PubMatic is out with their quarterly AdPrice Index report for Q3 2008. Just skimming the report it’s easy to see that every chart is down from previous quarters.

PubMatic also reported that Social Networks is still the lowest priced category with Sports a close second, coming in at 21 cents and 25 cents, respectively. They also report that Entertainment had the most significant drop of all verticals, dropping 42% from 57 cents in Q1 ‘08 to 33 cents in Q3 ‘08. I am finding on our sites that rates have leveled out and AdSense performance is actually up by a small percentage. Here are the key metrics direct from the AdPrice Index:

• For all sites in aggregate, Q3 08’s average ad price of 27 cents is a 27% drop from Q1’s price of 37 cents and a 21% drop from Q2’s price of 34 cents
• In Q3 of 2008, the value of ad inventory on Small websites ($0.61) was more than triple that of Large sites ($0.18) - small sites under 1 million pageviews a month, large over 100 million a month

As always, note that the AdPrice Index only measures data from publishers using PubMatic for ad serving.

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Online invoicing and business time management service FreshBooks today is introducing quarterly anonymized benchmarks for industries involving Web development, IT, design, marketing, and other services for all to see.

Why? To give the public at large a numerical hold on reported financial statistics as seen sector by sector. The thinking is that benchmarks help businesses reach goals (or keep above the fold), and so FreshBooks is placing a series of digits in public view to facilitate this processes, all from the pool of data garnered through its clientele.

Whatever the focus of your business, you’ll always have some level of competition to contend with. It’s inevitable, really. It is what gives industry its name. So the more information you have about your performance relative to others is naturally a good thing. And while too much data can conflict with the interests of numerous parties involved directly or indirectly in the effort to aggregate material, the generalization employed by FreshBooks ends up being something of an aid to all - that goes for the contributors as well as the consumers. It helps put things in perspective, more or less, which is really how company managers make sense of their surroundings, both immediate and far-reaching.

FreshBooks wouldn’t be able to compile a truly qualitative level of information if it were a small operation in and of itself. It counts some 500,000 users to date, a collection of members to which it has given these very data points that it is now delivering to the public for the past year and a half. So, might this be considered a teaser to non-subscribers?

Perhaps. The numbers given by FreshBooks today are sourced via the platform, so there’s clearly a sales pitch to be had here. However, even with Freshbook’s own marketing push, there’s value to be had. For some users it may not be giving enough. Others may regard it as needlessly generous. But it’s probable that a healthy majority will take FreshBooks’ slightly open approach with open arms. It’s hard to see any outstanding negatives, and the positives are quite clear. The benchmarks are concise and presumably helpful to some, if not many. A smart move on FreshBooks’ part, for sure.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Freshbooks Launches Estimates ServiceFreshBooks Adds Expense Tracking to Become More CompetitiveAuthorize.net Returns the Favor: Adds FreshBooks to Merchant ToolboxFreshBooks Launches Report Card: Business Comparative ToolCompete to Launch Search Analytics–Its First Paid ServiceThanks to Mashable’s Weekly SponsorsThanks to Mashable’s Sponsors

Source:Mashable!

Following in the footsteps of many other search engines not named Google, Yahoo is setting out on a big new ad campaign to try and get users to switch to its search engine. The company has announced plans to launch an online display and terrestrial radio marketing program, featuring ads like the one pictured here.

Considering that YouTube now does more search queries than Yahoo, it’s not surprising that the company is ramping up its efforts to re-gain marketshare. But as history has taught us time after time, advertising search engines does not lead to meaningful customer gains.

The most memorable recent attempt to lure search users through advertising was Ask.com, who through a variety of confusing billboards and television ads spent roughly $100 million with the “it’s the algorithm” campaign. Ultimately, the campaign was maligned by critics and left Ask.com’s marketshare mostly unchanged, with Google still commanding upwards of 60-70% of search queries depending on which report you read. Of course, Google has famously spent $0 on advertising its search engine throughout its decade of existence.

That’s not to say that all ad campaigns are completely fruitless. Microsoft is reportedly seeing small gains by paying people to use its search engine through its Cashback Rewards program. But without such incentive, switching search engines generally entails switching one’s start page, browser toolbar, and general Web usage habits – tasks that I have a hard time believing any brand advertising campaign can help change.

Much like how Google unseated the likes of Excite, Altavista, and Yahoo by offering a superior product that people told their friends and colleagues about, meaningful gains in search are going to come through technology that wows people with its approach. So far, that technology still hasn’t surfaced, either at Yahoo or at the hundreds of startups hoping to be the next Google.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Yahoo Starts Layoffs While Deciding What To Do NextYahoo Launches An Eco-Guilt TripYahoo Changes Questionable Sponsored Search Policy. Can Anyone Tell?Clickable Gets Funding for Centralized Ad Management ToolsSearch Engine Marketing Firm Kenshoo Raises Funds from SequoiaRumor: Yahoo Acquires Mobile Marketing Firm ActionalityBebo Partners with Yahoo Search: Acquisition Imminent?

