Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

In its first big movie during the reign of new boss Carol Bartz, Yahoo unveiled a trio of new advertising targeting products that incorporate some of the innovations Google has brought to the online ad marketplace. Given the slow, painful decline of Yahoo’s revenues in general and the display ad industry as a whole, a lot is riding on the advances – which seek to merge the arenas of search and display as a single solution. The new products include Search Retargeting, giving advertisers the ability to place display ads based on a users’ search activities; Enhanced Retargeting, delivering dynamically generated display ads across the Yahoo network based on user activity on an advertiser’s site; and Enhanced Targeting capabilities for search advertising, including ad scheduling and demographic targeting within search. (Cynopsis 2/25)

’80s electro new wave band Depeche Mode broke new ground with an increasingly flexible Apple, convincing iTunes to offer a TV-style “Season Pass” option for the band’s upcoming “Sounds of the Universe Album.” Fans can pay $19 to receive additional content over the next few weeks including remixes, exclusive videos and the pre-released single “Wrong,” leading up to the release of the full album on April 21. The model could help companies like EMI Music, Depeche Mode‘s label, earn extra revenue from the platform while quenching the thirst of die hard fans for extra content. (Cynopsis 2/25)

Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, the co-founders of MySpace, could soon be following Peter Chernin out of News Corp. Their contracts expire in October and both men have privately said there is a chance they will leave. The two are among the best-paid employees at News Corp. (Iwantmedia 2/25, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e3d55488-02b9-11de-b58b-000077b07658.html 2/24)

(Below) Where does this leave Hulu, the company which is trying to build new online video ground internationally as well?

Hollywood is finally beginning to turn its attention toward international online video audiences, but don’t expect the full-length floodgates to open just yet. Fox International Channels launched its first TV portal abroad in Italy, dubbed FlopTV, featuring a mixture of HD short-form Italian sitcoms and UGC, per Variety. Meanwhile CBS Interactive announced the availability of clips internationally on TV.com from CBS from shows such as Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, Star Trek, MacGyver and Love Boat, in addition to clips from 60 Minutes and 48 Hours. The clips will also appear to international users on CBS.com and CBSNews.com. (Cynopsis 2/25)

News Corp.’s Slingshot Labs is unveiling its first startup, DailyFill, a site offering nuggets of celebrity gossip. Stories are typically a few paragraphs and offer links to longer versions. Readers don’t want “really long articles,” says co-creator Josh Berman. “They want a quick summary.” (Iwantmedia 2/25, http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/20090224/tc_afp/itinternetfilmmediadailyfill 2/24)

Is Twitter — the microblogging service that famously has no revenue — a threat to Google? The notion is generating heated chatter across the Web. Very quietly, one of Twitter’s most powerful applications has become its ability to allow people to conduct real-time searches. (Iwantmedia 2/25, http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_11776452?nclick_check=1 2/24)

What happens when you make paid search ads both relevant and visual? Searchme, the search engine startup which presents results as a stack of full-page previews that you can flip through, is hoping to find out with the beta launch of AdView. Its first foray into advertising, AdView is SearchMe’s version of AdWords, except that instead of selling of paid text links it will be interspersing into its results clickable previews of entire Webpages, videos, or other visual advertising. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/24/paid-search-just-got-visual-searchme-launches-adview-beta-free-ads-for-first-500-signups 2/24)

MSNBC.com introduced an innovative new video portal to offer additional content complimentary to President Obama’s address to Congress last night. The interface allows users to search the transcript of the speech and pull corresponding video segments from the address for posting to third-party sites. The tool can be used to peruse more than 20 indexed Obama speeches and press conferences. (Cynopsis 2/25)

America may lag behind Asia and Europe in affordable broadband and connection speeds but the U.S. is #1 in a new measure dubbed the Connectivity Scorecard, as determined by a new methodology created by Leonard Waverman, Prof. of Economics at the London Business School with funding from Nokia Siemens Networks. Dividing a nation into the three “pillars” of consumers, businesses and government, the study ranks countries on a total of 30 indicators that affect productivity including broadband, mobile and fixed line infrastructure that contribute to a nation’s social and economic development. The U.S. scored the highest rank because connectivity in business use is very advanced, according to Prof. Waverman. (Cynopsis 2/25)

Connectivity Scorecard 2009 – Top 10 Nations
Rank  Country       Final Score
1     United States     7.71
2     Sweden             7.47
3     Denmark           7.18
4     Netherlands       6.75
5     Norway             6.51
6     United Kingdom 6.44
7     Canada             6.15
8     Australia           6.14
9     Singapore         5.99
10    Japan               5.87
Source: London Business School, Nokia Siemens Networks