January 13, 2009

Did Yahoo President Sue Decker See New CEO As Snub?

Despite the suggestion by ValleyWag, that incoming Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz's first job would be to fire President Sue Decker, seems Decker beat her to the punch by announcing her resignation.

Decker has overseen many of the few innovations and major changes at Yahoo during the past few years - as Terry Semel stood down to give Jerry Yang the CEO spot and their stock fell from the 30s to below 10. But, ValleyWag reports Decker was ambitious and "engineered a reorganization that drove out her chief rival, COO Dan Rosensweig, and then led a palace coup to drive out Hollywood movie mogul Terry Semel as CEO."

People had thought Decker was a major contender for the CEO spot and when another female from outside the company was named Decker had to leave.

Meanwhile, Chairman of the Board Roy Bostock stated "“The Board thanks Sue for her service as President, the important contributions she has made to Yahoo!'s development in a variety of roles over the past 8-1/2 years, and her willingness to work with Carol Bartz to ensure a smooth transition. We respect her decision to move on to other challenges and wish her only the best.”

The news of the new CEO and Decker leaving did little to impact the Yahoo stock price today.

Posted by Frank Watson on 5:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AdGooroo Releases Q4 2008 Search Advertising Data

AdGooroo has released data for search engine advertising in the fourth quarter of 2008. Google's first page advertisers grew by 58%, and Live Search grew by 42.3%. Yahoo only grew by 8.8%.

More interesting tidbits from Q4:

A combined Microsoft/Yahoo! entity would increase large advertiser counts on the Live Search network by 157 percent, making a strong case for Microsoft acquiring Yahoo!
Microsoft continued to close the gap in advertiser share with Yahoo: In Q3, Yahoo! led by 17.6 percent, but this lead has narrowed to 3.0 percent at the end of Q4

“Ad coverage on the search engines continues to provide a reliable indicator of advertising activity and is the focus of increased industry chatter,” said AdGooroo Founder and Chief Gooroo Rich Stokes in the new report. “The Q4 report shows that we measured large increases in ad coverage on Google. Microsoft ad coverage fell, on the other hand, likely indicative of their continuing focus on ad quality control and holistic search. Yahoo! showed little change in ad coverage from other 2008 reports.”

Posted by Nathania Johnson on 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Report: Carol Bartz Accepted Yahoo Offer to Become CEO

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Carol Bartz has accepted Yahoo's offer to become their next CEO. I have no link at the moment. Just a breaking news headline:

Bartz is currently executive chairman of Autodesk, a design software company. She formerly was CEO of Autodesk and was an executive as Sun Microsystems. She currently serves on the boards of Cisco (with Jerry Yang) and Intel (with Sue Decker).

Yahoo! stock was on the rise in reaction to the news. At the time of this post, Yahoo was at $12.38.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Online Video Spend Up 36% in 2008 Topping $2.12 Billion, Expected to Grow in 2009

Online video gross media spend was $2.12 billion in 2008, up 36% from 2007, according to AccuStream. Here's a breakdown on the details:

In-banner video impressions grew by 65% in 2008, and accounted for $1.5 billion in gross media spend
Inventory for pre-roll ads expanded by 12.6% in 2008, reaching 18.75 billion total avails, following a 16.8% increase in 2007.
Video buys made through rep firms totaled $90 million in 2008.
Overlay executions associated with video added $37.6 million.
insertion frequency for onsite experiences was capped at 1.5 (content views per avail) on average in 2008, reduced 13.7% from 2007

The forecast for 2009:

27% growth in pre-roll inventory
22.5% growth in gross media spend

Posted by Nathania Johnson on 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Four Advertising Groups to Develop Online Behavioral Advertising Privacy Standards

Four advertising groups have announced plans to collaborate on privacy standards for online behavioral advertising data. The four groups are:

The American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA)
The Association of National Advertisers (ANA)
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA)
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)

The Council of Better Business Bureaus (BBB) is also participating in the effort.

Online advertising data collection has been a concern of politicians and consumer groups. Election years typically see a flurry of activity over the matter and 2008 was no different. From state government efforts in New York and Connecticut to hearings in Congress, online advertising was in the hot seat last year.

It's nice to see advertising associations take the initiative to create standards, which can hopefully allay some of the fears out there over data collection.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Delicious Founder Joshua Schachter Now Employed by Google

Delicious founder Joshua Schachter was among several Yahoo! executives who fled the Sunnyvale search engine last summer. Yahoo! acquired Delicious, a social bookmarking site, in 2005.

