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Ad:Tech Announcements: MySpace Ad Network

posted on November 5, 2007

There are a lot of announcements expected at today’s start of Ad:Tech, so let’s kick off with MySpace.

The company is not content to live off the ad revenue it gets from its partnership with Google so is launching "SelfServe by MySpace"–an advertising network for display (banner) ads.

TechCrunch has the details…

The new tool will enable users to select from a number of ad targeting factors such as geographic, demographic, and various user interest categories. The service will be ready for use by early 2008. The minimum advertisement purchase size is $10; pricing will be based on a click to the advertiser’s profile and will be auction based once it gets going (to start things off, MySpace will charge a fixed CPC based on the category).

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Should the FTC Tighten up Regulation of Online Advertising?

posted on November 2, 2007

The FTC says they will begin to monitor online advertising and privacy more closely to protect consumers. This was from commissioner Jon Leibowitz at a forum on behavioral targeting. As more companies track customers, the agency will establish standards and privacy.

The concerns centered on advertising shown to children and the ways advertisers try to get people to give up information about themselves online. Personal information about everyone is used in a variety of ways, and it’s not just when you are surfing the internet. Google’s Gmail serves up ads based on what you write in an email. For example, you write that you’re feeling down and you start seeing ads on how to combat depression. MySpace enables advertisers to place ads based on what you write about yourself on your profile.

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Do Not Track Registry; Good Idea or Ill-conceived?

posted on November 2, 2007

As Andy already reported, organizations from consumer, privacy, and technology groups recently proposed the development of a “do not track” list in hopes of providing consumers the ability to prevent advertising networks from being able to track which websites consumers are visiting. The proposed “do not track” list was based on the idea of and is being compared to the “do not call” list that the FTC implemented in 2003 with significant success.

Conceptually the idea seems acceptable but the truth is it also seems extremely unrealistic. The following information is quoted directly from the proposal:

”Companies providing web, video, and other forms of browser applications should provide functionality (i.e., a browser feature, plug-in, or extension) that allows users to import or otherwise use the “do not track” list of domain names, keep the list up-to-date, and block domains on the list from tracking their internet activity.”

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Real Estate Blog Network Infused with $1.5 Million

posted on November 1, 2007

We’ve all heard the bad news in the housing market that only seems to get worse. Here’s a small bright spot for a real estate blog network. Curbed.com obtained some capital to expand their market. They currently focus on New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles has healthy advertising contracts with national advertisers. Now with $1.5 million in financing they’ll expand into new cities and add staff members. According to Lockhart Steele, Curbed.com’s publisher, traffic is growing 10 percent a month.

The investors include Nick Denton, who used to be Steele’s boss, Zach Nelson, chief executive of NetSuite, a maker of business software, and Gawker Media.

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Buy the Whole Car Online

posted on October 31, 2007

Now there is almost nothing left that you can’t buy entirely online. Autonation is the first to offer this service for buying a car completely over the internet. They are piloting a program that lets customers buy their car online in the Atlanta market with 14 dealerships.

Starting out, you enter your ZIP code, then using drop-down menus you can select a specific vehicle make and model and other features of the car. That includes choosing the color and packages. If you have a trade-in you can also use the used vehicle calculator to get a price for your car. When you and the dealer agree on a price, that figure is subtracted from the purchase price of your new car.

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Zillow Gets Googley with Homeowner Tools

posted on October 30, 2007

I know that Vanessa Fox’s move to Zillow doesn’t necessarily mean she’s single-handedly responsible for any improvements to the real estate site, but the latest update sure looks like it has her touch.

As you know Vanessa was a key part of Google’s Webmaster Tools–that cool dashboard that provides a check-up on the health of your web site as it relates to Google. Now it appears Zillow is getting something very similar.

The initiative, officially launched today, will enable homeowners to "claim" their homes and correct errors or eliminate omissions displayed on a Zillow profile regarding their properties.

When that happens, Zillow takes note and those changes help the company create internal portraits of homeowners, profiles leveraged in Zillow’s new Home Direct Ads program.

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Mozilla Gets 85% of Revenue from Google

posted on October 30, 2007

Towards the end of Mozilla’s 2006 Financial statements in the section called “Concentration of Risk” it reads:

“Mozilla has a contract with a search engine provider for royalties. The contract originally expired in November 2006 but was renewed for two years and expires in November 2008. Approximately 85% of Mozilla’s revenue for 2006 was derived from this contract.”

That one source responsible for almost all their revenue was Google. Now if I could choose a partnership to rely on, Google would be at the top of my list. But there are threats – like a plugin called Adblock Plus for Firefox that blocks the very ads that generate their income.