Trends

Old is New Again
Every so often, new information changes our perspective. Every so often, some new bit of data comes along that causes us to take pause and reconcile what we thought we knew about an area with what we now... More...

Not So Long Tail
August of this year will mark the four year anniversary of Google going public, in many ways the tipping point for Internet advertising as we know it today. Four years ago, what existed? Internet life focused around... More...

The Path to Profit
The ad network is dead. Long live the ad network. Depending on whom you ask, things are doing very well or not quite well enough. The same of course holds true for Internet advertising as a whole. On the one hand... More...

Get Hired
In this week's other article on the job market, "You're Fired," we talk about the potential that the job losses that have hit other industries could hit ours, despite the often rosy picture painted by many of the technology... More...

Risky Business
Earlier this week, prior to ad:tech, we had the chance to join another gathering of those in the industry. We traveled to San Diego to participate in Experian Americas Sales Summit, joining a panel of those much... More...

Can Display Catch Search?
While the not quite drama of Microsoft-Yahoo continues, the ensuing attention paid to the former's potential acquisition of the latter has at least started to focus the broader dialog on future possibilities of Internet... More...

Run (out) Of Network
The last couple of years, the past 16 months certainly, has treated those in the ad network space well, especially those with a technology layer, that, whether it lived up to its promise or not, helped increase the multiple... More...

Recession Survival Guide
Depending on whom you ask, the United States economy has already entered a recession or sits on the precipice of one, with even the most bullish not willing to say no such recession will occur. Our stock... More...

Power to The People - Part 2
Despite it being the largest corporate employer and having no shortage of detractors, Wal-Mart doesn't come close to qualifying as a monopoly. Granted, in many areas, especially rural, their presence has greatly reduced the number... More...

Ringtones In The News Again
If a government agency could find itself on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies, Florida's Attorney General's CyberFraud Task Force would have a strong case for inclusion. As you might recall, upon... More...

The Mystery of Display
Last week, almost two weeks after word spread that Microsoft had an interest in Yahoo, MarketWatch.com published an article titled, "Microsoft's play for display," with the subtitle, "Buying Yahoo a major bet... More...

Made for Yahoo Feed Sites Under Scrutiny
In addition to the writers strike ending, the flurry of activity surrounding the potential acquisition of Yahoo also pushed another, and in this case much more relevant to our industry than the writers strike, piece of news to the... More...

No School For You
Last month when we attended the Inman Real Estate Connect Show, a show packed with hundreds of real estate agents listening to leaders in the field and economists delivering the unfortunate truth that yes the housing... More...

Much Ado About Yahoo - Part 2
Just imagine a year from now, looking back on what was written about Yahoo-Microsoft. Imagine in three years. Will it become the next AOL-TimeWarner or perhaps the next Daimler-Chrysler? In Part 1 of our week 1... More...

The Domain Shakeout
For an industry that generates billions annually and operates much today as it did ten years ago with many of the same people as then, outside of the occasional article, little coverage of the domain name landscape... More...

Is it 2009 Yet?
When talking about the stock market, a friend of mine recently joked, "So I take it, you too are now a long-term investor?" He joked, because as two non-savvy investors, we have lost so much since the start of this year that... More...

Online Video Killed the TV Star
I like TV, more than someone in the Internet age probably should, and if I admit to how little video content I consume while sitting in front of an Internet enabled device, well, we won't go there. Let's just say there are... More...

Google Hates You
The Falling Knife might not have had the most uplifting news about the year(s) ahead, so we will apologize in advance that this article too doesn't offer much more hope. Name another company, though, that even if... More...

Online Media Mergers & Acquisitions Activity in 2007
In 2007, there were 615 merger, acquisition and capital raise transactions in the online sector of media. More...

Will 2008 Be Great?
As we wrote out our predictions for the upcoming year, one question kept creeping into our mind - "Will this year be a good one?" Saying this company might go public or this vertical might not tells the affect but not... More...

Ringtones Survival Guide
In this week's Trends report, we introduce the notion of affiliate accountability, not that affiliates have thus far in their existence acted without accountability, but for reasons both valid and not... More...

When Writers Strike
If asked to name a union, I imagine many would gravitate towards one of the larger, albeit waining ones, the United Auto Workers. Name the last time that they went on strike, and unless you actively follow or have some... More...

Facebook: Another Privacy Issue
It was a little over a year ago when Facebook faced loud criticism for the unveiling of its News Feed feature. After a public apology and a few tweaks, the News Feed remains and is a convenient feature for many users. More...

