While everyone has been focused on Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of Doubleclick and what it means for the online advertising business, PepperJam CEO Kris Jones points out that the acquisition makes Google the largest SEM company in the US.
Doubleclick is the parent company of Performics who also happens to be one of the major players in the affiliate marketing space.
The Peformics/Google relationship opens up a while host of questions that the mainstream media (and government) have not picked up yet. In the coming days I am sure that more will be written about this, but kudos to Kris for being first with this story.
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Infomatics today reported that MySpace has blocked their users from using Photobucket content in their user profiles.
“We are not happy about this and we’re pretty sure you’re not happy either,” Photobucket said in a posting to its users.
This is an interesting move by MySpace, which can make or break other social sites depending on whether they sent traffic to them or not. I am sure that this is not the last we have heard about this type of dispute.
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Adweek has an interesting article about niche social networks and how advertisers appear to be using them to test campaigns on. This is similar to more traditional marketing approach where prodicts are tested in smaller markets before being rolled out nationally.
The Adweek article highlights Playskool who is launching a yearlong social-networking campaign on CafeMom. CafeMom is a four-month-old social network for mothers and has about 2,500 members. Playskool is hoping that CafeMom members will share their experiences with each other (and the company). “The great thing is you can get that direct feedback from actual moms,” said Charlie Zakin, director of media at Hasbro, parent company of Playskool.
Interesting interview in the Financial Express with the director of search research at Yahoo! Research Andrew Tomkins. In the interview Tomkins makes a couple of interesting points about the growth of social media content.
If you look at the amount of new searchable content that is being produced every day, you will find that the amount of content that comes from the social media is much more than the amount of content that is produced by traditional, professional media (like newspapers or professionally developed web sites). In traditional media, around five gigabytes per day of content is being created. Social media content already may be at least twice that.
A couple of months ago I asked whether customer reviews increase sales? Well a recent article in Brandweek seems to indicate that they do.
A new study released this week from iProspect and JupiterResearch shows that:
- One in three Internet users report their purchase decisions are influenced by sites with social content, Amazon being the most influential, according to a report from.
- When it comes to influencing online purchases, positive reviews in Amazon may trump online ads, per a new survey.
Robert Murray, president of iProspect, Boston, said it’s unclear whether a positive review in Amazon is more effective than an ad, but: “It’s human nature. People trust people.”
The jockeying for the first in the nation primary has been won by MySpace, which will hold its primary on January 1 and 2 according to Techcrunch.
I would expect that the candidates will take this pretty serious, as it will generate a lot of buzz online, heading into the Iowa primary. I also expect that other social sites like Facebook will launch their own virtual primary event.
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As the first quarter ended, the big race amongst those with aspirations for the Presidency was not to see who could raise the most money. It was to see who could add the most subscribers to their YouTube channel.
- Barack – 3924 subscribers, up 40% from March 1st.
- Hillary – 1202 subscribers, up 69%
- John Edwards - 1421 subscribers, up 27%
While Barack Obama continues to be the grassroots candidate of 2008, it would appear that the Hillary Clinton campaign is generating some momentum on YouTube. The YouTube numbers could also fore tell trouble for the Edwards Campaign. He is adding new subscribers at a slower pace than any of the major candidates in either party which might indicate that he message is not resonating with the voting public.
I have been thinking about the Hitwise data from March and the MySpace demographic data from last year. In the demographic study (which was done by comScore 11% of MySpace’s visitors are over 55. In fact, over 51% of MySpace’s visitors are over 35.
According to comScore, MySpace is attracting about 64.4 million unique visitors. Applying the demographic data to these numbers, MySpace is attracting about 7 million unique visitors who are over the age of 55, and about 33 million unique visitors who are over 35.
