Posted by Alex Postance on March 25th, 2008
Paid Search
US web directory enquiries services are achieving increased success through the formation of strategic partnerships, one digital world analyst asserts.
A new report from comScore notes that the competitive sector of internet yellow pages (IYP) is increasingly dominated by those networks that form lucrative collaborations.
For instance, Superpages.com experienced success in 2007 thanks to its relationship with Local.com and acquisition of FindIt/Switchboard.com.
And Yellowpages.com experienced growth due to a number of business partnerships, the company’s new figures reveal.
Serge Matta, senior vice-president of comScore, notes: "Yellowpages.com’s network was one of the key beneficiaries of this strategy, since partnerships helped it secure a leading position in the market."
Yell.com, a leading UK directory enquiries service, cited a "strong online performance" in its financial report for the six months ended November 30th 2007.
Yell owns the US Yellow Book network, which comScore reveals has more than doubled its visitors in the past year.
Posted by Daniel Peden on March 20th, 2008
Natural search
The online web audience for news grew last month, new figures suggest.
According to comScore, the business/finance category of current affairs witnessed six per cent growth in February, while the general news category saw a two per cent increase during the month.
The digital world analyst’s top 50 web rankings report observes that Yahoo! Finance, AOL Money & Finance and MSN Money led the former category, while the latter sector was driven by Yahoo! News, CNN and MSNBC.
Concerns about the economy and public interest in the presidential primaries were said to be fuelling the development, which took the audience for business/finance news to 62 million visitors and the audience for general news to 107 million visitors.
The news follows a previous report from comScore which found that heavy bloggers also tend to consume larger quantities of news online than their lighter counterparts.
Meanwhile, February also saw the greetings, e-cards, flowers and gifts categories grow – a trend attributed to Valentine’s Day – while the websites of individual presidential candidates also saw an increase in visits.
Posted by Alex Postance on March 20th, 2008
Paid Search
Microsoft’s pay-per-click ad delivery programme adCenter has announced the launch of a cohesive community online space.
The new adCenter community site includes a number of user-generated features, including user profiles, blogs tailored to certain services and products and rich media components such as video interviews, training demonstrations and podcasts.
"In order to contribute to our credo of delivering world class service, we have been working diligently to deliver an online experience that enables our advertisers through a variety of interactive communication channels," says Microsoft.
Writing on the blog, the company’s Carolyn Miller notes that members of adCenter will regularly post advertiser-tailored pieces incorporating information such as feature reviews and how-to lists.
Microsoft’s pay-per-click ad delivery system followed the creation of such options by its fellow industry leaders Google and Yahoo!.
The new move is said to be an attempt to consolidate the firm’s community options into one, easily accessible space.
Posted by Malcolm Slade on March 20th, 2008
Social Media
ITV is hoping that a relaunch of its online video player will make it a serious contender against the BBC’s market leading iPlayer.
According to the Guardian, a revamped online catch-up facility is to be introduced by the network less than a year after its web TV facility was first launched.
The company will attempt to improve navigation by enabling users to search for programmes in a new way, while recommendations and the highlighting of the "most watched" shows are also to be featured.
Industry publication E-consultancy claims that there are a number of problems with ITV’s current web TV service, which was overtaken dramatically by the iPlayer despite being launched a number of months earlier.
Too much advertising can hamper the user experience, while the product is also said to be difficult to use at times.
The BBC recently conducted a redesign of its website, giving users the opportunity to customise their experience with local news and weather and alternative colour options.
Posted by Malcolm Slade on March 19th, 2008
Social Media
The social networking market is divided between two companies that are battling it out for the lead position, it has been claimed.
The new Digital World: State of the Internet report from comScore notes that MySpace and Facebook are struggling to claim the top spot as social networking becomes an increasingly popular digital pastime.
"MySpace and Facebook are in a tight battle for the global leadership position, each attracting more than 100 million visitors per month," notes the digital world analyst.
There has been a 34 per cent growth in the number of visitors to social networking sites over the past year, with the total audience now 530 million.
Facebook followed MySpace into the online community market in 2004, a year after the News Corporation owned site was founded.
Meanwhile, the report reveals that 21 per cent of web users worldwide are from the US, although growth has slowed compared to other nations in eastern Europe and Asia.
