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IBM is preparing a software upgrade to its WebSphere Commerce Suite in an effort to better index web sites in the search engines.
New to WebSphere Commerce v. 6.0 is the ability to create static URL pages.
This lets spider technology used by search engine sites, such as Google and Yahoo, query the URL, grab the keywords, and push the page back to the search engine so it shows up in the search results.
Web-site performance--speed and accuracy--is only half the battle. The other is getting the consumer to the site.
Most consumers start the buying process searching on a word or phrase. The problem is that spider technology used by search engines can't query and find search keywords on every Web site because most Web pages are dynamically generated, says Craig Stevenson IBM's worldwide WebSphere E-commerce manager.
He says the new feature WebSphere Commerce release drove search engine results from three to 278 hits for an unnamed company that worked with IBM to develop the technology.
The feature will ship as an integrated function in WebSphere Commerce v. 6.0, scheduled for release sometime between April and June 2005. Customers who have purchased v. 5.6 are eligible for an update.
Source: Information Week
SortPrice.com announces that it has reached 1000 merchants with over 10 million product listings, ranging from small retailers to industry giants.
Some of its largest clients include companies like Target, Buy.com and Office Depot.
Launched in 2003, SortPrice.com was created to provide free listings for merchants and an easy to navigate and user-friendly interface for shoppers.
SortPrice.com stands out from its competition due to its flexibility with merchant data feeds, “Our advanced integration capabilities enables us to harvest any type of data feed and therefore allows easy and fast integration to merchant sites” says Chief of technology and co-founder, Asaf Klibansky.
“Merchants have responded well to the no-cost factor, and by mid 2005 we expect to feature over 5000 merchants and 50 million products.”
In addition to free listings, merchants can also display their logo to increase brand awareness and equity.
Another available feature is to purchase keywords and become a ’sponsored merchant.’
In similar sites, merchants would struggle to get a return on investment as time and money is spent on advertising and creating a compatible data feed.
Source: Search Engine Journal
ebrary is a Palo Alto company that builds online searchable databases of books, maps and other publications.
Ebrary takes PDF versions of publications -- typically supplied by publishers -- rips them apart and reconstructs them so they can be entered into a searchable database.
A downloadable piece of software called the ebrary Reader embeds itself into Web browsers and allows users to view the documents, aided by a bevy of features not available in standard PDF readers.
Clicking on a word within an ebrary document, for example, triggers a pop-up menu that allows you to highlight text, look up the word in a dictionary, or search for it within the document, the ebrary database or the entire Web.
Searching for ``Wahhabism'' in one book about the Middle East, for example, spawns links to other books that mention the word. The tool inspires discovery in a way that printed text never could.
``You can explore from one book out to others,'' said David Bass, senior vice president for sales and marketing.
Ebrary usually sells its databases of content to academic libraries. But the company also is starting to make sales to public libraries.
Although users typically first encounter ebrary at their library of choice, they can also access the technology from home, through a library account.
Students, researchers -- or anyone else using the system -- can electronically highlight words or passages, scribble notes in the ``margins'' of the books and save that information for access later through their home computers.
``So even if a library has limited hours, they can still offer library services,'' said Warnock, ebrary's chief executive.
Ebrary's been around for nearly six years, but the company has grown tremendously in the past year or so. Its collection now totals 50,000 to 60,000 titles, from books and reports to journals and sheet music.
The 30-person company is privately held and is partially funded by three major publishers, Random House Ventures, Pearson and McGraw-Hill.
Source: Mercury News
In the early days of the Internet, search engines succeeded very well at turning up relevant results. But the situation is now changing.
With the growth of online content and the improvement in the ranking of search results, things are now flipped: Any query turns up an overabundance of results, both relevant and irrelevant.
Search engines struggle with the challenge of helping users deal with this information overload. Some search engines are placing their bets on personalization, which I contend is a dead end: Top talent will be expended on the problem with little to show for it in the end.
True search personalization has several inherent problems. True search personalization means that software will observe your Web surfing and other habits, and infer a profile of your true information tastes. Then your next search for, say, "anthrax," will turn up the rock band rather than the chemical.
But true search personalization has several inherent problems. Chief among them are the following:
• People are not static; they have many fleeting and seasonal interests. A student might intensely research Abraham Lincoln for a school project but may care nothing at all about the subject later on.
• The surfing data used for personalizing search is weak. The data that online booksellers like Amazon.com use is strong: I'm paying $20 for a book and committing 10 hours of my life to reading it. (Let's ignore the problems with gift purchases.) Surfing data involves the minimal commitments of a mouse click and a few seconds to look at a page before leaving.
• If the data used for inferring user profiles is the whole Web page that the user visited, then it's misleading. In this case, the user's decision to visit the page is based on the title and brief excerpt (snippet) that are shown in the search results, not the whole page.
• Home computers are often shared among family members, whose surfing interests obviously diverge.
• Queries tend to be short. My own spouse couldn't figure out my interests from a one or two word utterance, so how is a computer going to do better?
The best personalization is done by individuals themselves. Given all these difficulties, search personalization is likely to waste the talents of top computer scientists for years to come.
But if not search personalization, then what? Some companies are placing bets on a display of search results that goes beyond simple ranked lists. The idea is to analyze the search results, show users the variety of themes therein and let them explore their interests at that moment, which only they are in a position to recognize.
One approach is to cluster the search results into possibly overlapping categories. They can be displayed as simple category folders which can be expanded into subfolders and whose folder contents can be listed.
They can also be displayed as spatial or temporal objects that are visualized on a computer screen in various dimensions with a time component. Clustering into categories takes place first, and exactly how to show the clusters is a second, independent decision.
Other approaches do not make use of categories at all and instead directly embed the search results into a map of some sort, possibly with an added time dimension.
Two researchers at the University of Maryland experimentally compared zoomable interfaces to folders-style clustering interfaces along the user dimensions of task accuracy, efficiency and subjective levels of satisfaction. Among their statistically significant conclusions was that users preferred the folders-style clustering interface partly because of its simplicity.
Which approach is best? The best personalization is done by individuals themselves. Software or even other people can only guess--usually poorly--a person's interest.
The next advances in search technology will acknowledge this limitation and make it easy for people to act on their interests of the moment--which only they can recognize.
Raul Valdes-Perez is CEO of search engine Vivisimo.
Source: C-Net News
Dulance, Inc. today announces the launch of its comparison shopping service in RSS (Real Simple Syndication) format.
Dulance is the first search engine to use RSS technology to facilitate reserve price shopping.
The new feature effectively transforms any third-party RSS reader into a personal shopping agent.
Shoppers with a particular item and price in mind can now initiate a search once and rely on their RSS reader to repeat it automatically, until at least one seller drops the price below the set level.
“Trying to snag a product the moment it goes on sale requires users to frequently visit search engines or comparison shopping sites to manually repeat the same search over and over again until they see that the price has dropped.
It’s a tedious process that requires time and resolve that most shoppers don’t have,” explains Dulance founder and CEO, Sergei Burkov. “At Dulance.com, they can now automate the process. It changes the game when a bargain hunt costs near nothing in terms of time and effort.”
At Dulance, shoppers can run a search for a desired product indicating their price limit. Dulance returns a list of shops that sell the sought product below that price.
Now they can opt to subscribe to a RSS feed of results based on the same criteria. Subscribing to a Dulance RSS feed works much like subscribing to a news feed or blog elsewhere.
The Dulance feed contains links to individual online stores selling the particular product, along with current prices. A “news” event is triggered when Dulance finds a new seller or a change in price. It is picked up by the shopper’s RSS reader, as any other piece of news.
