:: Media Viper ::

Google Affiliate Network

I just received an E-mail from DoubleClick Performics that they are now Google Affiliate Network.

This should really be interesting as many affiliate marketers will want to join Google now as another way to further earn revenues.

Here is the E-mail

We are pleased to introduce Google Affiliate Network . Effective Monday, June 30, 2008, DoubleClick Performics Affiliate will operate as Google Affiliate Network. The integration with Google’s brand is a reflection of efforts to quickly assimilate our business and teams, as well as reinforce Google’s commitment to the Affiliate channel. Together with our new colleagues at Google we are creating new opportunities for monetization, expansion and innovation in Affiliate Marketing.

Within the next couple of weeks you will see some exciting changes to the user interface reflecting the new brand. The platform will continue to be hosted at www.ConnectCommerce.com, but will eventually migrate to a google.com product url.

As noted in earlier communications, DoubleClick Performics’ Search operations are being spun off and sold to a third party. While many advertisers have relationships with both DoubleClick Performics’ Affiliate and Search, there have always been separate account teams and product-specific specialists servicing clients’ search and affiliate programs. These teams remain intact. While the formal separation will occur when the Search business is sold, the businesses are functionally separate today.

We are proud of what we achieved as Performics and this name change signals a new milestone. Google provides world-class resources and enables us to continue to attract the best talent to support our advertisers and publishers. Now as part of Google we have an exciting and unprecedented opportunity to advance our industry. We remain committed to ensuring you receive the quality service you have come to expect from us.

We appreciate your business and look forward to doing great

To say the least this definitely gives food for thought as to what can be accomplished once all the pieces are in place!

I would really like to see comments on this and what others think of the new Network!

Microsoft has reported that talks with Yahoo are over and there will be no formal merger. Microsoft wanted to buy only Yahoo Search in the latest round of discussions.

The Yahoo Board of Directors felt that this was not the best deal for it’s shareholders and rejected the idea of selling off only the Search side of their business.

There are also reports of Microsoft wanting to have regulators look at the Yahoo Google search deal that has been stuck, based on Anti Trust laws.
Microsoft took this same tactic with Google / DoubleClick which only extended the timeline to get the deal done with the Government looking into the deal a bit more.

Ballmer is beginning to look like a baby with his actions.

More to come!

Microsoft Drops Hostile Takeover Bid!
Steve Ballmer & Microsoft have packed up their bags and gone and let the building or bidding!Microsofts boss yesterday decided to abandon his $42 billion takeover of Yahoo! After initially raising their offer by $5 billion Friday to $33 a share - and having it rejected again by the Internet icon’s CEO, Jerry Yang. Jerry denied the initial bid of $29.00 as well.

“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer,” Ballmer said in a letter to the Yahoo! CEO.

“After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal.”

Negotiations over the price of a possible deal began Friday between the two companies, sources said. Ballmer indicated that he was willing to pay $33 a share but Yang insisted his company was worth $37 a share, or nearly $5 billion more.

Sources have stated that Ballmer had contemplated dropping the bid since early last month after being rejected twice by Jerry Yang & Yahoo’s board of directors.

Most investment analysts and shareholders believed that there was little chance that Microsoft would walk away from the offer and Yahoo! shares traded up nearly 10 percent Friday to $29.70 in anticipation of a deal over the weekend.

The move may be terrible for Yahoo which stands to lose more than $15 billion in market value when the stock markets open tomorrow. Some large investors including hedge funds, were discussing throwing out the Yahoo! board themselves and trying to sell the company to Microsoft.

Many see this as a daring move if Microsoft is really gone for good. “There is no way that Yahoo! gets away with this,” said one large shareholder. “Yang is toast.”

Bt dropping Microsoft’s attempted takeover, Ballmer, decided not to pursue a hostile takeover of Yahoo!, something the CEO had promised when the Yahoo! board missed Ballmer’s deadline eight days ago.

