Google launches Adsense for Games

Google is always on the lookout for how to keep on increasing its ad portfolio. Getting ads into more and more platforms, into different devices, and accordingly getting a higher amount of revenue is what Google has always been interested in. Its corporate acquisition program has also been geared towards this effort, buying more and more companies that it believes can help it in its ad serving platform.
The popularity of online Flash based games has been soaring over the last few years, with usage figures soaring. For a long time, there was a feeling that Google will jump into this space, and the acquisition of Adscape Media in 2007 increased this feeling into a near certainty. The ongoing Beta by Google in this space, involving some of the Game developers since earlier this year made the intention clear:

More than a year in the works, Google finally launched its in-game advertising platform Wednesday. Called AdSense for Games, the platform will offer advertisers access to millions of Web-based Flash games. The in-game advertising market is small. The games industry scored only $1 billion from advertising and subscriptions in 2007, according to research firm Parks Associates. Google's entry is expected to make it explode.
Google's new ad platform, which grew out of its 2007 acquisition of Adscape Media, has operated in beta since early 2008. Game developers like Konami, Playfish and Zynga participated in the beta, but now other developers and publishers will also be able to apply to the program. The most prevalent ads throughout the company's beta test were short video spots from Esurance, but the network will also provide contextual and text ads.

Some of the success stories from developers using Adsense for Games has made the likely success of Adsense for Games more of a certainty, and is likely to increase the space between Google and its competitors in the Ad space.

Microsoft ropes in Seinfeld to bring more zest to advertising

The Windows Operating System is a massive money-earner for Microsoft; together with Microsoft Office, the software earns a huge portion of the total revenues for Microsoft. However, it has been 2 decades now since Microsoft rolled out the Windows brand and took a commanding share of the computer desktop software market. Users are slowly getting tired of this brand name, and seeking a cooler alternative, are latching onto the Mac platform in bigger numbers (they have not moved on in very high figures, but even a percentage decrease in Windows sales would be worrying for Microsoft). Another section of users have got introduced to the Mac through the Mac option of being able to load both the Mac and Windows on the same Mac machine; and there would be a number of such users who would find the Mac software more compelling (and of course, there are a number of Ads that show Mac users as cool, while Windows users are shown as nerdy). So what does Microsoft do ? It recruits Seinfeld to star in some ads designed to bring a cool look to the Windows platform:

Microsoft Corp., weary of being cast as a stodgy oldster by Apple Inc.'s advertising, is turning for help to Jerry Seinfeld. The software giant's new $300 million advertising campaign, devised by a newly hired ad agency, has been closely guarded. But Seinfeld will be one of the key celebrity pitchmen, say people close to the situation. He will appear with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates in ads and receive about $10 million for the work, they say.
The attempted image overhaul comes as Microsoft executives privately acknowledge that Windows - the company's most important brand - has grown stale and has been battered by Apple's “Mac vs. PC” ads. Microsoft's immediate goal is to reverse the negative public perception of Windows Vista, the latest version of the company's personal-computer operating system.

The company must be really worried. Normally, the Mac has always been derided by Microsoft, and not worthy of attention; so the campaign to hire a popular comedian (even though his shows stopped production in 1998) along with a new Ad agency smacks of an effort to try and get back some freshness, some new enthusiasm among its market base.

Facebook forced to reverse plans on Beacon

It seems so logical a business plan; you create a social networking site. Put in effort, put in a lot of useful features, and you start to get a lot of good publicity. People start pouring in, and you start salivating about how to use these large number of people. You get the perfect method, based on advertising. Everything seems fine, and then suddenly there is a large amount of uproar about the loss of privacy implied in this feature, and reluctantly, you have to withdraw the feature. And this is exactly what Facebook had to do over the 'Beacon' feature it introduced.

Facebook is giving members of its social network the ability to completely decline participating in the company's controversial Beacon ad system, a reaction to intense criticism that Beacon is too intrusive and compromises people's privacy. Beacon, part of the company's new ad platform, tracks certain actions of Facebook users on some external sites, like Blockbuster and Fandango, in order to report those actions back to users' Facebook friends network.
The idea is to generate advertising that is more effective because it is intricately combined with people's social circle, so that products and services are promoted in a more organic way via the actions of friends and family.

In this case, the analysis found that Beacon gathered a web of data about the activities of the user even under certain circumstances. For example, Beacon tracks users even if they are logged off from the social-networking site and have declined having their activities broadcast to friends. Beacon captures detailed data including for users who have never signed up to Facebook (but who are transacting on partner sites) or have deactivated their accounts.
Facebook went too far in terms of gathering and using data; however, this is also an example of how even the most fervent supporters can turn against you if they feel that they are being exploited - a sort of warning to developers of such sites.

