Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Google turned in healthy third-quarter earnings largely thanks to the fact that Google is finally getting serious about cost containment. But that is only half the story. Going into the expected economic downturn, Google is now turning on every additional source of advertising revenues it can. For instance, so far earlier month it began offering AdSense in Flash games, new AdSense links at the bottom of Google Maps, and introduced click-to-buy buttons on YouTube videos. Now, it looks like it may be testing two more ways to juice those AdSense revenues: an AdSense search box and AdSense ads that link to syndication pages filled with . . . more AdSense ads! (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/19/two-ways-google-is-trying-to-juice-adsense-ad-only-search-boxes-and-syndication-pages 10/19)

Okay, this has to be the coolest hack of the week. Visual search engine SearchMe has just added a music search tab that brings back results with free, legal, unlimited full-song streams and cover art you can flip through. It’s CoverFlow on the Web. And it actually trumps the experience one Yahoo’s music search, which also offers free full streams through Rhapsody—but those are limited to 25 streams a month per searcher. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/20/searchme-adds-music-search-with-unlimited-streaming-via-imeem-widgets 10/20)

Popular music service iLike has teamed with TuneCore, a music distribution platform, to help artists promote and sell their music as easily as possible. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/19/ilike-teams-with-tunecore-to-help-artists-sell-their-music 10/19)

The MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association came out Saturday morning. It shows that total VC financings in the third quarter were down 7 percent compared to the same period last year, to $7.1 billion. That is also down about the same amount from the second quarter. In the chart below, Techcrunch has plotted the dollar value of VC investments for each third quarter going back to 2001, coming off the last boom, when $8.3 billion was invested in VC-backed startups. While $7.1 billion is still a healthy amount, you can see that this may be the first quarter of a significant decline in funding activity. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/18/vc-financings-for-internet-startups-down-16-percent-in-third-quarter 10/18)

Fast growing women’s network Glam Media is now a fast growing women’s and men’s network with the launch of the site Brash.com. The site targets 18-49 year old men and, like Glam, brings in content from a network of third party sites. Glam will focus its efforts on ad sales and gathering content partners. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/20/glam-gets-brash-screenshots-of-the-new-mens-network 10/20)

CBS News announced plans to hold a live webcast anchored by Katie Couric on CBSNews.com and CNET.com that will pick up where the network’s broadcast coverage leaves off on election night. Katie and her crew will once again field questions submitted by online viewers before and during the webcast, the 11th produced by CBSNews.com during the past month and a half. (Cynopsis 10/20)

Muxlim.com, a social network aimed at Muslims, is planning to launch an entire virtual world aimed at the global Muslim community. Currently, worlds like Second Life or MMOs are blocked in many Muslim countries, especially in the Middle East, because much of the in-world content and advertising is considered offensive to Muslim culture. But with a global population of a billion, the Muslim community is one that brands like Coca Cola cannot afford to ignore, and the Finland-based Muxlim plans to capitalise on this. (http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/10/20/muxlim-plans-muslim-worlds-first-virtual-world 10/20)

Peter Stern, executive vice president and chief strategy officer of Time Warner Cable, said the company soon would expand its HBO on Broadband offering, which is available in Milwaukee and Green Bay, Wis. Stern said the service, which presents about 1,000 hours of content from HBO to Time Warner Cable subscribers, would be expanded to “many millions of customers.” Light Reading (10/17)

Cablevision, which has been working feverishly to build a Wi-Fi net to cover its footprint in the greater New York metropolitan area, has announced that it has completed its wireless-deployment efforts on and around Long Island. The service is free to those who have subscribed to the company’s Optimum Online high-speed broadband service. TMCnet.com (10/17)

Online real estate start-ups are being hit hard by the double whammy of the economic downturn and the real estate crisis. Well-funded Zillow.com, which estimates the value of area homes based on publically available data, announced it is cutting 25% of its workforce despite counting 5.4 million unique visitors in September ­- a 42% increase in traffic over this time last year. Earlier last week Seattle-based Redfin.com, which facilitates buying and selling of homes without an agent, announced it was laying off 20% of its employees, despite a 50% uptick in revenues and a 300% spike in traffic. (Cynopsis 10/20)

Prices for online display ads declined by 21% during Q3 and by 27% for the calendar year, according to ad optimization firm PubMatic. Its quarterly AdPrice Index indicates the downturn has affected sites large and small, although smaller sites fared the best earning an average of CPM of $.61 vs. $.18 for larger sites. CPMs for Gaming were down 34% from Q1 2008 while the Social Networks vertical also continued to experience weak pricing with an average CPM of $0.20. (Cynopsis 10/20)

Percentage of U.S. Searches Among Leading Search Providers
Domain     Sept. 2007    Aug. 2008     Sept. 2008
Google          63.55%        71.01%         71.16%
Yahoo 22.55%        18.26%         18.06%
MSN*              6.28%         5.32%           5.36%
Ask.com          4.32%         3.45%           3.63%
Source: Hitwise, *includes searches on Live.com and MSN Search but not Club.Live.com