Taaz is a fun new service aimed at women who want to try out makeup or hairstyles without real-life experimentation. You simply need to upload a photo of your face and map the outlines of your eyes and mouth. It's a fairly standard process that's been used in some other services, including Budweiser's Bud2Bud service that creates customized e-mails using text-to-speech and matching facial animations.
Once your face has been uploaded and analyzed you can adjust the skin, eyes, mouth, and hair using real skin makeup products that accurately match the real life counterparts. It's completely experimental, and when you find a style you like there are options to print it or share it with others. Printing out your creation is especially helpful, as it gives you a detailed shopping list of what products you picked in case you want to bring it to a department store or shop for them online.
When it comes to behavioral targeting, the prevailing ethos among marketers and ad agencies is "what consumers don't know, won't bother them." As a long NYT piece on the subject shows, there is a lot more targeting going on than consumers might suspect. The paper commissioned a study from audience measurement firm comScore (NSDQ: SCOR), with the intent of providing a snapshot of just how much data on consumers' online activity is collected in an average month.
From an ad agency standpoint, the gargantuan amount of data collected will mean that media companies will be increasingly dependent on Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG), which have the systems in place to best analyze and organize the user information they collect. Here's a rundown of some of the findings from the commissioned report:
-- Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, AOL (NYSE: TWX) and MySpace recorded at least 336 billion "data transmission events" - namely, instances of any user activity on their sites - in a single month. That number doesn't include what their related ad networks recorded. The information being compiled might include a person's ZIP code, what they searched for, or what they bought. Advertisers will pay more for certain types of data - for example, search tend to command higher prices than other bits of user data.
-- Out of those five companies, Yahoo collected the most data on consumers in a given month - about 110 billion collections, or 811 for the average user. In addition, Yahoo has about 1,700 other avenues of collecting such data, including partner sites like eBay (NSDQ: EBAY), where it sells the ads. The study —which is further explained in detail by the NYT here - does not measure the amount of data captured by the ad networks run by AOL, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft, but, because of the expanded reach ad networks provide, these comScore numbers represent the tip of the iceberg. Just to get an idea, Atlas, which is a unit of Microsoft's aQuantive, serves 6 billion ads every day.
-- Traditional media sites lagging: While Yahoo's internet rivals were not far behind in terms of the amount of user data they collected, traditional media outlets appear to be lagging. Condé Nast magazine's sites, collected just 34 transmissions from each average visitor each month, while the NYTCo's (NYSE: NYT) sites had 45 transmission events for each user; meanwhile Disney (NYSE: DIS) recorded 64 events and McClatchy (NYSE: MNI) had 49 recorded transmissions for each user. Disney hopes to close the gap by grouping data from sites like ESPN and ABC more closely; meanwhile News Corp (NYSE: NWS). hopes to mine MySpace users activity to figure out how to reach them when they're on the company's other sites as well.
-- Making ad targeting more friendly: In spite of Facebook's Beacon debacle last fall and privacy groups' growing calls for regulation of consumer data collection, consumers are largely unaware of how detailed the data is on them. But with 85 percent of adults telling researchers like the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at the University of California at Berkeley last year that they don't want advertisers to track them, companies are trying to ensure that such overwhelming displeasure does not turn into greater calls for regulatory action. A separate NYT item details AOL's latest effort to demonstrate its commitment to policing its behavioral ad targeting. As part of a new ad campaign to cast its ad targeting efforts as benignly as possible, a cartoon penguin helps explain what the process is all about.
Google advertising exec Tim Armstrong wore a smile and told those gathered at the American Association of Advertising Agencies yesterday how his company planned to destroy them. The weapon? A dashboard. With it, Armstrong said, buyers will be able to manage TV, radio print, search and display campaigns. Sounds like most of what a media buyer does. But don't fret, Madison Avenue. Your Terminator from the future won't arrive for some time yet. Or at least no sooner than any other vaporware like Android, OpenSocial, and Google Health.
How can you make money from Web 2.0 was the main question put to the Web 2.0 and Beyond: What Is the Business Reality panel at Microsoft Mix yesterday. Featured in the video is Frank Arrigo (Microsoft), Bryan Biniak (CEO Jacked), Tim Kendall (Facebook), Loic Le Meur (CEO Seesmic), Chris Saad (Particls).
The responses from Kendall were interesting. Kendall argued that Facebook is failing because the majority of the audience put their hands up when asked the question “have you seen ads on Facebook?” Apparently Facebook believes the best ads are the ones users don’t know are ads. There’s some talk about beacon and open access as well.
