Yahoo hiring Bradford: a good thing

I have to admit to deriving some pleasure from Yahoo's hiring of ex-Microsoft ad sales chief Joanne Bradford to replace that search guy. It hardly means that Yahoo is now in the clear, but no matter how much emphasis Yahoo has tried to put on search in its quixotic quest to be a true rival to Google, having someone from the search ad business replace Wenda Harris Millard seemed like a non-starter from the get-go. Bradford, like Millard, understands the mainstream advertiser mindset, and since their embrace of online advertising, and search in particular, is still a work in progress, much better to have someone in the top job who gets where the people they are selling to are coming from. Good luck, Joanne, and as for the people at Yahoo, I hope this is the first sign that you're moving in a new, right direction.

Woo-hoo! No more MicroHoo, YaSoft etc.

Protracted acquisition battles are always annoying, but the lengthy stalking of Yahoo by Microsoft, to me, had its own special layer of yick: those endless attempts at trying to smash the words Yahoo and Microsoft together. Way too cute for lil' miss Adverganza. On a more serious note, even if there were certain business reasons for Microsoft to own Yahoo, it seemed like a cultural misfit from the beginning, whereas the search advertising deal that Yahoo struck with Google yesterday—which killed any thoughts Microsoft might have had about still getting hitched to Yahoo—sounds right, no matter what the antitrust regulators, or Carl Icahn, or Steve Ballmer, might eventually have to say in the matter. Even after all of the numbers are crunched, it's hard to discount the importance of entities that are working so closely together having a similar world view. Google and Yahoo are different companies, no question, but both come from that quirky Silicon Valley mindset. Last time I was at Yahoo (admittedly, it's been awhile), the campus was filled with purple and yellow flowers. You could picture Google doing something similar, but that would happen at Microsoft over Ballmer's dead body. Let's hear it for YaGoogle! Doh! (Photo via Opencontent on Flickr.)

All about Yahoo, and lunch

As I haven't been traveling into the big, evil city much of late, missed yesterday's Ad Age Digital Hollywood Advertising 2.0 conference, which, strangely enough, was held in New York. But since this post is all about territory not really mattering anymore, I guess that's fitting enough. Seems Yahoo's Susan Decker told the assembled multitudes yesterday that the company is going to be selling ads on Walmart.com. Meanwhile, in a separate lunch with what I gather was a gaggle of reporters, Decker said the company is still serious about search, despite the fact that Google, well, eats Yahoo's lunch in that area. Me? I was home eating a roast beef sandwich and drinking some VitaminWater. BTW, here's the text of Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock's letter to Carl Icahn. It starts with this not-so-nicety: "We are in receipt of your letter of June 4th and take issue with its content." Have a nice day!

Look here for an ad from Google

You may have read earlier this week that Google is advertising now, so the irony of the company that makes the online ad market what it is not being an advertiser itself is over. For what it's worth, here's an example.

Didn't run for president; does buy search

Kinda strange that I came across a search ad for mikebloomberg.com in my Gmail yesterday morning, though the ad doesn't appear to run when you do a straight Google search. What, exactly, is the point? He's not running for president, nor is he running for re-election. Anyway, the site's not bad if you're obsessed with Mike.

Oogling Google's performance

Kind of fun to see Google defy the worry-warts by posting better than expected results for the first quarter yesterday—profit rose 30 percent from a year earlier, and revenue rose 42 percent. What I've been wondering is whether Google's performance can be seen as a bellwether for the online advertising category as the country heads into a possible recession. The thinking has gone—at least from those with rose-tinted glasses—that online advertising will continue to expand in a downturn, because its accountability will make it a safer investment, but I remember a similar argument back in 2001, when the dot-com bubble burst. Instead, advertisers turned to the tried-and-true. Granted, the medium has come a long way in terms of proving its worth since that time, but on the other hand, to get back to Google, its revenue comes from the most accountable of online media. Will its success in an economic downturn, carry over to other forms of online advertising? Despite the soundness of the accountability argument, I think it's hard to say. There are still a lot of advertisers out there for whom digital media is considered edgy, making some retrenchment possible.

Sir Martin Sorrell's Davos blog

Little did we know that, when he's not musing about Google's market cap, Sir Martin Sorrell is a blogger. At least for this week, as he is currently blogging for the Daily Telegraph on his trip to Davos. You can read all about it here. So far, he hasn't said a thing about Google; his main concerns seem to be, in no particular order, the weather, the crowds and the economy. Via AgencySpy.

Chronicle of a Google relationship foretold

Wonder what Martin Sorrell is thinking now that Maurice Levy, David Kenny and other members of Publicis are making nice with Google, actually letting Google engineers into Publicis offices and vice versa in a warm, cozy collaborative relationship. Is he jealous or does he think they're chumps? Hard to say, though his Google obsession is well-known, along with his classification of Google as a "frenemy." Anyway, the Google/Publicis lovefest was foretold by Google ad sales chieftain Tim Armstrong at last month's UBS media conference, where Armstrong said, "If you sat in a room with us when we're meeting with them, I think you would see a very symbiotic relationship. So I think, in essence, the companies that are saying friend or foe, I think they're not as focused on where we see the future going, which is basically see[ing] this digitization where the agencies actually play a very central, hub role." So there!

