Online Advertising

AdWords Removes Restriction on “Abortion and Religion-Related Content”

Google has removed a restriction on “abortion and religion-related content” in AdWords as part of an out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit according to an ABC News article. The British Christian group The Christian Institute filed the suit after Google refused to run that reads:

UK Abortion law
Key views and news on abortion law from The Christian Institute
www.christian.org.uk

The Christian Institutes suit claim that Google violated the U.K. Equality Act 2006 by refusing to run the ad. In a statement to ABC News, Google said that “over the last few months we have been reviewing our abortion ads policy” and that “following the review we have decided to amend our policy, creating a level playing field and enabling religious associations to place ads on abortion in a factual way.” The removal of restrictions is applicable worldwide.

Group to Define Standards for Social-Media Advertising

A new group, the Social Media Advertising Council, has been formed to define standards for social-media advertising according to an article by CNET News. So far the group consist mainly of representatives from ad agencies including leadership from Universal McCann, MediaVest, Edelman, Deep Focus, and Digitas. The group does not include any representation from the two largest social networks Facebook and MySpace, but the group’s Chairman is Tom Gerace, the CEO of social network Gather. Gerace told CNET News that the group has “brand advertisers, for the first time–to invite them to be part of the consortium.” The group plans to define standard methods of measurement and buying units for what they “engagement advertising.”

Google Challenges Report of Increased Costs from Google-Yahoo Partnership

In a post on the Google Public Policy Blog, Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian challenged the findings of a report by SearchIgnite that Google-Yahoo search advertising partnership would cost advertisers more. Varian say that the report is flawed because only looks at the cost of clicks and not the performance of those clicks. He says that “we believe that advertisers will be getting significantly better performance at prices that reflect that improved performance” He goes on to say that neither Yahoo! or Google will be able to see the current auction prices, so Yahoo! no the have the ability to choose the ads with the higher price. He also said that because Yahoo! receives all the revenue for their own ads and only part of the revenue from Google ads, Yahoo! has a strong economic interest to serve their own ads. Finally, he claims that advertisers receive a higher return on investment for clicks on Google ads because they are “highly relevant to user queries” and that “we anticipate that our agreement with Yahoo! will bring more relevant ads to Yahoo! users” which would increase the return on investment.

European Union Reviewing Google-Yahoo Partnership

The European Union opened a review into the Google-Yahoo search advertising partnership in July, according to Los Angeles Times article. The planned partnership is only in the United States and Canada, but Jonathan Todd, a spokesman for the European Union’s competition commission, told the Times that “since the two companies do business in Europe, the cooperation could violate European Commission rules on anti-competitive practices, such as price-fixing and sharing of sensitive business information.” Todd also said that the review “would focus on the possible effects of the deal on European Commission rules relating to restrictive business practices.” Last week the U.S. Justice Department hired lawyer Sanford Litvack in preparation for a possible challenge to the partnership.

Intent Data Focused Ad Exchange Launched Today

BlueKai, which claims to be the first intent data focused ad exchange, launched today. They will act as the middleman in auctions between publishers selling data on consumer’s purchase-driven behaviors and advertisers and ad networks buying the data to target advertising. The data will be based on cookies and participants in the network will be required not to combine the data with personally identifiable information. According to a CNET News article, BlueKai’s CEO Omar Tawakol compared the company to “the idea to the direct mail marketing business. Offline, marketers call up a data company like Axciom to buy the names and addresses of household decision makers in a certain ZIP code, for example. Then they would take that data and create a campaign.” While the company claims to have a number of the top 10 ad networks and publishers, so far only Autobytel and online video advertiser Tremor Media have been mentioned publicly.

The company is also touting what it calls “polite marketing”, providing consumers information and control over what information is collected from their data providers. The company also will give rewards in the form of charitable donations to consumer for maintaining data on the site.

Yahoo Hires New U.S. Advertising Sales Chief

Yahoo has hired a new advertising chief, Joanne Bradford will be in charge of U.S. Sales, taking over for David Karnstedt who has resigned, as well as Market Development for Advertisers, Small Business, and Yahoo! HotJobs. Bradford most recently work for advertising agency Spot Runner, she had previously be in the corporate vice president of Global Sales and Marketing and chief media revenue officer for Microsoft’s digital advertising network.

Source: Yahoo Press Release

NebuAd Suspends Controversial Advertising Technology

The Washington Post reports that NebuAd has suspended it controversial advertising technology. The technology uses deep-packet inspection to monitor all unencrypted traffic through an internet connection to gather information to target adds. Publicity, including an inquiry by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, led to ISP’s participating with NebuAd to suspend their use of the technology. In an email to the Post company spokeswoman Janet McGraw indicated that the company was looking to channels other than ISPs to deploy the technology. Earlier in the week, the company announced the CEO Bob Dykes was stepping down from that post.

Google CEO Says Yahoo Partnership On Track To Start in Early October

In an interview with Bloomberg Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that Google search advertising partnership with Yahoo! is preceding to start in early October. He also said that regulators have so far “not indicated one way or the other how they’re dealing with us.” The partnership is currently under review by U.S. state and federal regulators, as well as Canadian regulators.

Google Publicly Launches of AdSense for Feeds

In a post on the Inside AdSense Blog, it was announced that AdSense for feeds was made publicly available today. According to CNET News, it was “soft-launched to a small group of AdSense users back in May.” AdSense for feeds integrates ads into RSS feeds through Google’s FeedBurner. According to Google, they will be selling cost-per-impression (CPM) ads directly to the largest advertisers and the rest of the ad inventory will be made up of contextually targeted cost-per-click (CPC) and CPM ads. FeedBurner’s former independent FeedBurner Ad Network closed several weeks ago.

AOL’s Platform-A Introduces Affiliate Marketing for Widgets

AOL’s Platform-A has linked up two of recent acquisition to introduce affiliate marketing into widget ads, which AOL claims is a “first-of-its-kind solution” according to their press release. The new service combines services of widget creation and analytics technology company Goowy and affiliate marketing network buy.at, both acquired by AOL in February. The service provides publishers with a gallery of advertiser-generated widgets to place on their site, which users can grab and distribute. The publisher earns revenue from the sales drive by the widget. The first announced advertiser is Ticketmaster.com; with a widget that can be tailored promote specific Ticketmaster events.