YouTube Still Online Video King
According to the most recent comScore Video Metrix report for September 2007, Google Sites (which includes YouTube) remains the king of the online video hill, both in terms of the number of videos viewed and in terms of unique video viewers. More...

Cyber Monday Was Best Yet
Cyber Monday, the moniker fondly given to the Monday after Thanksgiving, saw its best year yet in 2007. Online shoppers in the U.S. spent $733 million on Cyber Monday, according to comScore. This marks a 21% increase from last years figure. More...

Credit Crunch Fears Reappear
Travel back to Thursday, July 19, 2007. The Dow broke 14,000 for the first time ever, ending the day at 14000.71. On Friday, it retreated 150 points, though, and closed just above 13850. Days later on Monday, July 23... More...

Do Not Track - Not For Me
I finished my undergraduate degree as the Internet boom started to hit its stride, but after several entrepreneurs had already started and sold companies for tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. When I started... More...

Sales-sourcing: A Tale of Two
Not having studied finance nor growing up with aspirations of working on Wall Street, and despite a significant number of years in the online space, not to mention more than one article on the topic, but the online ad... More...

The Real Ringtone Shakeup
About a month ago, we wrote about imminent changes in the ringtone landscape, ones that had the potential to materially impact a large percentage of those driving signups to ringtone providers. Changes can... More...

A Local Dilemma - Part 2
If you read Part 1, you will have learned of a great gym, but more importantly, of a challenge that it and many local businesses face, especially service based ones where foot traffic alone won't make the... More...

What's New in Incentivized Marketing
For many reasons - another record year expected in online advertising, Google first hitting $600 per share, Bidu passing $300, multiple multi-billion dollar acquisitions, record-levels of investment, a blog being valued at $100 million... More...

Google, Microsoft Popular in U.K., Facebook Growing
In August, Google attracted 28.3 million unique visitors in the U.K., or about 88.8% of the U.K.’s total online audience (ages 15 and older), according to recent comScore numbers. More...

Online Ad Spend Passes $5 Billion in Q2
The most recent data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers shows that online ad spending stormed ahead to reach $5.1 billion for the second quarter alone, a 25.4% increase from the same quarter last year. More...

King of Traffix
If you attend Affiliate Summit, you should have come across a company called Hot Rocket Marketing and their affiliate network RocketProfit.com. Then again, given their low key demeanor, you might not have. At Affiliate... More...

Google CPA Optimizer
Google has entered an arena which comes as no surprise but still a slight shock. The company has made billions of dollars off click based advertising, literally billions. In fact, they make more than a billion dollars... More...

Push vs. Pull in Lead Generation
If you follow the public companies within the Internet advertising space, you should have some familiarity with the rise and fall of Valueclick. The stock went from around $13 in the middle of 2006, doubled within five... More...

Blue is the new Black
Pretend for a second that you just got back from vacation and didn't happen to see the flurry of blog posts on Tuesday afternoon and articles yesterday. That way the answer to this question won't come quite as easily. Even if you do... More...

Captured: The Next Incentive Promotion
Every so often we like to highlight certain aspects of direct marketing. We've done this with various forms of lead generation, pure CPC arbitrage, and most recently with the incentive promotion space. The focus today... More...

Making Sense of the Mortgage Market Mess, Week Two - Part 1
Almost four weeks ago today, on July 19, 2007, the Dow Jones closed at an all time high or 14,000. In the four weeks since, the Dow has managed to give now more than 1000 points, closing below 13,000 for the first time... More...

Making Sense of the Mortgage Market Mess
For the past four, perhaps five years, the mortgage vertical has generated more leads and ultimately more revenue than any other. That could change this year as the mortgage market undergoes its biggest correction... More...

Valueclick and the Future of Incentive Promotion
A little more than two months ago, Valueclick announced an inquiry into their lead generation practices by the FTC. As required by securities law, the company filed a Form 8-K acknowledging the receipt of a letter of... More...

Google and CPA
News surfaced a little more than a year ago about the beginnings of a Google CPA network. In June of 2006, word started to break about a product called Content Referral where, for the first time, advertisers could... More...

PPC vs. Affiliate Arbitrage - Part 2
Perhaps not quite a soft spot, but we have long followed and had a strange affinity for various forms of arbitrage. It is, in many ways, a representation of life at large - the pursuit of easy money, the ultimate cat and mouse... More...

PPC vs. Affiliate Arbitrage - Part 1
Earlier this week, the ever acquisitive ValueClick announced that it added a new company to its interactive marketing mix. We hadn't read the release when asked what we thought Valueclick paid for the 4th ranked... More...