My question about Web 2.0 business models (or lack there of) is the second question in.
The video quality isn’t great, slow internet aside we should have a better copy up soon.
Crunch Network: CrunchGeardrool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Firebrand, a commercials-as-content startup with backing from NBC, is shutting down. The news was first reported by Gawker and confirmed by TV Decoder. The site, which remains up, announced its launch last September, with backers including the Peacock Equity Fund (NBC and GE), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and ION TV, which also broadcast its television show. Officially, the investors have decided to stop investing more into the site, although Gawker reports that they've told employees to stop coming and to turn in their blackberries. In addition to simply showing video ads as content, there was also a commerce angle to the site, a la HSN. Other sites doing similar things include TBS' Veryfunnyads.com and Honeyshed, which also has the HSN thing going. For now, everyone knows that people enjoy watching good commercials, but building a business off of this is a different matter.
Conde Nast has completed a reorg of its bridal magazines' ad sales teams, which involves separating its digital and print sides, Mediaweek reported. The move is part of a company-wide plan to have the print and digital sides of its publications operate more independently of each other. As part of the restructuring, Susan Rerat will move from her post as VP, publishing director for Bridal Media, and take on the new role of VP, Brides.com, which serves as the web portal for CN's three bridal mags: Brides, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride. Rerat helped launch Brides.com in April 2006. Amid that change, Jennifer Cole remains publisher of Brides.com and Bridal Media's 16 local bridal books. Cole will continue to report to Rerat.
IDG has completed the first expansion phase of its IDG TechNetwork. As Bob Carrigan, IDG Communications' CEO, told us last month, the company had been planning to open up the technology- and b2b focused ad network on websites and blogs outside of the magazine company's circle of publications. As BtoB points out, the IDG TechNetwork has about 100 outside blogs signed up. IDG is sharing revenue with the sites in its network. The move as seen as a way to broaden its news coverage and extend the reach of its advertisers. Read more
Two reports are out today on the size of the Internet advertising market. The Interactive Advertising Bureau has a preliminary estimate of $21.1 billion for U.S. Internet ads in 2007, a 25 percent increase over 2006. (For the fourth quarter of 2007, it is estimating $5.7 billion for the size of the industry, up from $5.2 billion in the third quarter).
Meanwhile, the Kelsey Group puts U.S. Internet advertising at $22.5 billion for 2007 (IDC, as previously reported, is at the high end with $25.5 billion).
The Kelsey Group also provides a global estimate of $45 billion for Internet advertising, which is 7.4 percent of the total $600 billion global advertising market. That compares to a 6.1 percent share of global advertising for online ads in 2006. And for what it’s worth (not much) it is forecasting global internet advertising to reach $147 billion in 2012. These forecasts are always wrong, but the 2007 numbers are helpful.
Via Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
All the ad networks are filling their coffers before the recession spreads to the online advertising industry, or at least that's the reasoning most of them are giving. Now, Adconion, the UK-based online ad network which is also now expanding into U.S., has raised a big second round of $80 million, led by Index Ventures and previous investor Wellington Partners. Adconion plans to use a quarter of its new funding to expand its U.S. operations—half to invest in new technology and the rest for acquisitions, reports WSJ. Adconion announced its first round last year in April.
The company was founded in 2004, and sells ads on about 350 publishers sites, including the Drudge Report, Sony's (NYSE: SNE) video site Crackle, and Demand Media. There was a rumor doing the rounds last year that Fox Interactive was in talks with Adconion to buy it, but seems like it didn't pan out, or tat the rumors were false.
European online advertising network and marketing firm AdLink Group, part of Germany's ISP firm United Internet, has been put up for sale, possibly to a U.S.-based company, reports Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, picked up by AFX. (The German language story is here). The story says UI is hoping for a triple digital millions from the sale...Adlink is valued at about 400 million Euros, while 84.3 percent is owned by United Internet.
AdLink also owns Sedo, the online marketplace for buying and selling domain names and websites; and Composite Digital, a provider of e-mail data and profiling tools.
The company has hired Morgan Stanley, the U.S. investment bank in a deliberate attempt to find an American buyer, the story says. My guess is AOL, which has been trying to buy a European online ad operation for a while, might be a buyer. It tried to buy TradeDoubler for $900 million early last year but withdrew its bid after shareholder opposition. Then later it bought Adtech AG, an international online ad-serving company based in Frankfurt, Germany, and then earlier this year announced buying UK-based affiliate marketing network Buy.at.