Adam Ostrow and SocialTimes’ Nick O’Neill were ahead of the curve on this one.

About a month ago, they spotted what looked to be an advertising platform at MySpace targeted primarily at musicians. It promised “options for targeting users based on a number of demographic and interest-related characteristics.” The self-service system Nick sleuthed into the public eye appears to be the same system that’s being announced today under the name “MyAds.”

Our original report looks to be largely correct, except that the advertising service is targeted towards not just musicians, but “filmmakers, musicians, politicians, authors, video bloggers, non-profit orgs, realtors, restauranters, comedians, radio stations, and doctors,” according to the press information they sent us this evening.

From our previous coverage:

As for the fee structure, MySpace explains: “There is no fee for your advertisement to appear on MySpace. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad and visits your profile to learn more about your offer. We will keep showing your ad on MySpace until your campaign has reached its expiration date, or you have reached your spending limit.” There is however a $25 minimum for campaigns.

We have a few new nuggets of info now the service is official. The most interesting bit is that the CPC rates start at $0.25 (with minimum campaign budgets of $25), which put it in the range of affordability for most people. As someone who’s run advertising campaigns on MySpace before to promote video blogs, I can say that it’s generally fertile marketing ground for that sort of thing.

And suddenly social networks focus on revenue: it’s about time. But how will it stack up against some of the other major CPC platforms out there? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

We live in a world where we are surrounded almost nonstop from the time we wake up until the time we go to sleep by advertising. From the magazines we read to the searches we do on the Web, advertising permeates it all.

With the software we use on a daily basis, it has been a common practice for some developers to offer up ad-supported versions of their software so users could use the programs without having to pay for them.

The idea being that if you wanted to get rid of the ads, you could buy a registered version that didn’t display any advertising. For the longest time web forums have carried advertising, but you could often buy a subscription that would serve you up an adless version. My own set of community forums over on my personal site operates this way.

Along with that, we have since the advent of AdSense become use to seeing text ads being displayed on our search result pages. The majority of Web 2.0 businesses are all based around an ad supported revenue model so we have gotten use to our web apps or services displaying ads of some sort. A great many of these web services also offer up what is commonly called the “freemium” option to their services, which means that the basic part of their service will display the ads, but you can buy a subscription that will remove the ads and some cases provide additional options.

In all this constant bombardment of advertising though, there has always been one place we could retreat to for a little while to escape this slicing and dicing of our activities used to serve up ads. Actually I should say that there use to be because even that last bastion of privacy is now opening its doors to advertising. The place I am talking about is of course our games. Whether it is online, console or computer we could immerse ourselves in those make believe worlds without the irritation of facing ads.

This changed in a very big way back in 2007 when Microsoft bought Massive and shortly after that inked a deal with Electronic Arts to supply ads within their games. Now today we have Google announcing the launch of their AdSense platform for game developers.

While some folks will probably see nothing wrong with this move to force even more ads in front of our eyeballs, I do have a problem with it. Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins makes a valid point about the idea’s possible success when he says in his post on Mashable

If you look at most online games, both casual and flash, most of the monetization is done through one the side bars, away from where most people are focusing their attention. Couple that with the fact that when you’re playing a game, the last thing you want to do is go check out that limited time offer blinking at you, and it’s no wonder that the low ad conversion rates on gaming sitesrival only those from social network.

However, I don’t care if the ads are successful or not. What is bothering me is that they are doing it in the first place. My objection isn’t so much that they are doing it but more of the fact that it all smacks more of greed and the fact, that in most cases the gamers are going to be paying twice for something. When it comes to Google’s entry into the marketplace they are primarily targeting online games and the problem here is that the vast majority of these game sites are already heavily monetized. Everywhere you look on these sites you will see ads. The sidebar, the header, the footer and now they will be within the game itself. When is enough really enough?

With Mircosoft’s play into in game advertising being centered around the Xbox platform and computer games this is even more irritating. After all haven’t we already paid for these games and now they want to force us to see advertising as well? When is enough really enough? In this case of the consoles and stand alone games the game developers are asking to be paid twice for the same game. First by ripping off your wallet and now by cramming ads down our throats.

At what point do we as consumers say enough is enough?