Why didn't someone else cut a deal with Nielsen?

Here's the thing I don't understand about the alliance announced today by Google and Nielsen to, as The New York Times put it, "give advertisers a more vivid and accurate snapshot than ever before of how many people are viewing commercials on a second-by-second basis, and who those people are." The thing I don't get is: why did everybody wait around and then let Google—which , on the surface, doesn't have that much of a vested interest in TV measurement—do it? Initially, Google and Nielsen will only be gathering data from some set-top boxes in Echostar's DISH network, but I'm sure that won't calm fears that Google is out to "get" the ad and media industries. Not surprisingly, the Times' version of events (it broke the story), is the most emailed of today's business stories so far—probably being shared by people, who, rather than viewing this as an honest attempt at developing deeper TV measurement, see it as the latest evidence that Google's world domination is at hand. The people in the media industry have no one to blame but themselves for not being first to do this. As it was when ABC first announced it would make its shows available for download on iTunes, expect a rash of similar deals to follow.

Yes, people do actually leave Google

Don't know who in the ad industry attended the Web 2.0 Summit last week, but probably would've made many in advertising happy to know that occasionally people actually leave Google rather than flocking to it like moths to a flame. In fact, the conference, which was held in San Francisco, actually devoted a whole panel to why Googlers might become ex-Googlers. The panelists included former Google ad strategist Patrick Keane, who is now evp/cmo at CBS Interactive. Said Keane, ""The financial incentives are important ... but I think there are bigger things—not that Google isn't a big thing."BTW, I scanned the list of speakers at the event (go to this link and scroll down), and while it was really impressive—anyone ever hear of Rupert Murdoch, or Steve Ballmer, or John Doerr?—it was utterly lacking in people from the advertising industry. Only ones I found were Brian McAndrews and Curt Viebranz, who run online advertising businesses from the publisher side. To me, something's wrong with this picture.

BusinessWeek names the top 100 global brands

BusinessWeek has a major package inserted within its "Pet Economy" issue this week covering the top 100 brands, which includes a lot of online-only content. These days that could mean that there weren't enough ad pages to be able to cover the topic adequately in the print issue, but I haven't seen it yet, so I shouldn't necessarily jump to conclusions. Here's a link to all of the content. Worth checking out are David Kiley's piece on five comeback brands, the five big winners and losers, the 100 global brands scorecard, and a Q&A with Google's vp/marketing.

Only a Microsoft could afford aQuantive

As I was saying yesterday, we should still expect the most valuable ad technology companies to land with the the major online media properties. In case you haven't heard yet, Microsoft announced early this morning that it is buying aQuantive for $6 billion, paying an 85 percent premium for the privilege, and paying twice as much for the company as Google paid for DoubleClick. Though I'm not sure I ever saw it printed, rumors have been circulating for about a month that Microsoft would buy aQuantive, the best way, other than whining about the Google/DoubleClick deal, for Microsoft to fight back against its archrival. It probably also got the better company. What has always been impressive about aQuantive is how it managed its way deftly through the dot-com bust, always steadfastly believing that in the end, strong analytics capabilities and a focus on ROI would win over clients. As for the price, $6 billion is a lot of money, but Microsoft can afford it, especially when one considers what is at stake: Microsoft has had its problems in competing against Google and Yahoo in online advertising, and there just aren't many ad technology companies still on the market that can hold up to aQuantive. It was time for Microsoft to do something dramatic. But let's take a look back at WPP's agreement yesterday to buy 24/7 Real Media for a paltry $649 million—WPP's valuation is just under $19 billion; Microsoft's is almost $300 billion. So, though I'm sure that WPP, and its rivals, may have been eyeing aQuantive (which also, of course, owns the digital agency Avenue A/Razorfish), the value of the company's ad technology simply put it out of their league. One last thought: isn't it somehow a sign of the times, that this flurry of ad technology acquisitions occurred during the same week that the TV networks held their upfront presentations?

WPP gets its ad technology company

In some ways, it’s hardly surprising that WPP Group has succeeded in buying 24/7 Real Media. Talks between the two companies had been rumored for weeks. On the other hand, it still seems a bit odd. Though old business models are being done away with all over the place, the acquisition marks the first time that one of the big ad holding companies has gotten into the business of selling ads—24/7 handles inventory for a number of sites. And while WPP said when it announced the deal this morning that it was buying the company for the technology, it’s worth asking whether WPP was also buying what it could. Consider that 24/7 competitor DoubleClick was bought by Google for $3.1 billion, and the decidedly second-tier, 24/7 is being bought by WPP for about $650 million. Microsoft also allegedly kicked 24/7’s tires, with at least one report putting the amount Microsoft was willing to offer at $1 billion. If this had come to a serious bidding war between any agency holding company and Microsoft, the holding companies surely would have lost., despite what Motley Fool says. As the consolidation of ad technology companies continues, we should still expect the most valuable to land with the the major online media properties, not with WPP and its competitors.