The State of Mobile Marketing
Our industry is an interesting one; it's a complex marketplace of intent, monetization, and relative performance. Those in the direct marketing space either have traffic, e.g. via their website or email list or they have the... More...

Master of Your Own Domain (Names)
Affiliate Summit registrants found something in their inboxes a few days ago that might have more than one looking quizzically at the message and perhaps even more hitting delete. It was easy to see why. The subject... More...

Lead Management
Not too long ago we wrote about one of my personal favorites, web based instant messaging company Meebo. I have used the product since I first read a story of how it caught on in an unlikely place, with our troops... More...

The Beginning of the End for Incentive Marketing
After ValueClick disclosed an inquiry into their lead generation practices by the FTC announcement stemming from the company's incentive marketing campaigns, it was only a matter of time before changes would start to make... More...

Breaking Down Paid Search, Part 1
Google has long seemed to have a love/hate relationship with the affiliate marketing company. That is to say, they seem to hate affiliates and love to make their lives difficult. Two weeks ago we... More...

Long-Term Fundamentals
When companies get purchased for hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars, it gets us fired up and hungry. Lucky, we operate in an industry where we can actually do something... More...

An Exit for Affiliate Networks?
Right Media, aQuantive, and 24/7 Real Media all had something in common besides the technology platforms for which they were ostensibly acquired. Each had an ad network component to their business. It's safe... More...

Five in Five
It began with a bang and finished with a boom. Five weeks, five companies, and more than $10 billion spent in the largest wave of consolidation in recent history, if not ever, in the Internet advertising space. And, for better or worse, it... More...

A Site You Can't Live Without
Some ideas take a while to grasp. Some make sense right away. Some might make sense but go nowhere. Others don't seem to make sense right away but end up clicking at some point later. Some ideas become financial successes... More...

True That
Imagine yourself three years ago looking for a market to explore. Yes, 2004, in a world before MySpace and Facebook, a time when New Century still bought leads. You had money, a solid leadership team, and a desire to enter into the... More...

Microsoft Getting Soft?
First Yahoo invests in Right Media. Next, Google buys Doubleclick. Then, Yahoo scoops up the remainder of Right Media. And now, Microsoft could buy 24/7 Real Media?? Before we even begin to fathom why they might do... More...

The Many Faces of Internet Advertising - An Ad:Tech SF Commentary
By now, you've spent one if not two days deep in meetings while trying to squeeze in some time to roam an exhibit hall the size of some commercial farms, a floor space that should have airport style carts to take you from row to row. During this time, you've met those you know, those you didn't know, and those you wish you didn't have to know. More...

Done Deal. In the Wake of GOOG DCLK.
Two weeks ago, when it seemed that Microsoft might actually acquire DoubleClick, we wrote, upon learning of Google's interest in the billion dollar ad serving company, that DoubleClick would go to Google. A press release by... More...

The Race to Buy DoubleClick
This past week, the Internet's version of an arms race launched. It started exactly a week ago with articles similar to that published in MediaPost stating, "Microsoft/DoubleClick Deal Seems Likely." Four days later, the likely deal... More...

The Current State of Incentive Marketing...Sort of
We at the Confidential have covered the incentive marketing space for almost three years. A lot has changed during that time. Had you taken a poll in 2004 asking those in the interactive space if they thought incentive... More...

Google Drops the C-bomb
My heart almost stopped when I saw the subject of the Inside AdWords email sent, "[Inside AdWords] Pay-per-action beta test." That almost reaction almost doesn't make sense though. We work in the CPA space. We spend countless... More...

A Sub-prime Primer - Part 2
Mortgage banking as a whole has played a significant role in the Internet advertising landscape. It provided the catalyst and platform for LowerMyBills' $380 million purchase and NexTag's estimated $90 million... More...

Two Ways to Think about Ad Networks
The sale of Strategic Data Corp to Fox Interactive got us thinking. In the ad network world, there exist very few companies such as Strategic Data Corp. Publishers like Fox, who focus on content and not technology make... More...

One Edu Company's Big Day
Those who follow online lead generation, especially those who follow and /or operate in the online education lead generation space quickly circulated the news surrounding Vantage Media. Had you not known of Vantage Media, you... More...

Here We Go Again - Quality Score Update
Oy. The body of the email that I received yesterday had written in it just that one word, a sign of exasperation, almost frustration, if not resignation. What could have caused such a response? A quick look at the forwarded message... More...