This new feature is a function of Dulance’s unique ability to extract prices and product availability from unstructured webpages in real time, milliseconds after downloading fresh copies of product pages off the live web.
This allows Dulance to report news of dropping prices to RSS readers seconds after they occur.
“Even if Google, Yahoo and other search engines made their search results available in RSS, their feeds wouldn’t offer timely news of changing prices.
Standard practice for most search engines is to fetch information from copies of webpages stored at their own servers, not from the live web.
The update cycle ranges from a few days to six weeks,” explains Burkov. “In contrast, Dulance does not maintain any web caches. Instead it relies on its artificial intelligence algorithms to dynamically extract the current prices.”
Learn more on Comparative Shopping Search Engines.
Source: Search Engine Journal
Blinkx just launched a new version of its search engine, which now creates special folders in users' computers.
The new feature, called Smart Folders, is the highlight of Blinkx 2.0, the newest version of this internet and desktop search tool, which is available as a free download from the start-up company's website at http://www.blinkx.com.
Blinkx 2.0 also has a feature called SIS, an acronym for the phrase Stuff I've Seen, which maintains a record of viewed files. Blinkx 2.0 also adds support for querying peer-to-peer networks.
The first version of Blinkx was launched in July and generated significant interest among users and industry watchers because of its unique approach to search. Instead of relying only on keyword-based queries, Blinkx reads users' entire screens or specific windows and, based on that contextual information, flags documents from their PCs and from the internet. Blinkx works unobtrusively in the background and displays search results when prompted by the user.
Blinkx also gained attention for its ability to index files on a user's hard drive, the so-called desktop search capability that big vendors such as Google, Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo are also pursuing.
Blinkx 2.0's new Smart Folders are automatically populated with PC and internet documents that are contextually related. Users can configure Smart Folders in various ways to narrow the types of documents and files that can be included. Smart Folders can contain pictures, music and video clips, text and web pages. Blinkx 2.0 also can alert users when it has updated the content of a Smart Folder.
Blinkx 2.0 is available only for Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
Source: PC Advisor.co.uk
Dogpile announces enhancements to its metasearch platform.
Dogpile's new IntelliFind™ technology utilizes sophisticated query intelligence to assess the likely intent behind every entered query, enabling Dogpile to return more relevant results from a wider array of content sources.
IntelliFind builds on Dogpile metasearch's unique ability to search more of the Web by analyzing the likely intent behind every query and intelligently searching the sources most likely to return the best results.
By limiting the sources queried to those most likely to contain the best-matched content, Dogpile now returns an even higher concentration of more accurate results to end users.
IntelliFind also extends Dogpile metasearch beyond leading engines such as Google, Yahoo! and AskJeeves to pull relevant results from a variety of vertical content sources such as white pages, news, audio, video and images.
Results from these content sources are reported at the top of results pages, above the Web search results, for easy access. Building on this functionality, Dogpile also today announced new vertical content partnerships with Topix.net and Singingfish.
"Today's release results from more than a year of hard work to refine our metasearch platform.
Users will find significant improvements in the relevancy of our results, along with rich new sources of content," said Melissa Turtel, senior product manager for Dogpile. "IntelliFind lays the foundation for a steady stream of useful, new features that will appear on Dogpile over the coming months."
Dogpile IntelliFind is highly responsive to rapid shifts in current events and pop culture that can influence the likely intent behind individual query terms.
For example, when an eruption at Mount St. Helens occurs, the intent of users entering the term "volcano" can change suddenly. Additionally, the intent behind queries that contain the word "tree" can vary sharply in the summertime and over the holidays.
IntelliFind is designed to keep pace with these developments so that users can quickly locate highly useful results year-round.
Throughout 2005, Dogpile will continue to add a variety of content sources not previously available through Web search engines.
These include specialized information on specific product categories, yellow pages content, movies, entertainment and more.
Source: TMCnet.com
Not only has Google's top executives denied the company is developing a Web browser, but the Mozilla Foundation recently has denied speculation that it is working with the search engine.
In an interview with eWEEK.com ahead of Tuesday's Firefox launch, Mozilla President Mitchell Baker denied rumors that the Mountain View, Calif., foundation was working with Google on a browser based on Firefox or its Gecko rendering engine.
"The code base is open for companies to do what they wish to do, but we're not working with Google on a special browser," Baker said. "We are not working on a Google browser."
As an open-source project, Mozilla's code base is available to other organizations and companies for building browsers and Web-based applications. Most notably, America Online Inc.'s Netscape Communications released its Netscape 7.2 browser based on Mozilla's underlying technology.
Though it is possible for Google to take the same development approach, Google executives have downplayed reports of a forthcoming browser. According to a report in the Financial Times in late October, Google CEO Eric Schmidt refuted browser rumors.
"We are not building a browser," Schmidt said in the report.
A Google spokesman on Tuesday corroborated the accuracy of Schmidt's statement but declined to discuss the browser speculation further.
Much of the speculation about a Google browser arose because of recent Google hires with browser expertise and because Google has registered the domain name gbrowser.com. Curious eyes turned to Mozilla after Google hosted a Mozilla developer day and after some Mozilla bug reports made reference to Google.
Mozilla is planning to refresh its overall application development platform, which includes Gecko and its XUL (XML User Interface Language) for building user interfaces, Mitchell said. Mozilla plans to target the platform to developers wanting to create Web-based applications, which might use browsing capabilities.
"We're not thinking…along the lines of co-branded browsers or re-branded browsers so much as this broader set of technology for Web-related applications," Mitchell said, when asked about co-branded browsers.
While a co-browser might not be coming from Google and Mozilla, the two organizations have grown a bit closer with the release of Firefox 1.0.
In the release, Mozilla changed the default home page to a Firefox-branded version of Google's search page that appears to be hosted at google.com. Google also is the default Web-search provider in Firefox's search toolbar, though users can choose to switch the default or add multiple search providers such as Yahoo Inc.
"Given the importance of search, we decided to add search functionality to the start page itself," Baker wrote in her Weblog on Monday. "Google has long been recognized as a leader in search experience and so we chose Google."
Baker mentioned that Mozilla could receive additional funding from Firefox's integrate search features but did not elaborate on how that would occur. Mozilla officials could not be reached to explain the funding.
But major search engines such as Google and Yahoo also operate search-based advertising programs and share revenues with partner sites that drive clicks to sponsored-link ads.
"We expect to see some funds come to the Foundation as a result of our integrated search," Baker wrote. "We'll use any funds that result to help support the Mozilla Foundation's non-profit operations."
Source: eWeek
The first two spammers ever to be convicted of a felony for sending fraudulent and unsolicited spam e-mail have just been convicted to nine years in jail.
Jeremy Jaynes and Jessica DeGroot, a brother and sister team, were convicted in a Virginia court Wednesday of sending AOL users millions of unsolicited commercial e-mail messages while evading AOL’s filters.
DMNews report that jurors recommended that Jaynes receive nine years in prison and fined DeGroot $7,500.
DeGroot was convicted because prosecutors proved the domain names used for sending the spam had been purchased on her credit card. A third defendant, Richard Rutkowski, was acquitted of similar charges. Formal sentencing has been set for February next year.
Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore called the convictions a victory in the fight against spam. “This is a major victory for Virginians and all Americans,” Kilgore said. “Spam is a nuisance to millions of Americans, but it is also a major problem for businesses large and small because the thousands of unwanted e-mails create havoc as they attempt to conduct commerce.”
