Marketing Pilgrim

ClickZ has details of the launch of two new advertising networks for podcasts – Kiptronic and Podtrac.

According to the Mercury News, the Department of Justice has filed papers to try and force Google to comply with a subpoena issued last year which includes a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.

Why does the DOJ want to get its hands on this information?

The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches.

Forbes takes a look at the growing trend of vertical search engines. Oodle, Jobster, and LookSmart are among the many featured in the story.

The biggest challenge for vertical search engines?

“With vertical search, by definition, you need to go to one engine for jobs, another for travel, and another for business supplies,” said Rosenberg. “I think the results at these vertical search engines have to be significantly superior to Google and Yahoo! for consumers to overcome that inconvenience.”

MSN Search’s Weblog announces the addition of 1 million new facts you can now get “Instant Answers” to.

Here’s an example: premier of russia

Now, where have we seen this type of thing before?

News from Nathan Enns. His search engine, FyberSearch, has added a keyword suggestion tool to assist its advertisers in selecting the right terms.

So Google decided it’s time to see just how far they can take their “pay-per-action�? ad model and acquired a radio advertising network. I spent a lot of time yesterday, discussing this move with a number of people. Here’s a collection of some of my thoughts…

Accountability and Efficiency for Offline Advertising

This is a very bold, strategic move for Google. They are basically laying down the gauntlet and challenging the status quo of offline advertising principles. If they are successful in bringing a pay-per-action model to radio, they’ll certainly have a lot of traditional radio execs and ad agencies quaking in their boots.

Like to crunch numbers? Here’s the raw numbers just released by Yahoo.

Revenues were $1,501 million for the fourth quarter of 2005, a 39 percent increase compared to $1,078 million for the same period of 2004.

Revenues for the year ended December 31, 2005 were $5,258 million, a 47 percent increase compared to $3,575 million for 2004.

The stock is down in after-hours trading. Why? As one analyst puts it…

“There is nothing there that is a particular problem,” says Martin Pyykonnen, an analyst with Hoefer & Arnett who rates the shares strong buy and doesn’t own them. “It’s about beating expectations and coming out ahead, and they didn’t do that.”