| Friday, Jul 15, 2005 |
What's inside:
Today's Online News
1. AOL Extends Live 8 On-Demand by Gavin O'Malley
2. Nestea Pursues Branded Entertainment by Gavin O'Malley
3. SuperPages.com Redesigns, Mimics Google, Yahoo! by Shankar Gupta
4. Online Gaming Network Files For IPO by Wendy Davis
News Briefs
5. Click Fraud Lawsuit Sent Back To State Court
6. WashingtonPost.com Tailors Home Page By ZIP Code
Today's News
1. AOL Extends Live 8 On-Demand
by Gavin O'Malley
Riding the successful wave of its Live 8 coverage, America Online on Thursday said it was extending on-demand availablilty of the event by three weeks until Sept. 5. Also, having already made headlines for trouncing Live 8's TV coverage, AOL reported that its music site has now drawn over 8.5 million unique visitors, and recorded over 25 million on-demand content plays, since Live 8 streamed live on July 2.
Five million unique users visited AOL Music on the day of the event, compared to a combined average of 2.2 million viewers who watched the event from noon to 8 p.m. on MTV and VH1--according to Nielsen Media Research--and an average of 2.9 million viewers who caught ABC's coverage during primetime.
But some analysts aren't sure that AOL can sustain such strong traffic, or parlay it into ad dollars. "They delivered the goods, they did a good job, but it will really be something if they can hold on to some of that audience," said David Card, Jupiter Research analyst, referring to AOL's Live 8 coverage.
For perspective, Card mentioned as-yet-unpublished Jupiter numbers, which position AOL's properties leading most other Web properties in terms of viewership, but fourth in terms of ad revenue. "That tells me that AOL isn't getting their fare share," Card concluded.
AOL and Yahoo! currently are neck-and-neck in the race to dominate the online music space. AOL Music drew a unique audience of approximately 12.19 million visitors for the week ending May 29, while Yahoo! Music garnered approximately 11.33 million, according to the eMarketer report, "Online Music: Downloads, Streaming, Radio, Mobile," which cited data provided by Nielsen//NetRatings.
2. Nestea Pursues Branded Entertainment
by Gavin O'Malley
Rather than just latch onto any of the Web's existing content to promote its new beverage, Nestea this week launched its own sensory-overloaded Web environment to attract 12-to-24-year-old males. JUXT Interactive, Nestea's creative partner of about two years, created the site, NESTEAICE.com, which incorporates original music videos, a design pallet on which to design T-shirts, and a mix of other novelties meant to engage visitors for as long as possible.
Visitors are directed to "ICE 'N Stories," the first two in a series of vignettes about a wannabe rapper puppet, Ice 'N, made entirely of fake ice cubes. The site also includes a candid-camera style short film starring El Yielazo, an offbeat wrestler whose mission is to rid the world of 'hotness' by targeting unsuspecting Nestea Ice drinkers.
"We wanted something that would take on a life of its own and maximize the viral potential of the Web," Mel Clements, Nestea's interactive marketing manager, said.
The site is part of a larger marketing effort that will include more traditional methods, which launch later in the summer. Since the site launch in late June it has attracted about 2,200 unique visitors per day, a number that Clements is happy with but expects will increase significantly when Nestea's online adverting begins appearing around the Web. "That traffic is just from word-of-mouth and blogs, which we think is very impressive," Clements said.
The site is representative of a larger shift occurring in the world of advertising, according to Todd Purgason, creative director at JUXT Interactive. "People are having to get a lot more creative now in very Web-centric way, because even the agencies who have a lot of awards sitting on their shelves aren't as familiar with the Web as they should be," Purgason explained.
What does Purgason consider the realty important rules of thumb when advertising online? "The Web is an interpersonal communication tool, where cultural differences have to be respected," he said. "You're not just entertaining, but trying to connect with people and trying to become part of their online culture."
3. SuperPages.com Redesigns, Mimics Google, Yahoo!
by Shankar Gupta
In an effort to compete in the growing local search market, SuperPages.com this week has completed a set of redesigns and upgrades that make the site look and feel more like a search engine such as Google Local or Yahoo! Local.