Jaynes and DeGroot were spamming AOL members with get rich opportunities and work from home offers such as being a ‘FedEx refund processor,’ which they claimed would allow people to earn $75 an hour working from home.
According to evidence, Jaynes received 10,000 credit card orders, each for $39.95, during a one month period. Instead of this spammer sitting at home stuffing FedEx envelopes, he’ll probably be behind bars next year, where he belongs. Hopefully, with no access to a computer.
Source: Search Engine Journal
A national survey done in October warns that the buying frenzy is set to start sooner rather than later. Although the new "Shopping in America" report, just released by the Macerich Company, concentrates on offline shopping trends this holiday season, online marketers and retailers should pay special attention — because their sales season comes even faster, and ends even quicker.
Over 40% of the 6,200 respondents said they would begin their "serious" holiday shopping before Thanksgiving, and almost 30% will shop on "Black Friday," the day after Thanksgiving.
The survey also found that shoppers will spend an average of $898.38 on holiday-related purchases, which includes $608.15 on holiday gifts — up 4% from the $584 average consumers spent on holiday gifts in 2003. This year, consumers say they will spend the remaining $290.23 on holiday decorations, parties and other related purchases.
"Despite some industry predictions of a modest season, the Shopping in America report shows that over 80% of consumers plan to spend the same or more than last year on holiday gift purchases," says Garry Butcher, Macerich VP. In fact, only about 19% of shoppers surveyed plan to spend less than they did in 2003.
Nationally, shoppers will spend an estimated $58.48 for each recipient on their 10.4-person gift list. The survey also revealed that shoppers in the Southern region of the US plan to spend the most on total holiday gift purchases, at $630.20 while those in the Midwest will spend the least, $582.70.
In a finding that might be of special interest to online retailers, since online household income demographics still skew slightly higher than the national average, the survey indicates that planned holiday gift expenditures rise with annual household income. Shoppers in the highest income level plan to spend the most at nearly $900.00.
In its soon-to-be-released Holiday Shopping report, eMarketer projects online spending in the holiday months — November and December — will total $16.7 billion, up from $12.9 billion last year, representing a rise of 29.3% for the year.
According to Senior Analyst and author of the report, Jeffrey Grau, "As consumers gain online shopping experience, their expectations rise. With holiday shopping beginning very early in some cases, e-retailers will have to be extra nimble and ready for high traffic volumes to occur soon."
Bricks-and-mortar stores are breaking out the holiday decorations now. Online retailers should also be preparing because it looks like the holidays are coming early this year.
Source: eMarketer
According to projections released by JupiterResearch, online retail sales will reach $21.6 billion this holiday season. Such numbers would mark a rise of 19 percent over 2003, the market research firm said.
Nearly 86 million Americans are likely to make purchases online this season, compared with 73 million last year, it said.
JupiterResearch is also predicting a 2 percent jump in spending per buyer compared with last year.
In addition, U.S. consumers will expand their range of purchases beyond the traditional top-selling categories of toys, books and apparel.
"Over half of online holiday shoppers say they will use the Web to get gift ideas or to seek better prices," Patti Freeman Evans, a JupiterResearch retail analyst, said in a statement.
"To capture these customers this holiday season, retailers are wise to use e-mails to alert customers who have left items in their shopping carts or wish lists when the price changes or inventories get low on those items."
Jupiter's projections are at variance with the data released by Forrester Research recently.
Forrester predicts holiday sales to be around $13.6 billion. However, Forrester defines the holiday season as between Thanksgiving and Christmas, while Jupiter's holiday projections cover the whole of November and December.
But like Forrester, Jupiter's predictions indicate slowing growth in online holiday sales. Jupiter recorded a 31 percent jump in holiday sales from 2002 to 2003.
"Despite the strong online sales forecast, many offline retailers are expecting a 'tight back-end,' or a challenging fourth quarter, due to the back-to-school sales bust," the Jupiter report stated.
"The positive September retail sales results notwithstanding, continuing economic, employment and global political uncertainties have influenced retailers to plan their inventories carefully this year."
Source: C-Net News
Copernic announces the creation of a new separate company, Coveo Solutions Inc.
The company will focus exclusively on providing easy-to-use, powerful and secure enterprise search software to businesses, organizations and government entities.
The creation of Coveo is in response to overwhelming market demand for its flagship product, Coveo Enterprise Search (CES), formerly known as Copernic Enterprise Search.
Currently, CES is being used by more than 3,000 businesses worldwide. These businesses and organizations require robust document-level security, low total cost of ownership, and superior relevance with one, unified approach from the desktop, across the enterprise and the Internet.
“Copernic is pleased to have seen tremendous success and growing demand for both its consumer and enterprise products.
Based on the differing needs of each audience, we felt it was imperative that we align strategically to effectively address these distinct market opportunities” said Martin Bouchard, Chairman of Copernic.
“Copernic will continue to focus on the consumer market and Coveo is the answer for the enterprise.”
Coveo will leverage its seasoned search specialists and R & D staff to quickly react to growing market expectations and to drive innovation for the core enterprise search solutions.
By streamlining operations and focusing exclusively on enterprise search solutions, Coveo will develop and market the most precise, secure and cost effective search software to ensure that customer’s needs are met.
According to a recent IDC Technology Assessment Report, CES is in a position to disrupt the current search market because of its favorable price point, rich set of features and short implementation time.
Laurent Simoneau, formerly COO at Copernic Technologies, Inc. has been appointed President and CEO of the newly formed company. A 10-year search industry veteran, Simoneau was deeply involved in every milestone of Copernic Technologies.
Other executive appointments are Eric Negler, VP Sales; Richard Tessier, VP Products; and Marc Sanfacon, VP Technologies. Martin Bouchard will serve as Chairman, David Burns will continue to lead Copernic Technologies as CEO.
Source: Copernic
Microsoft has started offering a Google search tool for download from the Microsoft website.
Google's Deskbar is included in Microsoft's Partner Pack for Windows, a collection of Microsoft and third-party products released last week that Microsoft describes on its website as "the ultimate application package" for a Windows XP PC. (www.microsoft.com/windows/partnerpack/).
The Deskbar adds a search box to the Windows taskbar, allowing users to search the web with Google without having to start a web browser (deskbar.google.com/).
Other applications in the Partner Pack include Computer Associates International's eTrust EZ Antivirus 2005 and Post-it Software Notes from 3M.
Microsoft's promotion of the Google Deskbar comes as it works to deliver a beta version of its own MSN Search engine and a desktop search application by the end of this year.
"We should see some good MSN search technology in this calendar year, probably late in the second half, and we're going to have a heck of a great race in search between Google, Microsoft and Yahoo," said Microsoft chief financial officer John Connors.
Inclusion of the Google Deskbar in the Windows Partner Pack is an example of how Google can be a partner for Microsoft's large Windows group while at the same time a rival to MSN, a relatively small Microsoft group that in June ended its first profitable year ever, said Joe Wilcox, a Jupiter Research senior analyst.
"While MSN Search may be in hot competition with Google, for the Windows platform Google is a valuable partner," Wilcox said.
With Windows XP adoption lagging, Microsoft's biggest challenge right now is promoting Windows XP's capabilities, Wilcox said.
"Over the past couple months, Microsoft has stepped up XP evangelism, in part by showing the capability of partner products that extend the operating system’s capabilities. The products available with the Partner Pack are consistent with that approach," he said.
Another reason for Microsoft to include the Google Deskbar in Partner Pack was because it was built using Microsoft technology.
"Microsoft is pleased that Google recognised the potential of the Windows platform and the .net Framework and chose to use it to enable the delivery of a great search application," a Microsoft spokeswoman said.
