For over a month now I have spent much of my time thinking and talking about cookies, but thankfully not eating them.
Many people, much more versed than I on the impact of cookies, have exerted a lot of brainpower trying to sort out the issue of consumer cookie deletion. Nothing has been resolved but the ideas are certainly flowing.
Cookie deletion has long been a huge deal for the deal for the affiliate and performance marketing space. But about six weeks ago, the issue was brought to the forefront when Jupiter Research released findings stating that as many as 33 percent of Internet users delete cookies weekly and that nearly 40 percent of Internet users wipe out their cookies at least once a month.
That research was widely picked up by the mainstream media. The findings of the report have also been challenged. Though many have ended up restating their findings to show cookie deletion rates that were even higher than those reported by Jupiter.
All this has prompted experts, industry watchers, software vendors, merchants and affiliates to propose solutions. This week top executives from Carat Interactive and Dynamic Logic joined forces to launch Safecount, a coalition will address the concerns of marketers and consumers around online measurement – and specifically cookies.
Now The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IA is getting into the mix. A recently published report says that the IAB is forming a cookie committee or task force that will attempt to identify different approaches.
It seems that eveything is changing when it comes to cookies. That’s why I’m taking a wait-and-see approach to all this, but if you have an idea, solution or just an opinion on cookies I want to hear it.
Just a quick column today. The frenzy of deadline for the Summer Issue and having AD:TECH05 in town has me a little more wound up than usual. And that’s saying something.
I made it over to the conference just in time for lunch yesterday. Hey, I’ve got to eat. Anyway, the conference center was jam packed. Everyone was buzzing about the size of the show – it’s more than doubled since last year. About 5,000 people are expected to attend this week.
Many of the attendees I spoke with had been coming to the show for years were more than upbeat about the growth. Many also noted that about three years ago, the show was so small they feared it was on the verge of extinction. That’s clearly not the case.
It seems that online advertising has been resuscitated. As I passed throngs of people chatting in the corridors, there was lots of talk about search, keywords, email, lead generation, blogs, RSS and contextual ads. My ears were constantly perked up.
Unfortunately, this was a drive-by day for me. I was only there to attend one session on affiliate marketing and have a pair of quick meetings with companies in the affiliate space. I only had time for a quick lap around the show floor, which means I probably missed some good swag.
I wish I could have stayed longer and heard more about what’s on the mind of online marketers, but I’ll be stopping in again today and Wednesday.
I also missed Monday’s keynotes by John Costello, Executive Vice President, Merchandising and Marketing for The Home Depot and legendary Morgan Stanley research analyst Mary Meeker. But the handful of people that discussed the keynotes with me said one was like a commercial for The Home Depot, the other was filled with interesting statistics. I’ll let you figure out which was which.
A handful of interesting announcements were also made at the show. I’ll sift through them during the week and try to give you a more comprehensive and coherent update at a later date.
If you’re at AD:TECH and want to relay any interesting information to me you, please do. I can’t be everywhere, so I’m counting on you to fill me in.
The speculation and gossip about DoubleClick’s imminent sale is over. The company announced that it had agreed to be acquired for $1.1 billion by a pair of companies led by San Francisco equity firm Hellman & Friedman.
Investing alongside Hellman & Friedman will be JMI Equity, a San Diego-based venture capital firm exclusively focused on the software and business service industries. Hellman & Friedman and JMI Equity have previously partnered together on a number of software related investments, including Blackbaud, Mitchell International, and Vertafore.
Under the terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter pending shareholder approval, DoubleClick shareholders will receive $8.50 per share. That is slightly less than the current trading price of DoubleClick shares, but about 15 percent more than it has been trading in the recent past. DoubleClick’s stock price closed at $8.57 on Friday.
As predicted by industry watchers, the company’s executive management team will change. DoubleClick chief executive Kevin Ryan will step down. A new board of directors and chairman will be appointed when the deal closes. David Rosenblatt will continue to oversee the TechSolutions division as its CEO, and Brian Rainey will continue to lead the DataSolutions division as its CEO.
Some industry insiders still believe that Hellman & Freidman is looking to break up DoubleClick and sell it off in pieces. That should certainly fuel even more rumors and speculation.
Let me know who you think would benefit from buying the Performics portion of DoubleClick’s business.
Google is buying DoubleClick. Microsoft is acquiring DoubleClick. AOL is in a bidding war for DoubleClick. None of these is actually true – at least not right now.
