by
5 Comments

Facebook Served Most Display Ads in Q1, Beat Yahoo

posted on May 12, 2010

Facebook served 16% of all display ads in Q1 of this year, according to comScore, making it the largest online display ad publisher in the US—handily beating #2 Yahoo, reports ClickZ.

Facebook’s growth is impressive whether compared to its Q4 numbers or Yahoo’s numbers. In Q1, Yahoo’s properties saw 132B impressions (12.1% of all online display ad impressions). In Q4, Facebook served about 115B impressions. In Q1 of this year, Facebook served a whopping 176B impressions: a 53% increase over its previous quarter. (Yahoo saw a slight decrease from Q4: down from 140B impressions, or 6%, and all other major ad players also saw declines.)

Last year in Q1, Facebook served 70B ad impressions, which means they increased their ad impressions by over 150% YOY.

by
0 Comments

This Conversation Brought to You By Six Apart

posted on May 12, 2010

(Not really, of course.)

Six Apart, owners of the blog-hosting service TypePad, have found a new way to monetize blogs: advertising. Okay, so that’s not new, and neither is the basic concept of sponsored conversations, but the execution this time is a little different.

We’ve seen sponsored blog posts for reviews and pay-per-post models—and we’ve seen them done badly, too. Paid reviews often ended up sounding like (surprise) ads, with or without disclosure. Six Apart’s new TypePad Conversations seeks to avoid that problem—by not having bloggers actually talk about the products.

by
8 Comments

Twitter, an Anti-Social Network

posted on May 11, 2010

What do you find when you look at 41 million Twitter users and 1.87 billion follower/followee relationship? (Aside from a lot of minutiae.) Well, Korea’s Advanced Institute of Science & Technology found that when it comes to Twitter, people really aren’t that interested in being social. More than 3 in 4 —78%—of all Twitter connections are not reciprocated.

By contrast, says KAIST, Yahoo 360 has an 84% reciprocation rate (that is, only 16% of relationships aren’t reciprocated). Even Flickr has more than three times the reciprocation rate of Twitter—68%. Twitter, then, appears to be less of a social interaction sphere and more of a news broadcasting medium.

by
3 Comments

Skype to Get Ads?

posted on May 11, 2010

Skype, one of the (if not the) most popular video conferencing applications out there, has long run on free conferencing and chat, with some paid services including connecting to telephone numbers. They were in the news last year as then-owner eBay promised an IPO to spin them off in H12010. Then they sold most of the company, but that deal was challenged by a lawsuit from Skype’s founders. Eventually, eBay settled the deal, leaving the founders with 14% of the company, the new buyers 56% of the company, and eBay 30%.

But apparently they’re struggling for income and their existing paid services just aren’t bringing in enough. Last year, eBay wrote Skype down last year (and an impairment charge two years ago)—suggesting the company never lived up to eBay’s expectations in the deal. Now that they’re (mostly) on their own again, Skype is contemplating advertising on its signature free services.

by
3 Comments

Android Outselling iPhones

posted on May 10, 2010

Maybe Google really has found the way to challenge Apple’s iPhone supremacy—and it isn’t the Nexus One. Or at least not the Nexus One alone. While it seems like Google’s been searching high and low for an iPhone killer since the G1 came out in October 2008 (or since rumors started in December 2006), they’ve hit on the real way to take over the smart phone market: by the OS.

Google’s Android OS outsold the iPhone in Q1 on 2010, according to consumer surveys conducted by NPD. With dozens of devices offering various features—and more than one potential carrier—Android is a more versatile option.

by
3 Comments

Google Responds to Countries’ Privacy Concerns (Kinda)

posted on May 10, 2010

Last month, privacy and data protection officials from Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom wrote an open letter to Google voicing their concerns about Google Buzz. Of course, this is nothing new, since Buzz has prompted privacy concerns since the day it rolled out.

Now Google is responding: and they’ve decided that what those ten countries really wanted was a briefing on Google’s privacy policy and guiding principles. Yeah, that’s what they were looking for.

Let’s rehash this conversation here. First, the ten countries say:

by
2 Comments

News Flash: People Who Stare at Ads Buy (And Search)

posted on May 7, 2010

Here’s a groundbreaking study: Eyeblaster, Microsoft Advertising and comScore have found that the longer people stare at an ad, the more likely they are to search for brand-related terms. Eyeblaster also found that “ad dwellers” are more likely to buy, too. Somehow, I don’t think that means we’re supposed to make all our creative into a “Where’s Waldo” type quest.

Reports MediaPost:

The results of the study indicate consumers who were exposed to campaigns that typically get people to linger longer are more likely to search for brand-related keywords as compared to users who were exposed to campaigns with a low dwell times. The research found that consumers who were exposed to campaigns with low dwell times increased brand related keyword searches by 12%, while consumers exposed to campaigns with high dwell times increased brand-related keyword search by 39%. This suggests that campaigns with high dwell times are three times more effective at driving search than campaigns with low dwell times.