FTC Still Examining GoogleMob—Wants Feedback from Rivals
Now here’s a great way to gather totally, completely unbiased information about a potential merger: ask the companies’ competitors. Okay, so the FTC isn’t completely crazy—of course other companies in the market would have a pretty good idea what the industry looks like and what a big merger might do. But still, we can only hope the FTC will remember to take their opinions with a grain of competitive salt.
AdMob, the popular mobile advertising company, and Google, the wanna-be-popular mobile advertising company, announced the deal in November. Google gave AdMob $750M in stock in the deal. The next month, consumer groups began lobbying against the deal. Now the FTC wants both advertisers and rivals to make sworn statements about the pending merger.
The probe isn’t public, but sources say the commission is “investigating whether Google’s proposed purchase of AdMob would reduce competition in the market for Internet advertising on mobile phones.” (Kind of a duh.) Google says it’s continuing to talk with the FTC and cooperate with requests for information.
Bloomberg consulted Thomas Ensign, an antitrust lawyer, on the matter. He said, “It’s difficult to envision a scenario where this development, if true, is positive for Google-AdMob, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the agency is going to challenge the deal.”
Just over a year ago, the US Department of Justice was hours from filing anti-trust charges against the search giant over another major advertising deal (with Yahoo). Is Google pushing their luck with this merger? Will GoogleMob hurt the mobile ad industry? Will the FTC stop the deal?
Facebook Increases Local Ad Targeting Capabilities and SMB’s Rejoice
With all the talk this week about Facebook valuations and the money that they are making (OK so it’s a guesstimate but what the heck……it’s the Internet!) it makes one think about just how Facebook plans to continue to grow top line revenue. One way was revealed as the ability to target Facebook ads locally increased considerably. Inside Facebook explains further
In its latest move to expand its performance advertising program, Facebook is offering what it tells us is “thousands” of new cities in its self-serve advertising tool, meaning advertisers can more narrowly target users across the United States and around the world. From social game developers to the various large and small businesses already using the service, the information could help them boost their returns on investment.
Well, it sure looks like local is the new black. It makes sense but the degree to which local online advertising seems to be expanding is still surprising. It’s not like the concept is new but the varied ways to reach the local consumer have emerged, developed and grown so rapidly that the sector is poised to really kick into gear.
For the SMB’s of the world there is now a better source to reach very segmented groups who are only in their backyard. Oh and it’s cheaper than other options. For now.
What is your experience with running local ads on Facebook? While traffic may be a good thing has the traffic converted?
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Yahoo CEO Asks, “Facebook, what’s their revenue?”–Er, About $1 Billion Carol
Yahoo celebrated its 15 year anniversary yesterday and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz decided that it would be the perfect time to take a swipe Facebook.
When asked why Yahoo wasn’t as hot as Facebook, she replied: "Facebook? What’s their revenue?"
Oh no she didn’t!
Well, as if on cue, Inside Facebook comes up with some compelling calculations that suggest Facebook will hit $1.1 billion 2010.
First, their calculations for 2009–keep in mind these are simply guestimates.
Then, estimating revenues for ads, partnerships, virtual goods, and such, they come up with their 2010 prediction:
A wide variety of sources we spoke to expect Facebook to pass $1 billion in revenue this year, possibly reaching $1.1 billion. This is significant growth, but likely still the start of the hockey stick.
And boy, it is some hockey stick!
The company will, in our view, gradually chip away at brand advertising spending on other big web sites, including Yahoo and MySpace. The optimistic case for Facebook, in terms of its brand advertising revenue, is that will get most of this advertising and bring in up to $20 billion per year, eventually.
$20 billion a year in revenue? That’s a big number, maybe one that will even get Bartz’s attention. 
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Google Extends “Click To Call” Ads To All Advertisers
Google introduced “Click to Call” in January as a component of its location extensions offering in mobile. Advertisers were permitted to include a phone number associated with a physical location, which would then show on high-end smartphones as an additional line of text.
When the user clicked the phone number and initiated a call the advertiser [...]
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China Says Google as Vital as Electricity…This Just In, Google Becomes Electric Utility
Not since chocolate and peanut butter have two things ever meant to go together as much as these two stories.
First, we have researchers in China opining that they can’t conduct their research without Google:
“Research without Google would be like life without electricity,” says Xiong Zhenqin, an ecologist at Nanjing Agricultural University in Jiangsu province.
In fact a study reveals…
More than 80% use the search engine to find academic papers; close to 60% use it to get information about scientific discoveries or other scientists’ research programmes; and one-third use it to find science-policy and funding news…84% of the scientists who responded to Nature’s survey say that losing Google would “somewhat or significantly” hamper their research
Maybe these scientists shouldn’t teach their students how to hack into US networks then, should they? 
