix is the first and only service to track actual online streaming video behavior among U.S. Internet users, offering publishers and advertisers valuable insights into the emerging Internet video universe.
“The surge in Web video content enables advertisers to expand beyond banners and reach online audiences using sight, sound and motion,” said Erin Hunter, executive vice president of comScore’s Media and Entertainment Group. “Fundamental to the effectiveness of online video as an advertising medium is an accurate measurement of streaming video - and comScore is delighted to be the first company to provide that capability to the marketplace.”
Yahoo! Sites Attract the Most U.S. Streamers
More than 106.5 million people, or about 3 out of every 5 U.S. Internet users, streamed or downloaded video during the month of July. In total, nearly 7.2 billion videos were streamed or downloaded by U.S. Internet users for an average of 67 streams per streamer, which means the typical video streamer viewed an average of more than two streams per day.
Yahoo! Sites ranked as the top property by unique U.S. streamers with 37.9 million, followed very closely by MySpace, which attracted 37.4 million U.S. streamers. Fast-rising Youtube ranked third with 30.5 million U.S. streamers, followed by the Time Warner Network (25.7 million U.S. streamers) and Microsoft Sites (16.2 U.S. million streamers).
MySpace Leads in Number of Streams among U.S. Internet Users
MySpace fared particularly well in U.S. user engagement. The site ranks first among all sites in individual video streams initiated by U.S. users with nearly 1.5 billion streams, which represented 20 percent of all videos streamed by U.S. Internet users in July. The typical U.S. streamer on MySpace initiated an average of 39 streams during the course of the month, or slightly more than one per day. Yahoo! Sites ranked second in total streams initiated by U.S. users with 812 million, followed by Youtube with 649 million.
Top 10 Video Properties Ranked by Unique U.S. Streamers Unique Streamers (000), Streams Initiated (MM), and Streams per Streamer July 2006 Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Video Metrix Property Unique U.S. Streams Initiated by Streams Streamers U.S. Users per (000) (MM) Streamer Total Internet 106,534 7,182 67.4 Yahoo! Sites 37,934 812 21.4 MySpace 37,422 1,459 39.0 YouTube 30,538 649 21.2 Time Warner Network 25,675 258 10.1 Microsoft Sites 16,227 156 9.6 Viacom Digital 14,077 322 22.9 Google Sites 7,520 60 7.9 Ebaums World 7,143 67 9.4 MLB 6,442 30 4.6 ROO Group Inc. 5,841 186 31.9 Note: Streams are attributed to the property that provides the stream. For example, the Youtube data include streams that occurred on their Web property and on other properties whereby Youtube provided those streams.
comScore Video Metrix measures online video content served through all major players, including: Flash, RealPlayer, Windows Media, QuickTime and DivX. The service, which is based on streaming activity among U.S. Internet users, does not include measurement of digital rights management (DRM) content (which is paid, encrypted content), online videos viewed through peer-to-peer (P2P) applications, or offline viewing of video content.
Online Video Webcast
Today, at 1:00 p.m. ET, Leslie Darling, vice president of comScore’s Media and Entertainment group, will review findings from the comScore Video Metrix service during a Webcast presented by Medialink. To sign up for today’s Webcast, please visit: http://www.iian.ibeam.com/events/mdlk001/20061/ .
For more information about comScore Video Metrix, please e-mail MediaSolutions@comscore.com or call (650) 244-5408.
About comScore Media Metrix
comScore Media Metrix, a division of comScore Networks, provides industry- leading Internet audience measurement services that report - with unmatched accuracy - details of online media usage, visitor demographics and online buying power for the home, work and university audiences across local U.S. markets and across the globe. comScore Media Metrix continues the tradition of quality and innovation established by its Media Metrix syndicated Internet ratings - long recognized as the currency in online media measurement among financial analysts, advertising agencies, publishers and marketers - while drawing upon comScore’s advanced technologies to address important new industry requirements. All comScore Media Metrix syndicated ratings are based on industry-sanctioned sampling methodologies.
About comScore Networks
comScore Networks is a global leader in measuring the digital age. This capability is based on a massive, global cross-section of more than 2 million consumers who have given comScore permission to confidentially capture their browsing and transaction behavior, including online and offline purchasing. comScore panelists also participate in survey research that captures and integrates their attitudes and intentions. Through its proprietary technology, comScore measures what matters across a broad spectrum of behavior and attitudes. comScore consultants apply this deep knowledge of customers and competitors to help clients design powerful marketing strategies and tactics that deliver superior ROI. comScore services are used by global leaders such as AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Verizon, Best Buy, The Newspaper Association of America, Tribune Interactive, ESPN, Fox Sports, Nestle, MBNA, Universal McCann, the United States Postal Service, Merck and Expedia. For more information, please visit
Welcome Wallop to an already crowded space. Microsoft is now challenging Google in search, Apple in digital music and MySpace in social networking, but the difference in the latter is that it spun Wallop off as a stand alone company, with headquarters in San Francisco. Let’s see if the strategy pays off.
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The number of blog sites in China reached 34 million in August, a 30-fold increase from four years ago, state media said on Tuesday, despite a series of curbs on media and dissent.
China has more than 17 million people writing blogs (short for Web logs) and more than 75 million people reading them, Xinhua news agency said.
Authors of personal blogs choose their own subject and can instantly forward their writings to friends anywhere in China or the world.
“The rapid growth of blog sites in China also brought potential business opportunities to the advertising industry,” Xinhua said. “Some blogs written by famous people attract millions of daily readers.” The report said that out of the 34 million blog sites, 70 percent were “dormant,” having remained unchanged for more than a month.
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