Archive for September, 2007

Microsoft yesterday told a Senate committee hearing that Google’s proposed takeover of DoubleClick will give it a near complete monopoly control of the online advertising market

A few senators attended the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, which was chaired by Senator Herb Kohl, a democrat from Wisconsin.

"This merger will undoubtedly result in higher profits for the operator of the dominant advertising pipeline, but it will be bad for everyone else," Brad Smith, senior vice president and general counsel for Microsoft, told the Senate panel. "It will be bad for publishers, bad for advertisers and, most importantly, bad for consumers."

The deal will see Google takeover DoubleClick for around $3.1 billion. Google is a leading purveyor of text based ads, such as paid search and organic search, while DoubleClick’s strength is in providing tools to serve display or graphical ads.

Scott Cleland, a telecommunications analyst and chairman of Netcompetition.org, told the commission that the merger would leave little market share for Google’s competitors.

"What do people want when they buy ads? They want audience. Google is 65 percent of the internet view share. They would get 25 per cent of the share they don’t have."

Online ad network Utarget says it is "continuing to consolidate its position" in the rapidly expanding online advertising market with the opening of two new offices in France and Italy.

"Utarget has experienced an enthusiastic response from European advertisers to our combination of high impact ad formats, wide network reach and precise targeting capabilities" Phil Cooper, Utarget chief executive, commented.

"The opening of offices France and Italy is an important step in our European expansion plans. We intend to build on this and the success of our German office, with the planned addition of a division in the Netherlands later this year."

The network recently opened up an office in Gernany, appointing former newtintion sales director Andreas Wolfes as managing director.

"Utarget’s success in Germany has laid the foundations for its current expansion into France and Italy," Mr Wolfes said.

"With increasing interest in pan-European campaigns from major brands and rapid growth within local European markets, it’s an exciting time to be in the industry and I’m looking forward to leading such a talented team as the company expands."

Microsoft has announced the launch of a new "less intrusive" video advertising system.

The ad system will does not interrupt a clip when it is being watched by users of MSN Video. Instead, the first ad is shown before a video is selected and then the next one is not accessed until at least three minutes later.

And the ads will never interrupt a video in midstream, the Associated Press reports.

"The growing appetite among consumers for online video content has created the perfect opportunity for advertisers seeking to reach a larger engaged online audience," Microsoft’s Chris Ward commented.

"We believe we are at the forefront of creating unique video advertising options and the time-based ads offered in our new version of MSN Video pave the way for advertisers to engage with consumers in a less intrusive way."

The introduction of the new MSN platform follows on from Google’s decision to introduce advertising to its YouTube site.

Both Google and Microsoft will testify before a senate subcommittee today (Thursday, September 27th), it has emerged.

The Senate Judiciary antitrust subcommittee will review Google’s takeover of online ad broker DoubleClick. The takeover deal is being scrutinised by federal antitrust regulators at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Google chief legal officer David Drummond says in prepared testimony released before the inquest that the antitrust concerns are not raised as the merger involves two complimentary businesses that do not compete in the same specific realms.

"DoubleClick is to Google what FedEx or UPS is to Amazon.com," Mr Drummond states.

Microsoft also tried to acquire DoubleClick, but it is still trying to get the FTC to block the deal in the US.

The deal is also being studied in terms of internet privacy concerns.

"Google’s bottom line is this: We believe deeply in protecting online users’ privacy," Drummond says in the remarks," Mr Drummond adds in his statement.

Microsoft has today (Thursday, September 27th) begun phasing in a new version of its Live Search service, as it looks to compete against its main rivals in the sector, Yahoo and Google.

The new improved version of Live Search should be made available within a week in the US and globally be the end of October, says the company’s vice president of search and advertising platform group Satya Nadella.

"The core thing for us is to show user we made a quantum jump in search results," Ms Nadella told journalists at a demonstration of the new product at Microsoft’s headquarters.

"This time, we feel we can claim we are as good as Google."

