Add BBC Videos to Your Blog with Mochila Marketplace

BBC Motion Gallery streamlines distribution of video clips online by joining the Mochila Marketplace. (Press Release)

Mochila Marketplace is a content syndication platform that helps publishers grow their businesses, content owners promote their content, and advertisers reach target audiences. Once registered, a user can search for news articles, videos, and images from a wide range of sources including: the Associated Press, Reuters, the Boston Globe, and MSNBC.com. A user can select individual content assets to use on his or her website. For example, say you need a picture or a video of a high speed train for a blog post you are writing.

Mochila users can also select a channel widget to display on their site or blog. Mochila has hundreds of pre-made channels such as 2008 Presidential Election, Fitness and Health, and Technology Trends. If pre-made isn't your thing you can also create a custom channel with specific content items and providers.

The channel widgets serve up ads in addition to fresh syndicated content. Mochila splits the ad revenue, 40% to the content owner (Getty Images, Boston Globe, etc.), 30% to the site or blog that publishes it (you), and Mochila keeps the remaining 30%. I think its a pretty fair deal. The content creator/owner gets the lion's share, the publisher gets a nice chunk, and Mochila makes a buck for providing the platform. Not too bad, as long as you don't mind some advertising on your site. ;)

Stumble It!

Kelsey Group Annual Forecast: Interactive Advertising Revenues to Reach US$147 Billion Globally by 2012

The Kelsey Group released their Annual Forecast (2007-2012) today. The Kelsey Group is the leading provider of research, data and strategic analysis on directories, small-business advertising, online local media, vertical market advertising and mobile advertising. According to the Annual Forecast, the global advertising market will be fueled by exceptional growth in the interactive segment.

Some interesting highlights from the press release:

Interactive advertising revenues will increase significantly from US$45 billion in 2007 to US$147 billion globally in 2012, representing a 23.4 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

“We see Internet development—including increased subscriber/user access and broadband penetration—as a driver of both interactive advertising revenue as well as migration of traditional ad spending to new media platforms.” -Matt Booth, senior vice president, Interactive Local Media, The Kelsey Group.

Interactive advertising, which comprises search (including local search), display advertising, classifieds and other interactive ad products, grew its share of global advertising revenues from 6.1 percent in 2006 to 7.4 percent in 2007. By 2012 Kelsey Group analysts expect the interactive share of global ad spending will reach 21 percent.

Directional advertising, which comprises local search, print Yellow Pages and Internet Yellow Pages (IYP), will grow from US$33.3 billion in 2007 to US$41.4 billion globally in 2012 (4.5 percent CAGR).

• Local search revenues will grow from US$2.1 billion to US$6.6 billion (25.5 percent CAGR).
• Print Yellow Pages revenues will decline from US$27.5 billion to US$25.6 billion (-1.4 percent CAGR).
• IYP revenues will grow from US$3.7 billion to US$9.2 billion (20.1 percent CAGR).

What does this mean to a small business's online marketing budget? My bet (and I'm really going out on a limb here) is that costs are going to increase as more small businesses begin advertising online. Cost-per-click (CPC) bids are going to increase for the majority of keyword phrases and advertising rates for local search directories and Internet Yellow Pages (IYPs) will increase.

Small businesses that follow best practices for search engine optimization and provide the informational content that online consumers want will reduce their dependence on online advertising for leads and customers.

Stumble It!

Komodo Links: News Corp and Yahoo, Search Engine Audience Profiles, NewsClipper, and RFPs

Komodo Links is back and we've got some quality links for you this week.

• First up Stephan Spencer, founder and president of Netconcepts, wrote a guest blog post over at Search Engine Land titled How to Write a Killer RFP (Request for Proposal) for Hiring an SEO Firm. It was a very good read and Stephan gives some great advice.
  
• Michael Arrington at Tech Crunch put together a nice post with the details of what a possible News Corp/Yahoo deal would look like.
• Another one from Tech Crunch: a review of the streaming news video site, NewsClipper, and its creator, Onar Vikingstad.
• And lastly, a very interesting post from the Hitwise blog, MSN Search and Ask Audience Profiles. Also check out the post from last week: Yahoo! search draws younger audience; Google users big spenders.

Enjoy.

Stumble It!

Google AdWords Display URL Policy Update

Google's AdWords blog, Inside Adwords, has posted an advance notice of new changes to their display URL policy. According to the post, redirects, vanity URLs, and certain uses of tracking URLs will no longer be acceptable. This new policy will go into effect on April 1st and will be strictly enforced. The blog post gives a brief example of what will still be allowed in regards to tracking URLs and sub-domains.

I don't think most advertisers will be unduly affected by this new policy, but I encourage you to read up on the new policy so you aren't caught off guard.

Stumble It!

Recession Resistant: Marketers Likely to Rely on Mobile, E-mail, and Search

Advertising Age published a great article yesterday, How Media Would Weather a Recession. The article covers all the major media channels and gathers opinions from some major players in media buying and selling. There is a general consensus among these media buyers and sellers that online marketing will remain strong through a recession due to marketers' ability to accurately measure online marketing ROI.