Google spokesman Steve Langdon said bundling the Deskbar in the Windows Partner Pack is an example of industry collaboration. "From time to time we work with Microsoft and this is an example of that," he said.
Source: Computer Weekly
Pew Internet and the American Life Project closely analyzed almost 1,400 Internet surfers and users in the US during the summer of 2004, in an effort to better gauge the country's use of online rating systems.
Overall, 26% of adult Internet users in the US have used online rating systems, or about 33 million people. A look at the demographics of those users shows that most groups displayed the same general level of use (usually between 20% and 30%), with a few exceptions. Among the demographic differences:
1) Men used online rating systems more than women by seven percentage points
2) Younger Internet users rated things online more than mature users (for example, 30% of Generation Y users had done online rating, compared to 11% of those over 69 years-old)
3) Hispanics did more online rating than blacks by five percentage points, with usage by whites falling in-between the two groups
4) Those with higher household incomes reported did more online rating than lower income households
5) College graduates and those who had completed some college used online rating systems more than high school graduates and non-high school graduates by about 10 percentage points.
Broadband users rated products online more than dial-up users.
Web sites use online rating systems for a variety of products and in a variety of ways.
Popular online auction site eBay lets users rate those who they do business with, helping potential buyers and sellers decide whether someone on eBay is trustworthy enough to do business with.
Other sites, like Amazon or Epinions, allow consumers to rate an almost limitless number of products, aiding other customers who are winnowing their purchase down to one product.
Similarly, sites like Citysearch lets users rate restaurants, bars, stores and other services, while the Internet Movie Database features movies ratings by those who have (it's assumed) seen a film.
Finally, sites like HotorNot.com offer anyone a chance to rate the physical attributes of anonymous people and assign a numeric score.
As this varied list demonstrates, these sites are not only useful as a source of buying advice, but can be a source of both entertainment - from reading humorous reviews to the tackiness of HotOrNot.com, for example - and as an engaging or even self-gratifying activity, such as when a user writes reviews and dispenses wisdom to others.
With so many applications and facets, use of online rating systems by US consumers is sure to rise even further.
Source: eMarketer
Today, Prudential Securities just raised its price target for Google's stock to $200 from its previous target of $130.
Google cited a "blowout third quarter as net revenue growth returns to triple digit."
It also raised its fiscal 2004 earnings estimate to $2.62 from $2.22 and boosted 2005 estimates to $3.67 from $2.91, the official told CNN/Money by phone from London.
Google stock has nearly doubled since the No. 1 search engine went public in August at $85 a share.
The shares soared 8 percent in after-hours trading Thursday, after rising during regular trading, following Google's first earnings report as a public company.
Google posted strong gains in sales and earnings, and the stock rallied as investors applauded the solid sales gains, which outpaced those at rival Yahoo!
The stock continued to gain ground early Friday, rising as high as $165 in electronic trading, Reuters reported, after moving above $161 in after-hours trading Thursday.
Source: CNN FN
The results of a new survey done by the Dieringer Research Group, show that in the past year US consumers spent $1.00 online for every $1.70 they spent offline, after doing online research using a search engine.
The survey was conducted in the 12 months between Q2 2003 and Q2 2004 among 3,000 US consumers in order to determine multi-channel consumer behavior. In total, $180.7 billion in offline purchases were made after consumers had conducted online research, a figure bigger than the $106.5 billion in purchases made online.
Not only were more Internet-influenced offline purchases made than online purchases over the 12-month time frame, but the percentage of offline purchases influenced by online research has grown faster than online purchases.
Online sales increased by 14% from 2003 to 2004, while Internet-influenced offline sales rose 31% in the same period.
A recent survey by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) shows that people favor doing product research online rather than offline by a large margin — 76% say they prefer finding product information online rather than in offline media, like magazines, compared to 21% who feel neither is better and 3% who favor offline methods.
The DRG study indicates, however, that when it comes down to actually making the purchase, people seem to prefer doing it offline.
Source: The Dieringer Research Group and eMarketer.
After an economic slowdown lasting more than 10 long years, Japan's eCommerce sector experienced faster growth than in the United States in the first two quarters of 2004, an important recovery that made front-page news in many economic circles.
To ensure the long-term health of the economy, the Japanese government launched e-Japan Strategy II last year, a plan for creating a vibrant and world-class e-commerce environment.
Japan is targeting seven sectors for development, from medical services and food safety to finance for small- and medium-sized businesses and education. The program represents a huge opportunity for US and other foreign companies.
The two recognized drivers that fuel consumer e-commerce growth — experienced Internet users and broadband adoption — are in place today in Japan. The percentage of households in Japan using broadband is set to grow to over 70% by 2007, according to eMarketer estimates.
"Broadband usage is on an upward trajectory," says Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the report. "But Internet user growth is leveling off."
eMarketer estimates that by the end of this year there will be 72.8 million Japanese Internet users online from either home or work, but Internet usage in Japan has moved from a rapid growth stage to a mature stage.
In 2001, the number of new Internet users increased by 29% over the previous year. The annual growth rate this year is slated to be 12%, and by 2007 it will slow down to 4%.
Declining Internet user growth is a natural outcome of a highly penetrated market. In 2001, only 38.4% of the Japanese population used the Internet, providing room for growth. This year, an estimated 57% of Japan's population of 127.6 million people will be online.
"With improved speeds and access opportunities, Japan's Internet population will demand more sophisticated services, which explains the government's strategy.
The online marketplace in Japan is mature. Now, the country's goal is to add depth and range to what it's doing online," Grau said.
"There is no question that the e-Japan Strategy II holds promise for US and other foreign firms who are looking to enter the second largest national economy in the world," says Mr. Grau.
"With its emphasis on developing innovative Internet applications that touch people's lives in fundamental ways, there is potential for entrepreneurial IT companies and application service providers."
"However," cautions Grau, "doing business in Japan requires patience and a long-term view.
Firms will encounter many hurdles, and anyone who wants in had better plan ahead to minimize the problems — because there will be problems."
Source: eMarketer
A press released was announced today from SEMPO that they have elected three new board members.
"The new SEMPO Advisory Board members are Chris LaSala, the Search Engine Marketing Channel Manager at Google; Neg Norton, the President of the Yellow Pages Integrated Media Association, and Safa Rashtchy; a managing director of Piper Jaffray and well known industry analyst."
In the press release it discusses Danny Sullivan's and Chris Sherman's resignation from sempo and then goes into more detail on the new board members.
SEMPO has made from some widespread discussion in many of the forums. Many of the posts I covered here in the past.
One such thread I did not mention as of yet is a thread named SEMPO Gone To The Dogs? over at SEW forums.
This thread was instrumental in the creation of a mock SEMPO site named SEMPO TAHOE.
The forum members are having a blast with this new site. I then started a thread named Will SEMPO Survive? with a poll that asks the question (not to SEMPO members but to individuals in this industry).
"How Long Will SEMPO Survive?". So far over 50% voted SEMPO Will Close within a Year, 17% said SEMPO Will Close within 3 Years and an other 17% said SEMPO Will Close within 90 days, only 11% so far said SEMPO Will Survive Forever.
This entry comes of way of an entry by Danny at the SEW blog named SEMPO Gets New Advisors & Parody Site.
Source: SEO Roundtable
In February 2003, Opera vowed never to produce a browser that worked with Microsoft's operating system for mobile devices.
Now the Oslo company said it will design one, citing strong demand for the software from makers of cell phones.
"We're going back on that because our customers are asking for it," said Rolf Assev, executive vice president for business development, marketing and strategic alliance from Opera's headquarters in Oslo. "Now is the first time that we see a demand for Microsoft from the operators and from the handset manufacturers."
