Month: April 2007

Doubleclick’s “Performics” division: The “largest search-marketing firm” says Ad Age [4/13/07]

“Performics, the performance-based marketing division of DoubleClick, provides online marketing services and technologies for leading multi-channel marketers. Together, Performics and DoubleClick offer clients an unparalleled range of marketing solutions and are uniquely positioned to compare effectiveness across marketing channels for valued clients. Advertisers benefit from Performics´ custom approach to Affiliate Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Data Feed Marketing and Online Lead Generation programs. Performics’ proprietary tracking and reporting technology platform, advanced market expertise, and active account management enable clients to acquire and reacquire online customers. Performics is the only recognized industry leader providing both Search Engine Marketing and Affiliate Marketing Services.” from About Us

Clients: “More than 300 clients, including America Online, Blair Corp., Bose, Cingular, CompUSA, Eddie Bauer, Fairmont Hotels, HP Shopping, J. Jill, Jos. A. Banks, Kohl’s, L.L. Bean, Motorola, OfficeMax, PC Connection, RedEnvelope, My Sony, Quickbook, Staples, Verizon Wireless, and Wyndham Hotels.”

FeedLab: “Performics developed FeedLab to automate cross functional processes and scale data feed marketing programs… FeedLab not only scales the delivery and optimization of data feeds, but the technology integrates input from “paid search” results, search queries and third-party information to improve the relevancy of the data feed and enhance an advertiser´s results…FeedLab also manages an advertiser´s data feed with comparison shopping engines, Web publishers and participants in the Performics affiliate network. There are currently more than 100 online publishers utilizing client data feeds through Performics.”

Attention European Commission: Doubleclick’s Own Warning About Google’s Growing EU Clout

In Doubleclick’s “The European search advertising landscape, 2006” report, they note that (excerpts):

“Google dominates the continent

Google dominates the search market in Europe, and this is especially true so outside the U.K. In Germany, Google’s market share approaches 90%. “The game in Europe is Google,” declared Andy Atkins, CEO of WebCertain…Google sites are also visited by a greater proportion of visitors in Europe (75%) than in the US (60%)…in July 2006, Google sites were the most visited online destinations in Europe with over 150 million unique visitors in that month. The dominant search engines in Europe are also the largest media owners—Google, Yahoo and MSN…The European online ad market is concentrated in the hands of a few major players.”

Research report press release

available as pdf via Google UK homepage

What Doubleclick also knew about you: Abacus Catalog Alliance

“With more than 3.5 billion transactions from more than 90 million U.S. households, the Abacus Alliance Database is the largest proprietary database of consumer transactions used for target marketing purposes. Abacus combines the power of this shared data with advanced statistical modeling to help Alliance participants improve profitability and increase market share.

With the Abacus Catalog Alliance, marketers can leverage transactional data to identify new customers and optimize the profitability of their existing customer base. Abacus data allows them to understand what customers actually buy, not what they say they buy. No one else can offer them the same advantages.

Alliance membership is for sophisticated marketers who are looking for a large universe of quality names and proven modeling techniques to increase their revenue and profitability.”
From: Doubleclick UK (accessed April 15, 2007)

“The Abacus Alliance database contains transactional data with detailed information on consumer and business-to-business purchasing and spending behavior. Over the past ten years, transactional data has proven to be the most effective predictor of future buying behavior. By combining transactional data with advanced statistical modeling, direct marketing can help marketers target the potential consumers that are most likely to buy their products or services.”

From: Direct Marketing (Doubleclick UK) Accessed April 15, 2007

PS: Aliance Data acquired Abacus in December 2006. But the Doubleclick UK site contains the above information as of today.

Doubleclick and Google Clout: First in a Series

“CEO David S. Rosenblatt of DoubleClick Inc., which serves up some 200 billion ads a month for customers, says that every campaign now allows for 50 different types of metrics.” Source: BusinessWeek. 2006.

“In 2005, Google captured as much as 64 percent of the [paid global search] market…” Source:Clickz.

“In June 2006, Google Sites led in search query volume with 2.9 billion searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (1.8 billion) and MSN-Microsoft Sites (818 million).” [U.S. market] Source: comScore

Google’s “landmark agreement” for search and advertising with News Corp./Fox Interactive (MySpace, etc). Source: release

Google’s $1 Billion investment and “strategic alliance” with Time Warner (via a 5% share AOL). Source: release

Doubleclick’s EU-based Falk subsidiary [acquired 2006]: “Falk AdSolution is now the third-largest ad management solution worldwide, serving over 18 billion ad impressions per month. With more than 70 employees and hundreds of publisher, marketer and agency customers, Falk is well positioned to cement its leadership in the online marketing industry.” Source: Company Profile.

“In December 2006, Google Sites captured 47.3 percent of the U.S. search market, gaining 0.4 share points from the previous month. Yahoo! Sites grew 0.3 share points, maintaining its second place ranking with 28.5 percent of U.S. searches, followed by Microsoft Sites (10.5 percent), Ask Network (5.4 percent) and Time Warner Network (4.9 percent)…. Google Sites led the pack with 3.2 billion search queries performed, followed by Yahoo Sites (1.9 billion), MSN-Microsoft (713 million), Ask Network (363 million), and Time Warner Network (335 million).” Source: comScore

Doubleclick’s 2006 acquisition of Klipmart, “the nation’s largest provider of online video advertising and management solutions for web publishers, agencies, and marketers.” source: release.

