FOXSports.com has begun relying on Unica NetInsight OnDemand to analyze site visitor behavior and create relevant marketing programs. The sports Web property on MSN began running the software as a service (SaaS) platform this month in parallel with its prior analytics platform, HBX. Kevin Keane, VP of marketing resource management at Unica, says FOXSports.com will phase out the platform Omniture acquired from Visual Science by the end of this month and begin relying solely on NetInsight OnDemand. Unica NetInsight's "soft-tagging" technology lets FOXSports.com remain flexible when analyzing site visits, while reducing the cost of maintaining and re-tagging pages. NetInsight's "drill anywhere" capability gives FOXSports.com the ability to understand the information visitors seek when coming to the Web site to look for games or sports information. The platform is available for both on demand as a hosted service stored on servers at another location, or on premise at the customer's location. Self-service capabilities built on an open data architecture allow marketers to analyze visitor behavior. Keane believes that Unica has developed a method to put less code on the page, and the ability to merge more information through an administrative interface in the platform rather than extract the information, merge and mix the data, and then import it again. Along with the visitor's behavioral information, demographic data stored on registered users that play online video games and fantasy sports provide FOXSports.com with additional metrics to target site visitors. Data from email campaigns can also be added. Web analytics to track and monitor site traffic has increased in popularity lately. The U.S. government has also recognized the importance of using the data to improve the content and navigation of Web sites. U.S. officials acknowledge that cookies and tags allow a greater level of accuracy in measuring unique visitors by being able to look at returning visitors to see what content is important. While there are no restrictions for companies deploying Web site analytics, the Obama administration may soon call for changes when it comes to government-owned Web sites. On the White House blog Tuesday, the Office of Management and Budget associate administrator for information and regulatory affairs wrote that cookies -- a small piece of browser software that tracks and authenticates Web viewing activities by users -- present a challenge for the government. It's not clear from the post what steps the U.S. government will take in the future, except that it is "reexamining the cookie policy as part of this Open Government Initiative" to find a balance between citizen privacy and the "benefits of persistent cookies."
Microsoft continues to grow shares of Internet searches for a second straight week after introducing its new search engine Bing, comScore reports Wednesday. Search share results in the United States rose to 12.1% between June 8 and 12 -- up from 11.3% between June 1 and 5, and up from 9.1% during the week prior to the engine's launch. Bing began rolling out on June 1, but was not fully in the public domain until days later. Global Equities Research Analyst Trip Chowdhry calls the numbers reported by comScore "irrelevant data points" because only the market share and ad dollars that Bing captures from Google will determine success. Chowdhry believes that to bring in the bucks and generate revenue from the site, Microsoft will need to position Bing as a subscription model and tie it into Microsoft Office products for enterprises. Rather than try to compete with Google, which he says operates as a discovery tool, Microsoft should sell Bing as a productivity tool that businesses could put to good use, he says. "Monetizing it with advertisements won't work," he says. "Productivity tools must have a subscription model." No real data is available to determine whether any search engines have lost share to Bing. Last week, analysts suggested that people were searching on both Google and Bing simultaneously to determine which search engine provided better results. Avinash Kaushik, analytics evangelist at Google, began seeing referrals on Google Analytics from Bing to his blog "Occam's Razor" on June 5, but site visits didn't pick up until June 7. Even now they are lackluster. Kaushik gets about 90,000 visits to the blog monthly. From June 5-16, his blog logged 7,500 visits from search engines -- and of those, 6,796 are from Google, 213 from Bing, and 9 visits from Live. The Benchmark Company Analyst Clayton Moran says Microsoft has the technology to take market share from Google, but not significantly. Bing might have a cleaner feel than past Microsoft search engines, but Google has become a verb -- a recognizable brand. "At that point you're really talking about a brand advantage," he says. For the second quarter, ended June 30, Moran expects Google to report $5.4 billion in revenue, with about half coming from the U.S. and the remainder internationally. That would show 1% growth from the prior year. Moran expects 5% revenue growth for 2009, compared with 30% last year. The Benchmark Company Analyst Brent Williams, who follows Microsoft, says online services contributed about 5.3% to revenue last quarter for the Redmond, Wash. company. The percentage has bounced between 4.8% and 5.8% for quite some time. "The real question is -- is any growth sustainable?" he says. "Will growth be there six months from now?"