Fair Weathered Pixel Practices
If it didn’t make me sound both old and/or worse behind the times, I would have begun this piece with “Back in my day.” But, really, back when my job involved, for lack of a better word, squeezing out the highest value per user... More...

Birth of Web 3.0
Hard to believe, but more than four years has passed since eBay bought PayPal. In those four years, those at PayPal, and specifically, those who decided to leave PayPal have kept busy. In the Long Island of the West, Silicon... More...

Birth of a Marketplace
To balance out this week’s Digital Thoughts, where we look at the incredibly non-direct marketing world of MySpace and YouTube, in this week’s Trends Report, we focus closer to our roots by looking at a company that has come a... More...

The Next Silicon Valley - Part 2
China has changed the face of manufacturing worldwide, and if Dr. Leonard Liu, one of the best CEO’s according to Japan’s Joichi Ito and leader of several multi-billion dollar companies has his way, China will change the face of... More...

The Next Silicon Valley - Part 1
Close your eyes for a second and think about what you will be doing at the age of 65. If you are Dr. Leonard Liu whose career included helping create and implement SQL, serving as a C-level executive at more than one multi-billion... More...

Year of New Lead Generation Verticals
When those of us in the online advertising world think of lead generation, we often think of the volume leaders - mortgage and education. It's hard not to, as they, for the most part, dominate our advertising consciousness, especially... More...

Beauty of Arbitrage
Those in the direct response space see the world differently. They get paid when something happens and only when something happens. Those in the direct response space come in many shapes and sizes. They include... More...

Online Video: Show me the money
In what feels like a long time ago but was only in October, we wrote that many advertisers have already jumped on the video bandwagon but that not all of the dollars available have yet to find a home. Even people who don’t necessarily... More...

Captured: Inventory Extension
Sites such as YouTube illustrate the challenges of ad matching well. Some incredible technologies have been developed that help tremendously, behavioral targeting being one. I have always liked what behavioral targeting... More...

Evolution of the Quality Score - Part 2
With the Quality Score, Google has found a masterful way to make more money from its advertisers in the name of more relevant ads. As an advertiser, it comes down to one thing, the higher the Quality Score, the lower the actual... More...

Evolution of the Quality Score - Part 1
A little more than a week ago, beginning November 6, 2006, Google unveiled its fourth Quality Score announcement. If you don’t advertise on Google, this might not mean to much to you, but if you do advertise on Google, especially if... More...

Something Video This Way Comes
It’s hard to explain or put a finger on it, but we are beginning to witness something big. When it comes to just what the next big thing will be, much of the discussion to date has focused on online video. And, chances are that’s... More...

The Un-network Ad Networks
Last week’s Trends Report “Thinking outside the Banner” focused on the new type of ad network, one whose inventory wasn’t limited to IAB formats. And, in a break with traditional web site based networks, many of these companies... More...

Thinking Outside the Banner
The ad network space has not seen too much activity with respect to investment / acquisition activity. Advertising.com sold several years ago; Fastclick went public then sold to Valueclick. Turn.com raised a decent amount... More...

Just Don’t Call It GooTube
How would you spend one-point-six-five billion dollars? That’s the question the owners of YouTube now face after their most impressive sale to the mighty Google. It was less than one week ago, in the wee hours of the 6th, that... More...

Pay Per Call and Local Services
Earlier this week, MediaPost ran an article written by Gord Hotchkiss, president of search engine marketing company Enquiro, on the pay per call market that focused on a pay per call advertiser Radiator.com and pay per call... More...

Yahoo and the Internet, Part 1
If this were baseball, Yahoo would not be going to the playoffs. And, if the adage, “three strikes and your out” applied, then the current number two in search would have even bigger worries. At the beginning of last week, Yahoo... More...

Video Primer Part 1
It almost embarrasses me to join the fray of people covering the world of online video. Admittedly, though, the world of online video has begun to take shape, and quite a bit has unfolded within the past week. This week’s news... More...

Have We Met?
Lead generation companies represent some of the most prolific advertisers on both search and display. Despite their seemingly run of network approach and often incomprehensible reach, those at the top actually employ... More...

Quiet Period
In “Quality over Quantity” we focus on the general trend in lead generation of both the buyers of leads and the suppliers of leads focusing on producing higher quality, more efficient leads as opposed to trying to simply maximize the... More...

Part 1 - Domain Name Landscape
There is a lot of land in the world. Virtually all of it is owned, be it by an individual, a corporation, or a government; a fair amount is developed, and the value of the land ranges dramatically based on its location. Some owners of... More...

