The DN Journal reports that the Ask.com division Ask Sponsored Listings, which is an IAC company, has acquired domain monetization company Sendori. Founded in August 2006, Sendori is a relatively new service acting as a middle-man between owners of premium type-in domains and advertisers looking to buy additional quality traffic to their websites.
Instead of monetizing the domain through a parking page and earning money per click, Sendori allows domain owners to directly sell their traffic to advertisers who will pay per visit. This has made Sendori’s advertising program an innovative approach to matching the needs of traffic buyers and those owning the traffic sources, the domain name owners.
Direct navigation traffic is high-quality traffic that converts well, so buying direct traffic is a good option for businesses to send thousands of additional clients to their online destinations every day. At the time of the acquisition, Sendori had 130,000 advertisers buying a total of 33 million page views per month. This massive amount of traffic surely is one of the reasons why Ask.com/IAC has been interested in the company. It’s also a good addition to Ask.com’s portfolio of online businesses. Today, every search and online marketing business needs a strong base of advertisers and traffic to be able to compete with Google to some extent instead of completely falling behind. Ask.com has shown deep knowledge of the value of generic domains in the past: Last year it bought the Lexico Publishing Group, owner of the Dictionary.com portfolio of domains and websites. Other domains part of that deal were Thesaurus.com and Reference.com.
The takeover of Sendori marks an important strategic move by Ask.com, which now has a lot more traffic to drive to its growing group of online advertisers. It is a small player compared to Google, therefore this was also a necessary acquisition.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c6338b00-dddb-11dd-87dc-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1
As reported by the Financial Times in the article linked above, Microsoft (MSFT) is again (or perhaps still) interested in Yahoo’s search business (YHOO). Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, told the FT that the software company was not going to fully take over Yahoo, but it was going to get a search deal done with the world’s number two search engine. Both companies are currently going through changes in their management teams: Yahoo is looking for a new CEO and Microsoft now has Qi Lu, Yahoo’s former search chief, leading its online division. That would make it a perfect time for the search deal, said Ballmer.
I don’t want to go into the details of the ongoing negotiations between MSFT and YHOO, where even Google (GOOG) has played a role for some time, but I can say that after more than one year I’m actually tired of hearing the many rumors about Microsoft and Yahoo. I’m sure Google has been laughing all the time while slowly but steadily growing its market share in the online search and advertising markets. That’s why I can only hardly understand why Microsoft and Yahoo haven’t been able to get into a partnership, yet. Both companies are not in a position to compete with Google as of today, so merging or at least working together in some way would be the right decision for both companies.
It would also be interesting to know what influence the back and forth has had on Yahoo’s brand. I guess Yahoo has suffered a severe image loss since saying no to Microsoft’s offer to acquire the company for close to $50 billion in 2008 (Yahoo’s market value has since dropped to $17 billion). Following that were disputes with Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang and more negative press.
But I think that Balmer may have talked to Yahoo already considering that he has made the above public statements in a newspaper. Otherwise, I guess, he would have remained silent for the time being. Who knows, maybe the Microsoft/Yahoo deal is just around the corner? (Or that’s just wishful thinking of mine.)
Earlier this week Pizza Hut announced that it would definitely be rebranding itself as Pasta Hut in the United Kingdom. But despite the vast spendings on the advertising and rebranding efforts, the company apparently forgot to register or buy the Pasta Hut name under all major generic top-level domains.
Pizza Hut/Pasta Hut did register PastaHut.co.uk and Pasta-Hut.co.uk, but it did not buy any of the other variations: PastaHut.com, PastaHut.net, PastaHut.info and so on. To be fair, PastaHut.com has already been registered in 2000. Still, Pizza Hut should have tried to acquire the domain from its current owner Kevin Smith prior to announcing the change of its name! What is downright ridiculous, is this quote of a Pizza Hut spokeswoman saying there was no reason for the company to have an interest in any of those domains at all.
It is needless to say that the other Pasta Hut TLDs have been quickly snapped up by cybersquatters after the company’s first Pasta Hut commercial was aired in April 2008, which many believed to be an April Fool’s Day joke at that time.
This is both an example of a company that does not understand the importance of a complete domain name portfolio and yet another example of why domain investors are having a hard time changing the image of their industry to the better.
Everybody pays, and Sony Pictures wisely paid for a generic and yet brandable domain name. Namely, Sony is using the domain EverybodyPays.com to promote its action-thriller movie The International, which is set to be released in 2009. I don’t know why they chose this particular domain name, but I definitely like it. Maybe Sony doesn’t use TheInternational.com because that domain is owned by a golf club…
Anyway, EverybodyPays.com is a good domain name for Sony’s marketing campaign because it is generic, easy to remember and it already implies some of the movie’s sensational action. It is easy to recall for those who see it at the end of the movie trailer and commercials. Secondly, it makes absolute sense for the story. Well-done.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/17/its-over-for-seinfeld-but-crispin-porter-keeps-microsoft-business/
TechCrunch reports that Jerry Seinfeld won’t be appearing in the commercials of Microsoft’s $300 million ad campaign anymore. MSFT employees close to the matter said it has always been the plan to have Seinfeld appear in the first TV commercials for the Microsoft Windows Vista campaign only.
You will remember me saying that I didn’t like the first commercial at all. But I did like the second one. It was way funnier and worked better for me on several levels; I liked the part of both Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. And the “connecting with others” theme was communicated better, in my opinion. Knowing that Seinfeld won’t be appearing in the coming TV ads, I’m candidly awaiting what Crispin Porter + Bogusky will have in store for us now. The ad agency is well-known for its weird marketing campaigns, which, by the way, have not worked for all of its clients in the past. I’m still not 100% convinced, but maybe Microsoft’s $300M budget hasn’t gone to waste after all.
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