Today, iPhone buyers must also sign up for AT&T wireless service, while anyone who purchases a BlackBerry Storm must also use Verizon. But that situation could change if a new initiative by some lawmakers and broadband advocates succeeds. With an assist from Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the advocacy group Free Press launched a new campaign Wednesday, FreeMyPhone, aimed at curbing deals that tie handsets to carriers. "Wireless companies promise the Internet in your packet, but deliver the walled wireless web," Timothy Karr, campaign director of Free Press, said in a statement. "Through exclusive deals for phones like the iPhone and BlackBerry Storm, wireless companies have stifled innovation, crippled applications, and stuck users with the bill." Wednesday afternoon, the FreeMyPhone site prominently featured a blog post by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) titled "Who Really Owns Your Phone?" The move comes the same week that Kerry and three other senators -- Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) -- asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate whether "exclusivity agreements unfairly restrict consumer choice or adversely impact competition in the commercial wireless marketplace." Visitors to the FreeMyPhone site are asked to sign a petition with demands including "the freedom to choose any phone or network" and "the freedom to access any Web content, applications, or services we want through our phones." Free Press also reiterated its call for the FCC to confirm that net neutrality principles apply to wireless broadband carriers. The group complained to the FCC in April that AT&T might be violating net neutrality principles by using its partnership with Apple to "hinder consumer choice for anticompetitive purposes." That complaint was sparked by news that Skype's free telephone service for the iPhone only works a Wi-Fi network and not AT&T's 3G network. Apple imposed the limit, but partner AT&T clearly wanted Apple to do so. An AT&T spokesman said at the time that it was "reasonable for vendors not to facilitate the inclusion of competitors' products and services on the products that we sell."
A Congressman from upstate New York has introduced a bill to restrict Internet service providers' ability to start charging broadband customers based on consumption. The Broadband Internet Fairness Act (H.R. 2902), unveiled Wednesday by Rep. Eric Massa, would require Internet service providers with more than 2 million customers to seek Federal Trade Commission approval before shifting to usage-based pricing. The act also would require the FTC to nix the new pricing if it determines that the rates, terms and conditions are unreasonable or discriminatory. Massa drafted the bill in response to Time Warner's announcement earlier this year that it planned to roll out pay-per-byte billing to four cities on a test basis: Austin and San Antonio (Texas), Greensboro, N.C. and Rochester. Those plans are now in limbo, but Massa and others are worried that Time Warner and other broadband companies will soon revive the pay-per-byte concept. The Congressman added that while he typically supports free market principles, he favors oversight of broadband pricing because many consumers lack options for high-speed Web service. "I believe that with enough competition we won't have this problem," he said. He added that in the meantime, "this bill leverages the long history that the FTC has in overseeing functional monopolies." In his home district of Rochester, Time Warner is the only cable broadband provider, while the telecom Frontier offers DSL service. Verizon's FiOS network, while available in much of New York, isn't available in Rochester. The now-shelved test would have offered Time Warner customers a choice of plans, ranging from $15 a month for 1 GB to $150 a month for unlimited bandwidth. Currently, many Time Warner customers pay between $40 and $50 a month for unlimited bandwidth. Downloading just one high-def movie can consume 5 GB. Local residents rallied against the plan, while groups like Free Press called for a congressional investigation. Among other criticisms, advocates saw the pricing as part of a plan to discourage people from consuming video online for free, rather than to continue paying for cable TV subscriptions. Time Warner announced in April that it would temporarily delay its plans, but recently it quietly revised its terms of service to provide for pay-per-byte pricing. The company also recently conducted a test of pay-per-usage service last year in Beaumont, Texas. A Time Warner spokesman said in a statement that the company "has placed all of its plans to test consumption based billing 'on the shelf.'" Time Warner isn't the only company to experiment with consumption-based billing. AT&T also tested a comparable system in Beaumont and Reno, Nev. Chris Riley, policy counsel at broadband advocacy group Free Press, said it appears that Internet service providers still intend to move toward usage-based billing. "I think this is a real threat," he said. "If every provider thought they could get away with it, they would probably switch to it."
Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton plans to launch a kinder, gentler and more advertiser-friendly new site in the next couple of months. That's the hot gossip from Henry Copeland, founder and CEO of BlogAds.com, which handles operations and ad sales for the wildly popular site PerezHilton.com. Appearing on a panel at the OMMA Publishing conference Wednesday, Copeland was tight-lipped about details of the online offshoot, but indicated that it would feature longer-form content and appeal more to mainstream advertisers who might not be as comfortable with the sensational, salacious coverage that characterizes PerezHilton.com. But Copeland assured that the new property would appeal to the same core audience as the flagship site. "He has this genetic link with 26-year-old women," said Copeland of the "Queen of All Media." Separately, he revealed that Hilton also has six-figure deals in the works to handle sponsored Twittering for three unnamed advertisers. Under the agreements, Hilton this summer will post Tweets about the products or services involved for a week on his Twitter feed, which Copeland said has more than 1 million followers. "Perez is a great springboard for anyone who needs a springboard onto Twitter," said Copeland, who claims that a link by the notorious blogger can send 10,000 to 20,000 new visitors to a site in an eye blink. The Twitter campaigns will also be tied into PerezHilton.com in a "variety of modes," including new interactive ad units, according to Copeland. While he would not disclose the advertisers involved, he indicated they would be brands aligned with the pop culture, trend-focused content of the main site. "Not Corn Flakes," he said. Ernie Cicogna, co-founder of Glam Media, who was a co-panelist with Copeland, agreed that advertisers were highly interested in exploring advertising around Twitter. He noted that women's ad network Glam was working with sites such as TwitterMoms.com and packaging Twitter campaigns as part of six-figure ad deals.
Based on click-through rates, pre-roll video ads are 8-25 times more effective than in-banner ads, according to new data from Web video company BBE. The study analyzed data from over 2 billion impressions, and virtually all of the online video ad campaigns -- both streaming pre-roll and in-banner -- that ran on BBE's network in 2008. "Finding average click-through rates of 1.44% draws a real distinction between in-stream and in-banner ads," said Matt Wasserlauf, CEO of BBE -- formerly Broadband Enterprises. Wasserlauf noted that the study was data-agnostic because the company's clients asked for both streaming and in-banner ads. BBE's goal was to find out which format brought advertisers the most bang for their buck, based on the most effective measurement the company has -- click-through rates. According to Wasserlauf, streaming ads may be more effective because they more closely resemble what viewers are used to seeing on TV: ads that are associated with desired content and have to be watched before viewing the content -- thereby engaging the viewer more effectively. Ad network Tremor Media recently found that pre-roll ads are highly effective when paired with the "right content." A study of more than 100 campaigns with nearly 65 million pre-roll impressions showed pre-roll video completion rates of around 80% for both 15- and 30-second streaming video advertising. Similarly, Break Media and video ad technology provider Panache recently found that completion rates for pre-roll video ads approached 90%, and click-through rates averaged 10%. Furthermore, according to a recent Ipsos MediaCT study, consumers are showing an increased willingness to watch ads in exchange for free online video content. A full two-thirds of the respondents said it was reasonable to show ads in front of professionally produced content such as music videos, news and sports clips.
MediaCom announced plans on Wednesday to begin offering clients the ability to manage their digital ad campaigns with Eyeblaster's ad-serving platform. As a company rooted in the world of rich media, the deal firmly secures Eyeblaster's position as an independent ad-serving platform. Along with Eyeblaster, MediaCom will still offer its clients the ability to manage their campaigns on DoubleClick's DART platform -- the onus being on options, according to Lowell Simpson, senior partner of media systems and Technology at the media buying agency. "As the industry matures, our clients' digital initiatives are becoming more complex and multi-platform," said Lowell Simpson, senior partner, media systems and technology director at MediaCom. Now, he added, "we feel we are better able to provide our clients with seamless, verifiable reporting for the customized, integrated digital solutions provided through Lifeline" -- MediaCom's own proprietary campaign management system. The partnership factors in all types of digital adverting, including display and rich media, but not yet search advertising. According to a study just released by Eyeblaster and TNS Media Intelligence, a clear majority of senior marketers -- 67% -- are now running cross-channel campaigns, while only 12% are integrating performance data across channels. A majority -- about 60% -- of marketers say they would like to integrate data more often, but they rarely do because of a lack of confidence in the numbers. Moreover, some 44% or respondents blame a lack of suitable metrics to measure impact, 37% blame lack of case studies showing cross-channel effectiveness, and 34% cite lack of technology. Part of WPP's GroupM, MediaCom clients include Allergan, Audi, ConAgra Foods, Dell, GlaxoSmithKline, JetBlue, LVMH, Michelin, and Nokia, to name a few.
