Remember MTV?Not the also-ran cable channel we have now with its bad reality shows, made for TV movies and music documentaries. I’m talking about MTV when it really was Music Television. When MTV debuted in 1981 it featured 24-hour a day music videos with a VJ (short for video jockey) who introduced the videos, [...]
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The SEO community has been a-buzz lately about standards. There's the epic conversation going on about SEO standards. And then there's the new mobile image ad guidelines that immediately outdated Google's new mobile ads.
Today, Google's Adwords blog got in on the action by talking about general online ad formats. Specifically, the Adwords team has published an online ad format guide. The one-page PDF guide is super simple to read and comprehend. There are recommendations for 6 different ad types:
The guide provides the following info on the 6 types:
So go ahead and get your online ad on!
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Microhoo bid raised aloft; Google-Yahoo Kool-Aid quaffed. "No Mas" cried Ballmer's Microsoft.
Yahoo drank the Google paid search Kool-Aid to fight off Microsoft, leading the Redmond giant to retract its higher bid to acquire the Sunnyvale search engine. Microsoft reportedly offered $33 a share, and Yahoo held fast at $37 a share. That was too rich for Steve Ballmer's blood. The prospect of Yahoo outsourcing its paid search to Google was also too much for Ballmer to stomach.
So Microsoft walked. In a letter to Jerry Yang (full text below), Steve Ballmer cited Yahoo's intention to outsource search as the primary reason he decided to scotch the deal.
Of course that doesn't mean enraged Yahoo! shareholders won't sue Yahoo.
Ballmer wrote, "I hereby formally withdraw Microsoft's proposal to acquire Yahoo!."
Here's why, according to Microsoft's business logic:
Advertisers would use Google rather than Yahoo! Panama to manage paid search, fragmenting not only PPC but display advertising and the Yahoo! advertising ecosystem.
Yahoo then wouldn't be able to retain talented engineers working on advertising systems - engineers whom Ballmer considers a key aspect of Yahoo's attractiveness.
The decision would also create a morass of regulatory and legal problems that no acquirer - especially Microsoft - would want to slog through. Ballmer believes search market share of the combined Yahooo-Google deal would reduce competition and advertiser choice.
Ballmer took the argument one step further, stating the deal would "effectively enable Google to set the prices for key search terms on both their and (Yahoo!) search platforms and, in the process, raise prices charged to advertisers on Yahoo.
While it would be hard to prove a keyword-auction would enable Google or any search engine to "set prices," the deal would increase keyword prices based on Google's ability to monetize inventory more efficiently.
Yahoo responded by promising (again) to maximize shareholder value and pursue strategic opportunities. Yahoo still maintains Microsoft undervalued the company.
Yahoo! banged the drum (again) about:
"-- a refined strategic focus to drive enhanced volume and yield;
-- reorganized to focus its efforts on its most promising products and services;
-- invested in innovations designed to revolutionize display advertising and facilitate closing the competitive gap in search; and
-- enhanced expense and resource management to support improved profitability."
As Jerry Seinfeld might have said, "Yadda, Yadda, Yadda, Yahoo."
Be prepared Monday for Yahoo shares to plummet back to earth. (Full text of Steve Ballmer's statement after the jump.)
Click to read the rest of this post...
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So, what do we have here? Finally, Balmer and his guys walk off the long-standing acquisition deal after finally not agreeing on the terms. TechCrunch got the scoop on the final meeting held today at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond between Jerry Yang, David Filo, Kevin Johnson and Steve Ballmer, with Ballmer withdrawing the offer. And [...]
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Do you Twitter? If you do, there’s a whole lot of SEO and search marketing people using Twitter to share ideas, share news and even write about small happenings like what they’re eating for lunch or when Google oriented news pops up on CNN. I’ve found Twitter a great way to connect with others in [...]
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Working in the space of social media is never boring.This week has been nuts. I’m getting so much content writing business (linkbaiting) that I am having to increase the price. I’ve only been down to the beach twice this year and it’s only 20mins away. So it’s going up from $500/ ?250 to $1,000/ ?500 [...]
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In my early days I played a bit more in the darker side of the game. I fully admit that I built and ran more than 1 or 2 scrapers, aggregators, and MFA style sites, but as a business model those type of sites are really on the decline, and not something I’d ever recommend [...]
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