Nothing gets people gossiping more than the hint of an acquisition – especially if the company’s stock is publicly traded. So this week’s published report in the New York Post that DoubleClick is likely to be bought for up to $1.2 billion by San Francisco buyout firm Hellman & Friedman has whipped the affiliate and online marketing community into a frenzy.
It has also fueled a spike in trading and sent shares of DoubleClick soaring. It closed on Thursday at $8.56 after heavy trading, 18 percent.
I’ve been hearing from a lot people about what might be happening with DoubleClick. It seems that everyone is willing to put forth their “educated” speculation on potential buyers, whether they actually have the inside scoop or not. Naturally, DoubleClick management isn’t talking.
The most commonly mentioned bidders for the Internet marketer include also include a pair of private equity firms – General Atlantic Partners and Cerberus Capital Management. Industry watchers claim a privately equity deal would make a lot of sense, because these types of firms would have the advantage of selling the entire company at once, with any breakup of its operations conducted under the new owner.
Back in October, DoubleClick publicly admitted it hired Lazard Freres & Co. to explore the sale of part or all of its operations, which are primarily split between its Internet advertising management services and a more traditional database marketing division.
Also at that time, rival ValueClick’s CEO James Zarley, said his company might be very interested in purchasing Performics, an affiliate network DoubleClick purchased in May 2004 in an all cash deal estimated at $58 million.
Performics is attractive to ValueClick (which owns affiliate network Commission Junction) because its business is split 50/50 between affiliate marketing and search engine marketing, a booming area Commission Junction is aggressively pursuing.
News of the potential acquisition of DoubleClick came just days prior to its reporting a $900,000 first-quarter loss. However, Performics was a bright spot for the quarter. Performics products recorded revenue of $6.3 million, a more than 50 percent increase over the same quarter last year.
Let me know what you’ve heard about DoubleClick’s potential buyout.
I was feeling extra perky this morning until I got to the office and read that e-commerce is now a full decade old.
That means that your teenager can hardly remember a world when you couldn’t go online and order groceries or buy something fleecy over the Net from Land’s End or download the latest hot music track.
I find myself starting sentences with “back in day.” Then, I kick myself, fire up some Interpol or Queens of the Stone Age on the iPod and say, “shut up, grandma!” Just because I remember the old days, it doesn’t mean I want them back - with the exception of XyWrite and Kozmo.com.
Then, I remember that I’m not old (well, not that old) or averse to change; I’m just cynical and cranky. Actually, I’m usually the first one of friends to embrace most new technologies. I have an iPod, a Blackberry, a digital camera, a cell phone with camera built-in, TiVO, three different video gaming systems and so many other gadgets it’s almost embarrassing.
At my power strip/surge protector overloaded household we have multiple DSL lines, a half dozen PCs and laptops, wireless networking and more mass storage capacity than NASA.The list of what I’d be willing to give up before losing my broadband Internet connection is extremely long.
There must be a lot of others who feel the same way. A new report from eMarketer says that e-commerce is now a $140 billion business. Count me in for a hefty portion of that. I do all my banking and bill paying online. I order something over the Internet at least two times a week (my husband and VISA will attest that that). Whether it’s Omaha steaks, shoes, clothing, makeup, books, or gifts for my family and friends, I spend a huge amount of time making online purchases. Over the last decade I’ve seen the UPS and FedEx guys (hi Dave and Marco) more than some members of my far-flung family.
And now it looks like the rest of consumers are catching up with me. According to the eMarketer report, the demographic profile of the online shopper has evolved since the early days of online shopping. “In its infancy online shopping was the purview of well-educated, high-earning, 20- and 30-year old single, white males. Today online shoppers closely resemble the US population as a whole,” says Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the report.
The e-commerce landscape is also evolving. It’s no longer the domain of Internet-only retailers. It’s currently a mix of online and traditional brick-and-mortar retailers. One key piece of evidence that consumers are becoming savvier about shopping online is that comparison-shopping sites, such as Shopping.com, Yahoo! Shopping and Shopzilla, are also consistently showing up among the top retail Web properties.
So, Happy Birthday E-Commerce. You’ve come a long way, baby since the days of the Pets.com Sock Puppet and Webvan.com.
I’d break into a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday in honor of the e-commerce milestone, but then I’d owe someone royalties. Those privileged few (I can count you on one hand) that have actually heard me attempt a tune can thank me later for not singing.
Everyone blames (or credits, depending on your perspective) MTV for creating a nation with a short attention span when it comes to focusing on visual images.
