SpectatorBytes

Venture Beat picked an interesting story from Ad Age which outlines the challenges facing the online advertising industry (See Here) which outlines the challenges facing the onlineadvertising industry. Below is one of the most interesting statement’s in the Ad Age piece.
“The inconvenient truth is that for all its new-media spin, display advertising is “old” [...]

This was a tough week for online advertising given Valueclick’s lower guidance for Q208 (see below), Google’s less than stellar performance and even eBay’s cautious outlook for Q3.

Valueclick’s Guidance - Fiscal Year 2008 Revenue by Segment

Year-Over-Year Growth

Affiliate Marketing2(excludes Search123)

+8%

Comparison Shopping and Search (includes Search123)

+19% pro-forma

Technology

+18%

Media, Total

-18%

Display advertising

Low single digit increase

Lead generation

High 20% decrease

While Valueclick’s [...]

I have written several posts about the need for offering innovative ad solutions to brand advertisers. I wanted to share a couple of solutions for brand advertisers that two companies in our portfolio have developed (obviously I have a vested interest in the success of these two companies). Nevertheless, I think that they are offering [...]

Years ago, I realized that Google’s search product has become the leading distribution platform for content on the Web. As a website owner or content publisher, one has to optimize its site structure to make sure that Google properly showcase your content when your users are looking for it. If Google does not want to [...]

In January 2007, AOL made a tender offer for Tradedoubler shares at 215 SEK (Sweedish Krona). The total value was $900M. The offer was supported by the board of directors and counted with support from several large shareholders. However, the majority of the shareholder base decided that the offer undervalued the company significantly. AOL [...]

Online Ad optimizer, Pubmatic put out once again their findings about online CPMs (See Here). Pubmatic found that CPMS are stagnant at best on average and dropping across several categories. This research is in line with what most large networks have also reported about their CPMs in the last couple of quarters.
The problem is [...]

I recently came across an interview given by former head of Ad Sales Wenda Harris Millard (see Here) which outlines some of the issues that I see in the online ad industry today — particularly around the push to shift “brand” advertising spending to the Internet and away from Television and print.
- The online [...]