Tangled in what he calls "a form of group suicide," media entrepreneur Steve Brill on Wednesday implored media publishers to shed their collective "inferiority complex," and start charging subscription fees for content. "The world you helped to create needs to be fixed, and it needs to be fixed now," Brill told attendees of the OMMA Publish conference on Wednesday. To do that, Brill -- along with former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz, and Leo Hindery, the former head of Tele-Communications, Inc. -- recently embarked on a venture to help publishers charge readers for full access to Web sites, single articles or packages of related content. "It's all up to them," Brill said of publishers' freedom to bundle and monetize their own content as they see fit. When it launches, Journalism Online -- so-called -- will provide consumers with a single account to subscribe to different publications across various platforms. Backed by private investors, Journalism Online will attempt to package and market content under a variety of brands. "We will pay the cost of building this type of Web site," said Brill, adding that the company then will take a cut of subscription revenues. While considered a dead model by some, paid subscriptions have had success in certain content verticals. The Wall Street Journal, for one, presently claims over 1 million paying subscribers, each of whom fork over $103 a year. With regard to new subscription models, Journalism Online is not the only game in town. Newspaper and technology consultant Alan Mutter is currently pitching an online registration service that would track Web users as they read articles on an array of publisher sites. Owned by its participating publishers, the ViewPoint venture intends to compile personal data profiles comprised of demographic information and reading histories. Naysayers of such efforts find it hard to believe that consumers will ever pay for content that they currently get for free. "How do you get people to start paying for something that's already free?" asked Sean Nolan, VP of online operations and external online marketing at Rodale, from OMMA Publish. Hogwash, said Brill. "Publishers need to shed their inferiority complex," he said, explaining that most individual newspapers already have the critical mass they need to succeed. Brill insisted that publishers can easily convince at least 10% of their monthly visitors to pay subscription fees, while maintaining the vast majority of their non-paid traffic. Brill has also hired antitrust lawyer David Boies to help publishers negotiate better terms with Amazon. "How can Amazon be extracting 70% of subscription fees and controlling the consumer relationship?" Brill asked. Rather, Amazon should make its money by selling Kindle devices, and leave the subscription fees to the publishers. "It's like if Sony told HBO that it wants 70% of what people pay for its content because people watch it on a Sony television."
Steve Brill, founder of paid content startup Journalism Online LLC, took his mantra that content -- make that quality journalism content -- doesn't want to be free, and indeed cannot survive through existing advertising-only supported models to the OMMA Publish conference on Wednesday. "No one can point to a quality journalism product that has depended only on advertising revenue," Brill said during the conference's opening keynote speech. "The closest was the network news operation when there were three networks and even then their news content was a loss leader." Brill, who is best known for starting American Lawyer and Court TV, has been making the rounds to talk about the potential demise of quality journalism. Brill's start-up will, among other things, create an ecommerce site where consumers sign up just once to pay for all types of news content online from publishers who joined Journalism Online, which Brill said could include bloggers and journalists who operate independent news-gathering sites that want to receive payments for their work. The venture's success, however, depends heavily on Brill persuading large traditional publishers to join Journalism Online. Brill's startup will make its money by taking a percentage of the fees paid by consumers, so it needs to bring in the media companies that consumers want content from to make significant revenue. Brill's partners in the venture are L. Gordon Crovitz, the former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and Leo Hindery, the former CEO of AT&T Broadband. Brill said that each publishing company that joins Journalism Online will decide how much and in what form it wants to get paid for content, but Brill said that the ecommerce site could offer an "all you could read" program that charges $30 for all the affiliates or targeted subscriptions such as sports for a lower price. To watch out for any antitrust concerns since the industry can't collude on pricing, Brill has brought on David Boies, who led the Justice Department's antitrust suit against Microsoft's and former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olsen to counsel the company as well as be a part of negotiations with aggregators and search engines that traditionally have pushed for content to remain free. He also wants to offer market intelligence to publishers that strike deals with his company. "We'll give them reports from the front lines, what's