I think two of my favorite electronic devices – the iPod and TiVO – are likely to have just as big an impact on how we all are willing to receive information and advertising in the future.
It’s got me worried enough to wonder if I should stop using my iPod Shuffle. I enjoy the randomness of the music, but that desire to be constantly and pleasantly surprised is changing how I want to deal with making decisions and interact with others.
“What’s for dinner, Lisa?”
“I have no idea. Why don’t you surprise me?”
That’s annoying but okay when dealing with the hubby. (Just a tip, but waiters don’t really dig this approach to ordering). It’s also not likely to fly at the office.
“What’s in the next issue of the magazine, Lisa?”
“Not sure. I thought I’d just decide as things come up.”
Good thing I’m much more a planner when it comes to my job and I can assure you that things here at Revenue magazine are well thought out in advance. But you can see how this might become a problem.
And I don’t think that I’m alone in this. The number of iPod users is growing. A new Piper Jaffrey report finds that 41 percent of the high school students surveyed own an MP3 player, and of those, more than half are iPod owners.
A new report from Jupiter Research says that digital music players will reach critical mass in 2005, with ownership levels getting to 15 to 20 percent of households. JupiterResearch expects shipments of MP3 players in the US will increase by 35 percent in 2005, totaling 18.2 million by the end of the year. Meanwhile, the installed base will grow from 16.2 million in 2004 to 56.1 million in 2010.
The other device that seems to be interfering with how I want to get information is my beloved TiVO. My friends, family and co-workers can attest to the fact that I am more than just attached to my TiVO, I love it and don’t even remember how the world was able to spin on its axis before this wonder came along.
But again the side effects are slipping into the rest of my life. If I’m listening to the radio and miss something, I curse the fact that I can not just rewind to hear what I missed. I also feel this way sometimes when I’m talking to people and I happen to space out for just a second or two.
It’s also made me averse to commercials. I’m annoyed when I have to watch them on TV or hear them on the radio. That’s bad news for DVR advertisers. Ad-skipping and on-demand viewing could result in $27 billion in lost ad revenue for the TV industry over the next five years, according to new research by Accenture. The research suggests that the impact of DVRs, video on demand and interactive TV will be much greater than previously thought.
Viewers with DVRs skip 70 percent of ads, a trend expected to get worse as DVR penetration grows from 8 percent of homes to a projected 40 percent by 2009, according to Accenture’s research.
Tell me how online advertisers can beat this short attention span problem and attract consumers.
I think I’ve mentioned 10 or 20 times before that I love to shop. So the news that there was a new shopping search engine that provides information and options for all aspects of the shopping experience intrigued me.
Called Become.com, the service includes tons of product reviews, lots of product details and other information that helps if you’re in the process of researching a product. There are also many comparison-shopping tools and direct links to merchants to streamline the process of actually making the purchase.
There are several more reasons Become.com is probably worth watching. It’s from the team that created the comparative shopping service engine MySimon, which CNET bought back in January 2000 for $700 million. That same team then created another search engine – WiseNet – which it sold for nearly $10 million in April 2002 to human-powered directory provider LookSmart.
Plus, Become.com is free to users and doesn’t require registration. That works for me.
Become.com already has an index of more than 3.2 billion pages of shopping related information from more than 40 million websites. It doesn’t rely on feeds and sponsored listings like many other shopping sites, but instead crawler-based technology designed to focus exclusively on shopping related information, which helps weed out non-shopping or spam links. Become.com also uses human editors to further refine its index.
For right now, Become.com only crawls U.S. sites that provide product and buying information. The company does not currently allow merchants to submit feeds though, that capability is due in the future. Like Google’s Froogle, Become.com will not charge for this service, but rather it will implement a cost-per-click model.
Become.com also includes a shopping-specific spell check feature, which uses a dictionary that includes model numbers, product and brand names and SKUs. There are also “search suggestions” generated by analyzing large numbers of pages related to your query and identifying key concepts.
If you’re not busy shopping, then you’re likely selling something. Let me know about your affiliate experiences with comparative shopping services.
I thought I would use this space to answer some of the questions you’ve been asking me with regularity during this last month.
So, in order, here are your answers…yes, absolutely not, digitally, and shut up I don’t need to be reminded that I picked BC to go all the way.
Question #1: Is affiliate marketing really going to live up to all the hype?
