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Smart Move! Google Acquiring “Intelligent Display Advertising” Company Teracent

posted on November 23, 2009

Can you tell the difference between these two ads?

Look closely:

Well the one on the bottom just made the founders of Teracent, very, very rich!

OK, that’s not quite the same example that Google just gave over at the official blog, but it did announce that it plans to acquire Teracent.

What does Teracent do?

Teracent’s technology can pick and choose from literally thousands of creative elements of a display ad in real-time — tweaking images, products, messages or colors. These elements can be optimized depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads.

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Why a Deal With News Corp Would Make Bing the Trader Joe’s of Search

posted on November 23, 2009

A confession.

Sometimes I use Bing.com.

Stop looking at me that way. I said I “use” Bing.com. I didn’t say I enjoy it! In fact, I “use” Bing.com when I’m shopping online and want to get the best price. Bing has a pretty cool shopping engine and I can get up to 10% cashback with its cashback program.

See? I use Bing.com.

The problem is, that use does not result in me using the search engine for any other task. And that is the issue I see with rumors that Bing is willing to pay News Corp and other news organizations to provide their content exclusively to the Microsoft search engine. The FT reports:

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Poll: Will You UnFollow Those That Place Ads in Their Tweets?

posted on November 23, 2009

The above tweet ended a lively discussion I had with @Ed and a few others about the use of 3rd party ads in Twitter. I’ve said before that I am open to the idea, although I’ve not yet posted any ads to my Twitter feed.

Anyway, as this week is going to be a little quiet–what with Thanksgiving coming up–I thought I’d publish a poll and see what your thoughts are on the subject.


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Google, the Butt of Toilet Humor

posted on November 21, 2009

Apparently Google is more than just the world’s most used search engine. It’s also “Super elastic, soft, smooth. Highly absorbent, for you always!” :-)

googletoiletpaper

Via The Huffington Post

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Cup of Joe: How Not To Go Viral and Look Like an Idiot

posted on November 21, 2009


(via)

So, ever since I came back from Vegas, I have had a pretty bad head cold. But, I have been diligently applying my favorite remedy: Watching mindless YouTube videos! Seriously, it makes me feel better. I am not sure why, but I am sticking to it! One thing I have noticed is that the most popular videos have at least one of two things; authentic, original content, or very well polished and produced material. Basically, if the video has authentic, original content then it doesn’t really matter if it’s “put together” well, because the content alone will sell it. However, if you are trying to replicate something someone has already done, then you need to do it better than them, make sure that your presentation is polished and your delivery is spot on.

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Closed Captioning Brought to You by YouTube

posted on November 20, 2009

youtube aslGoogle announced that closed captioning is coming to YouTube. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know it was already there in many videos where the creators took the time to add the subtitles for the hearing- or speaker-impaired. But now, for selected participating partners (mainly universities), YouTube itself will be adding the captions.

The captions will be machine generated and automatically timed to match the video (and still be readable, I hope). Just like any dictation program, I suppose, they’ll listen to the audio from the clips and transcribe it. Now, normally, you know I’d be in there making fun of all the hilarious errors a machine makes when transcribing the participating partners’ clips (because, hey, even humans don’t always do a good job of captioning)—but as I write this, they’re actually not doing it yet. Sigh.

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Google Testing Permanent Sidebar

posted on November 20, 2009

Search Engine Land talks to Marissa Mayer about Google testing a new search interface among a select few users. The new interface uses a left-hand pane to display search options—but instead of being off by default, with a link to turn on the pane, the new search options will be on permanently, and Google will lose the top blue bar over its results.

Other options, including results from other Google properties (Images, News, Maps, Books) will join the left-hand panel. Search Engine Land has screenshots of the news options test:

Meanwhile, as a refresher, here’s the present Search Options (first tested a year ago, added to the SERP in May):