Google is the world’s most popular search engine, and marketers regularly place pay-per-click and paid search ads on its pages through its AdSense programme. Yahoo is second, while Microsoft currently lags in a distant third position.

Buying a stake in social media site Facebook will do little to help Microsoft and will simply represent the latest unfortunate chapter in the company’s mangled internet strategy, one expert has claimed.

Vishesh Kumar, senior writer at TheStreet.com, says that any deal would be "yet another sign of desperation" from Microsoft.

The Wall Street Journal earlier this week reported that Microsoft was looking to bag a five per cent stake in Facebook, in a deal which would value the social media site at around $15 billion.

"Despite the hype surrounding Facebook, things are much less rosy for the site than is often assumed," Mr Kumar states in an article carried by thestreet.com.

"And while a move by Microsoft is seen as a bold move against Google it just shows just how far ahead the search giant is when it comes to all things internet.

"The hallmark of Microsoft’s internet strategy seems to be to throw money around," he adds.

Social media site Facebook now has more unique visitors in the UK than its main rival, MySpace.

Adults and students have flocked to the site in their droves in recent months, statistics from Nielsen Netratings show. Facebook had 6.5 million unique visitors in August, while MySpace had 6.37 million and Bebo 4.44 million.

At the beginning of the year, Facebook had only one fifth of the number of visitors as MySpace

"The suspicion that the next big thing in social networking could always be just round the corner is illustrated by PerfSpot," said Alex Burmaster, the Nielsen NetRatings’ European internet analyst.

"Some, however, have theorised the future of social networking will revolve around specific interest groups as opposed to the general behemoths that dominate today."

It emerged last month that Facebook was working on a new targeted internet advertising system, designed so that marketers could place ads based on user information.

In October 2006, Facebook had a total of 448,000 unique users.

Leading online research company comScore has launched a new measurement product, according to the latest reports.

The new "holistic" tool allows advertisers to take an all-encompassing view of their campaign, with age groups spanning various ad units and audience demographics for site categories.

It is apparently called Ad Metrix Publisher and it captures all types of display advertising, including static, rich media and interactive ads for the US market.

Reports produced will incorporate ad impressions and will search for sites with display advertising, GRP reporting for individual sites and how impression and share trends alter as time passes. These factors will help determine the target audience reached through ad impressions.

Compete has just launched a new tool known as Compete Search Analytics. Available on a pay-as-you-go basis, it can show data such as site referrals and keyword referrals through searching through billions of performed search enquiries.

Small and medium-sized enterprises need to have a web presence - "because that’s how people look for their services these days", one expert has claimed.

Adam Wayland, editor of Smallbusiness.co.uk, made the comments in response to a new report from UK Online, which showed that around two-thirds of small businesses are still running their operations without an internet connection, email or website.

Having a website and using search engine optimisation techniques can help grow your business significantly, he says - and implementation costs needn’t necessarily be high.

"I don’t think every small business needs a website that is totally interactive and using Flash and using very high-tech programs," he commented, before adding that "it’s important for small businesses to have a web presence because that’s how people look for their services these days".

"It’s about getting the message out there and making it as easy as possible for people with very little technical knowledge to get something up and running."

Google is firmly ensconced as the leader of the internet search market - and the search engine giant is continuing to consolidate its position at the top, according to new figures.

Statistics from research agencies ComScore and Nielsen both show that Google is continuing to exert its dominance over its rivals.

ComScore said that Google had 56.6 per cent of the total online search market during August, an increase of 1.3 per cent month-on-month. Nielsen stated that Google had 53.6 per cent of all searches during the month, up 40 per cent year-on-year.

But the company’s two closest competitors, Yahoo and Microsoft, each lost a small share during the month. Recent analyst reports have helped boost Google’s share price, with the company’s value reaching a new all-time high last Friday.

Google may soon bid for a US wireless spectrum licence and look to offer internet and VoIP technology to its consumers, say reports