Written on June 30, 2008 – 3:28 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Rambler Media, one of Russia’s leading Internet companies (€38 Million in 2007), has announced contextual advertising for video content. Its advertising division - Begun - will integrate Begun.Videocontext on Rambler’s video sharing community, Rambler Vision. That means 1.3 million visitors per month will see the ads.
Each video appearing on Rambler Vision is tagged according to its content and as a result,
advertisements can be displayed beneath relevant videos. Rambler claims to be the first Russian web service to profit from contextual ads, which is remarkable, as online videos attract more Russian viewers than cable TV channels. Begun will sell the ads on a CPC bases.
If you’re a Russian reader, let me set you at ease: you can easily click the ad away.
[Via: Quintura]
I hope you like that post!
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Written on June 26, 2008 – 3:20 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Our English Webtipr from France not just does a good job at writing articles for this blog, he’s also busy with developing Myplaylist.biz - a bootstrapped start-up that combines streaming music with Flickr pics. While listening to your favorite artist, Myplaylist shows photos of the performing artist from Flickr. Of course, the music is hosted somewhere else on the web, so copyright death threats from big companies aren’t applicable. Steven is constantly improving the service, adding lyrics this week.
So the new deal is: type in the artist of song title and enjoy the music while trying to decide whether you’re gonna watch the photos or read the lyrics. No, just kidding here, as Myplaylist has become a really good source for lyrics, as there are hardly any ads on the page. It’s just the old school HTML look - which is the new punk - with a Google Adwords block and ringtone link here and there. No AdultFriendFinder or less subtle sex ads, so searching for lyrics becomes the a-sexual act it should be.
In the end, I think this is the best way to make money. Offer your visitors a clean and easy-to-use page and they’ll become more than just one-time users. They might even register. So instead of scaring them away with adult or ringtone ads, you make them love you by providing them with the content they want without any hassle.
Written on June 17, 2008 – 11:59 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Today was a hefty day for the online ad industry, as two important announcements were made. Technorati has launched an ad network and the utterly successful women-focused ad network Glam Media has acquired Monetise, a London-based digital-ad sales start-up.
Let’s start with the most exciting one: Technorati has launched an ad network for blogs called Technorati Media. They’ve been privately testing the service the last couple of weeks with several advertisers - including T-Mobile, Toyota, and Verizon - and some core sites who reach an audience of 17 million people. CEO Richard Jalichandra wrote in the announcing blog post that “over the next several months, we’ll be adding blogs from the mid and long tail within those verticals.” If he keeps his promise, this might become an interesting network. As for smaller blogs, there isn’t really an alternative for Google Adwords yet. Let’s just hope that at the same time, Technorati will keep improving it’s blog search engine - since it has been pretty slow lately. The recently raised $10 million will probably help.
Speaking of raising money, Glam Media has used its latest staggering round of funding - $85 million dollar - for an acquisition that must help them to “speed the entry into the important U.K. display ad market” - Glam Chairman and CEO Samir Arora said in a release. “Monetise has strong relationships with London advertising agencies and enables Glam to immediately increase its reach in the U.K. market.” All the employees, member sites, and division will be integrated into Glam. Valleywag editor Nicholas Carlson speaks of a “Glam scam” and raises the question whether Glam is still really focused on women sites.
I don’t think Glam minds though, as they’re now operating in a country where the online ad spending is about to take over TV this year.
Written on June 7, 2008 – 10:03 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
We’ve recently reported that the Russian search market is dominated by native search engines like Yandex. This leading service was recently valuated at $5 billion and is preparing for an IPO on Nasdaq this autumn. That must have scared Google, as they’ve launched an outdoor campaign called “Moscow 2.0″ - “Know more on Google.ru“.
According to industry analysts, Google has invested $0.5 million in this traditional way of advertising - which comes down to $250,000 per month. That has bought them 550,000 ad places all over Moscow - reports Quintura -, which Google has covered with 24 billboards, 58 benches and 450,000 thousand stickers. Where’s the 2.0 part, you might wonder. Well, Russian can embed their city snap shots and videos in Google Maps. How does that feel, Yandex? Already frightened?
