CampaignStreet.com

Week In Review 04.24.06

Yahoo Search tied to Direct Revenue lawsuit
Yahoo Search has been tied to the lawsuit against Direct Revenue, filed recently by New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. New court documents indicate that Yahoo Search accounted for around $200,000 a month of the adware company's revenue last spring. The search ads apparently came to Direct Revenue from the company Walnut, which was a distributor for Yahoo Search. Yahoo is not accused of wrongdoing in the lawsuit filed by Spitzer and the company denies authorizing Walnut to pay Director Revenue. Read more Here

Closure/Layoffs for MetaReward
Experian Interactive is getting out of the incentive marketing business and in the process laying off 50 in its MetaReward unit. With annual sales exceeding $2.5 billion, Experian, a subsidiary of GUS plc, is a global leader in providing information solutions to more than 50,000 clients across diverse industries. Its 12,000 people in 27 countries support clients in more than 60 countries. Read more here.

Acquisitions/Mergers announced this week:
Internet and media services provider United Online Inc. acquired MyPoints Inc. this week from UAL Corp. for $56 million. A provider of member-driven Internet direct marketing services, MyPoints has an opt-in database of 4.5 million members. In 2005, MyPoints had revenues of $38 million, up 44 percent from the year before and had operating income of $2.4 million. United Online, which operates NetZero, Juno, Classmates.com and other online services, plans to offer its 50 million registered users in North America MyPoints.com memberships, a company press release stated.

Affiliate marketing firm PartnerCentric has announced it will be merging forces with AMWSO, a professional affiliate management group based in Asia, but with market penetration in the U.S. and Canada. With this alliance, PartnerCentric hopes to greatly expand its base of experienced affiliate managers and allow them to offer their clients round-the-clock attention through the addition of the English-speaking, Asian-based satellite office. For the last three years, PartnerCentric has grown at an annual rate of over 300-percent

Think Partnership recently announced its plan to acquire IceRocket.com, a leading blog search engine. IceRocket, is currently co-owned by Internet communications magnate Mark Cuban and Chief Executive Officer Blake Rhodes. Blake Rhodes will continue to serve as IceRocket's CEO following the closing. Think Partnership provides online and off-line marketing, advertising, public relations, opt in email marketing and other affiliate marketing services. Earlier this month, Think Partnership acquired Litmus Media, incorporating its pay per click search ad network tools into its portfolio of interactive advertising companies.

Studies and Stats
The latest Search Behavior Study from iProspect and Jupiter research, shows that search engine users are more persistent when searching the Internet and will continue to look even if they did not find what they were after; they are becoming more loyal to the search engines they use and are also getting more sophisticated by using longer and more specific keywords.
Read more here.

According to marketing and advertising research company PQ Media, the total money spent on advertising in podcasts, blogs, and RSS feeds grew to $20.4 million in 2005 - an incredible 198% increase. They also predict 144.9% growth in 2006 to a total of $49.8 million. PQ also expects podcast advertising, an industry that barely existed two years ago, to overtake blog ad spending in 2010. Read more here.

Google and The Great Firewall of China
Google Inc. is forecasting strong company revenue growth in China despite the country's stringent online censorship laws, Reuters reported. Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt said while he doesn’t know where the revenue growth will be, he said it will be large. China's Internet filtering regime, called the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world, is known as the Great Firewall of China. These Internet controls have been a source of uneasiness for U.S. companies such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, which have been pressured to help China's Internet security restrict access to certain content. In recent months Google has been criticized by U.S. legislators for agreeing to block links to topics the Chinese government deemed controversial. Google is developing partnerships for advertising and other businesses but is awaiting licenses and regulatory approval. Schmidt says that the company has a responsibility to abide by the laws of countries it does business with and sees China as a huge market.

Google GEO says more competition means more revenue

Google Inc. faces mounting competition in the Internet search advertising market, CEO Eric Schmidt said he expects such battles to drive up prices and increase revenues across the entire industry.

Print Newspaper Circulation Drops, Online Readers Increase

While newspaper circulation dropped 2.5 percent in the six-month period ending in March, newspaper websites had an eight percent increase in viewers for the first quarter of 2006, according to the Newspaper Association of America's analysis of data released by the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

The Cpa Vs. Ppc Debate: Why Can’t Both Ad Strategies Just Get Along? Is the Pay Per Click (PPC) online advertising industry changing? Experts say that, as the PPC model changes, its natural progression will cause it to move towards the Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) model.

Ad Network for Bloggers

Federated Media, the blog-publishing firm run by Wired and Industry Standard founder and Google-watcher John Battelle, last week launched an ad platform designed to give marketers access to its klatch of highly literate and well-trafficked blogs.