OK, story number two ties into this magically.
Google finally won approval…to be an electric utility…With their new approval to be a utility, Google could be a smart grid / smart charge service provider.
If I had a late night news show on the Comedy Channel, I’d so enjoy discussing the epic timing of these two stories! 
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Extending The Lifecycle Of Super Bowl Ads Through Online Video
At up to $3 million to air a 30 second spot, marketers must ensure they get the full benefit from their Super Bowl ads, even—and especially—after the game is over. According to CBS, Super Bowl XLIV was the most-watched program in television history with 106.5 million viewers. For advertisers to get the most efficiency out [...]
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Display Makes Searchers Buy Faster
Eyeblaster released a study yesterday showing that “display ads stimulate search by increasing the speed at which people searching enter the purchase funnel,” reports MediaPost. The study examined over 1300 search and display campaigns over a 15 month period.
They found that early one in five people who convert after using search had seen at least one display ad before searching. Eyeblaster concluded that display advertising increases the reach of campaigns, pushing more consumers to search. Those consumers then move through the purchasing funnel faster.
And this wasn’t just in a single industry: Eyeblaster looked at more than 200 advertisers in over 20 verticals. 72% of conversions resulted from display advertising, while 23% of the conversions were a direct result of the search channel and 5% were the result of display ads that were followed by a search.
Eyeblaster Principal Analyst Ariel Geifman says that display can thus be used to enhance search and reach a greater audience. “Since search is down the funnel, you need more prospects in the intent-to-purchase phase,” he says. He also notes that display scales more easily than search.
Display may help because search campaigns only show ads to people who’ve shown interest in that subject. Type “digital camera” into a search engine and you’ll get digital camera ads. But if you’re browsing the Internet, the random sites you come across won’t know you’re in the market for a digital camera. Display advertising is usually less targeted by intent, but reaches a greater audience across all target demographics.
On the other hand, as MediaPost says:
Search works on the lower parts of the funnel by targeting prospective customers in the consideration stage or in the intent-to-purchase stage and pushes them to complete their purchase. Display works on all stages of the funnel, bringing prospective customers into the funnel by generating awareness for the products or the services.
What do you think? Does display+search help people buy faster?
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50 Million Tweets Per Day? We’re Going to Need a Bigger Boat!
It appears Twitter is finally had enough of third-party analytics companies getting all of the publicity over tweet counts–so it’s spilling the official beans.
Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second.
I may have to admit to contributing maybe half that number on some days. 
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Bing Maps Announces Awesome Flickr Intergration in JUST 1300 Words!
Bing has a lot to learn about sharing big news on its blog.
Take this post for example: spatial search: the next frontier
Cute title, but doesn’t tell me anything about the announcement.
Or take the actual post. 1300+ words and you have to read 628 of them, before you get to the announcment. Talk about burying the lead!
Fortunately, I have a man on the inside (hi Scott) that makes sure I don’t miss important news from Bing. Such as, the awesomeness of the forthcoming Streetside Photos in Bing Maps.
Watch this 2:35 video and you’ll see this cool technology integrates with Flickr images:
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What, you don’t have a couple of minutes? Here’s the summary:
Streetside Photos application (in technology preview): Available today, this tech preview mines geo-tagged photos from Flickr, and relates them to the Streetside imagery in Bing Maps. As more people contribute and share imagery, we can reunite those photos with the location where they were taken. This application will also enable the layering of historical imagery, so people can go back in time and see a location as it existed decades prior.
Awesome news, that was almost missed.
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Ad Spend on Social Networks Gains a Whopping Half Point in Share
Apparently, ads on social networks aren’t working out too well.
While this is not anything we didn’t already know, it must be disheartening for Facebook, MySpace et al, to learn that pinning their revenue growth on display ads may be a tough row to hoe.
It’s not a completely ugly picture, according to eMarketer, ads on social media networks will gain a 5.5% share of all online ad spending, but…
That’s up from 5 percent in 2008, the stats released Thursday say. The good news is that, unlike some other sectors of the ad world, it’s not shrinking–but it’s also not growing exponentially by any means. After plunging from a 61 percent rate of growth in 2008 to 12 percent in 2009, the rate of growth is projected to crawl back up to 14 percent this year and stay about the same at 13 percent next year.
MySpace is to blame for most of the stagnation–its own ad revenues have fallen–and it doesn’t help that Facebook is cutting back on its ad serving as well.
Of course, the news isn’t quite so depressing for social networking advertisers. Social networks still make up around 22% of all online display impressions, it’s just that they are dirt cheap–hence not being a bigger slice of the ad spend pie. 