Assev attributed new demand for Microsoft-compatible browsing software in part to Windows Mobile's appeal to makers of high-end phones, which make up a small but profitable part of the cell phone market.
A study performed this year by market research firm Canalys found Microsoft had a mere 4 percent of the smart phone market for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. That market remains dominated by the Symbian operating system, found on 94 percent of smart phones.
Microsoft did not return calls. The Norwegian software maker declined to say which handset manufacturers had asked for a Microsoft port, but said at least three major companies had requested a Windows version, but had not previously asked for one.
Opera has sustained itself selling browsers amid Microsoft's dominance of that market by focusing on cell phones. It also markets a desktop browser that has a small but loyal following among those who dislike Internet Explorer, Microsoft's market-leading browser.
The Oslo company has maintained a contentious relationship with Microsoft, sparring repeatedly over compatibility issues between its browser and Microsoft's Web sites.
In May, Microsoft settled Opera's claims with a $12.75 million payment. Assev said Opera's decision was unrelated to any detente between the two companies, and said the company had received only technical and not financial support from Microsoft in preparing the new version.
Source: C-Net News
A similar variant of the MyDoom virus crashed Google, Yahoo, AltaVista and Lycos on Monday and continued to hamper e-mail accounts around the world. The new version, variously dubbed MyDoom.M or MyDoom.O, was first detected early Monday morning and quickly went on a tear, flooding many mailboxes with hundreds of messages.
It has also slowed Google, Yahoo, AltaVista and Lycos to a crawl, because once it infects a PC, the virus automatically performs Web searches on those search engines.
E-mail screening company MessageLabs said it had intercepted more than 23,000 copies of the variants in the first five hours of their existence. McAfee Avert, the virus-tracking squad at the antivirus software maker, rated the worm a "medium on watch," or right below a high-risk vulnerability. Tens of thousands of PCs have been infected by the worm, which was first detected just before 6 a.m. PDT. The biggest impact, however, has been on the search engines.
Google, Lycos and AltaVista hav been sporadically out of service all morning, while Yahoo has been slow. That's a function of how the worm spreads, said Craig Schmugar, a virus researcher at McAfee. Once installed, the virus searches for e-mail addresses on the host computer's hard drive, and then it looks for more by running queries on all four search engines.
"It is kind of an inadvertent (denial-of-service) attack," he said, because the search sites are being knocked out in the quest for more e-mail addresses. This is a twist on MyDoom: Earlier variants looked for e-mail addresses only on the host hard drive.
The worm uses the search sites to find any published e-mail addresses with the same domain name as the main e-mail address on the infected computer, said Vincent Weafer, senior director for security company Symantec's security response center. If you're infected, and your main e-mail address ends with @mycompany.com, for example, the worm will mainly attempt to propagate itself to other mycompany.com addresses.
The technique offers several evolutionary advantages, Weafer said, most significantly the psychological advantage of having infected messages look as if they come from co-workers. "It's really the special engineering aspect of making you think it's coming from someone inside your company," Weafer said.
Keeping infections in-house may also be a technological advantage, Weafer said. "We've seen from other viruses that if you propagate on the local network, it's just faster," he said.
Among other antivirus firms, McAfee explains one way to remove the virus from an infected computer.
Security experts said the new variants first surfaced in Europe and spread quickly, thanks to several factors. Messages sent by the variants pose as either a "returned mail" message from a postmaster or an alert from an internal IT administrator. Although the bounced mail spoofs weren't likely to prompt a second look, said Joe Telafici, director of operations McAfee, those posing as a corporate IT missive were realistic enough to fool some workers.
"It appears close enough to something your IT department might send you that it could fool some people," Telafici said.
The worm also delivers a mixed payload, with only a handful of messages going through with a .zip attachment, a recently popular technique used by virus writers to avoid corporate security systems. MyDoom.M mainly arrives as a simple executable program file, Telafici said, making it more damaging for anyone who gets fooled into opening a message. "It takes fewer steps to infect yourself, which is helping (the worm) spread," he said.
Individuals may not notice a huge performance hit on their own PCs if they are connected to broadband and have a computer that is only a few years old, Schmugar said. The queries are fairly low-impact events. However, only a few medium-on-watch risks come up a year, he said, and the search engines are feeling the pinch.
The original MyDoom surfaced early this year and quickly ranked as one of the worst e-mail pests ever. The original worm has since spawned numerous offshoots, including one specifically programmed to attack Linux antagonist SCO Group.
Marty Lindner, senior member of the technical staff at the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) at Carnegie Mellon University, added that the virus also comes with a back door that potentially enables a hacker to take control of an infected system. Several worms open back doors and harvest e-mail addresses. The novelty of this latest variant is that it appears to be able to launch queries. Linder, however, stated that CERT has not fully confirmed the query function as yet.
Source: C-Net News
The number of unique visitors to fantasy sports websites peaked at about 7.4 million in October 2003, a month in which all four major sports were in their regular season or playoffs.
A study by comScore released in July 2004 measures the volume and usage of the unique audience for online fantasy sports sites from October 2003 to May 2004. Fantasy sports Web sites averaged about 4.7 million unique visitors in that period, with users averaging 93 minutes and 219 pages each per visit, with about 7 visits per month.
The National Football League (NFL) is clearly the strongest fantasy sports draw, accounting for 81% of fantasy sports users at the onset of the football season in October 2003, or more than 6 million people. By comparison, the beginning of the Major League Baseball (MLB) season in April only drew about 3.1 million visitors.
The number of unique visitors to fantasy sports Web sites was high from October to December, when three major sports were in their regular season. Usage dropped in January and February, as football ended and baseball was barely in spring training. By April, with baseball, basketball and hockey all in full swing, the number of visitors was up, though still between 300,000 to 400,000 below the October to December period.
Yahoo Sports drew more than one-half of the fantasy sports audience, averaging over 3 million for the time period, compared to under 1 million for ESPN and Sportsline.
All three Web sites received more visitors during football season, though Sportsline seemed to be more adversely affected by the end of the NFL season in January. From October to January, Sportsline drew an average of 300,000 more users than ESPN; once football ended, ESPN showed its strength in hockey, basketball and, by March, baseball fantasy games, outdrawing Sportsline by an average of 200,000 users through May.
Fantasy sports fans are active and voracious users of content, often scrolling through page after page of content to gather information on players and mold their fantasy team.
The fantasy sports category draws more dedicated visitors than the general sports category — the average fantasy sports site visitor viewed an average of 219 pages, compared to 107 pages per visitor for the average sports site.
Similarly, fantasy sports visitors viewed content for an average of 93 minutes, while general sports visitors only averaged 71 minutes. The kind of engaged user that fantasy sports sites attract present an ideal target and overall opportunity for companies marketing sports-related products.
Source: eMarketer.com
A Feedback Research survey indicates that of the respondents who go to the movies, 24% said that they have bought flick tickets online.
According to a survey conducted by Feedback Research, a division of the Claria Corporation, as more and more moviegoers read reviews, view trailers and explore interactive content online, the Internet will continue to grow as a source of information, advertising, influence — and even direct sales revenues — in the film world.
Feedback Research analyzed online traffic to gain insight into how the success of online film-related promotions influenced summer blockbuster movie-related behavior online.
Traffic was monitored from May 1 through June 30, 2004 among moviegoers who viewed sites related to three summer blockbuster movie sequels: Shrek 2, Spiderman 2 and the Harry Potter sequel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Feedback also surveyed users in the weeks leading up to each individual movie release to gauge interest and activity around these three movies.
