Marketing Pilgrim

Nielsen Online’s VideoCensus indicates that in February, 17-month-old Hulu grew to become the second most popular video site (after the behemoth YouTube)—so, Hulu, what are you going to do now? “We’re going to Disney World!” “We’re building a social network!”

It feels like a long time since we’ve been reporting on every search engine and funeral home opening a social network, but the trend is obviously far from over.

If the social network can bring them even more traffic, so much the better. Though their 309 million monthly video views have nothing on YouTube’s 5.2 billion, Hulu still stands to make a great profit from its current traffic. AdAge reports that television shows online command $40 to $50 per thousand viewers.

Microsoft is sure making a lot of news in search these days. As reported here earlier the new look search of Kumo is lurking about although Microsoft is acting like Kumo is some kind of hallucination that deserves a homepage.

Now add to that the news reported in a Computerworld article regarding the U.S. market share of the major search engines. It appears that Microsoft’s share is at a 12 month low which is, well, not real good. Microsoft may be asking “Where’s that darn Kumo thing anyway? Maybe that really will help? It certainly can’t hurt at this point.”

Here’s the scorecard:

Google 63.3 %
Yahoo 21 %
Microsoft 8.2%
Ask 4.1%
AOL 3.9%

Sometimes you just have to shake your head and wonder what in the world people are thinking. Then you wonder that maybe you’re not fully aware of all the details and there had to be a good reason to do something. Then you shake your head again and ask what the heck ARE they thinking?

Case in point is the announcement of the closing of Microsoft’s adCenter Analytics. I first came across a quick blurb on Search Engine Watch that linked to the Microsoft adCenter Analytics blog. While we all know that the term ‘Microsoft search’ is possibly an oxymoron does it mean that they have to keep painting a target on themselves for further ridicule? If they are serious about competing in that space (which maybe they just aren’t) it doesn’t seem too prudent to take away your ability to track results of ad campaigns in the same manner that the king of the paid search hill, Google, does…..does it?

When word leaked that Microsoft was testing its "Kumo" alternative search engine internally, a company spokesperson told me that there were no plans to re-brand Live Search to Kumo.

So why the effort to create a new Kumo hompage then?

(via)

If you can’t get enough of Twitter, then this post is for you.

If you’ve had enough of Twitter, then the good news is we’ve contained today’s Twitter news inside one post that you can now safely ignore!

Here’s the latest Twitter buzz:

• Hitwise looks at how data flows to and from Twitter. Interesting: Twitter sent nearly 20% of its downstream traffic to other social networks. The data also suggests that more people use Twitter like a social network, than as a search engine.
• Now, if you want to get the most out of Twitter “the search engine” you might want to check out Search Cloudlet–a Firefox plugin. Search Cloudlet adds tag clouds to Twitter Search and individual Twitter profiles.

There’s no doubt that Tim Armstrong did a lot of great things while serving as Google’s top ad sales executive, but his departure to become AOL’s new CEO takes place during a slump in performance.

With the recently announced closures of Google Audio Ads and Google Print–and Google TV not doing much better–Google, led by Armstrong’s efforts, has struggled to diversify its ad sales. Which leads me to the big question: Did Tim Armstrong leave Google because it was struggling, or because he was struggling?

Think about it. Either way Armstrong is a genius.

If Google’s business model simply doesn’t lend itself to anything other than AdWords and AdSense, why would a hot-shot ad sales guy stick around in such a limited role?