Reputation
One of the more interesting consequences of today’s information society is not just the abundance of information, but the potential permanence of it. I remember companies advertising for browser cleaning products. Before today’s registry cleaning... More...

eBay, AOL, Amazon, Yahoo, and MSN
Chances are most of us use eBay, Amazon, and Yahoo, but they seem to have become non-players at the moment with respect to internet advertising. More...

The Era Of Intent
Business Week ran a cover story last week for their August 14th issue that covered one of the most successful sites, about which many either know so much or so little, Digg.com. Ask almost any Internet technology person, walk... More...

A Tale of Two Duplicities
This had been a notable week in terms of the deluge of news articles regarding Internet fraud. Perhaps the summer heat and the forecast of temperatures rising into the 100s have an overall noxious effect on people’s... More...

Information Security Bigger Threat than Terrorism
A study titled “Secure the Trust of Your Brand: Assessing the Security Mindset of Consumers” was conducted by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and Opinion Research. The results were released on Monday, and reveal... More...

State of Remnant Advertising
Two weeks ago, we looked at the impact that sites like MySpace have and will continue to have on those in the direct response / lead generation space. Historically, lead generation advertisers have found a way to succeed on... More...

Mortgage Lead Gen’s “Strive for 5”
At the dealer where I take my car to be serviced, plain paper printouts adorn the walls reading, “We Strive for Five.” After asking, I learned that the service writers, that is, the one who handles your visit, receives more money if you give... More...

Quality Score Update - CPC to PPC Arbitrage Parade
In April, I wrote about a site that had jumped from zero traffic to an Alexa reported almost 15 million page views per day. The site peaked towards the end of June at more than 20 million page views and achieved a rank that More...

Mechanics of “The Tail” or Long Tail Economics
This week’s Digital Trends explores the phenomenon known as the Long Tail, a phrase and now book by Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson, first published as an article for the magazine he heads in October 2004. Part 1 of... More...

Exitcution: The “150/100” Challenge, Part 2
Exitcution is all about how a company handles grow. Exitcution deals with not just how companies handle growth but whether they will continue to grow. It’s part strategy and a big part execution. With respect to those in the Internet... More...

Google goes CPA
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to present, as part of a panel at DM Days, my thoughts on the changing search landscape. My piece focused on CPA search, a topic that fascinates me in no small part due to the arbitrage activity taking More...

VendareNetblue - Before they were one, Part 2
In Part 1 of this week’s Digital Trends we cover the history of Vendare, a company that went from tens of millions of dollars annually to breaking one-hundred million dollars four years later. The company grew through smart... More...

360Solutions - Hotbar + 180Solutions
In March of this year Claria, originator and pioneer of the modern adware landscape, made the intriguing announcement that they planned to exit the adware business. They weren’t giving up tracking user behavior and serving... More...

Edu-adventures: Education Lead Generation Landscape
Part One of this piece on the recent Eduventures conference in Boston sets the framework for the information below. It tells of the unique nature of the conference as it brings together, not necessarily by choice, two very different... More...

Much To Do About Video
Keeping on top of the latest technology takes effort. Everyone should be so lucky to have at least one friend, that no matter what the technology, can help make sense of the situation and enable you to become proficient with it. For me, this was the case when trying to understand the relationship between... More...

Free Ringtones - The Real Incentive Promotion 2.0
Those that know me have probably seen that I have an odd passion for the economics of online offers, that is, trying to understand and explain why certain offers do well and what it takes for an offer to succeed - not just any offer... More...

Valueclick / aQuantive
Last week, when the announcement of a merger between acquisition happy Think Partnership and iLeadMedia hit the wires, talks between two much larger companies considering a merger were breaking down. The potential merger... More...

Internet Land Grab: Part II
Talking about the domain name industry today is really talking about the Internet land grab, and in many ways it paralleled the expansion of the US. Pioneers went out and laid claim to settled a large chunk of the land. When More...

Earnings Showcase Showdown
Every three months, public companies release their performance for the previous three months. Those with an interest, often a vested interest, in the stock market tend to follow these events closely - both the lead up to the actual... More...

Information Asymmetry
Found on eBay - Turn-Key Mortgage Lead Gen Business Opportunity. Unfortunately, the listing no longer exists on eBay but it touches upon one of the more fascinating trends going on in the lead generation space - owning traffic. More...

Caveat blogger
Long before companies started to leverage blogging as a next generation CRM solution and/or a means for thought leadership, individuals were using blogging to meet their own needs and sometimes no needs at all. Not many... More...