The first Apple crazie start lining up 100 hours before iPhone release

Ever since the news of the iPhone was released, there has been a constant chatter about the features, about the geekness, about the wizardry, about the user convenience and so on. The impending release of the iPhone on the 29th, this Friday afternoon has been one of the most awaited events in the tech calendar this year. Apple has hardly had to do any publicity, but even they would not have expected this kind of positive publicity; people always queue up before the release of a major much awaited product, whether that be the new Harry Potter book, or a new gaming console. People have even been known to queue up for a new Operating System.
But this one takes absolutely the pits; for just a phone plus a few other things embedded in it, people are queuing up 100 hours before the release ( a full 4 days to go).

For an Apple devotee, queuing for three and a half days in the baking heat to be the first to get their hands on an iPhone is nothing. And that is exactly what a group of dedicated Apple fans is doing. Outside the company’s flagship store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, they have set up camp, and – flopped on deckchairs and writing blogs – are whiling away the time until the new device goes on sale at 6pm on Friday.
When asked how they would cope with the 34C temperatures and severe storms that are predicted in New York for tomorrow, both replied: “We’ll deal with it.

This would seem might strange to a number of iPhone devotees, but it is just a phone slapped onto am iPod; is this worth spending 3 plus days waiting in bad weather? I wouldn't think so. And it is not even a very cheap phone, along with a service plan, it costs a minimum of $500.
Apple wouldn't mid at all. This is all free publicity, and is sure to get more people convinced that this is a new device that must be great.

iPhone data plans out

As the time period for the release of the iPhone on Friday evening rolls out, the Apple PR machine cranks out on full speed, releasing articles one after the other. So here's the latest update, the data plans for the iPhone have been released, with the lowest one starting just below $60, instead at $59.99 per month.
There are essentially 3 data plans that have been released, with each plan offering unlimited data, offering 200 text messages, mobile-to-mobile calling and a new service, visual voicemail. These plans do not offer much variety, with $59.99 plan offering 450 minutes, the $79.99 plan for 900 minutes and the $99.99 plan valid for 1,350 minutes. The plan is for a 2-year service agreement, with a one-time activation charge of $36. In addition, the users need to have an iTunes account as well.
Visual voicemail is like email, and the user can review all the email that they have, and select the one they want to hear. Apple is expecting sales of 10 million devices by the end of next year, which is a fairly high expectation. It offers the user a great device, combing a great phone with internet access and the quality of an iPod. However, it is expensive, so there is some amount of doubt over whether Apple can meet the target. If for some reason, the phone under-sells, it will hit AT & T and Apple pretty hard.

Microsoft buys ad company for $6 billion

Microsoft must have been feeling left out after recent advertising-related acquisitions by Google and Yahoo, hence it finally went ahead and bought an agency for internet ads, aQuantive Inc, for the large sum of 6 billion dollars. The cost of the acquisition shows the current heated nature of the ad market, and also the feeling that it should not be left behind by Google in this market. There are not that many leading companies available now, and the remaining ones will carry an additional premium.
Refer this article:

Microsoft Corp., not wanting to get left behind rivals in an online advertising boom, agreed to pay $6 billion in cash to acquire aQuantive Inc. on Friday, a leading agency for Internet ads which also has powerful technology that serves display and banner ads to other Web sites.
The eye-popping premium of 85 percent Microsoft is paying for aQuantive reflects a heated race for the few remaining online advertising businesses, as media and technology companies jockey for position in the Internet advertising market.
The deal caps a month of furious activity in the sector which began in mid-April with Google Inc.'s $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick Inc., a company that provides technology used by Web site publishers to deliver advertisements to viewers.

One wonders about how much the premium paid by Microsoft was due to ensuring that they are not getting left behind by Google in the race for advertising. Google is the unquestioned world leader in the advertising and search markets, and Microsoft is making a determined effort to challenge this supremacy, although they have a long way to go.

For Microsoft, getting aQuantive could jump-start its online advertising business, which lags far behind Google and Yahoo Inc. due to the lower traffic on its own destination Web site, MSN. The deal "certainly keeps them in the competitive arena with Google," A.G. Edwards analyst Denise Garcia says.
aQuantive's technology will allow Microsoft to deliver ads to third-party Web sites, something that should mesh with Microsoft's existing plans for delivering ads onto other platforms such as video games on its XBox, which connects to the Internet. Microsoft currently delivers ads mostly to its own Web sites, such as MSN.