working and what's not working," he said. "There are debates about micropayments versus subscriptions. Who knows which works best? Our affiliates will know because we are giving them reports." This kind of intelligence may be the most compelling concept behind Journalism LLC as more companies in the media industry consider shifts from free models to paid content models. It's also going to be increasingly important as more online properties -- whether journalistic or not -- realize that their content is not being supported by advertisers either. Another big issue discussed at OMMA Publish was the problem of selling excess online ad space inventory. Or said differently, why is it that even when content is free, advertisers may not be interested in paying to reach consumers viewing those pages? Brill's success may depend heavily on having access to that kind of information as well if Journalism Online is going to succeed. Brill is not espousing putting all content behind a paid firewall, he said, but instead getting eight to 15 percent of visitors to pay for more unique content. The remaining majority of readers would access existing content for free that is less unique. Helping publishers figure out what should and shouldn't be behind a firewall and how much people will pay could be key to Journalism Online's success as business and distribution models continue to evolve. Indeed, during a panel discussion at OMMA Publish an hour after Brill's speech, executives from Rodale and Time Inc. noted that these issues are already being discussed, and some are already in practice. The panel, titled "The Payment Plan: Pipe Dream or Promise," focused in part on what type of payment plans for content are already in place. Moderator Terence Kawaja, managing director with GCA Savvian Advisors, asked all the panelists to give their thoughts on Brill's plan. All were supportive of Brill's passion to make certain that quality journalism survives because it's important in the broader discussion of issues such as democracy and civic duty. But they also see the difficulty in taking what was once free and making consumers pay for it. "The struggle is how do we charge for content that is already free," said Sean Nolan, vice president of online operations and external online marketing at Rodale. "But for us, the content that we charge for has never been free." Time Inc. executive vice president John Squires echoed that sentiment, saying that it is a misperception that the company's magazine content is free. "People magazine's content isn't free online," he said. "People.com is an hourly site with different content. We've always believed in paid content." They also noted that new distribution models, particularly on mobile devices such as the Kindle and iPhone, may be changing the way consumers think about paying for content. "It may not be that consumers won't pay, but what will be the advertising model for mobile," Squires says.
[Yesterday OMD ran a commentary titled "Why Facebook Will Fail." More than a few people didn't agree. At least nobody tried to say, it's too big to fail. This was one response.-Ed] Social networking has never stood on its own. When Facebook and MySpace debuted, it wasn't the thrill of social networking that brought people to them. It really was the opportunity to connect with similar people - people in their industry, people at their college, and people with the same hobbies and interests. Facebook never had a need to cater to these groups individually, and that remains true today. To say that it has to work as the primary front-end tool for street soccer players as well as their mothers is equivalent to saying that Google Search has to meet the specific needs of every niche group who uses it to find the things that interest them. Instead, Facebook has been quietly at work collecting a great deal of information about us as people. The few hundred million people on Facebook must be significantly easier to archive and catalog than the billions of sites that appear on Google. Should Facebook take full advantage of its function as a repository of personal information - serving as the Google of people - it would have no difficulty finding its own niche as a sort of meta-social network. This integration has already begun. The thing is, it's invisible on Facebook itself. Instead, it can be seen on the Google search results for "login using Facebook," which shows some 750,000 results; or the search "facebook connect," which shows nearly 37 million. The sites you can use your Facebook credentials to log on to include runner's site The Run Around, lifestyle site DurianSeed, and the site for a pair of DJ's known as the Super Mario Brothers. Virgin Airlines, too, announced plans to use Facebook Connect on its planes. What does this mean? It means that no matter what tribe you belong to, the data that makes it work can run through Facebook. Facebook makes logging in to any site easier; it means you don't have to re-enter numbing amounts of information about yourself; it means you can more easily find the friends you already have at the niche sites you join. Maybe this will lead to better targeted advertising. Maybe it won't. But the functionality provided as Facebook invades every tribe on the Web is undeniable. Whether it serves as a search engine, a profile repository, or something else, Facebook is sure to stick around.