3 posts tagged “ad”
Eurekster has raised $5.5 million in a round of venture capital funding, suprising many since they've recently lost their biggest client, Friendster, to Google. The search engine that has dedicated its services to searching communities and social networks has provided value to many, nonetheless, and has become an easy solution for bloggers and niche communities across the board. When it comes to niche search engines, Eurekster has proven to have staying power.
Their swiki feature has proven rather popular and useful to those wanting to add a customized search tag cloud to their website or blog. In terms of the service they provide to communities, it's unique in that they study user behavior in order to provide better search results. This can be monetized, but not as much as a deal with Google, apparantly.
Eurekster's round of venture capital funding was provided by Technology Venture Partners of Australia and Transcosmos Investments of Japan, as well as additional private investors. If their loss of Friendster as a client has hindered them in any way, particularly in closing a deal with another larger company, I'm sure their latest round of funding will help them to further their development and put them in a better position in the long run.
Friendster's got a new friend
Google and Friendster have partnered up for an advertising deal, which is obviously good for the long-forgotten Friendster. Yahoo previously powered their search, but I'm sure Google is offering more money. Friendster, which lost a lot of clout and face value when rival MySpace suprisingly became the poster child for online social networking nearly two years ago, has still managed to hang on to a decent amount of members, consistently improving their service to include the stuff that poular networks are made of.
In following most of the other steps taken by MySpace, signing an advertising deal with Google is among the most lucrative.
It will be most interesting to see if and how Friendster is affected by the advertising deal with Google. The advertising company is always looking for more businesses to partner with. It's Friendster who must now be wary of why they partner with, as Google can appear pretty selfish at times. MySpace, who's very rewarding deal with Google ads left them with smiling faces, is the cause of anguish now that they're seeking a partnership with eBay's PayPal for the creation of online stores for their users. Google's newer online payment system is a direct rival of PayPal.
Yet this will no doubt increase the value of Friendster. If their still looking to sell, having an exclusive ad deal with Google will definitely improve their sticker price. The Google ads are scheduled to appear on Friendster's pages this spring.
AuctionAds has launched their eBay auction widget for people to put on their site to display eBay items for sale that match their chosen keywords. It's an affiliate program intended to incentivize the bloggers site owners of the world by paying them a dividend of ad-revenue. They will get 100% initially, but that's just for eBay to get the ball rolling. It's a tactic used by almost all of the well-backed companies looking to kick-start their latest campaign.
At this point, it will be interesting to see how well the Auction Ads is received in the community at large. Affiliate and Google advertising methods have left us all a bit disillusioned. Only those who really know what they're doing and how the system works have been able to make a decent profit from these advertising methods, unless you've warrented enough traffic to not have to worry so much about beating the system.
Still, the idea of creating this type of widget is a good one. It's far more engaging than text ads, and typically proves more relevant to the end user as well. It would be much cooler, though, if it streamed ongoing eBay auctions instead of displaying a limited number at a time.
