Despite its strong brand awareness and deep pockets to pursue the litigation, American Airlines faces an uphill battle in its suit seeking damages from Google for allowing rivals to buy keyword ads triggered by its own trademarks. The suit, which was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Fort Worth, seeks unspecified damages from Google for allowing visitors who enter trademarked phrases such as its frequent-flyer program name "Aadvantage" or "AA.com" to see rival "sponsored links." Google has already triumphed in at least two separate lawsuits on this issue. In a case brought by Geico, a federal judge found after trial that there was no proof consumers were confused by such ads--long the hallmark of federal trademark infringement. Google also won a case brought by Rescuecom; that case is now being appealed to the Second Circuit. American Blinds has a similar case pending. "We are confident that our trademark policy strikes a proper balance between trademark owners' interests and consumer choice, and that our position has been validated by decisions in previous trademark cases," Google said in a statement. Lead counsel for American Airlines is Terence Ross of Gibson Dunn DC, who has lost previous lawsuits for clients Wells Fargo and 1-800-Contacts that he brought against adware companies. Professor Eric Goldman, who runs the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law, says it was risky for American Airlines to file the suit--which he predicts will be hard-fought and expensive if it goes to trial. On his blog, Goldman says lawsuits over consumer "diversion" often cost more than the lost profits from the allegedly diverted consumers. "In this case, I wonder how many consumers pick an American Airlines competitor instead of American Airlines solely due to keyword advertising. After all, American Airlines has a loyalty program that inhibits brand switching of its most loyal customers, and very good comparison sites like Orbitz encourage comparison shopping if that's what consumers want. Given those factors, I wonder how much keyword advertising contributes to bona fide 'diversion'," Goldman blogged. "It's not in Google's nature to retaliate this way," he added, "but I wonder what would happen if Google decided to cut off keyword advertising for American Airlines?" On Friday, American Airlines issued an official statement saying it supports Google's overall business model and "values the importance of the Internet and the convenience that companies such as Google create for consumers around the globe. "In working through this business dispute," the statement continued, "American is hopeful that it will continue professional, friendly and fruitful relationships with Google, while finding an appropriate resolution to the trademark issues ... American wants to make it clear that its dispute does not seek to prevent the display of search results that reflect consumers' interests or choices." The state of Utah has moved to ban allowing competitors to purchase keywords on trademarks, even though the federal courts have given the nod to the practice. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and others have come out strongly in favor of allowing trademarks to trigger paid search links, arguing that such ads benefit consumers. On Sunday afternoon, Google searches for "AA.com" produced the American Airlines Web site as well as sponsored links for cheapoair.com and cheapair-fareis.com. A search for "AAdvantage," the airline's frequent-flyer program, yielded one sponsored link for "CompareCards.com."
SEMDirector has rolled out new versions of Organic Insight and Paid Insight--two of its automated search reporting and management tools that are geared toward enterprise-level businesses. The San Jose-based search marketing tech and service firm announced the upgrades at the 2007 Search Engine Strategies conference today, highlighting tweaks to the applications' interfaces, auditing capabilities, and reporting features. The upgraded Paid Insight tool aggregates data from across all a company's search marketing activities--including search engines, Web analytics tools and bid management systems--to provide a comprehensive view of the efficacy of their paid search efforts. The application provides macro details of search performance for a brand or company overall, analyzing campaigns according to client-specified benchmarks and time periods. Paid Insight also supplies real-time comparisons of paid and organic search results that allow for swift bid changes and swaps--all in a single dashboard. "Paid Insight ties costs to actual value metrics, so people with budgetary responsibility can see what they're spending and where they should be spending to get the best results," said David Flesh, senior director of product management, SEMDirector. "At the same time, there's the flexibility to view bids, analytics and algorithmic changes--allowing someone to make actual tradeoff decisions between paid and organic keywords, and campaigns." To shore up a client's organic search results, SEMDirector's Organic Insight software automates the Web site auditing process. The tool helps companies ensure that every Web page in their inventory complies with SEO best practices by comparing them using a single, proprietary metric called Audit Score. SEMDirector's Audit Score ranks Web pages according to their tech configuration, the quality of their content, and an analysis of links--much like the ranking methodologies used by search engines themselves. Organic Insight finds and reports errors via a dashboard, and like Paid Insight, offers multiple levels of fact reporting. "With Organic Insight, brand managers and execs can compare site traffic and ranking across hundreds of brands, while SEO professionals can view detailed, page-level audit results," said Flesh. "But on every level, clients have been able to correlate improvements in their SEMDirector Audit Score to improvements in page rankings, across their particular industry and their SEO as a whole." Paid and organic search data that ranges from views of the industry-at-large to granular keyword details has become increasingly valuable as advertisers begin to integrate search insights into their overall marketing plans. "Being able to provide visibility into how search terms are impacting performance through all phases of the sales cycle, from research to purchase--and how they fit into the optimal media mix--can instill a more accurate perception of a campaign's ROI," said Flesh. "Clients often ask us about how to clearly identify the way search campaigns are driving performance on- and offline." Some clients will leverage the tools in a complete search marketing management solution, part of SEMDirector's Marketing Action Platform--working with SEMDirector reps to track, analyze and act on the data. But Organic Insight and Paid Insight are also both available as stand-alone applications that clients and agency partners can incorporate into their existing search marketing strategies.