Posted by Malcolm Slade on March 19th, 2008
Natural search
People are moved to make complex purchases online because of the element of control this medium offers, it has been claimed.
Phil Gates, marketing director of Glasses Direct, told E-consultancy that the "leap of faith" required by consumers when purchasing spectacles on the web should be considered in light of the increased influence online retail offers the customer.
Mr Gates compared the shift to web-based glasses purchases to the boom witnessed by the online insurance market, observing the "faith that the public demonstrated when moving to buying insurance online not so many years ago, rather than being told what policy they should have by a broker".
Figures released this month by comScore revealed that last year saw the number of car insurance policies purchased on the internet exceed two million.
The online optician representative advised start-ups to ensure they adopt a customer-focused perspective and to manage their budget carefully.
Posted by Malcolm Slade on March 19th, 2008
Paid Search
A new partnership has been formed between a leading search engine and an online auditor in a drive to combat click fraud.
In the first such deal of its kind, Yahoo! and Click Forensics told the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York this week they would work together to cut down on the practice.
Tom Cuthbert, president and chief executive officer of Click Forensics, told the conference that click fraud was an escalating problem that needed to be addressed.
And Yahoo!’s Reggie Davis told Forbes: "We welcome the opportunity to work with anybody who can bring value to the table and help us and our advertisers drive a better return on investment."
Through the deal, advertisers will enabled to share sensitive information such as click data to assist attempts to identify low-quality traffic.
The news was revealed after Symantec discovered a click fraud Trojan aimed at Yahoo!, Google and Baidu.com.
Posted by Mike Gomez on March 18th, 2008
Natural search
Web marketers are divided about whether blogs are a useful tool for targeting consumers, a recent report observed.
An article in Internet Retailer has noted that some companies are attempting to establish relationships with bloggers, despite evidence that there is no direct link between blogs and buying habits.
Some 2.6 per cent of US shoppers research purchases using blogs, a recent study from Jupiter Research found.
However, Screenlife LLC’s director of consumer research, Tony Roscelli, told the publication that it is possible to gauge consumer demand by monitoring blog conversations.
The company has begun analysing forum chatter in collaboration with Buzz Logic.
"We can tap into these forums and really see what these people are into and build products based on that interest," Mr Roscelli said.
Meanwhile, eMarketer observes that some marketers have been deterred from pursuing blogs by the Jupiter Research study.
Pay-per-click, organic search and other strategies are deemed preferable to blog monitoring by some industry presences, the publication contends.
Posted by Daniel Peden on March 18th, 2008
Paid Search
Marketers have been advised to concentrate on writing high quality ads ahead of the upcoming change to the way minimum bids are set.
Writing on the Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog, marketing communications manager at Yahoo! Roger Park offers five tips for perfecting ads to maximise budgets and boost performance.
The Ad Performance Report can be used to track the effectiveness of ads, while strategies such as using keywords in titles and ensuring landing pages are relevant can also help, he advises.
Mr Park adds that marketers should group together relevant keywords and also use ad optimisation to automatically display the ads receiving the most clicks.
High quality ads can reach better positions for the same price and also tend to receive more clicks, he claims.
The company’s Jeff Hecox explained in a previous blog post that an auction model is now to be applied to sponsored minimum bids, which were previously fixed at $10 (£5).
Posted by David Wilding on March 18th, 2008
Social Media
The inventor of the world wide web has claimed he would leave an internet service provider (ISP) if it began tracking his activity on the internet.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee told the BBC that ISPs should not be able to monitor user habits without their consent.
He was speaking as a number of ISPs reveal their intention to use a technology from tracking company Phorm to analyse surfers’ routines in order to deliver targeted ads.
"If you want to use [my web history] for something, then you have to negotiate with me. I have to agree, I have to understand what I’m getting in return," said Sir Tim.
Kent Ertugrul, Phorm’s chief executive, told the news provider that the technology makes the web more "vibrant and interesting".
Mr Ertugrul said the firm looks forward to explaining the process in more detail to Sir Tim.
In related web technology news, Bill Gates recently told an audience at Northern Virginia Technology Council that TV is to become something "utterly different" as it merges with the internet.
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