Blogging in the Corporate World
In my inbox today, I saw a MediaPost article titled, “Execs Mull Pitfalls Of Corporate Blogs.” It stemmed from the author attending a panel at OMMA Hollywood in which the participants discussed blogging as the new CRM. The... More...

Google versus Yahoo by the numbers - Part 2
Last week we featured a column titled “Marketer’s Unite - Open Up the Kimono.” The better title and the one used on my blog, is “Google versus Yahoo by the numbers.” This week, we continue the fascinating look at... More...

Marketers Unite - Open up the Kimono
The same day that Apollo Group announced its partnership with Advertising.com was the same day that an article in AdAge told of “a war of words” as “as search-marketing vendors went toe-to-toe with Google and... More...

Web Two Point Uh-Oh: Life in a syndicated world
Were Internet advertising like wines, then Vintage 2004 would be considered a good year. The drought that plagued the online ad market for most of 2000 through the end of 2002 is now just a blip on the radar, a slight false start, not... More...

Lead Markets
The “interpreter of supply and demand,” that was a definition I came across when trying to figure out how to describe markets and marketplaces. When I hear the word, I think of the stock market, of people buying and selling in... More...

Incentive Promotion 2.0
Don’t let today’s “Effectiveness in Lead Generation” or hundred million plus dollar price tags of companies in the lead generation space fool you into thinking last year’s topic of conversation no longer shines brightly. More...

Super Bowl of Ads - Convergence
It took a little while, but the Internet has fundamentally changed offline advertising. Perhaps no other event highlights those changes as much as the Super Bowl. Companies have for years included their web sites in their TV... More...

Direct Response Sold
When it comes to affiliate marketing solutions, two pairs of companies get mentioned more often than any others. One is Commission Junction and Linkshare, the other Direct Response and KowaBunga. ValueClick snapped... More...

The Year That Will Be
Despite the rocky beginning and the ultra-competitiveness foreshadowing times to come, 2005 once again made Internet advertising history, not to mention making more than 1200 millionaires. We’ve already presented our take on Internet Advertising... More...

Components Of Affiliate Marketing
Distinct to affiliate marketing are some of the big brand advertisers you will find on them, and the ease with which a traffic source could work with them. From the ad networking point of view, trying to work with Citibank or Payless Shoes means knowing their... More...

The Year Of The Customer
Three weeks ago, collaborator and friend Cliff Kurtzman, creator and maintainer of the wonderful Online Advertising Industry M&A Deal Flow, sent me a link to a PDF white paper created by Ken Sonenclar, Managing Director of the Digital Media... More...

AOOOOOOL
By now, almost everybody outside the Internet world has heard of Google. Similarly, thanks to its first mover status and ubiquitous blanketing of American mailboxes and retail outlets with CD-ROMs, you’ll be hard pressed to find someone that hasn’t heard of... More...

What Do I Do For A Living?
Reunions of any sort follow the same template. People who have lost touch ask the same questions. Of the top three asked, the one that I have recently had to answer the most was “what do you do?” And with that, I confidently reply “I work for... More...

Finding The Sweet Spot Part 2: Sky Is The Limit
A company’s financials are an affect of their business. In Part 1 located here, we laid the groundwork for our discussion on understanding and evaluating why certain companies attain the size they do. The result was a set of criteria, that when... More...

Finding The Sweet Spot Part 1
The sweet spot for selling right now seems to lie right around a half a billion dollars. More companies than not have sold for less, much less, but there is something about that $500 million number that has many companies saying “I do.” This includes companies... More...

The Showdown
Much like an auto race where the top few cars battle it out for number one, the fight for other positions can be as exciting, if not more so, than the one going on at the front of the pack. It’s like the Masters golf tournament. Being number one is what you want... More...

The Local Internet
The weekend before Thanksgiving, I moved into a new apartment. Besides marking the first time I have lived outside of downtown Los Angeles, the move also signified another first, my using Craigslist to sell stuff. The results truly speak for themselves... More...

A Giant In The Making
Could a company that generates per year what a similar company does per month, one whose market cap equals that bigger company’s quarterly revenues, be considered the “next” iteration of it? That appears to be the question that CGI Holdings Corp... More...

Sealed Vs. Open Keyword Auction
If you have ever seen a mortgage lead form, you will know that one of the drop downs deals with the potential borrower’s credit. Not being a mortgage banker or broker, it would seem reasonable to believe that those on the lending side would only want to... More...