Written on June 7, 2008 – 2:48 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
AOL used to be world’s largest walled garden. Yet shortly after they were incorporated by Times Warner, the walls collapsed and the majority of garden visitors left. But during the past few years, the gardener has acquired quite a number of companies - like Bebo, Buy.at and Goowy media. All these web services have thing in common: they’re focused on advertising. Within a very short while, AOL has become an important advertising company. Now it’s time for the former Internet giant to bring structure into the company.
AOL Mountain View Office
The AOL executives started Platform-A for that task last September. This division houses ad sales for all its sites, ad network properties and supporting technologies. Platform-A has integrated sales for Advertising.com, AOL-run sites, Tacoda, Third Screen Media and AdTech. After cleaning up the house in the U.S., Platform-A now continues in Europe.
AOL will merge its existing European advertising subsidies - Advertising.com, Adtech, and buy.at - into Platform-A’s international operations. The European HQ is based in London and former Advertising.com international head Brendan Condon will be in charge. He can offer its American customers a more global appeal by placing their ads on European websites. With more social networks becoming global entities, advertisers will surely welcome this move by AOL.
Written on January 10, 2008 – 3:26 pm
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
To know how to steal advertisers from magazines you have to understand how magazines work.
A little history is in order, I used to be the designer and director of a highly successful design, manufacturing and distribution company (Intimidation) out of London during the nineties. One of the most interesting aspects of the business was marketing. It was the one part where you really had to deal with the entire industry, know what was going on, and be at the center of the controversy in order to get the most bang for your bucks (the latter seemed to come naturally).
So I’m this tiny rogue bean in an industrial sized tin of Heinz being baked, the most important thing I had going for me was a unique product, lots of new killer features and plenty to distinguish me from the ‘competition’ which in my case amounted to a ‘one size fits all’ bunch of losers, so that part was easy.
As an advertiser with a very limited budget, I had to maximize the return, I had to know precisely where the advertising would work and how to get it at rates that my competitors would die for. So I made some bold decisions from day one, here was my manifesto in a nutshell.
1) Always do double page spreads,
- you get the best rates;
- they have an impact like none other;
- they intimidate the competition;
- they cannot be ignored.
2) Forget the rate card,
- Call up on p-day (publishing deadline) and offer them silly prices for a DPS, if the rate card said 1k per page, offer them 800UKP Max for a DPS.
3) Focus,
- Have a real top class advert,
- advertise only one product,
- the message had to be crystal clear.
- The product had to almost leap out of the page so that potential buyers could just about grab it (if not pin it to their wall).
- The advert had to be full on war, with a simple but extremely effective caption. To give an example one of our captions was ‘Aural Sex’ (The product was a DJ Mixer BTW). When you get girls phoning up asking you for more information about aural sex you know your on to a good thing.
So what can blogs learn from magazines about advertising and how to poach it away from the mainstream publications. This diatribe rant is to both sides, advertisers and bloggers, as both need to understand what it takes to be effective from each others perspective.
(more…)
Written on December 11, 2007 – 10:13 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
The following movie was created by Geert Desager who works as a trade Marketing Manager for Microsoft. The movie is beautiful and it is hard to believe that Microsoft came up with this. Even Geert seems to wonder about that openly on his blog. He writes:
“by the end of the month, I’ll be able to tell you whether I still work as a Marketing Manager at Microsoft, or whether this project finally turned itself against me”
Now watch the movie:
Considering that the movie has won its first award and is being referenced on thousands of blogs by now I’m pretty sure that he is going to be at Microsoft for a long time.
On the other hand… aah no, lets be optimistic and friendly for a chance.
I didn’t think I would ever write these words, but here we go: Thank you Microsoft!
UPDATE: Geert left a comment here to tell us that Microsoft didn’t fire his ass but handed him an award and shipped him off to Singapore. Good for him!
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