Short and sweet – yes, yes, yes. Research, surveys, anecdotal evidence and nearly every expert I talk to believe that affiliate marketing is still in its early growth stages. The potential is huge and the rewards even greater.
Question #2: Can spyware be stopped?
Unfortunately, the connected world of the Internet will never be free of unscrupulous software that seeks to gather consumer’s personal information or divert sales from legitimate affiliates. Every time an anti-spyware vendor comes out with a new program, the spyware developers find a way around it.
Lawmakers are joining in on the fight and that may go a long way to curb the proliferation of spyware, but there is likely no stopping spyware completely at this stage of the game.
Security and privacy concerns around spyware have changed a lot of consumer habits when it comes to cookies. Jupiter Media just released a report relating to the inaccuracies of cookie based measurements.
The report states 58 percent of online users emptied their cookie cache, with 39 percent doing so on a monthly basis during 2004. If users delete or block cookies, it can be very difficult to gauge consumer behavior. It can also hurt affiliates since consumers tend not to purchase on the first visit to a website. If consumers delete their cookies before making a purchase, the affiliate loses out on the commission.
This is a situation that we’ll be watching closely.
Question #3: How can I get a copy of Revenue magazine in Singapore, Australia England or insert your favorite country outside the U.S. here?
This is actually something I’m asked on a nearly a daily basis. I’m happy to say that Revenue magazine will soon be available to you in digital form through Zinio. It will be the exact same great content and price as the printed hard copy. Stay tuned for the exact date we are launching.
Question #4: Are you elated that North Carolina won the NCAA tournament?
I spent most of March fending off the madness and questions about my predictions for the Final Four. Even though I’m a former sportswriter and big sports fan, I’m not really into college basketball. I prefer my b-ball with big bucks, brighter bling-bling and really bad boys and I spell that N-B-A.
So, when pressured to participate in the office pool, I went with my heart and my hometown team (Boston College) not with any actual stats or knowledge. If I had done any research before filling out my bracket I might have known that the Tar Heels entered the NCAA Tournament ranked No. 2 in the country and were gunning for their fourth NCAA title.
Instead, I succumbed to the pool peer pressure, said (and heard) the word bracket more times in 30 days than the rest of the entire year, exited in the early rounds and lost $20 bucks in the process.
Help make me richer with answers about your affiliate program.
Let me say this right up front. Today is April 1st. Again, listen closely. I said, it’s the first day of April. Just in case you have forgotten that means it’s April Fool’s Day.
You know, that one-day of the year when every co-worker, family member and loved one attempts to pull a little prank on you. (Hey honey, my mom and her three dogs are coming to live with us for the next two years. Just kidding.)
It’s also the day that nearly every newspaper, magazine, website or person with a blog tries like heck to scam you into thinking that some insanely absurd thing is true.
The key to snookering your mark is to sprinkle the story with a few elements that ring true. The basic premise should play on their desire for whatever tall tale or situation to actually be a reality. Or on the flipside, capitalize on their worst fears. Either way, you need to reel in the sucka and then at the end pull the rug out from underneath them.
If you’re really cruel, you won’t reveal your hoax and let them have the embarrassing privilege of spreading the story to many others. But in the end, the result is always the same. April Fool’s. Ha, ha, ha. I got you good. Boy, do I look clever and you look very, very foolish.
Obviously, April Fools joke are always magnitudes funnier when you are the perpetrator not the prankee. So, I’m going to spare you any possible embarrassment this year. Plus, you dear reader, are far too intelligent to fall for any lame scam I might attempt. Besides, I’m just too darn lazy to come up with something clever or plausible enough to dupe you.
Therefore, I will not attempt to hoodwink you. I will not use my powers of the pen (or keyboard) to make sure you are punk’d or bamboozle you. I have no desire to make you look gullible or hornswoggle you with a fake press releases about a new affiliate network.
I will not tell you Google bought MSN Search or Microsoft bought Google or that either one of those companies is going out of business.
I readily admit that there have been some memorable hoaxes, and there are also a handful of old standbys - most of which we’ve all tried during college dorm life. But too many of these so-called attempts at humor go awry and the tomfoolery ends up not being funny or in same cases just downright cruel.
I refuse to participate in that. There will be no April Fool’s day shenanigans or monkeyshines here today, but I’m not promising anything for the other 364 days of the year.
Let me know your best trick for getting more conversions or tell me your most foolish affiliate misstep.
is getting into the mix. A recently published report says that the IAB is forming a cookie committee or task force that will attempt to identify different approaches.