The Ownership of Traffic
The first half of A Crash Course on the Digital Marketing Vendor Landscape, the basis to last week’s two part Digital Marketing 101, focused on the different types of internet advertising and the companies that operate in them. The second half... More...

The Blurring of Search and Media
That Ad:Tech might have felt crowded, overlapping, and utterly confusing - reflects not on the show but the industry. Our industry used to have easily defined boundaries and companies that could fit into independent silos. Like the continents, the... More...

Digital Marketing 101 - Part I
What if you worked for a company that had a successful product, one with good offline exposure but with none online, and you were handed the responsibility of marketing it online? More...

Digital Marketing 101 - Part II
Lead generation, and co-registration come together to make up the next area of digital marketing, incentive promotion. More...

Trends Report: The Future of Direct Navigation
If you read this week’s Digital Thoughts, which of course you did, you would have read about a small conference that very few in our industry attended. For those of us that did attend, such exclusivity won’t last long as this space should soon become a significant player in the world of online advertising. More...

Tia Fix Predicts and Industry Wit
I have a confession to make: a few months ago I glimpsed into the future and decided not to tell anyone about it. I wanted to keep all the mind-blowing revelations for my company and myself even though it could have benefited just about everyone in online marketing. More...

Adware dead?
Two formerly highflying stars of the Adware world are laying off workers. What could cause this, especially in the most lucrative time of year in one of the hottest growth industries? More...

Trends Report - Affiliates and Search
In only a few years, search has gone from the new kid on the block to the de facto method for driving traffic. While most likely not intentional, the increased popularity of search has been accompanied by an ever increasing learning curve to use... More...

Trends Report - Following the Money, an Investment Recap, Part Two
Part One of Trends Report recapped six major investments, including five content driven sites totaling more than $2 billion in transaction prices. Four of those deals occurred in a span of less than four months. Yet, as impressive as that... More...

Trends Report - Following the Money, an Investment Recap, Part One
It’s hard to say when it happened, but it did. Our industry, once the unwanted offspring of the media world, operates in obscurity no longer; investors and members of the “real” world look upon it and those of us in the trenches with admiration. We now... More...

Trends Report - One Exit, One Entry
Twenty-three months ago ValueClick made a move that consolidated the affiliate marketing space by picking up Commission Junction. The deal, worth approximately $58 million, left many people wondering why ValueClick would choose to purchase another affiliate... More...

Trends Report - Murdoch's Internet Empire
The well covered $580 million acquisition of Intermix last month established Rupert Murdoch as player in the online space. If Mr. Murdoch has his way, though, Intermix will represent just the beginning of his Internet Empire. He has publicly said that... More...

Trends Report - Internet Real Estate
The housing market isn’t the only hot real estate segment...internet real estate is also reaching its peak. Like a marketing company that has figured out how to convert low value PPC keywords or an affiliate that has figured out how to create SEO... More...

Trends Report - Anatomy of a Lead Gen Industry
This week’s Digital Thoughts uses a wide brush to cover the evolution and segmentation of arbitrage activity online. In it we touch upon one of the major arbitrage activities, lead generation. It’s an industry that, regardless of how they buy... More...

Trends Report - A Polished Sneaker
Last week, I lamented the fact that no major acquisitions occurred. No sooner had those thoughts left the keypad then news of ClassesUSA’s sale to Experian became public. While Rupert Murdoch’s entry into the online space made headlines... More...

Trends - The Fab-Four
Writing about major acquisitions is among the best topics to cover. They provide a great opportunity to research companies in order to better understand the factors behind the sale. One such sale was Intermix, a company snatched up by Rupert Murdoch’s... More...

Trends Report - Microsoft and Claria
When both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal choose to a cover a topic, chances are it is a press worthy story. On the rare instances that they cover a story that involves our industry, it generally focuses on growth and the size of the market. More...

Trends Report - MGM v. Grokster
Once again Google captured headlines this week. However, their new product feature and $300 per share sustained closing price was not enough to command the majority of the internet advertising related media. Something close to the heart of any... More...

Trens Report - Clash Of The Titans
Another week, another $100 million plus deal - that has certainly been the case the past two months regarding mergers and acquisitions activity in the Internet advertising related space. This week’s deal? Viacom, the parent company to MTV Networks... More...

Trends Report - Internet Arbitrage: A Short History
The top five companies in our area account for north of $500 million in annual revenues. Almost as remarkable, these companies make the vast majority of their revenues from advertisers paying them only for the actions they generate. Hundreds of millions of... More...

