Nielsen Online today released it rankings of U.S. search share for August. Overall search decreased 7.7 percent year over year to 7.2 billion searches. Google had year over year growth of 3.1 percent and received 60 percent of searches. Yahoo! had a year over year decline of 16.5 percent and received 18.1 percent of searches. Microsoft had a year over year decline of 23.8 percent and received 10.7 percent of searches.
Microsoft Signs First Partner for U.S. Expansion of Mobile Ad Network
Microsoft has signed it first U.S. partner for it’s mobile ad network ScreenTonic according to an article by Adweek. The deal with CNBC expands on a deal reached in December to sell as on CNBC.com. ScreenTonic, which Microsoft purchased in May 2007, has so far been focused on the European market. Brian Arbogast, corporate vice president of mobile services at Microsoft, told Adweek that “the company is working to build an extensive mobile network that mirrors its approach online, where the firm has concentrated on sewing up deals with big-name publishers such as CNBC, Facebook and Digg.” The U.S. ad network will show standard banner ads at first, with more advance options including video possible in the future.
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.
Google Reiterates Lack of Duplicate Content Penalty in Google Search
In a posting on Official Google Webmaster Central Blog, Webmaster Central
Justice Department May Be Preparing Challenge to Google-Yahoo Partnership
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the U.S. Justice Department has hired a well-known lawyer for a possible antitrust lawsuit against Google. The lawyer, Sanford Litvack, was the Justice Department antitrust chief for President Jimmy Carter as well as a former vice chairman of Disney and partner at law firm Hogan & Hartson. The report says that it is not clear if the possible challenge would be to the Google-Yahoo search advertising partnership alone or if it would encompass Google’s overall online-advertising business. Lawyers familiar with the review told the Journal that “For weeks, U.S. lawyers have been deposing witnesses and issuing subpoenas for documents to support a challenge to the deal.”
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