Hashemian Blog Web Tools, Financial Markets, Technology Saturday, February 02, 2008 Face Cream Gimmick  Microsoft's $45 billion offer to buy Yahoo has certainly intensified the online advertising scrutiny. No doubt the entire advertising industry is going through turbulent times. At $20 billion per year, online advertising is still a small fraction of the entire advertising market, but that figure is estimated to rise sharply as more people turn to the Internet for their news, entertainment, and other personal and business matters. Indeed the cyberspace is no more immune to false advertising than other traditional methods. There are plenty of these online gimmicks around, many appearing on even reputable sites. From cars, to mortgages, to medical and beauty products, they make claims that are nothing short of miracles. And I suppose they sell well, because they seem to be everywhere. For example, this is a before and after shot of a woman's face on an ad banner touting some miracle cream to recapture youth. I keep seeing this over and over on msnbc.com. Is this an instance of false advertising? You decide. face cream,online advertising,banners,yahoo,microsoft Labels: advertising, health, Microsoft, web, yahoo <Face Cream Gimmick> // posted by rh 3 comments Thursday, May 03, 2007 Microsoft's bCentral LinkExchange Banner Network Shuts Down  I Received the inevitable email from Microsoft today. It was inevitable because in the face of all the acquisitions, consolidations, and new technologies to deliver ads on the web, it was a miracle that LinkExchange even lasted as long as it did. LinkExchange opened its operations in 1996. It created a banner exchange marketplace where sites could get their banner ads displayed on other members' sites in exchange for participating in the program and displaying banners from others. The company made money by selling a percentage of the banner placements to paid advertisers. In 1998 (fortuitously before the dotcom implosion) Microsoft acquired LinkExchange for $265 million and rolled it into its small business services initiative, dubbed bCentral. Eventually newer players (read Google) and newer technologies made the old boring banner exchanges obsolete but LinkExchange soldiered on, until now. Now that Microsoft is shifting its bCentral operations to live.com and adCenter has been positioned to compete with google's AdWords and Yahoo's Panama, it was time to decommission the old banner exchange. Microsoft stopped taking new LinkExchange applications on Nov. 15th, 2006 and as of June 4th, 2007 will stop serving banners. So as LinkExchange takes its final bow, scroll to the bottom of this page to say your farewells. Soon there will be an empty spot in its place. Microsoft,LinkExchange,banners,advertising,bCentral,banner network Labels: advertising, Microsoft, web <Microsoft's bCentral LinkExchange Banner Network Shuts Down> // posted by rh 0 comments Saturday, April 14, 2007 Oracle #1 Ads  It may seem that way, I don’t mean to pick on Oracle, but lately I've seen a number of boastful ads from the database and CRM giant in various media that makes me a bit wary of this company. Gloating in ads is nothing new. Politicians do it all the time and so do many other companies. Oracle and other companies in their field have been engaged in negative advertising for quite some time, but recently Oracle ads have had nothing to say other than bashing their competitors. There's nothing wrong with that, but I wonder if the exposure gained is the type that this company really wants. I, for one, am not a big fan of braggers, specially if that's what all a company does to promote itself and its products. In my mind that actually lowers a company's stature and makes me more cynical of their operations. Take a look at the first ad. It was on the back cover of a recent issue of Computerworld, a popular trade publication in the IT management industry. I understand what this ad is trying to convey, but then there's more than one way to read it. So Oracle revenues beat those of their competitors, but that also means that more money was invested in non-Oracle databases. It could also mean that Oracle is overcharging its customers for its products and services. Why don’t these customers switch to cheaper alternatives? Perhaps Oracle products are so entrenched in their operations that they don't dare extricate them. In other words, some may just be hostages to Oracle's tactics. Yet still this ad is totally useless in comparing the installation bases. I have a hunch that MySQL (a generally free and popular database product) by itself has a much wider number of installs than that of Oracle database. But that message is lost on the casual viewer who only sees the #1 claim printed in a super-sized font and the supporting pie chart below that. The second image is a partial snapshot taken from Oracle's homepage that was running until recently. Again, I can understand that Oracle is touting its earnings momentum, but what's all this competition bashing? A casual browser would have no idea how Oracle arrived at the conclusion that its earnings grew 5 or 6 times faster than those of its competitors. Oracle has swallowed up a lot of companies recently, so their comparison methodology may not be as straightforward as it seems. In other words it could be all smoke and mirrors and not based on an apples-to-apples comparison. And still, it could again mean that they are more successful at overcharging their customers. Oracle's blustering and showboating might please their shareholders who are interested in the bottom line, but as far as attracting new customers, perhaps it's time to cut back on bashing competition and focusing on the strengths and merits of their own products. Otherwise they might as well also brag about being #1 in their number of ads about being #1. Oracle,advertising,databases,mysql,sap,sql server,bea,negative ads Labels: advertising, databases, mysql, oracle, sql server <Oracle #1 Ads> // posted by rh 1 comments

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