Trends - Supersized Internet
On Tuesday of this week, Google broke new ground - not by unveiling an innovative feature but by becoming the largest public media company, this in only ten months of having been listed on the NASDAQ. At $80 billion, Google’s market cap overtook long time... More...

Trends Report - The Convergence
Almost six months have passed since the Super Bowl, but one marketing trend that surfaced heavily during the game continues today, and that is the use of non-internet mediums to drive interest to a web site. While not the first company to do so... More...

Trends Report - Are You Multilingual?
When it comes to email, co-registration/hosted lead generation, incentive promotion sites, and search arbitrage, arguable no other group collectively knows more than those operating in our space. One of those specialties, co-registration/hosted... More...

Trends - The Year Of The Fees
Almost a week ago, Experian made an announcement that should have sent the online ad interest more abuzz than it appears to. Last week, they announced their intent to purchase LowerMyBills for $330 million dollars with an additional $50 million.... More...

Trends - Spitzer v. Adware Aftermath
Seemingly hard to believe, it has been less than two weeks since Elliot Spitzer launched the most public case against desktop software to date. Last week’s Trends Report looked into some of the issues surrounding the case both from a global... More...

Trends - Spitzer In The Face Of AdWare
More than annoyance, most users find adware and spyware insidious, and now these users can count Elliot Spitzer, the famed New York State Attorney General, on their side. Late last week, Mr. Spitzer filed suit against Los Angeles based Intermix Media... More...

Well Timed Releases
As many as 6000 people converged in San Francisco this week for Ad:Tech - an event known for its busy exhibit hall, conference sessions, and copious night life attended by almost all in the online advertising industry. More...

Trends - Think Week
Last week’s DM Confidential included an article discussing the impacts of rapid growth, something many in our industry have experienced both in terms of revenues and people. With that growth, though, come many often-unanticipated challenges... More...

Trends Report - 180's Solution
One of the most consistent trends in our industry over the past year revolves around companies in our space either selling a portion of their company for funding or buying another company for growth. More...

Oz Behind The Curtain
In an industry that at times appears to be completely anonymous and automated I find it rather relieving when I receive the “So and so has moved on to pursue other interests and so and so will be your new account rep” email. I tend to get so entirely caught up with... More...

Trends Report - Look Internaly
Traditionally, this section of the DM Confidential looks externally at the market. Topics range from capital markets activity to insights gleaned from watching Yahoo and Google indirectly and directly compete for dominance. This week’s article takes a step back... More...

Trends - Blogging’s value
The latest edition of Webster’s New World College Dictionary contains at least one entry that won’t mean much to those who do not user the internet frequently. The word isn’t “wedgie,” even though it gaine More...

Trends - content, search and commerce
Arguably the biggest purchase impacting our space last year occurred in June when AOL announced its intent to purchase Advertising.com for north of $400 million. Two months prior, in March, another substantial acquisition took place. This one saw Ask Jeev More...

Trends Report - Investment activity into our space
As anticipated, this year has brought no shortage of investment activity into our space. Just last week, for example CGI Holding Corp - not to be confused with the famous dot com bomb CMGI - d/b/a Think Partnership (AMEX: THX) announced its intent to acqu More...

Trends
A little more than one week ago a press release went out that seemed as though it should have generated more interest than it did. The company behind the release, Snap.com, offers a product unlike any other on the market. More...

Trends
This week marks the two month anniversary of Google AdWords Affiliate Policy Change. It focused on and impacted a very specific type of activity - that of search engine arbitrage. More...

Trends Report
In 2004, some of the best known companies in our space received funding. Fastclick raised $75 million, Netblue another $20 million. With the online ad market so hot, it makes sense to expect that trend to continue. More...

Trends Report - Search Engine Activity and Tools
Search as an industry is always in the news. And these past few week's have been no exception. Rather than earnings or user base statistics, the most recent news has focused on feature developments and operational strategy More...

Trends Report - Super Bowl
One of the best days in advertising recently passed. So unique is this day - it is one of the few times where television viewers look forward to ads. From a marketer’s perspective too, this day is unique. More...

Trends Report - State and federal legislation
State and federal legislation greatly influence operations for any business, and ours does not escape this. More...

Trends Report
As companies announced their prior quarter and year end figures, much of the recent industry news focused on 2004 being a record year for online advertising with hopes that the momentum would continue into 2005. More...

Trends Report - Internet Advertising
Internet advertising still manages to capture at least one or two headlines daily. More importantly, the stories continue to paint upbeat forecasts for the industry. More...