SpectatorBytes

Upon learning of Facebook’s acquisition of Friendfeed, very few industry people (myself included) were surprised that Facebook needed to acquire a company to bring in talent to compete with Twitter. However, if one takes a step back, this news should have at least raised an eyebrow. Currently, Facebook is one of the hottest digital [...]

YouTube’s recent programming and advertising initiatives are pretty exciting. In them, I can see that YouTube is taking steps to unlock the value of online video.

First, YouTube recently allowed one of its content partners, CBS, to use their own video player to broadcast “March Madness” on YouTube.com. The second was YouTube’s experiment with a [...]

Today, the WSJ reported on an initiative by MediaVest’s Vivaki to work with some of the leading online networks to test and develop new standards for online advertising formats. This effort highlights the still nascent nature of the industry but also that online video is coming of age. Even in this economic downturn, advertisers [...]

Last week, during a lunch with a former colleague and Jeff Ocampo-Tan, one of my associates at Velocity, we engaged in a discussion about the opportunity Facebook (FB) has in building its brand advertising revenues. The New York Times recently reported (see here) Facebook has faced some challenges in doing so far. However, these [...]

I recently attended an interesting “unconference” organized by WPP’s Mark Read and Yossi Vardi in Athens, Greece (Thanks to both of them for hosting this event). After reflecting about the many conversations I had in Athens about online advertising, I thought I would start outlining my thoughts on what is going in online advertising [...]

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 [...]

Recent report by Pubmatic (see here) over the past week indicate that online advertising prices are declining. This trend had already become evident as leading Web players announced their Q1 results.
The forces that have enabled the growth in advertising on the Web now seem to be working against it.
Direct Response advertisers have driven [...]

Today’s major news headline is NewsCorp’s FIM sales reorganization (see here). While internal politics have been blamed for the changes in the blogosphere, in an strategic sense, I would expect the move to further help FIM built its brand advertising revenues. Here are some of the reasons why:
- Increases focus on creating “scalable” [...]

Much discussion has taken place about the value of advertising networks over the last couple of days. Here are some of the most interesting posts (See Are Ad Networks Becoming Irrelevant?, What’s This Fascination with Ad Networks? and Are ad networks for loser/weak publishers?).
I believe that Web publishers need to focus on building [...]

Some interesting news came out GM today (see GM roars Forward Into Digital Ad Channels). This suggests brand advertisers are finally ready to commit significant spending to digital media. This is certainly good news for the industry, and in particular for companies that are creating solutions specifically designed to serve brand advertisers.
GM’s [...]