Here are some of the findings and conclusions of the survey:
* More moviegoers are skipping theater lines and purchasing tickets online
* Of the respondents who go to the movies, 24% say that they have bought movie tickets online.
Of the respondents who bought movie tickets online, 71% made a purchase between one and three times in the past 6 months.
Fandango was the most popular site for movie tickets with 44% of people saying they have used it to purchase tickets. Movietickets.com and Moviefone.com followed with 36% and 21%, respectively.
Film-related sites are successful
Yahoo! Movies was the most popular general movie site among users for information relating the three summer blockbuster movies. The Shrek 2 Yahoo! movie site captured 30% of total traffic to the top general movie sites related to the three movie sequels, followed by the Yahoo! Harry Potter movie site with 29% and finally the Spiderman 2 Yahoo! movie site captured 12% of total traffic.
39% of total traffic to the three official movie sites came on Fridays and Saturdays.
Survey respondents cited "watching trailers" as the most popular reason for visiting official movie sites with 66% of respondents going online to see the trailer for Harry Potter, 53% for Shrek 2 and 48% for Spiderman 2.
Of the total respondents surveyed, 39% said they go to the movies once or more every 3 to 4 weeks, and most respondents said they plan on seeing the movies within 1 to 3 weeks of their release, which means most will be online well before that.
Source: eMarketer.com
The British Broadcasting Corporation's Creative Archive, one of the most ambitious free digital content projects to date, is set to launch this fall with thousands of three-minute clips of nature programming.
The effort could goad other organizations to share their professionally produced content with Web users.
The project, announced last year, will make thousands of audio and video clips available to the public for noncommercial viewing, sharing and editing. It will debut with natural-history programming, including clips that focus on plants, animals and birds.
"The Creative Archive is fuel for the creative nation," said Paula Le Dieu, co-director of the initiative. "It allows people to download these excerpts and be able to edit them and incorporate them into their own creative works."
Other organizations, including some small music publishers in the United States, have begun to offer their content to users under liberal licensing terms.
In contrast to record companies and Hollywood -- which are trying to lock down their content with help from legislators -- these organizations believe that liberal licensing terms will generate even more interest in their content.
In fact, in the BBC's case, access to its programming archive is part of its charter. In the United Kingdom, anyone who owns a television must pay a BBC-allocated fee, so the public owns its programming.
In the past, the BBC has not been efficient at making its archives accessible, Le Dieu said, but the Internet makes it much easier. In addition, digital distribution and editing tools now enable audiences to modify the content for their own creative endeavors.
The BBC archive would only be available to British citizens who pay the yearly TV license fee. Anyone who tries to visit the site through a foreign IP address won't be allowed to log on, Le Dieu said.
She said the BBC is working on ironing out various legal and contractual issues. The BBC plans to license its materials using a system similar to Creative Commons, an American organization that has developed a set of flexible copyright licenses for creators of digital content.
But clearing the rights is a significant challenge. Some clips contain elements like musical soundtracks, which may require getting permission from the copyright holders.
"Much of our programming is interspersed with other programming owned by other people," Le Dieu said. "We completely understand the audience's interest in getting the full programming. We're trying to balance that desire with the rights of the (content) ownership."
Those technical and legal challenges may render the archive incomplete, some fear.
"We want to make sure that the archive is more than just shagging marmots," said David Tannenbaum, coordinator for the Union for the Public Domain. "There's been no public discussion of how they are going to get beyond these nature clips."
Tannenbaum said the group hopes to build support to change the BBC's charter in 2006, when it comes up for review, so that the BBC will commit more fully to open access. Also, the group wants the BBC to clear rights with other copyright holders in its future contracts, so that the BBC can freely distribute other producers' works.
But observers expect commercial broadcasters to oppose the archive and the expansion of liberal licensing efforts, arguing that they cannot compete with free programming.
"We hope that by getting this into the charter, that people within the BBC will be able to stand up to the objections that get raised as time goes by," said Cory Doctorow, European affairs coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"They will have the ammunition they need to say, 'This is exactly what the BBC is there for: to really move public broadcasting into the next century and define what public broadcasting looks like in an Internet world.'"
Lawrence Lessig, Stanford law professor and founder of Creative Commons, said the BBC's plan would help the world understand that there is more at stake in the copyright war than "piracy."
"If the archive succeeds ... then that will drive demand for computers, broadband and software to enable that creativity," he said. "Businesses -- beyond the content industry -- will recognize just what's at stake."
The BBC hopes others will follow its lead. "We hope that we can provide a model so other rights holders can do something similar," Le Dieu said.
Source: Wired News
A DNS service outage at Akamai Technologies prevented access to some of the Internet's major Web sites Tuesday, including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, according to The SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center.
The DNS (domain name system) servers that content hosting company Akamai uses to host DNS services for some customers stopped responding at around 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time in the U.S., leaving Web surfers who were trying to reach those sites high and dry, said Johannes Ullrich, chief technology officer at the Internet Storm Center.
Andy Ellis, Akamai's chief security architect, declined to comment on Tuesday, but did not deny that the Cambridge, Massachusetts, company was experiencing problems.
An Akamai spokesman did not respond to requests for comment. Akamai offers an "Enhanced DNS" service, in which customers use Akamai's network of DNS servers to resolve Internet requests for their domain, such as Google.com. The distributed, worldwide network of servers is marketed by Akamai as a more stable and robust solution than internally managed DNS servers, which are susceptible to failure or attack.
However, users began reporting problems Tuesday reaching popular sites, like Google.com and Yahoo.com, that use the service. The Internet Storm Center received reports of troubles from across the world, including Asia and South America, Ullrich said.
An investigation into the problem revealed that Akamai's DNS servers were not responding to requests. The problem appeared to affect the company's worldwide network of DNS servers, suggesting that the problem may have been with caused by a problem within Akamai rather than an external attack on its DNS servers, Ullrich said.
"It could be anything -- somebody tripping on an power cord. I think an attack is unlikely, unless somebody was able to hit a central control node," he said.
While some Internet users were prevented from reaching the affected sites during the outage, others were unaffected, due to the distributed nature of the DNS infrastructure.
DNS, which translates reader-friendly names like "Yahoo.com" into numeric Internet Protocol addresses used on the Internet, is a tree-like structure of distributed servers, each with its own frequently-updated list of server and domain addresses.
Problems in one part of the DNS system often do not affect other parts of the infrastructure for hours, or more, Ullrich said.
The hiccup in Akamai's service is the second in less than a month. In May, a software glitch slowed Akamai servers used to host customer Web pages and other information, making it difficult to reach some of its customers' Web sites for around 90 minutes, Akamai acknowledged.
Akamai blamed that service interruption on a bug in content management software that Akamai customers use to update content on Akamai servers, said Jeff Young, an Akamai spokesman.
Yahoo.com, Google.com and Microsoft.com were all reachable again within two hours of the reported interruption.
Source: IDG News Services
Baidu has beaten Google, in becoming the fourth largest Internet website in the world in terms of web traffic, according to the latest Alexa traffic rankings.
Another leading Chinese search engine, 3721.com, ranked seventh.
Baidu.com claims that it has become the world's largest Chinese language search engine with over 300 mln Chinese language website pages, and over 60 mln page hits every day.
In China, it covers over 95% of Chinese netizens, with more than 80 mln users. According to Shanghai-based Internet research house, iResearch, Baidu.com has a market share of 48.2% in China in terms of search engine traffic, while the global Internet search giant Google.com accounts for only 29.8%.
