You know soccer has hit the big time in the U.S. when it's at the center of a ratings dispute between ESPN and CBS Sports. The spat stems from ESPN saying earlier this week that the 1.1 million people who watched at least some of the U.S. soccer team's 1-0 World Cup win over Algeria Wednesday represented the largest audience ever for a sports event online -- beating the Duke-Butler NCAA championship basketball game earlier this year. But CBS on Friday called for a yellow card on ESPN, pointing to data showing that the BYU-Florida NCAA tournament game actually had a slightly larger audience than the U.S.-Algeria match. The figures from content-delivering network Akamai, which handles video streaming for CBS, show the BYU-Florida game on March 18 drew 1,115,097 viewers compared to the 1.1 million for the U.S.-Algeria contest. (The Duke-Butler game had an audience of 557,433). "It was incorrect for ESPN to assume the Duke-Butler championship game, which was viewed by 48 million people on CBS Television in prime time, would produce the largest online number for the tournament," said CBS in a statement. "Unfortunately, we were never contacted by ESPN to confirm that the Duke-Butler game was our largest single game from the 2010 tournament before they reported it." ESPN didn't respond to a request for comment Friday. But the network Thursday said the U.S.-Algeria game, which the U.S. won in dramatic fashion on a closing-minutes goal from Landon Donovan, had also set other viewing records for the sports network. The TV audience of 6.6 million was the most for a non-holiday morning telecast ever for ESPN, and ESPN.com set a record with 1.7 million concurrent users logging in to check score updates or other news on June 23, beating the previous high by 42%. ESPN Mobile also had its highest-traffic day ever, with 650,000 watching the U.S.-Algeria game on handheld devices. Audience data coming in from ESPN -- which has U.S. broadcast rights to the World Cup in South Africa -- and other sources suggest that the 2010 tournament is generating an unprecedented level of interest among Americans. That's in no small part because the U.S. team is having its best showing since the 2002 World Cup, coming back to tie or win each of its three matches in the group stage. Former President Bill Clinton, who was on hand for the game against Algeria, is far from the only newly minted U.S. soccer fan in recent days. Hitwise released data yesterday showing visits to soccer sites on Wednesday were up 22% from the day before and that visits to ESPN.com were up 45%. Among soccer sites, Yahoo's World Cup 2010 site claimed the most traffic, with 33.3% of visits. Yahoo touted its World Cup audience Friday, highlighting comScore figures showing that its section dedicated to the tournament drew 7.9 million unique visitors from June 7 from June 13 during the first three days of play. The Web portal also said Yahoo Sports drew more than 18.5 million visitors during that period, outpacing both FIFA.com and ESPN's overall traffic numbers at 2.8 million and 13.7 million, respectively. Another company benefiting from surging interest in the World Cup is mobile TV service Flo TV. The Qualcomm unit is offering subscribers all 64 of ESPN's World Cup match broadcasts on its Flo TV devices and AT&T handsets. The company is also sponsoring the Fox Soccer Channel's "Ticket To South Africa" program for the World Cup. During the first five days of the event, Flo TV said total viewing minutes for the service jumped 39% compared to the prior week. The World Cup also accounts for three of the top five viewing days on Flo TV. The spike in online viewing caused by World Cup fever has even caused some problems. A surge in traffic during last Friday's U.S.-Slovenia match led to a crash in Univision.com's live stream of the game. With the U.S. taking on Ghana in the second round of the tournament on Saturday, ratings for the game across media could set new records. But given that more people will have the chance to watch the game on TV because they won't be working, the TV audience could grow at the expense of online and mobile traffic.