Some highlights from the article:

Digital, said Bryan Wiener, CEO of digital agency 360i, is the least vulnerable media spend in times of economic downturn because it is inherently more measurable than other media. [Wiener] add[ed] that the categories that tend to drive the best return on investment are e-mail and search -- so marketers are likely to continue investing in those categories regardless of the economy.

Search marketing, because it's so closely tied to sales, more often is thought of as a cost of goods sold rather than a marketing and administration expense. Therefore, it is assumed to be the most recession-proof of all marketing channels.

"As consumers get more frugal, [Consumer Package-Goods] will shift their media to things that have a more immediate return on investment," Mr. Garga said. "Shopper marketing is a captive audience in the store with an immediate effect. ... Online is a medium, too, that supports more value-oriented messages."

I highly recommend reading the article. It offers some great insights.

Stumble It!

Stumble Cards: A Growing Pandemic

Welcome fellow Stumblers. I'm sure most of you are well aware of this latest sensation to sweep the web. What started out as an ill conceived viral marketing campaign, by the web design firm uP'n'@tom, has quickly morphed into an all out spam attack on the StumbleUpon Community.

The problem with uP'n'@tom's stumble cards is that they lack creativity and are extremely easy to duplicate. Spammers have quickly made their own stumble cards to drive traffic to their sites serving advertising. This is degrading the user experience of StumbleUpon. Another problem is that ad-driven blogs, like Cult Press, are jumping on board and posting collections of stumble cards to drive stumble traffic to their blog posts that are loaded with ads.

The biggest problem fueling the stumble card pandemic is the collection of stumblers who thumb up the cards. If the majority of StumbleUpon users, who dislike the cards, can get the word out that these cards are nothing more than spam, then maybe fewer and fewer people will thumb them up. Over time these spammers will see less and less traffic coming to their stumble card pages and it will not be worth their time to create new ones. As long as people keep thumbing up the cards, the more of them we will see on StumbleUpon.

So my question to the StumbleUpon community is this: what do you think the SU community should do to address this problem?

Stumble It!

2008 IFA Annual Convention Round-Up

The 2008 International Franchise Association (IFA) Convention was held last weekend and the first of this week at the Marriott World Center in Orlando, Florida. It was our first time attending and exhibiting at the convention and it was a great success and a great experience for us.

We were exhibiting as a supplier at booth #117, and we received a great deal of interest from franchisors and industry suppliers alike. Below is a picture of us manning our booth.



In addition to the great reception we received at our booth, I also really enjoyed having the opportunity to network with many very successful franchisors outside of the exhibit hall. It was great to hear about the insights they had gained from their experiences as successful entrepreneurs. We also met many other business people who serve the franchise industry in one way or another.

Monday evening from 5-7pm was Fun & Games time with the exhibitors. Most of the exhibitors had prepared fun, simple games for the franchisors and other industry people to enjoy during the final hours of exhibiting. We hosted Dragon Jeopardy at our booth. Just like real Jeopardy a contestant would pick a square, we'd give them an answer (in this case, SEM/SEO related) and they would have to give us the question.

Below is a picture of the Dragon Jeopardy layout.




We attended the annual Monday Night Bash hosted by Fishman Public Relations at the House of Blues. The party had a great turnout and was a lot of fun. Good party music and an open bar made for a great time. I also enjoyed catching up with the franchisors and suppliers I had met earlier in a more relaxed, party atmosphere. Monday night was our last night at the convention, so the Bash made for a great final event for us. Thanks to Fishman PR for putting it all together.

All in all, the IFA Convention was a great experience and we hope to do it again next year. Thanks to all who stopped by our booth. It was great meeting everyone.

Stumble It!

Komodo Links: It's all about Microsoft and Yahoo

It's the end of the week so that means it's time for Komodo Links. Yes I'm still in the office on a Friday night. We're heading out for the IFA annual convention tomorrow so we've been tying up all the loose ends today. This week's Komodo Links has a laser focus. It's all about Microsoft and Yahoo.

• Microhoo At One Week: Decision Nears? Yahoo Brand to Survive?
  
• Yes it's another open letter addressed to someone who is involved with the Microhoo deal. An Open Letter to Steve Ballmer.
  
• Is it too late for Yahoo? I have both feet in the maybe camp.
• Congress delays first hearing on Microsoft's Yahoo bid. Congress delaying something...that's about as surprising as the sun rising. ;)
  
• Yahoo and Microsoft: Will 'Microhoo' be the ultimate community? I'm pretty sure Google and a few others will have something to say about that.

Have a great weekend everybody.

Stumble It!

Google News Gets Local

Google News launched a local news feature late last night. Simply enter the city and state or the zip code in the local news section and Google will populate it with news pertaining to that locality. I took a look at it and so far I like what I see. I have used Google News for quite a few years and it is one of my go to destinations for news stories. It's great having a local section right there in the mix, so that I can quickly see what's going on without having to go to individual local sites.

The Google News blog post briefly (and generally) describes how their local feature works and how it's different from other local news aggregating sites.