Baidu.com has accelerated its expansion in China, with staff numbers doubled to over 300 from around 100 one year ago, Zhu Hongbo, COO of Baidu.com, told Interfax. Apart from traditional search services, the company launched or is planning to launch several new services.
The latest addition to its services, "Posted Message Bar", enables users to search messages on various Chinese BBS, while the under-testing "Download Bar" service enables users to share files with other netizens for free mutual downloads.
Other new services include weather information, with which a user can search a city's weather and have exact weather information displayed on the top of the search result list, rather than from a link to this information.
"All these new services aim to bring convenience to netizens. They are free of charge, but they will be helpful to boost our page views and improve our website popularity," Zhu pointed out.
Source: Interfax
Although the Internet has given the person on the street access to more information than ever before, business users need even more.
So argues Clare Hart, boss of search firm Factiva which was formed in 1999 from Dow Jones Interactive and Reuters Business Briefing.
Factiva brings together information from more than 9,000 sources including newspapers, newswires, transcripts of news programmes from the BBC and other broadcasters, plus historical stock market data.
It is a program for desktop machines that lets customers search for information among this pool of sources.
In its pre-Factiva incarnation, it was used by librarians and other information professionals whose job it was to find and supply facts to other people.
The growth of the web as a vast corpus of data threw that role into question. "In 2000 and 2001 so many times we had customers saying to us that most of this is available for free on the web," said Ms Hart.
But, she said, 60% of what Factiva offers is not online for free. And, said Ms Hart, even if all the sources were available online she is sure that Factiva would still have a role to play.
The reason for this is because, as Google and others are starting to realise, the sheer number of results a search system can serve up are not enough.
"When you do a search you're not interested in quantity," said Ms Hart, "you want relevant research and quick access to relevant results."
"I think people get very frustrated by Google results," she said. "The lack of quality results and the fact that they have to register with more and more websites."
As a business tool, Factiva knows that if you search for Orange you will be looking for the phone firm rather than the county or fruit.
What is important to Factiva users is the fact that they know the sources it uses have a history and legitimacy that many on the web do not yet possess.
Also information tends to make it on to the wires long before it gets on to the web.
But, said Ms Hart, many firms use both Google and Factiva side by side. And the growth of the web and the success of search sites has forced firms like Factiva to react, said Ms Hart.
Factiva, like Google and many other search engines, can be queried via a toolbar and the service has been reworked to reflect users' growing familiarity with the net and the tools it is creating.
Now, for instance, news feeds that come out of Factiva are in web formats allowing them to be put into documents and pages to provide up to data information.
"The web has turned everything upside down and has made it so much easier to get access to information," she said. "Everyone has become a searcher."
Source: BBC News
Football and soccer fans now can find the latest football and soccer news and sports websites, with the launch of a new search engine dedicated specifically to these games.
Megasoccer Search, which claims to be the world's first search engine devoted to football, has an index of over 6,000 soccer websites.
The engine only searches footy content that has been reviewed to provide users with “the most relevant, up-to-date results for all queries”. Using the Advanced Search page, you can set strict rules on language, search terms and the numbers of results.
Mike Flynn, chief executive of Fast Web Media (the company behind the engine), said:
"The technology which has been applied to Megasoccer Search enables users to get the information they want on soccer without trawling through pages of unrelated sites, setting Megasoccer Search apart from other generic search engines."
Megasoccer Search has tied up a partnership deal with Premier League site 4thegame.com and search boxes and buttons will also be distributed to other global soccer sites.
Source: Web User.co.uk
The first-quarter estimate significantly outpaced online ad sales for the same period in 2003, when they accounted for $1.6 billion, a nearly 40 percent increase, the Interactive Advertising Bureau said.
Furthermore, the first-quarter returns were higher than those recorded for the fourth quarter of 2003, when the market reached $2.2 billion.
The fourth quarter is typically the most successful period for ad sales across all communications and publishing mediums.
The IAB said Monday that online ad sales reached almost $2.3 billion in the first quarter of 2004, the highest three-month total since the group began tracking the sector in 1996.
Greg Stuart, president of IAB, said he was "surprised" by the strength of the sector's performance and cited research from New York-based eMarketer that indicated Internet penetration will overtake cable TV market numbers this year and that the online ad sector is ready to bloom anew.
"You have more users, better advertising platforms and fewer ads that make more sense, which is a nice environment," Stuart said. "If you combine those factors with some of the other Internet statistics we're seeing, such as broadband access overtaking dial-up in the next year or so, it gives you an idea of the market's potential."
Many researchers have already predicted strong years ahead for the Web ad space. eMarketer expects U.S. online ad sales to reach $8.4 billion for 2004, an increase of more than 15 percent from last year, and higher than the 2000 peak of $8.1 billion.
Search engines are expected to provide a significant chunk of that revenue. Search advertising more than doubled to $2.3 billion in 2003. Banner ads and other types of traditional Internet advertising dropped slightly last year, to $4.9 billion.
Stuart credited the recent upswing to momentum gained over the last three years, as opposed to short-term market factors. While the executive remained bullish on innovative advertising strategies used by market leaders such as Google, he said the most effective catalyst for growth has been consistency.
"Can you look at the market from one year ago and say things are really different in a lot of ways? I'd say no," he said. "The fact is that there is a lot of wind at our backs because the message has been consistent for at least three years that the Web offers advertisers the most cost-effective alternative."
Stuart highlighted the significance of the quarter-to-quarter growth versus the final period of 2003. He said he has never seen advertising media "override seasonality." The first quarter is often the toughest across the industry. He is now expecting annual growth of 30 percent or more for the sector, an amount that exceeds predictions by many financial analysts, ranging from 15 percent to 24 percent.
Looking forward, Stuart said he expects more companies to begin fighting for the increasing number of dollars at stake in the sector. He also predicted that some companies will return to business models from the golden era of the Internet, or roughly five years ago.
"I think you'll see some people dust off older business models and bring back some ideas we heard about a few years back," he said. "It should be pretty entertaining."
Stuart said the local advertising segment, which has become a major focus for some of the Web's largest companies including Google, should continue to see success.
IAB's research is conducted by the New Media Group of PricewaterhouseCoopers, which compiles data supplied by companies that sell advertising on the Internet.
IAB's first- and third-quarter revenue reports are estimates. The actual figures are released along with second- and fourth-quarter data.
Source: C-Net News
ValueClick Media launches ChannelSearch, a solution that enables advertisers to leverage the power of contextually-targeted ads and search.
ChannelSearch simplifies the online media buying and management process, while providing advertisers with access to two online marketing channels. Based on a flat-rate cost-per-click (CPC) pricing structure, ChannelSearch delivers targeted visitors through a combination of distribution methods, including:
Standard Graphical Ads
Strategic placement of web-based display ad units across the most contextually-relevant of 17 targeted content channels on the ValueClick Media network, which reaches 66 million unique users in the U.S. and 120 million worldwide.
Keyword Listings
Premium placement of text listings based on 17 predefined categories of keywords within ValueClick's Search123 pay-per-click search network.
SimpliContent Ads
SimpliContent is a new rich media ad unit that combines standard graphical ads with search listings, by dynamically displaying a marketer's text listing, logo and product image within banner ads appearing on contextually-relevant content sites throughout the ValueClick Media network.
The SimpliContent ad unit dynamically pulls an advertiser's Search123 listing into a category-based banner ad, and targets the ad across contextually-relevant sites. The rich media ad also includes the option to display the advertiser's logo and one additional product image.
"ChannelSearch delivers highly targeted visitors by blending two of the most powerful forms of online direct marketing -- search and contextual ad placement," said David Yovanno, general manager, ValueClick Media.