Finance company Media Rights Capital has partnered with "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane and teen star Raven-Symone to create original content. What makes the deal different is its distribution strategy, which employs Google's AdSense network to package the video content along with banner and online video advertising. MacFarlane has agreed to create 50 animated shorts, which will be distributed to various Web sites across the AdSense network beginning next year. The $10 million content deal also includes a series of Martha Stewart-esque "how-to" segments being developed by Raven-Symone of the Disney Channel's "That's So Raven" fame. "Google's AdSense network is one of many avenues publishers should be pursuing and experimenting with," said Gartner Research analyst Mike McGuire. Google did a similar distribution deal a year ago with Viacom's MTV Networks--before Google acquired YouTube and subsequently clashed with Viacom over copyright issues, agreeing to let Web publishers place Viacom-owned video clips on their pages. Using AdSense's sophisticated technology to match ads on videos with receptive viewers, the initiative was intended to establish the AdSense network as a viable platform for video programmers. Viacom had been expected to receive more than two-thirds of the ad revenue from the deal, according to reports at the time. Syndication has since emerged as the preferred strategy of media companies and content owners to achieve audiences of scale. Added McGuire: "It represents an important shift in the mindset of media companies. They're struggling to achieve the audiences of scale that used to come naturally from TV."
Almost 10% of searchers at Ask.com now choose to refine their queries through "Search Suggestions," one of the upgrades bundled into the search engine's user interface overhaul two months ago. Based on what comScore reported as more than 51 million unique visitors in July, over 5 million people--or about 3% of the total online population--let "Search Suggestions" suggest a relevant search phrase or a better way of spelling their keywords. According to Daniel Read, Ask's vice president of site product management and user experience, the company has been "blown away by the numbers" of users that have taken to Ask 3D. The site also includes a "Zoom Related" search, allowing users to change the emphasis of their queries without having to start from scratch. A "Binoculars" feature gives searchers a snapshot of their search results' Web pages before they navigate to them. Although the company declined to provide specifics on the actual number of post-revamp searches, comScore's data shows that traffic to Ask jumped by more than 2 million unique visitors from May to June (the month of the rollout.) As both advertising and casual curiosity waned in July, Ask's traffic dipped slightly (from just over 52 million to 51.8 million uniques), but in the two months since the algorithm's overhaul, traffic has been the highest it's been all year. Ask fared well in the University of Michigan's recent annual American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) report, as user satisfaction grew from a rating of 71 (out of 100) last year, to 75 in 2007. The four-point increase contrasted with slips in satisfaction for Google, MSN and AOL--and for the category as a whole. According to Read, the increase stemmed from Ask's focus on "customer satisfaction as our top goal," with the key performance indicators of increased queries, user retention, and revenue per search coming afterward. With the company now guided by feedback from extensive consumer tests, "we're looking forward to even better results in 2008," said Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone. The company intends to continue investing in search technology and personnel, rolling out new options like the ability to customize its front page with an image or "skin." While throwing features like videos, extra panels and customization onto the typically clean search interface was a risky move, Ask's willingness to make highly visible changes seems to be working in its favor. According to Larry Freed, author of the ACSI report and president of ForeSee Results, the interface serves as proof to users that there is innovation at Ask--a point of differentiation as it battles with MSN (and to a much lesser extent Google and Yahoo) for its share of the search marketplace. "An additional three or four points in market share and we might even double in size," added Read. Overtaking MSN's Live Search for the third spot "would be huge," said Read. "That's the thing about being the littlest big guy in the market--we can grow market share significantly in the short to medium term."
CBS has partnered with Verizon Wireless to stream live footage from the eighth season of its "Big Brother" reality series to V-Cast Mobile TV subscribers. MediaFLO, a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm, is also on board as a distribution partner. Through September, CBS plans to stream hundreds of hours of live programming from the Big Brother house to viewers. Intent on fleshing out a robust mobile strategy, CBS earlier this year established a CBS Mobile division within CBS Interactive. Led by Cyriac Roeding, who said CBS Mobile is "about innovation and creating truly made-for-mobile experiences," the arm is focused on expanding the network's mobile operations across CBS Entertainment, Sports and News. The Big Brother mobile channel will supplement regular programming from CBS Mobile, which is one of eight stations available on V-Cast's service. The others include Comedy Central, ESPN Mobile, FOX Mobile, and NBC 2Go. CBS has previously worked with both MediaFlo and Verizon's V-Cast, as well as with Amp'd Mobile and Cingular. It has also delivered mobile video breaking news alerts for CBS News and text-message voting for such shows as the Emmy Awards. Verizon's V-Cast Mobile TV is live in more than 30 markets from coast to coast, including Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia.