Ballmer said Yahoo!’s promise to enter into a search agreement with Google, the No. 1 search company, would have made Yahoo! “undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.”

The deal, which would allow Yahoo! to carry Google ads, “would fundamentally undermine Yahoo!’s own strategy and long-term viability by encouraging advertisers to use Google as opposed to your Panama paid search system,” Ballmer said in the letter.

“This would also fragment your search advertising and display advertising strategies and the ecosystem surrounding them,” Ballmer added. “This would undermine the reliance on your display advertising business to fuel future growth.”

The takeover, had it been successful, would have recast the power structure of the Internet by forming a more formidable rival to Google, the leader of the $41 billion paid search business.

Yahoo! had hoped its new search technology, called Panama, would help shrink the gap between Google and itself, the No. 2 company in search. But Panama was a disappointment and Google’s dominance over Internet advertising remains.

Yahoo Becomes an Adsense Publisher For Two Weeks!

Good morning readers - One of the first to have the announcement MediaViper.com notes that Yahoo said Wednesday, that they will begin a test running Google ads alongside Yahoo.com’s organic search results.

The two-week trial run of Google’s AdSense for Search service will be limited to no more than 3% of Yahoo search queries, & will not include the company’s network of affiliate or premium publisher partners.

The move leads to speculation that Yahoo is trying to forge a stronger alliance with Google.com which Yahoo hopes will increase efforts to resist Microsoft’s hostile takeover attempt. The move was made following discussion the two companies held about Yahoo potentially outsourcing search ad sales to Google.

Yahoo basically becomes a publisher of Google Adsense yet unlike the rest of us Adsense publishers, likely to earn a majority of the revenue generated within any arrangement.

In announcing the ad test with Google Wednesday, Yahoo re-stated that thier board members are continuing to review their options to maximize stockholder value, including exploration of potential commercial business ventures.

Yahoo also went on to say “the testing does not necessarily mean that Yahoo will join the AdSense for Search program, or that any further commercial relationship with Google will result.” Yahoo also said it would not comment further on the nature or timing of any potential relationship.

Microsoft, just a week ago warned that it would lower its offer price if Yahoo didn’t come to an agreement on the proposed merger, within three weeks time, and immediately raised antitrust questions about Yahoo’s ad test with Google.

“Any agreement between Google & Yahoo would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google’s hands,” said Microsoft in a statement. “This would make the market far less competitive, in sharp contrast to our own proposal to acquire Yahoo.”

U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, voiced his thoughts on the Yahoo - Google venture, further vindicating Microsofts stance.

“We will be following closely the results of the short-term test alliance between Yahoo and Google,” he said in a statement. “Should there be moves to make this agreement permanent, we will examine it closely in the Antitrust Subcommittee to ensure that it does not harm competition.”

Yahoo’s board of directors has rejected Microsoft’s $31-a-share offer as “substantially undervaluing” the company, in its response Monday to Microsoft’s ultimatum. In exploring alternatives to a Microsoft acquisition, Yahoo has had discussions about a possible deal with companies including News Corp. and Time Warner Inc.

Two sources, paidContent and Silicon Alley Insider were reporting late week that Yahoo is in serious talks with Time Warner, which may see a Yahoo-AOL merger agreement which could be announced as soon as next week. A Yahoo-Google search partnership would only sweeten the deal, with Google already owning a 5% stake in AOL. Whether that deal will actually come together remains unclear.

Yahoo could possibly see its’ ad trial with Google, will push Microsoft to boost its offer price. Earlier on Wednesday, a large Yahoo investor criticized Microsoft for threatening to lower its bid.

Here are some keywords almost everyone should consider using as negative keyword terms especially anyone using broad match as a means of targeting visitors

• free
• craigslist
• directions
• ebay
• facebook
• free sample
• game
• games
• lyrics
• map
• maps
• myspace
• nude
• porn
• recipe
• samples
• sex
• sexy
• utube
• you tube

As you can see this list is a marketer worst nightmare unless marketing items that would match well with the terms. As always you would want to maximize the ROI of all advertising expenditures and the list above should help increase your profit margins and bottom line earning.