Resource: “What Microsoft’s MSN, Google, Yahoo and AOL KNow About You.” A very useful and well-written article by Elise Ackerman of the San Jose Mercury News. It’s a chilling description about how much information is already being collected about all of us.

silk movies pantyfemale movie single whitesmokin movies xxxsoundtrack movie philadelphiamovies in spankingsmovies squirt tgpstrap on sex moviestrap on sex movies Map

FTC and the EC—Investigate and Deny Google/Doubleclick

The Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission must investigate–and should halt–this acquisition. As the Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group told the FTC last November, we are concerned about the growing consolidation of control within the digital advertising technology industry. Now, we have the number one online search advertising “agency”–Google, swallowing up the leading provider of third party display ads online. Google will have even more information about each of us and a vast new array of targeting and profiling technologies to boot. We mention the EU because Google is a global business and Doubleclick acquired Germany-based Falk last year.

The evolving structure of the interactive advertising market will have a tremendous impact on the quality and diversity of content in the emerging digital media worlds. We also most protect ourselves from permitting a handful of giants–such as a Google–to digitally shadow our every move online. But the new deal underscores why its time to protect privacy online in the U.S. There needs to be a series of safeguards to ensure we fully understand and control all our information (and not just the narrowly defined data set of name, email, etc. now acknowledged by industry and regulators). There are other concerns beyond the scope of anti-trust and data privacy regulators. We must think about the consequences to civil society about a interactive world where everything is a precision targeted and profiled-powered commercial transaction.

Expect action from the Center for Digital Democracy.

software credit and card achdegrees accredited nursing onlineace creditsaccount card bank texas credit merchantcredit aa visa cardfor accreditation programs residential treatmentcredits tax adoptionfederal union credit airforce Map

Don’t Think NBC/CBS Agenda for Hill/FCC Didn’t Play a Role in Imus Cancellation

In addition to pressure from sponsors, civil rights leaders, their own employees, and personal sense of justice, we think that part of the equation for CBS and GE/NBC was the impact on public policy. The Congress is going to take up legislation regulating TV violence (and Senate Commerce Chair Daniel Inouye just signaled his support for such a bill). The FCC is considering a new give-away to television broadcasters for their additional digital channels, requiring cable television carriage. There don’t want any serious scrutiny on their deals and mergers. There’s generally a policy angle lurking whenever the media industry does the right thing.

Toyota Infiltrates Music `Scene’ and Network TV to Sell Scion

For years now we have said that “product placement” has been replaced by what we’ve termed “plot” placement. That means episodes of programs, entire series, and even TV networks created in support of a brand/sponsor (such as the new Bud.TV-reg required).

Toyota’s marketeers for its Scion line like to insert the brand in “hip” culture. Now, they are “ramping up its efforts within the independent and underground music world, with negotiations to launch a reality TV show called “Stomping Grounds,” starring hip-hop artists who cruise around (in Scion vehicles) the neighborhoods they grew up in.” One of Scion’s agencies told MediaPost that “Stomping Grounds” is now in “film festivals, but we are approaching networks about licensing the show and making a series out of it. That’s how we would approach it, as a Scion-branded show, with Scion cars in it.” This week Scion launched “a program using hip-hop producer Hi-Tec, who has produced for 50 Cent and Jay Z, among others. As part of the program, “The Prospect,” he will select a promising hip-hop artist, record his music and make a music video, while Inform Ventures develops a marketing program and a mini-tour for the artist. The winner of the program will be chosen in July, based on submissions to scionprospect.com.”

The Brand and Not-so Beautiful world that Toyota, Viacom’s MTV and Nickelodeon (see today’s Nick announcement), and so many, many others are creating ultimately makes everything in our world an extension of a brand message. Yes, I believe that hip-hop artists, video and online content producers, and journalists must be paid decently (and have the resources to do their work). But if music, childhood, and civic discourse are reduced to mere extensions of [perpetual] marketing campaigns, isn’t that a cynical and disturbing development? Yes, I believe so. Do we really want to develop a global culture where the public is forced to have never-ending relationships with brands and their messages?

New MIT Book Covers Children/Youth and Digital Culture/Politics

My wife Kathryn C. Montgomery has a new book about to be published. It’s titled “Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet.” The following is from the MIT Press catalog:

“Children and teens today have integrated digital culture seamlessly into their lives. For most, using the Internet, playing videogames, downloading music onto an iPod, or multitasking with a cell phone is no more complicated than setting the toaster oven to “bake” or turning on the TV. In Generation Digital, media expert and activist Kathryn C. Montgomery examines the ways in which the new media landscape is changing the nature of childhood and adolescence and analyzes recent political debates that have shaped both policy and practice in digital culture.

The media have pictured the so-called “digital generation” in contradictory ways: as bold trailblazers and innocent victims, as active creators of digital culture and passive targets of digital marketing. This, says Montgomery, reflects our ambivalent attitude toward both youth and technology. She charts a confluence of historical trends that made children and teens a particularly valuable target market during the early commercialization of the Internet and describes the consumer-group advocacy campaign that led to a law to protect children’s privacy on the Internet. Montgomery recounts–as a participant and as a media scholar–the highly publicized battles over indecency and pornography on the Internet. She shows how digital marketing taps into teenagers’ developmental needs and how three public service campaigns–about sexuality, smoking, and political involvement–borrowed their techniques from commercial digital marketers. Not all of today’s techno-savvy youth are politically disaffected; Generation Digital chronicles the ways that many have used the Internet as a political tool, mobilizing young voters in 2004 and waging battles with the music and media industries over control of cultural expression online.”