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A Whopping 44% of CMOs Have Faced a Reputation-Crippling Attack!

posted on January 28, 2009

I’m a sucker for any new research that has data on how well companies are managing their online reputation. So, like a moth to a flame, I’m drawn to a new report from the CMO Council and Satmetrix.

To be honest, there are a lot of great stats in the report, but here are some that really jumped out at me:

  • 44% of respondents admitted that high-profile negative customer experiences had at some time compromised their brands!

Which is not surprising when you consider:

  • Only 13% of companies have deployed real-time systems to collect, analyze and distribute customer feedback
  • A mere 23% say they track and measure the volume and nature of customer feedback via email

And, finally:

  • Only 16% monitor online message boards and social networking sites

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Click Fraud Reaches Record High

posted on January 28, 2009

Click Forensics has released a study showing that click fraud has hit 17.1%, an all-time high. For those of you who are unfamiliar, click fraud represents the act of clicking on a web advertisement to inflate click-through rates.

TechCrunch points out that over 30% of click fraud is via automated bots—another all-time high. This is a 14% increase over last quarter. I’m surprised the search engines aren’t doing a better job at keeping the bots down. This clearly continues to be a problem and needs to be addressed. I think the search engines need to release a state of the industry report on how they plan to cut these rates now ASAP.

Outside of the U.S., Canada is the largest driver of click fraud (7.1%), followed by Germany (3%) and China (2.3%).

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Yahoo’s Q4 Numbers: There’s Good News & Bad News

posted on January 28, 2009

As the headline suggest, Yahoo’s fourth quarter earnings report was a mixed bag of news for investors.

What do you want first, the good news or bad news?

You’re a "give me the bad news first" kinda guy? I like that about you! :-)

OK, so the bad news is that Yahoo had its first money-losing quarter since the Q1 of 2002 and its first quarterly revenue decline since Q4 of 2001. Ouch!

Now for the good news. The numbers weren’t quite as bad as Wall Street was expecting. In fact, while analysts were projecting 13 cents a share, Yahoo delivered that plus an extra 4 cents–that’s 17 cents in case your fingers can’t keep up.

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Google’s Gmail Finally Gets Offline Capabilities

posted on January 28, 2009

It’s time to mark an item off my Google wishlist! The Gmail team has announced that, starting this week, users will be able to use a Gmail Labs feature that allows for the email service to be used when offline.

Huzzah!

It’s something that I–and many others–have longed for. OK, maybe it wasn’t so much of a deep yearning, more of a "sure would be nice to have" feeling. Anyway, the video below explains how Gmail will use the Google’s Gears tool to provide offline email use.

So, how do you think Microsoft is reacting to this news? Is an offline Gmail more of a threat to Outlook? Have you been waiting to make the switch?

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Yo Yahoo! The “Truth” is, Your Search Marketing Changes Suck!

posted on January 28, 2009

I’m not normally one to keep stirring the pot–I usually say my peace and be done with it–but someone over at Yahoo is smoking crack.

After I, and many other bloggers, outed a new Yahoo policy that allows the company to make changes to an advertisers account–including the addition of keywords–the company is claiming that us “blogger friends” are misinformed.

Oh really, Yahoo?

Misinformed? I emailed you back in early December and you confirmed exactly what we’ve reported–YAHOO IS CHANGING ADVERTISERS ACCOUNTS WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION!

You can dress it up anyway you want to–”lipstick on a pig” comes to mind–but you’ve still launched a program that is opt-out only, and one that many advertisers are complaining about.

You say:

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More Bad News for MySpace

posted on January 28, 2009

myspacelogoBy Danny Brown

In a move that won’t surprise as many people as it would have this time last year, Fox Interactive Media has announced it will be cutting its workforce by as many as 100 jobs. Fox is the parent company of social network site MySpace as well as Photobucket and various mobile sites.

The move, which accounts for 5% of employees across the board, is another sign that MySpace and Photobucket are falling increasingly behind in the social networking battle. With Facebook and Flickr taking away much of the core audience of Fox Interactive’s babies, the signs aren’t good for Tom Anderson and his friends.

But is it such a surprise?

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Google Promoting Chrome via YouTube

posted on January 27, 2009

CNET reports that there is a Chrome sighting over on YouTube. Google recently began showing display and overlay ads on YouTube, and now seems to be pushing their own product line. 

I think this raises a few questions as to Google’s 2009 objectives:

  1. Is Google going to put a greater focus on promoting their own products like Chrome? 
  2. At what cost is Google willing to promote their products? Technically it is “free” for them to promote on YouTube, but with every Google ad they show they miss the opportunity to make money off of someone’s ad.

CNET also reports that Chrome is being advertised on the Facebook Scramble Game.

So what’s Google saying about all this?