Digital and direct services accounted for $1.3 billion--or 23%--of WPP Group's revenues in the first half of 2007, and Chief Executive Sir Martin Sorrell said he'd like the share to increase to a third of all revenues. Working toward that goal, of course, WPP recently acquired 24/7 Real Media. To arrive at the $1.3 billion/23% figure, Sorrell used what he termed a "wide definition" of digital and interactive services that includes total revenue coming into the group's Direct/Digital Networks from all sources, rather than just direct. WPP's Direct/Digital Networks -- which include Ogilvy One, Wunderman, rmg:connect and G2 -- thus had revenues of $997 million, or 18% of total WPP revenues, as opposed to $284 million, or 5% under the narrower formula. The remainder of WPP's digital revenues came from Information, Insight & Consulting companies (Millward Brown, RI and Lightspeed) with $170 million, Group M with $113 million, and other sources with $54 million. One area not included, even in the "wide definition," was public relations -- which Sorrell noted is "one of our highest growth areas," helped along by the growth of social networks that "have reconfirmed the power of editorial publicity over paid-for publicity."
You know that old philosophical question--if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, I started thinking about that as it applies to the explosion of Web and cell phone-based user-generated content (UGC). Who will watch the billions of videos being posted? When you take out the extraordinary amount of content on the "user-generated" sites that is really stuff caught on TiVo, will anyone really care to watch the stuff that "users" actually make? My first posit is that when you go beyond the "pirated" TV and movie content that exists on UGC sites, the next category is "almost TV." Content that the creators want to broadcast but which TV won't "pick-up." As an example, I read an article the other day about two guys who started glacier calving surfing. This is when you go to the base of a glacier, wait for it to calve, and then surf the resulting wave from a massive sheet of ice dropping into the water. Their exploits are readily available as a series on YouTube and other video sites. That type of UGC is a fantastic use of the medium. But that type of content is still created by a relatively minute percentage of the "user" public. Let's leave aside how few people can actually glacier surf because one man's glacier surfing is another man's how to make a cabinet, and so on. The point is that those videos are clearly shot with some very professional video equipment and involve quite a bit of editing and effects. Although I don't know those two brave souls, I imagine their dream is to be on the National Geographic Channel or the History Channel and become the next "Ice Road Truckers." That isn't content that Everyman is going to create. I am well aware of the argument that each of us has something we really like doing and are good at it and someone will want to watch. Yes, true, but only to a point. Just as all of us who take pictures don't publish postcards, all of us who enjoy cooking or dancing or glacier surfing won't be inclined to devote the time and energy to make a video series about our exploits. If that is all that UGC becomes--decently produced hobby series, upstart comedians and the occasional "caught on camera" expose of celebrities behaving badly--more power to the medium. Basically, we use Web UGC to go from 500 channels on TV to 500,000 on-demand channels. But is there another level? What about the 5 billion channel on-demand system? If all of us start capturing and posting videos of relatively low production value and presumably of little "broader" interest, who will be there to watch? The answer to that question is in the phrase "of little broader interest." That isn't a problem as much as a positioning statement. True UGC--defined now as the stuff we all post, on the fly, in whatever "grainy" quality we shoot with our unstable hands and cell phone cameras and camcorders--will succeed as part of something JuiceCaster calls Social Broadcasting. We define Social Broadcasting as sharing the content you care about with the people who care about you. Videos of me singing Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler" at 2 a.m. at some bar in Hermosa Beach are only rolling-on-the-floor hilarious to the people who really know me well. The people who know that I am basically never up at 2 a.m., never at a bar, and never sing. That concept is social broadcasting. Sharing your videos with the people you know. Those people will care. While the core of social broadcasting is socializing with the people you know through videos, social broadcasting does expand out in concentric circles. The video of me singing is funny to my friends. One of my friends may have a friend who always does karaoke, but does not know me, but will find that video funny 'cause he just did karaoke to the same song I did, and so my video will expand outward. Perchance my singing video (or one in a million other such videos) might just have crossover appeal to the people at large. Maybe it's that funny or interested or thought-provoking that my friends and friends of friends soon become the "world" looking at my video. So, to answer the open question--yes, people will watch true UGC. Maybe just one person, maybe five, maybe fifty and maybe five million. But the sustainable basis for true UGC to exist, particularly in a "right now" medium like the cell phone, is the emergent notion of social broadcasting. Your videos to the people you know.