Speculation that Facebook will allow all Open Graph-enabled Web pages to serve up in searches when a member clicks on the "like" button surfaced Friday, but a company spokesperson dismissed reports. The All Facebook Blog reported that Facebook will create a semantic index of the Web through the "like" button, enabling stronger search options than Google through "link baiting" rather than "like bating," the technology the social site uses to determine relevance. The blog says a Facebook spokesperson confirmed the feature. Analysts and SEO professionals have been awaiting the arrival of Facebook's search strategy. With the exception of the past several months, the social site experienced higher growth rates in search query volume than traditional search engines, according to comScore. Some attribute the uptick to an increase in members, people creating and launching community pages, and brands expanding social campaigns supported by Fan pages. Search will not become the center of attention for Facebook, according to a Facebook spokesperson. Not now, anyway. Facebook will continue to test search features, but it will not become the product focus for the company. The 1,400 employees, of which there are about 300 engineers, will continue to focus on building a technology platform that allows "cool experiences" such as adding social elements. Social games -- which have become the site's strongest vertical -- should provide that social experience, not only on the site, but also tie into consoles like Microsoft Xbox 360. Built on the concept that sharing experiences among friends creates community, Facebook engineers will continue to create features on the platform that allow marketers to communicate with consumers, and friends to share experiences among friends. And although not intentional, Facebook members should expect surprises related to services, as the social site forges ahead with features not previously offered. Tests are done on all tools before being released, but testing cannot always identify all the bugs and faults in the code. Privacy holes and flaws in the code can sometimes appear as intentional, but Facebook employees do take privacy seriously. The continuous push into uncharted territory to open the social graph may present some unexpected features that engineers will need to fix as they are found. Take, for example, the privacy debacle and issues surrounding controls. Engineers will continue to work on making the privacy controls easier to use. Many of these controls have been buried in layers of clicks and Web pages, making settings nearly impossible for the layperson to figure out. Facebook officials assert that the site's basic privacy settings have been around for years, but the company has forged new ground on uncharted territory when it comes to opening and connecting the Internet's social graph. Now it's a matter of pulling out the settings to make it easier for people to find, as well as educate them. The company will continue to condense the privacy settings in "fewer buckets" to prevent people from feeling "overwhelmed" and realize that Facebook members do have control. In an effort to cope with the privacy backlash, Facebook hired White House official Marne Levine to work with its policy team. Levine joins the social network as vice president of global public policy, spearheading efforts to build and manage teams focused on policy in Asia, Americas and Europe.
Consumers say they ignore static banner ads, and don't click on them, but eMarketer Senior Analyst David Hallerman cites stats from a Microsoft Atlas study that suggest the static strips running across the tops of Web pages still influence purchase decisions. Successful campaigns require a variety of tools and it appears that banner ads have begun to take on the dubious title of "staple." Hallerman, who has been researching a report about online brand marketing, calls banner ads "somewhat subliminal" because banner ads appear to affect consumers whether they realize it or not. "The positive, yet not always easy-to-measure effects and the increasingly lower cost and availability of banners give campaigns a steady foundation," says Hallerman. "Banners help to fill in the campaign." Expect the report to look at spending trends because where companies actually allocate budgets means more than any talk their executives say in front of conference podiums and public events. Hallerman also plans to analyze consumer reactions to banner ads and alternative ways of finding conversions, as well as measurement strategies, and some of the miss-measurement methods. Banner ads complement search advertising, too. In 2010, the nearly $12.4 billion that companies will spend on search advertising accounts for about 45% more than what they will spend on all three display ad formats -- banners, video and rich media -- combined. Citing research from an unnamed source, Hallerman says about 18% of consumers searched for the brand's products or services after being exposed to a banner ad. Success from banner ads, however, depends on the company, the industry, the product and the stage in which the brand tries to hit the consumer. How brands rely on targeting also plays a role. As marketers look to engage consumers -- and to gain better measurement and targeting tactics than what's available with most other media -- they will continue to increase budgets for Internet ads of all kinds, cannibalizing newspapers, magazines and other traditional media spend. The Internet's share of total media ad spending will rise from about 15% in 2010 to more than 20% in 2014. A large part of the growth will come from video, even in banner ads. Spending for online video advertising will make the format the second-biggest recipient of new ad dollars from 2010 to 2014, according to the eMarketer report "U.S. Ad Spending: How Big Is the Bounceback?" Of the more than $13.6 billion incremental dollars that will flow into online advertising during the next five years, 33% will come from video ads, compared with 44.5% from search. However, don't expect the online video boom to become as hot as some hype would suggest, according to the report. Annual spending growth rates should hit between 30% and 40%, as brand marketers looking for greater targeting shift a portion of their TV budgets onto the Web. As search attracts more dollars and video gets more growth, banner ads will increasingly become filler for those two ad formats, as well as for other elements of advertising campaigns. And as the market share for banner ads continues to decline -- even in 2014, when spending on banners will make up 20.3% of all the ads on the Internet -- the format will remain second to search. Despite the ongoing commoditization of banner advertising, a result of the plethora of ad networks and the growth in the number of Web sites and pages with ad inventory, the total share of online ad spend for banners will stand at more than 20% from 2009 through 2014, according to Hallerman. It could turn the medium into a low-cost staple for online ad campaigns.