Now, Schachter is calling Google home when it comes to his career. Details on the new gig are thus far being kept private.

Will he aid Google in social efforts? Or will he pursue new interests? We'll have to wait and see.

Let us know your hopes for Schachter at Google in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Obama to Nominate Former IAC Executive as FCC Chairman

President-elect Barack Obama is planning to nominate former IAC executive Julius Genachowski as FCC Chairman, according to the Wall Street Journal. IAC is the parent company of Ask.com.

Before his stint at IAC, Genachowski was Chief Counsel to Chairman Reed Hundt of the Federal Communications Commission under the Clinton administration. He is a former classmate of Mr. Obama's at the Harvard Law School and most recently co-founded DC-based venture capital firm, LaunchBox Digital.

Genachowski has sat on the boards of Expedia, Hotels.com and Ticketmaster. He currently serves on the boards of Beliefnet, The Motley Fool and Website Pros.

If approved by Congress, Genachowski will face a number of challenges including national broadband, white space spectrum issues, and the changeover to digital television.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rent.com Tops Top Ten Most Popular Apartment Search Sites for Q4 2008

Rent.com topped the list of top ten most popular apartment search sites for the fourth quarter of 2008, according to Realty DataTrust. The rankings are compiled by quantifying the number of times renters checked availability online per property.

The list is as follows:

Posted by Nathania Johnson on 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Google to Announce Q4 2008 Results on January 22, 2009 (Same Day as Microsoft)

Google has announced that its earnings call for the fourth quarter of 2008 will occur on Thursday, January 22, 2009 at 1:30pm PST (4:30pm for East Coasters). The call can be accessed live at http://investor.google.com/webcast.html.

Guess who else is holding their earnings call that day? Microsoft. Their call will begin one hour later and can be accessed at http://www.microsoft.com/msft.

We've already seen indications that the fourth quarter was a rollercoaster for search advertising. This is likely to have much more of an effect on Google than Microsoft, who will benefit from strong Xbox 360 sales during the holidays and be affected by the larger software and enterprise offerings of their overall business.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Mobile Search Training Workshop at SES London 2009

In addition to more than 40 conference sessions at Search Engine Strategies London on Feb. 17-19, 2009, there will also be four SEM and SEO training workshops at SES London on Friday, Feb. 20, 2009.

Cindy%20Krum.jpg These four-hour workshops provide the in-depth training you need to become (and remain!) a top performer in your field. The small class setting also ensures that your instructor is accessible for informal one-on-one or small group discussions.

One of the training workshops should be of particular interest to UK and European marketers - because it is in a field of search that is more advanced in Great Britain and on the Continent than its is back on my side of the pond. It's the field of mobile search and the training workshop is entitled, "Mobile Marketing 101."

The session will focus on mobile SEO, but will also touch on driving traffic and conversions with mobile applications, text messaging and mobile email. You will learn what you need to know to develop, launch and track a mobile marketing strategy.

After attending this workshop, you will be able to:
• Understand how mobile marketing fits into the traditional and online marketing mix
• Determine what mobile marketing strategy is most appropriate for your target market
• Update your existing site to be found and used on a variety of mobile devices
• Choose a mobile site architecture that will work for your site and your customers
• Direct mobile meta crawlers and mobile users to mobile content
• Author meta data that ranks well in mobile search and is compelling for mobile searchers
• Leverage local and universal search results in mobile search engines
• Provide a good mobile user experience for all mobile devices
• Test mobile websites to ensure they render correctly across different devices
• Track and evaluate your mobile success
• Anticipate future opportunities in mobile marketing.

The instructor is Cindy Krum, the Founder and CEO of Rank-Mobile, LLC. She will also be speaking at SES London 2009 during the "Mobile Search Update - The Next Generation," which will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2009.

Cindy writes for industry publications, and has been published in Website Magazine, Advertising & Marketing Review, Search Engine Land, and ODG Intelligence. She also currently serves as the co-chair of the SEMPO Emerging Technologies Mobile Web Task Force.

Byron Gordon of SEO-PR interviewed her at SES Chicago 2008 about both the Mobile Search Update - The Next Generation conference session as well as her Mobile Marketing 101 training workshop at SES London 2009.

Cindy Krum, Rank-Mobile, previews SES London 2009!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG-eOWzSmNE

If you watch the video interview, Cindy says the training workshop is being held on her birthday and she'll be bringing a cake. Let's see if the instructors for the other three SEM and SEO training workshops try to top that.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on 2:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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