SEO Articles

Visit Rank for $ales

Read my bio

email me

Home

My 2 featured articles for the week ending Oct. 20, 2006:

Archived blogs for the week of Oct. 16, 2006

1253 - Oct. 19, 2006 - 10.36 AM EST

Baidu inks important deal with MTV

With more than 40 percent of China's search market, leading search engine Baidu will distribute MTV programs and certain music videos on the Chinese Internet, under a licensing agreement announced Oct. 18 with MTV Networks.

Overall, Baidu's deal with MTV includes programming from other MTV channels, including SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer.

The two companies aim to generate cash from advertising and by charging for some downloads. Users will be forced to view adverts before programmes and charged to download music videos, MTV Networks announced in a statement.

MTV and Baidu will both take a share of the profits, as well as splitting the take with record companies when music videos are downloaded. Profit sharing ratios and other financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"Content owners and artists will be compensated through this revenue sharing agreement, which also offers exciting new opportunities for advertisers to reach the online youth demographic in China," said Baidu co-founder and chairman Robin Li.

Baidu has previously had an uncomfortable relationship with the music companies. The search firm is facing lawsuits from major music and movie firms because it operates a specialised media search engine which provides easy access to pirated MP3s and other music online.

Despite yesterday's announcement, the only media download service prominently featured on Baidu's home page today remains the contentious Baidu MP3 search engine.

Posted on Businessblog™

1252 - Oct. 18, 2006 - 4.06 PM EST

Google in the news, again!

"Experts are saying that today, technology innovation is crucial to a high-tech company's survival and long-term success" and that "Google is a great example for successful innovation" said a panel of technology executives on October 17.

This high-tech discussion was part of the opening session at The Centre for Advanced Studies 2006 Conference (CASCON 2006) being held in Totonto this week.

Organized by the IBM Centers for Advanced Studies, CASCON is an annual event that brings together computer scientists, students, IT entrepreneurs, programmers & developers, eCommerce industry analysts and high-tech experts.

Conference participants share ideas, shortcuts and best practices in a series of workshops and forums. Panelists this year noted that Google had largely succeeded in creating a strong company that fosters innovation.

"About the best place to be for an innovator is Google," said Elliot Noss, CEO of Internet software developer Tucows Inc. in Toronto.

Another panelist echoed the same sentiment. "Overall, Google has managed to create an environment that's both challenging, while being fun at the same time," said Andrew Trossman, co-founder of Canadian automation software maker Think Dynamics Inc., acquired three years ago by IBM.

It's largely innovation that enables start ups to compete effectively with much larger companies that have been around a lot longer, and with far greater resources, many panelists underlined.

Technology innovation is essential for the survival of many start ups, said Pierre Berini, founder of Spectalis Corp., an optical sub-systems provider based in Napean, Ontario. Berini said "New firms that innovate often manage to get around older patents set up by larger companies, and this helps startups adjust to a rapidly changing market".

While many panelists mentioned Google as the paradigm for innovation, keynote speaker Steve Bourne, chief technical officer at El Dorado Ventures in Menlo Park, CA. had a word of caution: "The pace of innovation at Google might not be appropriate for other smaller organizations", he said. Bourne added "Some companies may have risk adverse clients who want to stick with tried-and-tested technology".

Posted on Businessblog™

1251 - Oct. 17, 2006 - 6.11 PM EST

Yahoo's third quarter earnings drop

Fighting to keep up with its top competitor Google, Yahoo reports 3rd quarter sales that are lower than expected. Although the company delivered earnings that matched most analysts' expectations, Yahoo did forecast a current quarter outlook that will be weaker than initially predicted.

Yahoo's stock hovered in after-hours trading Tuesday. Its shares fell slightly in regular trading on Nasdaq, after Yahoo was initially downgraded to a "neutral" by Cowen and Company.

After its so-called Traffic Acquisition Costs (TAC), the Sunnyvale, CA.-based media company reported revenue of $1.12 billion, up 20 percent from a year ago, but still lower than Wall Street's consensus estimates of $1.14 billion. TAC is revenue that Yahoo has to share with some of its partners.

Additionally, Yahoo said it expects sales for the fourth quarter, excluding TAC, to come in between $1.145 billion and $1.265 billion. Analysts had been expecting revenue of $1.3 billion.

Overall, the company posted a net profit of $159 million, or 11 cents a share, in line with consensus estimates. Yahoo reported a profit of $254 million, or 17 cents a share for the same period in 2005.

Posted on Businessblog™

1250 - Oct. 16, 2006 - 3.57 PM EST

Yahoo rapidly losing market share

As a search portal, Yahoo makes most of its advertising revenue on its own content. If you compare this to search rival Google, which only sells ads on other people's content, you will notice very different results.

In terms of ad-space-inventory, Yahoo will probably continue to lose market share as long as its content is growing slower than the Internet as a medium.

Google sells ads when you search for, say, "Miami Florida Real Estate". The paid ads are around five bucks a click from one of the big real estate brokers. Many of the results lead to content sites, like Trulia and Zillow, both of whom make their own money reselling Google ads.

Yahoo, of course, has the exact same paid search opportunity. But that business only grows if more people are searching with Yahoo.

Meanwhile, and despite the housing bubble burst, online real estate ad spending is still rapidly increasing.

Internet real estate advertising jumped to a $2 billion level in 2006 and will surpass the $3 billion mark in four years from now, and beating newspapers in terms of advertising market share.

There is room for even more growth. Sixty-one percent of agents do not advertise on the Internet. And 87 percent of agents are not buying keywords on Google or Yahoo.

Posted on Businessblog™

Copyright © Serge Thibodeau 2006. All rights reserved.

All views and opinions expressed on this blog are those of Serge Thibodeau only and are not representative of any company listed. All slogans, trademarks, text or logo representation used or referred to on this blog are the property of their respective owners.