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Source:Mashable!

Yahoo and Rhapsody have joined forces and starting today whenever you search for a song or artist on Yahoo you’ll be able to play any of the songs right there in the search results.

The Full Monty

By empowering its music search engine with Rhapsody, Yahoo will be able to provide full song playback for more than 5 million songs. Also, Yahoo recently partnered with Rhapsody on another venture involving their subscription music service, which now includes playback within Yahoo Search. This means you can now listen to 25 free full-length songs every month. Once you’ve played those 25 songs you can either subscribe to the Rhapsody unlimited streaming service or continue to listen to an unlimited number of 30-second samples until the next month starts.

You Foxy Thang

Yahoo’s FoxyTunes Player is the key to music playback within Yahoo Search and Yahoo Music. Clicking on a play button in a search result will launch the player near the bottom of the browser. The player is customizable as there are plenty of special plugins and skins.

Conclusion

This musical union is all part of Yahoo’s “Play the Web” strategy, which includes being more open to other sites when it comes to featuring content. Being able to play full songs or even samples from search results makes the process of finding music more enjoyable and a real time saver. This partnership shouldn’t hit any sour notes any time soon.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Yahoo Kills Yahoo Music Unlimited, Signs Deal With RhapsodyRhapsody Music Now Available Through TiVoRhapsody Does DRM-Free Music, Teams With Yahoo and VerizonFree Music at Rhapsody. Just Buy a Hot, Juicy Burger.MTV, RealNetworks & Verizon to Bring Triple Threat Against Apple & AT&T?Yahoo Series Moving to MTV Next WeekMOG Integrates Rhapsody for More Full-Length Songs

Source:Mashable!

One of the growing trends this year is that just about everyone with any kind of scale is trying to cash in by creating an ad network. While many of the ideas sound similar, BuzzLogic is trying something rather unique, targeted specifically towards bloggers and the advertisers trying to reach their audiences. BuzzLogic offers what it likes to call a “Conversation Ad Network,” which is basically marketing speak for targeting bloggers with highly engaged audiences in fairly specific niches. It is launching to the public today.

While targeting audiences based on specific topics is nothing new, what differentiates BuzzLogic is that there is actually a human element, versus the typically automated “channel buys” you might make on a larger ad network like ValueClick. The company uses its software, which analyzes blogs and their respective “neighborhoods” (the other bloggers that link to them and engage in conversation), to custom design campaigns for its clients. Additionally, they actively recruit new bloggers that might not already be in its system, but would be a good fit for a given campaign. As a publisher, unexpected ad revenue is always nice, so this type of outreach could certainly create some good will for BuzzLogic.

On the other hand, since this is all a bit abstract, I asked CEO Rob Crumpler for some examples of how this all actually works and who’s using it. While the service has been in testing with only about 500 bloggers, a couple notable campaigns he told me about so far include K-Swiss and Military.com. K-Swiss wanted to reach tri-athletes, while Military.com wanted to increase email and RSS subscriptions.

According to Crumpler, those clients saw significant increases in engagement for users who followed BuzzLogic ads – 6.25% more in the case of Military.com. Meanwhile, during the beta period, publishers were seeing minimum CPMs of $2.00 – a much better rate than you would usually expect to see from remnant ads on one of the major networks.

As for publishers, they also get a dashboard where they can keep track of earnings and other statistics, as well as manage their ad codes. In the future, BuzzLogic will also incorporate some of the data that they use to build ad campaigns – for example, allowing a blogger to see other bloggers that they should be engaging with if they’re not already. For now, ad formats include standard IAB sizes, as well as video and polling ad units.

Meanwhile, BuzzLogic is continuing to work to improve its algorithms. The company recently acquired BlogRovr, and Crumpler says that they have started to integrate some of those features into its service to better understand the relationships between bloggers and establish their credibility within a specific niche. In total, BuzzLogic says that it has access to about 2 billion monthly ad impressions.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:BuzzLogic’s New Ad Network Gets $2.5MBuzzLogic Launches Dynamic Targeted Ad NetworkBlogRovR Parent Company Acquired by BuzzLogicDIY Ad Network Partners with Technorati JapanHow to Spy on Your Customers: Networked InsightsYouTube Gandhi, mDog MySpace, OfferTrax, TechStars, Limelight, BuzzLogic, MTV Virtual Hills, StupidVideosClickable Gets Former AOL Exec Jonathan Miller on Board

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 at 11:31 am and is filed under News, advertising, online advertising, web 2.0, blogging, web, buzzlogic, ad network, San Francisco-San Jose. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.