While we’re not the first news site to aggregate local news, we’re doing it a bit differently -- we're able to create a local section for any city, state or country in the world and include thousands of sources. We’re not simply looking at the byline or the source, but instead we analyze every word in every story to understand what location the news is about and where the source is located.

Below is a screen shot of the local news section for Miami Beach. (click to enlarge)


As you can see...it's a pretty slow day in Miami Beach today. But the weather is nice. ;)

Stumble It!

Social News Site Mixx Adds Private Message Functionality

Today Mixx added private mail functionality to its site. Mixx joins Propeller as the only two social news sites to offer private mail. Currently, you are only allowed to send private messages to your Mixx "friends."

I'm sure there will be some folks out there that will say that offering private mail functionality is bad for social news sites, because it will encourage shameless marketers and promoters to create voting blocks and send messages back and forth on what to vote up and what to vote down. I think its a good move by Mixx because it's just another little thing that differentiates them from the mighty Digg. Plus, if marketers, promoters, and spammers start using private mail to artificially inflate votes on their submissions, Mixx admins will surely be able to track messages and who is sending what to who. As with most socially focused sites, there are systems in place at Mixx to report spammers. So if users become "friends" with some one who turns out to be a spammer, they can simply report that they are getting spam private messages.

So do you think this is a good move by Mixx? Let us know.

Stumble It!

Yahoo is Feeling the Pressure from Microsoft's Bid

Yahoo! is feeling cornered after Microsoft made its takeover bid last week. The Yahoo! board said it would take its time to review the Microsoft bid. They haven't acted on the bid yet.

The New York Times posted an article reviewing the current situation with some great commentary from Wall Street analysts. The article also explores some other options open to Yahoo! if they decide to decline the Microsoft bid, including an advertising partnership with Google, courting other buyers, or forcing a leveraged buyout to take the company private.

Some highlights from the article:

But if Yahoo spurns Microsoft, analysts believe it probably will have to swallow its pride and forge an advertising partnership with Google if the alliance could win antitrust clearance.

Under this scenario, Yahoo would rely on Google to run its search engine while joining thousands of other Web sites that depend on the Internet search leader for a steady stream of ad revenue generated from text-based links that produce commissions with every click.

But getting Google's advertising help probably wouldn't be enough to trump Microsoft's offer by itself. To placate shareholders, Yahoo probably would have to line up enough money to pay a special dividend or perhaps even take the company private in a leveraged buyout.

The list of so-called ''white knights'' willing to come to Yahoo's rescue appears to be dwindling. Several of the most logical candidates, including News Corp., AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp., reportedly have no interest in trying to top Microsoft's bid.

Yahoo's board conceivably could even turn down Microsoft on the grounds that the current offer grossly undervalues the company, given its stock traded as high as high as $34.08 in late October.

If Yahoo assumes that stance, it might provoke a showdown at its annual meeting in a few months. Microsoft has until March 13 to nominate its own slate of directors if it tries to seize control of Yahoo's board.

What do you think Yahoo should do? Should they take the Microsoft offer, partner with Google, or something else? Let us know.

I personally like the suggestion made by the Merrill Lynch analyst Justin Post, who "believes Yahoo should dangle the prospect of a Google partnership to persuade Microsoft to raise its bid and then accept the higher offer." Microsoft could call their bluff believing that either Yahoo won't approach Google or that regulators would deny the partnership on anti-trust grounds. I don't believe they would call the bluff though. I think Microsoft is just too eager to get this deal done.

Stumble It!

IFA 2008 is Only Days Away

The 48th IFA annual franchise convention is only a few days away. SEO Komodo is exhibiting at booth #117. If you're going to be at the IFA convention in Orlando stop by, say hello, and see what we are all about. If you are also going to be exhibiting at the convention, let us know where your booth is and we'll stop by.

In the days leading up to the convention we will be putting the finishing touches on our new site layout. We should have it up and running in the next few days. Stay tuned...

Stumble It!

Microsoft Proposes Acquisition of Yahoo! for $31 per Share

The proposed deal, valued at approximately $44.6 billion in cash and stock, would provide a 62% premium to current trading price for Yahoo! stockholders. Microsoft claims the combined entity would be a more competitive company while offering greater value to stockholders and a better choice for customers.

Read the full press release.

Some highlights from the release:

The online advertising market is growing at a very fast pace, from over $40 billion in 2007 to nearly $80 billion by 2010. The resulting benefits of scale along with the associated capital costs for advertising platform providers make this a time of industry consolidation and convergence. Today this market is increasingly dominated by one player. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo! can offer a competitive choice while better fulfilling the needs of customers and partners.

The combination will create a more efficient company with synergies in four areas: scale economics driven by audience critical mass and increased value for advertisers; combined engineering talent to accelerate innovation; operational efficiencies through elimination of redundant cost; and the ability to innovate in emerging user experiences such as video and mobile. Microsoft believes these four areas will generate at least $1 billion in annual synergy for the combined entity.

Microsoft has developed a plan and process that will include the employees of both companies to focus on the integration of the combined business. Microsoft intends to offer significant retention packages to Yahoo! engineers, key leaders and employees across all disciplines.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Stumble It!