"ChannelSearch allows our clients to benefit further from our core competencies in search and contextual advertising through a simple, unique package, and builds upon ValueClick's reputation as an innovator in performance-based online marketing."
Source: Value Click
Internet advertising revenues have risen to the highest quarterly total since the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) began tracking revenues in 1996, marking a pronounced recovery from the dot-com doldrums.
The previous record was set in the fourth quarter of 2003. Before that, interactive ad revenues hadn't seen such heights since 2000.
First quarter estimates represent a 3.9 percent increase over the fourth quarter of 2003, an especially significant jump due to the holiday spending typically associated with the fourth quarter.
The first quarter estimates also showed a 39.8 percent increase over the $1.6 billion brought in during the first quarter of 2003.
"All through 2003 we published positive revenue results for Internet advertising and the trend continued through the first quarter of 2004," said Tom Hyland, partner and chair of the New Media Group at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The researchers estimated the revenue figures by surveying the top 15 online ad sellers and extrapolating to calculate the total industry revenue figure.
The IAB and PwC typically release estimated top-line figures in the first and third quarters. They then provide actual figures with additional detail in the second and fourth quarters. Actual first quarter revenues are expected to be released in July, 2004.
Source: Click Z
Well-funded competitors like Yahoo and Google are only starting to target the local market, so local media still have time to respond.
However, newspapers still face long-term damage to their business from online local-search products, far greater than the damage done to classified advertising revenue by competitors like Monster.com and HotJobs.com, a new study, “The Geo-Google Threat: Search Engines Target Local Advertising,” reported today.
The study, by The Neil Budde Group and the Advanced Interactive Media Group, reports some newspapers may be forced to drop from daily to less frequent publication and that print margins are likely to erode as advertising migrates online and advertisers opt for pay-for-performance and self-service ad models.
In addition, it states, yellow pages may become more immediate competitors to newspapers, noting that in two countries the leading yellow-page publishers have purchased large classified-advertising publications for integration into online search services.
“For local publishers, which have already been fighting the ‘new monsters’ eating away at their classified advertising, this may be a far greater challenge than the first Internet wave,” said Neil F. Budde, one of the report’s lead authors.
The 59-page report, prepared with data compiled by eMarketer, reviews the threat from yellow pages, international dot-coms like Google and Yahoo’s Overture, and direct, targeted ad placement online by key local advertisers like car-care shops, plumbers and restaurants.
It includes a four-page “action plan” to help newspapers and other local media meet the competitive challenge and even grow their market share of ad spending.
“The ability to directly target advertising at consumers, and to determine exactly what the response to those ads has been, gives local advertisers more power than ever before to focus their spending where it works,” said Peter M. Zollman, the report’s other lead author.
“Few local publishers have realized yet how this will endanger their business, and even fewer have responded with effective local search tools for their advertisers.”
Source: Onrec.com
New York-based DoubleClick said it would pay $58 million in cash for search engine marketer Performics, plus additional payments of up to $7 million based on future earnings.
Performics helps clients automate and track the performance of paid placements in search listings on multiple search engines.
Performics clients include Time Warner Inc's (NYSE:TWX - news) Internet provider America Online, cellular phone maker Motorola (NYSE:MOT - news) and retailer Target Corp (NYSE:TGT - news) and expects to see revenues increase by 50 percent in 2004 from a year ago.
Once the acquisition closes, DoubleClick said it would combine Performics' search marketing technology with its DART system for tracking and analyzing online advertising including banner ads and more sophisticated rich media ads.
DoubleClick said it expected an additional $10 million in revenue over the second half of 2004, with search management revenue accounting for slightly less than half of that amount. Adding Performics' business would raise operating expenses and cost of revenue by nearly $9 million in the second half of this year.
DoubleClick said Performics would have 130 employees by the time the acquisition closed and that additional employees would be hired for that business by the end of the year. The acquisition is subject to approval by antitrust regulators.
DoubleClick shares traded 13 cents lower to $7.91 on the Nasdaq.
Source: Yahoo News
The Viewpoint Toolbar shows the usual search result as a web page but in addition to it, it fetches thumbnails of the shown search results.
There are search toolbars and then there is Viewpoint Toolbar. It does what an average search toolbar does and takes it one step ahead. It uses Yahoo! search engine technology to display results but the difference is the visual representation of the search results.
The good thing about the thumbnails is that you can make out if it’s a content rich site or just another keyword spammed site filled with advertisements. Since the generation of thumbnails is done in real time, the process can be quiet painful on a normal dial up connection so they do let you disable the thumbnail display and use the toolbar as a regular search toolbar.
And it does the other functions of a search toolbar pretty well too. There is the usual popup blocker with one interesting extra option (allow non ads popups) which sounds pretty ambitious. I would need some more tests before I can actually fall for that claim. Then there is a search save feature that functions as a visual bookmark, where your searches are saved as clickable thumbnails.
Shortcomings? Pretty apparent. It is supported only on Internet Explorer. Not surprising considering all the popular ones out there are IE only. It needs a good fast connection to properly exploit the features. Should not be a big problem now considering broadband is cheap. And it eats a big chunk of your browser window while displaying the thumbnails. Though it offers you three sizes to choose from.
Is the technology revolutionary? I beg to differ. I don’t know how old this toolbar originally is, but I remember using an Internet Explorer utility way back in 1999 called girafa. It showed you the thumbnails in the sidebar.
The website still exists so does the tool and the technology is apparently used by MSN to show search previews. So, it’s a good idea implemented well which works fine for people like you and me who want more than just results as links!
Download the Viewpoint Toolbar for free at http://search.viewpoint.com/
Source: Search Engine Journal
Espotting Media today reported preliminary results for the calendar quarter ended March 31, 2004.
'We are delighted that Espotting has reached profitability and that we have had the most successful quarter in the Company's history' commented Daniel Ishag, CEO & Founder, Espotting Media. 'As we approach our merger with FindWhat.com, Espotting's performance is stronger than ever.'
Net revenues were over $30 million in the first calendar quarter of 2004, compared to approximately $18 million in the same period of 2003.
This represents a 67% growth in revenue. Espotting's results for the first calendar quarter of 2004 are preliminary results, prepared by Espotting's finance department. Espotting continues to finalise the audit of its March 2004 fiscal year. Espotting's fiscal 2003 results have been audited by Ernst & Young.
Espotting reached profitability in the first calendar quarter of 2004, for the first time.
Espotting's advertiser base grew by 14%. The number of active advertisers receiving targeted traffic from the Espotting Network was 22,700 in the first quarter 2004. This compares to 20,000 in the third calendar quarter of 2003.
Espotting's volume base of queries grew by 26% in the first calendar quarter of 2004, to nearly 4.3 billion, up from 3.4 billion in the fourth calendar quarter of 2003. The volume base of queries is the number of impressions where Espotting's listings can appear and thus represents the opportunity to reach potential customers.
Daniel Ishag, Espotting's CEO & Founder, has been short-listed as a finalist for Ernst & Young's London Entrepreneur of the Year Award. The award celebrates entrepreneurs who are building and leading successful, growing and dynamic businesses. Ernst & Young run a global awards programme, covering over 35 countries.
On February 10th 2004, Espotting announced its amended merger agreement with NASDAQ listed FindWhat.com (NASDAQ: FWHT). It is currently anticipated that on 2nd June 2004, the shareholders of Espotting, and on the 4th June 2004, the shareholders of FindWhat.com, will be meeting, independently, to vote on the merger.
Source: Espotting Media
