Advertising and marketing

Google has found a buyer, Publicis Groupe, for the Performics search marketing group it inherited during its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick.

The group specialized in tasks such as helping Web sites rank high on search results, and Google said planned to sell Performics. "It's clear to us that we do not want to be in the search engine marketing business. Maintaining objectivity in both search and advertising is paramount to Google's mission and core to the trust we ask from our users. For this reason, we plan to sell the Performics search marketing business to … Read more

Google has taken its popular Google Trends and launched a spin-off product called Google Insights for Search. Geared toward advertisers, it's a tool to track a particular search term's popularity across the Web and geographic regions of the world.

For Google, this can help boost advertiser confidence and potentially win its program some new converts who would've otherwise been skeptical regarding how effectively they could target an online ad campaign.

With Google Insights for Search, you can search for a term to track how much it's been googled over time, where on a "heat map&… Read more

Google's DoubleClick technology now can be used to deliver video advertising shown with Microsoft's Silverlight technology, and it will be used for that purpose with the Olympics video that NBC Universal plans to show online using a player based on Silverlight 2.

Google announced the Silverlight ad capability, called DoubleClick In-Stream, on Tuesday. It already could be used to deliver video ads using Flash, RealMedia, and Windows Media technology. In-Stream also can show static ads within video, which Microsoft and NBC concluded was the best approach for live video.

NBC Universal, already a DoubleClick customer, was bullish about … Read more

Yahoo has struck an agreement with LucidMedia in a move to enhance contextual display advertising on its Right Media Exchange, the companies announced Tuesday.

The arrangement comes as Yahoo and its competitors, which rely heavily on ad revenue, face a challenging environment as the economy softens and advertisers pull back. With the agreement, Yahoo is seeking to grab market share from Google and Microsoft.

Under the agreement, Yahoo's Right Media will support buyers and sellers that use LucidMedia's contextual advertising engine ClickSense. The arrangement will allow Right Media users to categorize their display advertising inventory, using targeted tags … Read more

Update at 3:08 p.m. PDT, with Carl Icahn's appointment to the board and closing stock price.

The results are in on the re-election of Yahoo's directors, and the damage is not as bad as last year. No one received more than a 22.1 percent withhold vote, compared with a substantially higher 34 percent last year, according to the company.

Shareholders withhold votes to re-elect directors as a means to send a message of investor dissatisfaction to a company and its board.

Here's how each director stacked up on their re-election:

Roy Bostock, chairman, a … Read more

Although many of the results of J.D. Power and Associates' annual poll of digital camera purchasers aren't surprising, some stuff just doesn't add up.

The results, which were released Thursday, sent me searching its site for a description of the survey and rating methodology. But I couldn't find one.

For example, Digital SLRs: Nikon and Canon are, unsurprisingly, rated best among the 8,000 people polled. But Nikon's ratings in the 4 categories--picture quality, performance, operation, and appearance--are 3, 5, 5, and 4 dots, respectively. Canon's are 4, 3, 3, 2. Yet both get 5 dots overall.

So if the overall rating is from a survey, people are perceiving the cameras as more than the sum of their parts (which actually makes sense). But if the overall score is based on a mashup of the subratings, then J.D. Power needs a little more transparency than: "Please note that J.D. Power Consumer Center Ratings may not include all information used to determine J.D. Power and Associates awards."

Poor Olympus, Pentax and Sony's ratings in all but appearance are 2 dots; 3 dots means "about average," but 2 dots means "the rest." So what does 1 dot mean?

Then take the Premium Point-and-Shoot category, which is ruled by the Canon G series and the Panasonic TZ series. However, this category throws in such disparate subcategories as megazooms (Canon S and SX series, Cyber-shot H series, Olympus SP series, Kodak Z series) and regular old expensive compacts (Canon SD series, Panasonic FZ series) with the enthusiast cameras.

Based on the ratings, Panasonic beats all for megazooms and Canon's SD are the favored expensive compacts. But the surveyed indicated that what they liked most about the Canon SD is its appearance; everything I've heard from people says the opposite (they love the photo quality and performance but just tolerate its looks).… Read more

A Web advertising trade group has proposed a new technology standard for digital video commercials so that the fledgling--and potentially lucrative--form of advertising can get off the ground.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, which represents the $21 billion online ad market, said Thursday that it has proposed a new communication standard for digital video ads called VAST, or Digital Video Ad Serving Template. If adopted by the industry, the standard would establish a common protocol between the various video players and video ad networks on the Web. That way, advertisers would be able to insert a commercial onto YouTube, without having … Read more

Carl Icahn may be ducking the spotlight at Yahoo's shareholder meeting Friday, but we'll probably hear who else shares his dissatisfaction with the Internet company's recent share price.

Any shareholder disgruntled with how Jerry Yang and colleagues handled Microsoft's attempted acquisition may pipe up at the meeting. CNET News plans live-blog reporting and video coverage for the shareholder meeting in San Jose, Calif.

Most expect Yang to come in for the latest in a long series of serious criticisms. The company's stock closed at $19.18 the day before Microsoft launched its attempt to acquire Yahoo, … Read more

Update 7:59 a.m. PDT: Added link to Carl Icahn's blog about his thoughts on the Yahoo shareholder meeting.

Believe in deja vu? Yahoo shareholders may when they file into the company's annual shareholders meeting on Friday.

Last year, an angry mob of investors took Yahoo CEO Terry Semel to task at the annual shareholders meeting, citing the company's lackluster performance and lucrative compensation awards. A week later, Semel resigned from his executive post, passing the baton to company co-founder Jerry Yang.

Fast-forward a year later and the situation is expected to be markedly similar. When … Read more