ChasNote

Well, not entirely. If you search for “regeneration” at Google, the #1 result is a Wikipedia entry for the biological process that starfish, for example, go through when they grow back arms that were torn off. But the second entry, among nearly 18,000,000 pages identified by Google, is Dell’s site ReGeneration.org, a site (and brand concept) that was kicked off, in part, with a Graffiti drawing contest inside Facebook.

From an interview at Silicon Alley Insider:

“SAI: Haven’t ad networks played a role in holding down online CPMs?”

“Moore: I dont think its the networks that are doing it. I haven’t spoken to anybody who thinks media fragmentation is going to stop. I think we are dramatically underpriced compared to offline. The amount of money newpapers and magazines have been getting per thousand is outrageous. Newpapers and magazines are still getting roughly 30% of all advertising expenditures–yet if you look at their share of media usage, they’ve got between 7% and 9%. Thats why they’re having so much trouble.”

Oh, come on. Google and the ad networks are selling clicks, even when the advertiser signs an IO with the acronym “CPM” after the $0.70 price tag. They are giving away for free the vast majority of impressions, those that don’t generate a click. They are telling advertisers that those impressions have no value. Charging nothing for impressions that make a positive impact on creating demand and spurring consideration is, in fact, charging too little for the service rendered. Google and the ad networks are most certainly deflating CPMs across the media landscape.

Wenda Harris Millard, former sales chief at Yahoo, puts it succinctly (PaidContent):

“This is absolutely inevitable, entirely predictable and it is all about what happens when you lose sight of what business you’re in and who your customer is. Yahoo’s monomaniacal obsession with Google and its thinking that Google was its only competitor led to this. In fact, (in) a company where 90 percent of your revenue comes from advertising, it would seem the primary competitor would be broadcast networks.”

And Yahoo’s not alone. Google has made nearly every online media company forget what brand advertising is.

From Financial Times:

“‘We have found that social networks are not monetising as well as we were expecting,’ said George Reyes, chief financial officer, as Google reported its earnings for the final quarter of last year. Since Google has guaranteed to make minimum payments to a number of social networks that carry its advertising, principally MySpace, the slow growth of the business had left the company out of pocket and contributed to falling profit margins in the quarter, he added.”

And if you look at Nielsen Net/Ratings or Comscore numbers, you see that conversational or social media sites are driving most of the growth in online usage, so it’s fair to say it’s a very big deal. Perhaps Google needs a new approach to advertising within social-networking content.

Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 lays out his “Five Guiding Principles for the Transformation of Media Companies.” Among them: The good old-fashioned monopolies over distribution channels once enjoyed by big media companies have crumbled, get used to it; search still rules the new media landscape, get smart about how search works; and figure out how advertisers can add value to the experience.

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch has a piece on one of my favorite topics, embarrassing moments in contextual advertising. These snafus are generally best at news sites, like this example from CNN (or this one), where news coverage of illegal steroid use in professional sports pulls along with it ads for sketchy purveyors of said steroids.

Ami Vora at the Facebook Developers site says Facebook tags and “other platforms” can now be used by other publishers on sites outside of Facebook. (I saw this first on Paid Content.)

“Now we also want to share the benefits of our work by enabling other social sites to use our platform architecture as a model. In fact, we’ll even license the Facebook Platform methods and tags to other platforms. Of course, Facebook Platform will continue to evolve, but by enabling other social sites to use what we’ve learned, everyone wins — users get a better experience around the web, developers get access to new audiences, and social sites get more applications.”

Very cool. I’m guessing this means that any participating publisher can paste Facebook tags on his or her site, and based on select Facebook Profile information serve relevant content or advertising to his or her audience. If the Facebook gang reads the same news I do (especially the over-zealous rants from the past 3 weeks, for an extreme example see Josh Quittner’s), I’ve got to believe they will be very careful about privacy, disclosures, opt-outs and the like, and will nail this one. Google must be thrilled.

Microsoft’s Windows Mobile group is sponsoring FM’s 2007 Holiday Gadget Guide, a wish-list of geek gear from a dozen leading tech authors and bloggers. Right now the site comes up in the #1 position on Google among the natural, unpaid results for the phrase “holiday gadgets,” ahead of sites from CNET and CNN Money. Nice!

Thanks to my colleague Lester Lee for adding these images to my file on contextually-targeted ads gone bad. First, Google-served text ads for Days Inn alongside a CNN article on lawsuits against Days Inn for alleged price gouging following a recent hurricane.

Then newspaper-industry ads pitching the merits of newspaper ads over online — since newspapers are “a destination not a distraction” — alongside a Mediapost headline calling the revenue picture for newspapers “deeply depressing, ad business shifting to online.”

Oops.

AdAge reports:

“Andy Berndt, co-president of Ogilvy & Mather’s New York office, has left his post at the agency to go to Google, where he will helm a new global unit dedicated to collaborating with marketers, agencies and entertainment companies.”

I saw this at Searchblog. I’m especially interested to follow Battelle’s assessment….