Google has a stranglehold on this market, with the capability to deliver ads easily to third party websites. And Google provides an easy way for third party publishers such as blogs to post Google ads on their sites, and make money out of that, effectively turning all these people into promoting the Google ad network. In fact, if you take a look at a lot of websites in the online world, you will mostly see 'Ads by Google' in them somewhere.
Analysts are not sure about the returns from this deal, given that it is an expensive deal, but maybe there were not too many options available with Microsoft, given that it was unable to push its own network too much.

Google upgrades its search engine

What do you get when you search in google for something ? You get a page of search results in text format, although when searching for an image, you can do an image search that shows you resulting images matching your search pattern. However, would it really not be good if you could get a composite search result, for example, when searching for a public figure, you get text searches, images and videos (from Youtube), all in the same search ? Well, this is going to be the next reality of Google search. In a presentation to press and analysts, Google presented a revamped search that integrates news, pictures, videos along with the regular text search. One side benefit of this is that advertisements on the search page could be made better looking and richer. Refer this article from MSNBC:

Google announced a significant upgrade to its core search engine on Wednesday, promising a richer multi-media experience for users and pointing the way to increased business with advertisers, the source of 99 per cent of its revenues.
Other examples included a search for Steve Jobs, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple, that produced pictures, video and news from Google Images, Video and News along with the regular text links.
"The move potentially should be a huge boon for searchers, while search marketers who have paid attention to the importance of specialised or vertical search will see new opportunities," said Mr Sullivan in a blog note.

This entire news has been touted as something incredible and that will make the searches more user-friendly in terms of results. However, and this is a point that all of them may be missing; people were attracted to Google in the beginning because of the simplicity of its search results, and the fact that Google has never let any kind of clutter come in the way.
In fact, as per a number of interviews, the founders of Google rejected the concept of showing ads other than plain text because that would detract from the users search results. If they now give up that concept (and maybe buckle down to advertise needs), and if they screw up their implementation by making it very heavy or confusing, they will turn away a number of their users.

Yahoo buys Right Media for $680M

After Google bought DoubleClick very recently, Yahoo must be feeling left out, and maybe behind in the chase for advertising supremacy. Hence, this deal.
Yahoo bought RightMedia, an online advertising exchange, using a combination of cash and stock for $680 million. In October 2006, it had earlier bought 20% of the company, and now plans to purchase the remaining equity.
RightMedia is an interactive advertising exchange, having more than 20,000 buyers and sellers who use its services daily. This web based exchange allows buyers and sellers to do deals regarding placement of online ads.

Google's acquisition of Doubleclick worrying privacy advocates

The practise of using cookies to store information has always worried people worried about their privacy. Even in the matter of a search engine, Google's saving of user searches has worried people in the past, and Google announced in March of this year that they would take steps to drop such information from their servers after a period of time.
However, with Google buying DoubleClick, these privacy concerns are causing more worry. When DoubleClick was at its prime, there were regular accusations that it was not very concerned about users privacy and shared this information with its advertisers.
Google bought DoubleClick primarily to take advantage of its knowledge and market related to banner ads. DoubleClick has built a network that serves banner ads and then tracks user activities through cookies, leveraging this information to better server its advertiser. Now that Google has bought this, it brings DoubleClick's abilities into much stronger limelight.
Google has a corporate slogan about 'Do no evil'. However, it has a business about monetising its search, and in order to provide a good service to advertisers, it has to better track its customer profile and their activities, thus bring them into conflict with privacy advocates. This battle is only going to grow, and is guaranteed to not reflect positively on Google.

Advertising on web overtakes newspaper ad spend

Another milestone in the all-conquering march of the internet. The BBC reported that, for 2006, for the first time ever, spending in the UK on internet advertising increased rapidly, overtaking newspaper ad spending that grew much more slowly.
As per a report by the Internet Advertising Bureau and Price Waterhouse Coopers, online ad spending jumped 41.2% to pounds 2.01 billion while spending on newspapers grew just 0.7% to pounds 1.9 billion, itself conveying a strong message about the future. Internet advertising is still below TV advertising which is at pounds 3.9 billion, but the fact that TV advertising fell 4.7% essentially depicts that internet advertising is on a string growth mode, and this growth is coming at the expense of the other traditional mediums.
The most advertising is on recruitment followed by finance and technology, which are areas where the most advanced set of users will typically be. But as internet and broadband proliferates, and more and more people get computer savvy, and more important, spend more time on the internet and mobile devices, advertising on these media will keep on growing at a pretty fast rate.