ShopWiki.com, a comparison shopping engine founded by two DoubleClick veterans--former CEO Kevin Ryan and chief technology officer Dwight Merriman--is expected today to officially launch after being in a quiet beta period since February. The site, which includes listings from 120,000 retailers, eschews one of the standard comparison-shopping engine revenue streams--paid inclusion--and simply crawls the Web for product listings. The search function allows users to refine their search based on the product they're looking for; a search for "diamond rings" could be performed as a "diamond rings 2-4ct," and it would only return the rings with stones of that size. Likewise, searches can be refined by a price range. The wiki part of ShopWiki.com comes in guides for each category written and edited by uers. Currently the site has roughly 1,000 guides, some written by the Web-surfing public, and others written by the co-founders and their friends. Ryan, for example, authored a guide about ping-pong tables. To moderate the buying guides, ShopWiki.com employs five full-time editors who go over every user edit. "We have more editors who survey the content to make sure there's no problem, and make sure the quality is good," he said. "If we have so many people making changes that we can't handle it anymore with our editors, then that means there are so many people on the site that the community will be able to self-correct." According to Ryan, the site will be monetized through sponsored links, but not through paid placement or paid inclusion. "We will monetize similar to a Google model, which is on the right-hand side; they have clearly marked ads, but the integrity of the search results aren't violated," he explained. "Monetization as a comparison-shopping engine is not very hard--what's more targeted than someone searching for a microwave? That person is going to buy a microwave in the next 30 days."
Yahoo Tuesday reported a first quarter net income of $159.9 million, or 11 cents per diluted share--down 22 percent from $204.6 million, or 14 cents per diluted share, during the same period last year. The Web company attributed the decline to greater stock compensation costs. Yahoo said sales in the first quarter gained as advertisers steered a greater portion of their budgets online. Gross revenue rose 34 percent to $1.57 billion. Quarterly marketing services revenue was $1.381 billion, a 35 percent increase over last year's $1.025 billion. Fees revenue for the quarter was $186 million, 25 percent higher than $149 million for the same period last year. Cash flow from operating activities for the first quarter of 2006 was $445 million, a 15 percent increase compared to $386 million for the same period last year. Adjusted net income, excluding stock compensation expense, net of tax, recorded under the fair value method for the first quarter of 2006, was $231 million or $0.15 per diluted share. This compares to adjusted net income of $195 million or $0.13 per diluted share, excluding stock compensation expense, net of tax, recorded under the intrinsic value method and gains on the sale of certain investments and settlements, net of tax, for the same period of 2005. Yahoo Entertainment was its fastest-growing channel year-over-year, increasing 76 percent from a three-month average monthly unique audience of 3.3 million to 5.8 million, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Entertainment was followed by Yahoo Photos, which grew 40 percent, and Yahoo Education, which grew 36 percent in the first quarter year-over-year. Overall Web traffic to Yahoo grew eight percent in the first quarter of this year compared to last year, from a three-month average monthly unique audience of 96.5 million 104.7 million, Nielsen reported. Also on Tuesday, Yahoo said it acquired digital home software startup Meedio's technology assets, and will bring its small team of engineers in-house. The deal will likely bolster Yahoo's "Go" initiative, which is intended to expand the company's presence beyond consumers' computer screens into their living rooms and onto their mobile devices. The deal with "enable Yahoo to further its goal of extending beyond the browser and onto the connected devices throughout consumers' lives," said Yahoo spokeswoman Helena Maus in a written statement.
Search engine marketing firm Efficient Frontier next week is expected to unveil a self-service version of its paid search product. The product will be aimed at small and medium businesses that spend less than $50,000 per month on search engine marketing. The product, Efficient Frontier Express--which has been in beta testing since August with 20 of Efficient Frontier's small- and medium-sized clients--will be available for a flat monthly fee, and will allow marketers to run a campaign on Google, Yahoo, and MSN's upcoming keyword advertising system. The self-service product uses the same algorithm that Efficient Frontier's enterprise product uses, which allows marketers to select variables such as clicks, clickthrough rate, or return on investment, and then uses a predictive model to optimize keyword buys. Efficient Frontier CEO and president Ellen Siminoff said the firm had been receiving requests from smaller businesses for a cheaper alternative to their enterprise service. "We've been getting a lot of demand for a self-serve product," she said. "When you're spending $30,000 a month, ROI matters just as much when you're spending $5 million a month." Users of the self-service version will lose some of the bells and whistles that come with the enterprise product, including an account manager, and the ability to run multiple campaigns and optimize for multiple metrics.
E-mail marketing services company FreshAddress, Inc., based in Newton, Mass., intends to release data today showing that in the last year, it's been able to find e-mail addresses for between 5 and 21 percent of customer names gleaned from offline mailing lists. The study, for which FreshAddress examined 100 million customer records, marks the first time FreshAddress has attempted to quantify its success in e-mail "appending," or tying e-mail addresses to names and street addresses. The average success rate for commercial senders was 12 percent for individuals and 16 percent for households. Efforts to find new e-mail addresses for customers who had changed accounts met with an 8 percent success rate. Natalie Hahn O'Flaherty, the company's marketing director, said she believes the company--which has been in the e-mail appending business since 1999--is becoming more successful at matching offline and online information than in the past. Still, the practice remains somewhat controversial, because many consumers recoil at the idea of being sent e-mails when they haven't volunteered their e-mail addresses. O'Flaherty stressed that when FreshAddress discovers consumers' e-mail addresses, the first message it sends asks whether the recipient would like to receive more e-mail communications. Nonetheless, some consumers find unsolicited e-mail extremely offensive, said e-mail marketing expert (and MediaPost columnist) Melinda Krueger of Krueger Direct/Interactive. "You just have to be careful, because it's such an intrusive and offensive practice," she said. In February, one disgruntled consumer complained in a blog about Miller Brewing Company's e-mail appending; the entry was then picked up by popular blog site BoingBoing. "I filled out a web form for a contest from Miller using a throwaway junk e-mail address and then, months after I dumped the throwaway account, I got this to my main account! Not sure I like the idea of companies tracking me down like this," griped the consumer.
Thanks to a sustained ad market, Dow Jones on Tuesday reported a first quarter revenue rise of 9.7 percent to $452.2 million, up from $412.1 million during the same period last year. Excluding one-time year-over-year period effects, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal and its online counterpart earned $11.4 million or 14 cents per share, up from $9.5 million or 11 cent per share during the same period last year. Dow Jones Online ad revenues rose 26 percent in the first quarter year-over-year--or 15 percent pro-forma (including MarketWatch 2005 advertising revenue for the full year). Average monthly unique traffic to the free MarketWatch.com site was 5.7 million this quarter--down from 7.1 million last year. Merrill Lynch, however, was not satisfied with Dow's online ad revenue. "Results were shy of our expectations," read a Merrill report issued Tuesday. Consumer media revenue of $275.7 million in the first quarter increased 13.4 percent versus the same period a year ago, on a 17.8 percent increase in ad revenue and a 5.1 percent gain in circulation and other revenue. The Journal did increase its paid subscriber base from 731,000 to 761,000, even though subscriptions were off from their peak of 768,000 late last year. Dow's recently appointed CEO Rich Zannino said in the earnings report that broad organizational changes were well under way. "Our new organizational structure and leadership team, announced in February, is up and running," said Zannino. "This was the first step in transforming Dow Jones from a channel-focused publishing company to a franchise, market, and customer-focused media company." Dow Jones is expecting second-quarter profit per share in the 30 cents-per-share range--excluding one-time effects--below analyst estimates of 38 cents.