Top 10 Stores For Electronics

When marketing affiliate programs knowing where your target market may be headed is always a nice bit of information to have at your disposal.

Below is the changing tide it seems from brick & mortar big shots to online ease!

How likely is it that you would recommend this store for electronics to a friend?

* Net Promoter Score. Net Promoter, NPS, and Net Promoter Score are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, and Fred Reichheld.Source: BIGresearch

1,000,000s of Businesses without Google PageRank!!!!

That’s right there are literally 1,000,000s of Businesses without Google PageRank!!!!

In New York City alone there are over 250,000 businesses without Google PageRank contributing nearly $4.5 billion in tax revenues to the city.. (2002 Stats)
Can you imagine how much money these businesses are earning without any Google PageRank?

If you can then you are much more intelligent than 99% of the so called business people running around online and who actually panic & fret over their business being alloted a stupid green ingot value to be assigned by who they believe is the savior to their business aspirations the almighty Google.com

Just because all the Forest Gumps in the world can’t find a better solution to building a business online or offline does not mean we all need to follow in their shoes.

I challenge you to go out into the village, town, or city where you live, and see how many businesses are alive and well without having a silly value assigned to them by a search engine.

Many of those businesses were in existence before PageRank and doing quite well without a silly green ingot value.

If your business is not doing well or your stomach twists and turns because your business suffered a green ingot devaluation, visit with a serious marketing company that can help you build a business online!

Online Advertising To Surpass Radio Advertising By Years End

“While advertising spend is experience tremendous growth, Radio is lagging behind and by years end likely to fall behind online advertising in addition too losing to television and newpapers in adaption to the internet.

“While advertising spending is growing rapidly online, it is not necessarily at the expense of radio,” says Ben Macklin.

Ben Macklin is senior analyst and author of a report for emarketer titled “Radio Trends: On Air and Online.”. “There seems to be no reason why this market cannot find a new lease on life and benefit from the growth in the online sector. Advertisers should not abandon radio in favor of the Web, but combine the two to take advantage of the unique attributes of each.” Mr. Macklin was quoted as saying.

The report from eMarketer expects US radio advertising spend to grow 1.5% during 2007 to $20.4 billion. However this is really a bit lackluster due to the fact that between 2006 and 2011, an additional $2.5 billion will be spent on radio advertising.

Growth here will be seen on radio station web sites, and through in-stream Internet audio advertising. Additional enhancers are satellite audio, HD Radio pod casting and mobile devices.

Myspace has found that it now has four times the amount of registered sex offenders as it did in May of 2007.

The number is pegged at 29,000 registered sex offenders who are registered members of Myspace.com.

I think this quote really sums up the issue.

‘This is horrifying’
“On the most basic level, this is horrifying,” said John Aristotle Phillips, CEO of Aristotle, a technology consulting firm that has developed age-verification for sites including Anheuser-Busch’s pioneering Bud.TV. “You have 29,000 convicted sex offenders milling around with kids on a website, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg because these are just the people who were stupid enough to use their real names.”

You Can’t Fix Stupid!!!!!

For me what I find most disturbing is that this does not get the attention or the public wrath that Michael Vick does with illegal dog fighting.

Doesn’t say much for Americas moral values…..

Google print ads are next to hit the search marketing options for Google Advertisers via Google Adwords
.

I found a new tab in My Client Center today which at this point does nothing but it is there.

So it seems Advertisers will have the choice to run ads in newspapers and magazines and be able to track the metrics. That would be great for advertisers…maybe not so great for the newspapers & magazines.

Personally I like the idea of having greater choices in where to market for my clients and the ability to refine the target market whom we wish to places ads in front of when they are receptive to new ideas or seeking to learn via reading.