Category: Yahoo!

We have been privileged to work with Prof. Joe Turow of the Univ. of Penn.’s Annenberg School over the last few months on new media and marketing merger issues. Last fall, we asked him to brief the FTC and the Congress on the Google/DoubleClick merger. Prof. Turow brings a all-too-rare independent analysis to the critical issues involving the relationship of digital marketing to democratic civil society. We’re pleased the Washington Post, AP, and others cited him today in their coverage of the proposed deal. Here’s the full statement we helped send out to reporters yesterday: “Microsoft’s decision to buy Yahoo is a direct result of the decision by the FTC to allow Google to purchase DoubleClick. It is further evidence that despite the appearance of unlimited choice in the new media environment, people’s activities will be tracked and shaped by a very small number of companies who care far more about surveillance and targeted advertising than the public interest. The Federal government, which should have been the guardian of the public interest, has dropped the ball. A concerned public ought to call its political leaders to account about the problematic ways they are allowing the new digital world to develop.”

Joseph Turow is Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of over 70 articles and 10 books on mass media industries, including Niche Envy: Marketing Discrimination in the Digital Age (MIT Press, 2006), and the editor of The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming).

Microsoft/Yahoo!, Google/DoubleClick et al: The Emerging “New Media” Media Monopoly
Consolidation of the Online Advertising Business Illustrates Failure of FTC and Antitrust Process
Privacy Threats Online to Consumers Will Grow: Federal Safeguards on Data Collection Urgently Required
Consequences to Democratic Discourse Must be Examined

Today’s proposed acquisition by Microsoft of Yahoo!, if consummated, will create a powerful interactive Internet interactive duopoly in online media. Google and Microsoft will have inordinate power to shape the online communications marketplace, including journalism, entertainment and advertising. The once most potentially democratic of all mediums—the Net—is being shaped by the same powerful forces that consolidated the “older” media of broadcasting and newspapers. There are consequences to democratic societies everywhere, as two digital gatekeepers are likely to control how the Internet and other interactive media evolve. In an era when individuals are increasingly conducting their personal, social and political lives online, the corporations that control the digital experience will have a far-reaching influence over every aspect of society.

The failure of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Congress to adequately address the emerging consolidation in the online advertising business helped lead to this proposed transaction. Two years ago [November 2006], the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and US Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG) petitioned the FTC to open up an antitrust investigation into the growing consolidation of the online ad business. We and other groups asked the FTC to impose competition safeguards in the Google/DoubleClick deal. The FTC failed to do both and has now placed consumers and competitors at risk. Beyond competition safeguards, the proposed deal underscores the need for both the FTC and the Congress to enact policies that will protect consumer data online. They are already at risk, as we reminded the FTC in an amended complaint and letter last November. In an online era dominated by digital behemoths, consumers will be more vulnerable to having their personal information become the property of the GoogleClick’s and Microhoo’s!

We don’t want to pick on Google–almost everyone else in the interactive advertising business has similar goals regarding unleashing new media to promote marketing. But Google’s evolution as a powerful force shaping the future of media requires attention and public debate. Here’s an excerpt from Online Media Daily covering what a “Google TV Ad” exec said to industry honchos last week [our emphasis]: “THE FUTURE OF TV ADVERTISING will probably be a lot like current state of the online advertising: aggregated advertising networks, behavioral targeting, and automated buying systems enabling small, “long-tail” advertisers to compete alongside the TV industry’s biggest marketers and agencies… “We have built technology and have an infrastructure that the industry can use to connect all those hundreds of thousands of advertisers with all the permutations that come,” Mike Steib, director of Google TV Ads, said in the search giant’s latest pitch to the TV industry that it can help it unlock underutilized, under-measured and undervalued advertising inventory, especially millions of local cable advertising avails that have become the ghetto of the TV advertising marketplace.

By aggregating the disparate local cable advertising in ways that deliver meaningful sub-segments of viewers, Steib said Google TV ads program is able to create audience mixes that likely would have higher advertising value than their remnant avails currently have on their own, and which theoretically could compete in value with some of the TV industry’s most premium network TV inventory.

“There’s all these opportunities to drive sell out,” he said, “much, much closer to 100% and to take the CPMs up significantly when you start matching the right advertising with the right audiences.”

And, as the late Kurt Vonnegut Jr. might say, so it goes.

Why let a European Union Parliamentary inquiry (okay, seminar!) into Google’s data collection system and its proposed acquisition of uber digital marketer DoubleClick spoil interactive marketing dealmaking? That’s what Google obviously believes. According to today’s Guardian, Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced yesterday a new alliance with Publicis, the Paris-based advertising conglomerate. Publicis is the fourth largest advertising company in the world. One of its digital marketing subsidiaries–Digitas–represents such clients as American Express, Bank of China, General Motors, IBM, Miller Brewing, Nestle, and P&G. In the U.S., Publicis works with Coca Cola, Consumer Electronics Association, Denny’s, General Mills, Glaxo Smith Kline, etc.