Among other changes, the search fields were simplified and relocated to the top of the homepage, while tabs were added for searches in merchandise, eBay auctions, and Web pages. On the advertising side, SuperPages is also beginning to incorporate formats pioneered by search engines. It already includes pay-per-click search ads, and will incorporate pay-per-call ads by the end of the summer, according to Robyn Rose, SuperPages.com's director of product and channel marketing.
"We are in many ways taking the aspects that we admire in search engines and adding them into our site from a user perspective, in the same way that search engines are adding things from IYPs [Internet Yellow Pages] that they like," Rose said.
Overall, SuperPages.com accounts for .02 percent of total U.S. Internet visits, while Yahoo!'s local search product .31 percent of U.S. Internet visits; Google Local, a newcomer, which grew 464 percent in the last six months, now captures .007 percent of total U.S. Internet visits. In the last six months, SuperPages.com has increased its total Internet market share by 86 percent -- part of which might be due to the addition of several traffic partners that had been taken offline for evaluation, according to a spokeswoman.
Kelsey Group analyst Greg Sterling said local search engines like Google Local and Yahoo! Local have conditioned users to expect a certain degree of ease of use, and now Internet Yellow Pages is working to catch up to that standard. "Google and Yahoo! and other search engines have really conditioned user expectations from a usability standpoint," he said. "[Internet Yellow Pages] didn't meet the ease of use standard that was established in the wake of the rise of Google and Yahoo!"
Sterling added that while Internet Yellow Pages like SuperPages.com competes with local search engines, they also offer their advertisers different services. While local search engines deliver high volumes of traffic, IYPs deliver users who are further along in the buying process, and more ready to make a final purchase decision. "There's room for both of them in the market, there's definitely some competitive issues there, but I don't think it ends up with one clearly winning and the other clearly not winning," he said.
4. Online Gaming Network Files For IPO
by Wendy Davis
The boom in Internet advertising has spurred online gaming network IGN Entertainment, Inc. to file this week for an initial public offering of up to $200 million in common stock. IGN operates a variety of online gaming sites, in addition to the entertainment sites Rotten Tomatoes and IGN FilmForce, and male lifestyle site AskMen.com.
In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, IGN reported unaudited ad revenue of $9.45 million for the quarter ending March 31--almost twice the company's $5.014 million in ad revenue for the first quarter of 2004. Revenue from subscriptions and services reached $4.293 million in the first three months of the year, amounting to 31 percent of the company's total revenue, up from 23 percent for the whole of 2004. Despite the spike in subscriptions, IGN stated it anticipates that ad dollars will "continue to represent the substantial majority" of total revenue.
While the preliminary prospectus indicates revenues are rising, the company has never been profitable. "We have a history of losses, and, even with the proceeds from this offering, we may not have sufficient cash to achieve profitability," reads the document. As of March 31, IGN had a total deficit of $23.3 million, including a net loss of 3.4 million during the first quarter.
The SEC filing also outlined details of recent key acquisitions. The company paid $13.5 million in May for AskMen.com, and agreed to pay $7.8 million for its July 2004 purchase of movie site Rotten Tomatoes.
IGN previously went public in March 2000, then was taken private in a deal led by investor group Great Hill Partners, LLC.
News Briefs
5. Click Fraud Lawsuit Sent Back To State Court
Leading search engines, including Google and Yahoo!, lost a round in court this week when a federal judge in Texarkana, Arkansas ruled that a click- fraud lawsuit belonged in state court. The complainant, Lane's Gifts and Collectibles, originally filed the matter in an Arkansas state court in February; Lane's Gifts also is seeking class action status. The search engines asked the federal court to take jurisdiction over the case but, on Monday, a federal judge ordered the matter returned to state court.
-- Wendy Davis
6. WashingtonPost.com Tailors Home Page By ZIP Code
WashingtonPost.com Thursday announced it will launch two distinct home pages for national/international and local users. The decision is in response to user studies that showed local and national/international users often have varied preferences for top news when accessing the site through its home page.
-- Gavin O'Malley
Friday, Jul 15, 2005
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