An overview of some of today’s search, ad, tech news
Search
Adobe has filed for a patent that would enable search engines to crawl rich media format through an annotation-based system.
“According to embodiments of the invention, a developer annotates portions of the procedural code of a rich Internet application to facilitate exposing particular content to a search engine,” the patent filing reads. The patent would make Apple’s war against flash technology more difficult.
AOL is currently gauging the offers of several companies to power its search as its $700 million-a-year deal with Google is set to expire in December. Whether it renews its agreement with Google or switches to another search company, AOL is likely to sign in its partner for the few years to come by September, according to various reports.
As Yahoo and Bing progress on the Search Alliance, Yahoo said it is live testing results of Microsoft organic and paid search on its platform this month. In its update, Yahoo also gave a few other prospective dates and steps. Read on.
Testing
Yahoo said the testing volumes this month will fluctuate although those for paid search “in particular [will be] kept low enough to help minimize any potential impact to your account.” Full transition is still slated for the third quarter but Yahoo indicated that the two involved companies may elect to delay it until next year, should they “conclude that it would improve the overall experience.”
An overview of some of today’s ad/tech news.
Google is in the news again.
The search behemoth said in a blog post it has launched its Google Fiber for Communities website dedicated to educate and inform people about fiber networks as well as “keep up-to-date” interested communities on the Google Fiber project. Initially announced in February. The plan for Google Fiber was to provide low-cost ultra high-speed broadband access “to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people,” starting with a few locations across the U.S. In the end, as 1 100 communities and 200 000 individuals have already expressed interested in the trial, Google is brushing up its PR by launching the website first and even putting together a “Thank you” video for the prospective users.
An overview of some of today’s ad/tech news
Twitter’s SocialAds Network
Twitter is launching SocialAds, a video ad network forked out of its TwitVid. SocialAds allows you to buy your followers and re-tweets (RT) but also provides social analytics. This could be the explanation of Twitter’s simultaneous announcements of its Smallthought acquisition and URL shortener launch as well as rumored trial of a “You Both Follow” feature. According to MediaPost, the pricing model is that of price-per-action, meaning that impressions that do not result in actions won’t be charged for. “Bidding begins at one dollar per follower and seventy-five cents per retweet, with higher bids receiving better placement on ad units,” the report said, noting that SocialAds doesn’t require viewers to retweet or follow brands. It is understood that a private alpha testing yielded over 400 followers to one participant in less than an hour, with 2% of users who “were shown an ad followed a brand.”
On Monday, Microsoft and Yahoo invited search marketers and vendors to an all-day overview of the upcoming Microsoft-Yahoo Alliance. Here are some of the highlights from the day.
Timeline. Both MS and Y reps assured us that they are on schedule for a full rollout of the Alliance by October. November and December is the “protected holiday period” that is so key to search marketers, and the Alliance is on target to have all US and Canada PPC advertisers moved over to the shared platform by October. API migration will also be complete by then.
This is huge. Literally. At the close of the stock market on Wednesday, Apple became the first company of the Nasdaq, meaning its value finally surpassed that of rival Microsoft.
Apple vs Microsoft
At the market close in New York, Apple’s capitalization stood at $222 billion, leaving behind Microsoft’s $219 billion. America’s highest market capitalization is Exxon Mobil’s, at $278.64 billion, now the only company to surpass Apple.
Analysts and industry players agree that Apple’s edge over Microsoft is its innovation and the portability of its devices. Apple’s Mac laptops, iPhones and iPads are sleek, light, powerful and adapted to a highly mobile lifestyle while Microsoft is still into ’static’ products that users identify more with the last century.
It will take a few weeks.
We got a glimpse of what the new homepage would be like in November and now the time has finally come. MSN will begin rolling out their new homepage today. But as one of the most trafficked pages in all the web, it should come as no surprise that the full roll-out will take a few weeks.
The new page goes from a blue background to white and relies on structured data from Bing to inform content selection for the homepage.
Other new features include:
A new day in search: It’s so on.
Microsoft and Yahoo! have received approval from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission for their search deal announced last summer. Now, their attention turns to implementing the deal.
Let the games begin.
Yahoo! will transition their search to Bing, and their paid search platform will become adCenter. However, Yahoo! ad reps will be the sales force for the deal.
The plan is to get things merged by the 2010 holiday season, but they’re also not going to mess with that crucial time of year for advertisers if they fall behind schedule.
Phones are due out by the 2010 holiday season.
It’s called the Windows Phone 7 series and, despite the name, it’s nothing like Windows. Sure, there’s mobile versions of Office, Outlook and Internet Explorer. But if Windows was more like this phone, it wouldn’t have image and reputation problems.
No, this phone is more like Zune HD, which is smooth and sleek. There’s room for games and music and video. There’s also XBox Live integration – you can tinker with your avatar on your phone. Plus, you can update social networks like Facebook directly from your phone. No need to wait for apps to be developed (with apologies to my husband, an iPhone app developer).