Mr. Schmidt articulated Google’s vision for its work with Publicis and other marketers (before heading off to Davos). It is, wrote the Guardian, “about building a platform for targeting hundreds of millions of consumers with hundreds of millions of tailored ads in the digital marketplace.” Mr. Schmidt’s new partner–Maurice Levy of Publicis–added his own view about how the two companies would benefit from the alliance. It would foster “building a relationship between a brand and its consumers through an emotional link.”

PS: Via Online Media Daily’s coverage: “… Levy and Schmidt said the alliance involved the sharing of proprietary technical knowledge, as well as insights about advertising and media planning and buying, and involves the exchange of personnel between the two companies…Google has independently been recruiting Madison Avenue expertise at a rapid clip, hiring hundreds of former agency media planners, buyers and account planning executives to help build out a burgeoning advertising and media services organization.”

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We have long admired the Writers Guild of America–it’s been an important voice of conscience for an industry long interested more in bottom-line and politically expedient results than fulfilling its democratic and creative potential. The WGA played a key role alongside public interest media groups during the 2001-2003 battle fighting the Federal Communications Commission’s plans to further consolidate the broadcast, cable, and newspaper industries. Now the WGA has assumed an important leadership position for the “creative community,” especially in regards to the rights and royalties that should be shared from digital distribution. Everyone understands that the entertainment and news business has already fundamentally changed. The time to ensure fair participation and opportunity is near the beginning of this transformation–not what the Directors Guild of America did by postponing a serious approach to the issue for three years.

We hope the members of the WGA will fight on, even though we know there are serious hardships. As always, the media owners are pulling a fast-one, hoping the writers will get scared (as many did during the Blacklist era).

The largest media companies working in television and films have been on a buying spree, acquiring digital marketing and advertising companies. They have aggressively moved into broadband, mobile communications, and video games. They have also fully embraced cross-platform strategies (digital upfront’s, for example) that are another sign of fundamental changes in the industry. The joint News Corp./Fox and GE/NBC U broadband video service Hulu.com is a good example of how the industry is responding to the changing audience and distribution models (that includes deals with Comcast, Time Warner, Microsoft and Yahoo!). Don’t forget the buying and deals involving emerging markets in Asia. Here’s just a very cursory, thumbnail of some of the deals. We hope WGA won’t place its strike in “turnaround.” Someone has to stand up (and while we are on the subject, the mainstream news media have done a horrible job explaining the issues involved in the strike. Nor have the networks identified their own conflicts when their news divisions have covered the story).

Time Warner’s digital acquisitions (2007): Tacoda, AdTechAG, Third Screen Media, Quigo.

News Corp, Strategic Data Corp (permitting the expansion of its MySpace, IGN and other Fox Interactive Media properties to engage in advanced data collection and hypertargeting users); Photobucket; Flektor; 2 IGN Entertainment, MySpace, Scout Media (and don’t forget recent creations such as FIM Labs, FIM Mobile and FIM Stations Group). Jamster/Jamba (a joint venture).
Viacom: Neopets, Sportsline.com, Atom Entertainment, IFilm, RateMyProfessors.com, Harmonix Music Systems, XFire, Y2M (and don’t forget Viacom’s cross-platform ad and content sales operation).

NBCU: Oxygen Media, iVillage, Sparrowhawk Holdings (also remember Hulu).

Disney: Pixar, Club Penguin, Minds Eye Productions, Living Mobile, iParenting Media.

Sony Pictures: Grouper, You Tube Channels, and see: Sony Pictures Mobile, Station.com

PS: We like this description via Fox Interactive Media of its businesses (our emphasis): “FOX Interactive Media (FIM) provides an integrated network of sites that collectively offers more than 200 million worldwide users socially rich media experiences centered on entertainment, news, information and self-expression. FIM’s online sites include MySpace (the largest networking destination in the world), IGN (industry leading video game website), FoxSports.com, AmericanIdol.com, Rotten Tomatoes, Askmen.com and Photobucket along with numerous other online destinations. FIM is a cutting edge internet company with a track record of explosive growth both through internal development and strategic acquisitions. FIM is located in Beverly Hills, CA.

Fox Interactive Mobile is charged with overseeing the mobile extensions of FIM’s online assets, including FOXSports.com, IGN.com, MySpace.com, MyFOX.com, AskMen.com and others. The mobile operations team is responsible for managing diverse branded mobile product offerings on a global basis, spanning the wireless product spectrum from WAP to video.”

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