The Internet service provider Knology has won a round in a potential class-action lawsuit accusing it of working with defunct behavioral targeting company NebuAd to install "spyware" on subscribers' broadband lines. U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land in the Middle District of Georgia recently sent the case to arbitration, ruling that the subscriber who sued, Andrew Paul Manard, had previously agreed to resolve disputes with Knology out of court. The judge wrote that Manard signed a contract "that clearly and unambiguously incorporated" an arbitration clause. "That arbitration provision was readily available for plaintiff's review if he had bothered to read it," Land wrote. The decision marks a victory for Knology, which no longer has to face the possibility that a jury could award large damages. In addition, it's possible that this lawsuit won't be able to proceed as a class-action in arbitration. But the costs of litigating on behalf of just one subscriber could prove prohibitively expensive. Scott Kamber, the lawyer who brought the case on behalf of Manard, says he is "evaluating all options," adding that the ruling concerned only Manard, and not other potential plaintiffs. He declined further comment. The ruling marks the latest fallout from NebuAd's failed attempt to launch an ISP-based behavioral targeting platform in the U.S. The platform, which relied on deep packet inspection, riled privacy advocates as well as lawmakers. Unlike older behavioral targeting companies that only collected data from a network of publishers, Internet service providers have access to all Web activity -- including users' searches and their visits to non-commercial sites. The company's emergence spurred congressional hearings, following which NebuAd suspended plans for further tests. The company officially folded last year. Knology was one of six ISPs to test NebuAd's platform; the others were Bresnan, Cable One, CenturyTel, Embarq and Wide Open West. (CenturyTel and Embarq have since merged, while Cablevision agreed to buy Bresnan.) In 2008, a group of consumers sued all six ISPs and NebuAd for allegedly violating federal and state laws with the platform. Last year, a federal judge in the Northern District of California dismissed the case against the ISPs, ruling that they shouldn't have to defend themselves in California when they had no contact with the state except for their contract with the Redwood City-based NebuAd. Lawyers for the consumers then re-filed the cases in various courts throughout the country. Only the case against Knology has been sent to arbitration. Others remain pending. Court records show that the lawsuit against NebuAd is slated for a conference on Monday.
Assisting publishers with their affiliate partnerships, content monetization startup Skimlinks on Friday debuted a new product that automates their often-times arduous execution. Still in beta, SkimWords creates new affiliate links by automatically converting product references in editorial and user-generated content into geotargeted links directing consumers to specific purchase points. UK-based Skimlinks has been working with existing clients including, ITProPortal, AV Forums and Anglersnet over the past month to develop the product. During these initial trials, SkimWords claims to have increased the number of pages that can generate revenue by 300%. The degree to which the product increases publisher affiliate revenue is not clear. For its efforts, meanwhile, Skimlinks takes a reported 25% cut of the affiliate fee. The SkimWords Beta is now open to all existing SkimLinks publishers, as well as other sites with a focus on several predefined verticals, including technology/electronics, sport/ lifestyle, automotive, and fashion. Skimlinks CEO and co-founder Alicia Navarro believes he has found the secret formula for successful affiliate linking. "Being non-intrusive, transparent and relevant is key to the future of monetizing content," said Navarro. "We designed SkimWords to benefit all parts of the value chain." To date, Skimlinks has raised roughly $2.5 million from investors including Sussex Place Ventures, the Acceleration Group and the UK's National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. The Skimlinks platform currently supports thousands of merchants across more than 22 affiliate networks internationally, while publishers using the system include Hachette Filipacchi Media US, Mirror.co.uk, and Future Publishing UK. Earlier this year, Skimlinks rival VigLink reported an $800,000 funding round that it raised last summer, which was led by First Round Capital and Google Ventures, along with a number of angel investors including Reid Hoffman, Dipchand Nishar, Niel Robertson, Hadi Partovi, Ali Partovi, Carlos Cashman, and Micah Adler.