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Google To Launch AdSense for GamesGoogle’s In-Game Advertising System Coming SoonKnibble Offers Free Games for iPhoneGreystripe Offers Hands-On Mobile Games for FreePalm Closing Java Support: Another Epic Fail?Pac-Man lives on; Now on 3G iPodYoYo Games Is a User-Generated Gaming Community

If you’ve heard about Berlin, Germany a lot recently, it’s because it’s a growing technology hub in Europe that many people are calling Europe’s next “Silicon Valley.” There are a lot of web companies opening offices all over Berlin, like eBay, Nokia, and Wikimedia, and they already have their own “Facebook,” the social networking site studiVZ.

Berlin is certainly Germany’s internet capital and quickly rising in the ranks as Europe’s top technology-oriented city (behind only London and Paris).

In order to attract American and global companies to Germany, Berlin Partner, a business development agency, partners with companies looking to expand to Europe and offers them reimbursement grants of up to 50% of a company’s investment.

At New York City’s Web 2.0 Expo I sat down with Alexander Kolpin of Berlin Partner to talk about why Berlin is so hot, what exactly is going on in Europe in terms of social media, and how Berlin plans to host their own European Web 2.0 Expo in October. You can watch via the embed below or download the MP4.

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—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Web 2.0 Expo Berlin 2007: 100€ Off for Mashable ReadersiPhone to Launch in Germany on T-MobileHas Google Changed the Ad Network Landscape — Again?BuzzDash Platform: Co-Branded PollsPartnersBerlin Talent Campus Partners With YouTube To Show ShortsMeebo Launches Partner Edition Rooms

Source:Mashable!

 A new report was issued today by eMarketer that showed a distinct pattern of growth in video advertising spending over the next five years, with percentage increases year over year between 5% and 12%. In dollars, they predict that video ad spending, which amounts to around $505 million this year, is expected to top $5.8 billion by the year 2013.

Rather than key in on the fact that the amount of money in the pool for producers will be increasing by a factor of fourteen, many editorialists are keying in on the fact that ad rates on a CPM are likely to decrease over time.

There was a single sentence that has been used all over the place (I first saw it at Wired today): 

Part of the pricing for professional-quality online video is based on scarcity.

Master videographer Nalts weighed in with a few pieces of advice for the people in the various parts of the online video equation (viewers, amateur creators, advertisers, online studios, and heritage media nuts). Almost all of it is indispensible, but most interesting to me is the advice he gives for producers: 

It may seem initially upsetting, but of course supply/demand will take care of things. If you attract audiences that marketers want to reach, then you’ll command a decent CPM. If not, then you’ll either have lower CPMs or no ads at all (or worst yet, Google Adwords). And for the love of video, go for non CPM revenue models like sponsorships or custom promotions. There’s a fertile market for advertisers looking to engage without paying hundreds of thousands in ad buys. Again- this has been far more profitable than checks from a YouTube partner program (which are really welcome but I could work at Taco Bell for a better hourly wage).

It’s important to note that Nalts is entrenched in the YouTube culture (but not at all ignorant of the rest of the online video world). According to the eMarketer report (and fleshed out by my own experience), there are many online publishers (Mashable included) that are spending a good deal of effort growing their online video offerings because quite simply, you can monetize it at much higher rates than the rest of the content.

The average video CPM amongst the seven Web publishers surveyed by eMarketer were about three times higher than the average display ad’s value at $43. The rest of the same publishers’ content averaged at about a $15 CPM.

Certainly CPMs will be driven down by lack of scarcity by 2013, which is the reason why now is the time to jump into video (or any time that’s sooner rather than later). The real money in video is the ability to move beyond CPM ads an into brand advertising and other forms of sponsorship. The return for both advertiser and producer tends to be a lot greater, but these relationships are generally only available for those who’ve established a track record and reputation in their content production.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Google Stock Price Soars at $560.70ABC’s Digital Chief Says Current Non-Hulu Strategy Is Working OKSoundExchange Extends Peace Offering to SaveNetRadio in VainWhy There Will Be Another LG15Two More Guba Executives Leave To Start a Video Site of Their OwnYouTube Delivers Option To View High(er) Definition VideoYouTube Skins - Slide.com’s SkinFlix

Source:Mashable!

While some have slammed Internet audio ads as annoying, some marketers admit that having a bit of sound can be a good way to bring readers’ attention to one ad amongst half a dozen banners. Do you like audio ads? Would you consider putting one on your site or blog? Or would you prefer using an audio ad for your online ad campaign? Below are 9 audio ad networks for websites, podcasts, and beyond.

Tell us how you feel about audio ad networks in the comments.

Podtrac

Podtrac is a popular ad network for podcasters. It basically acts as a sales representative for podcasters to advertisers. It also provides demographic analysis and targeting, third-party measurement, content ratings, planning and purchasing, creative rotation, and multiple advertising delivery options. Podtrac boasts of hundreds of top podcasts in its network including many from the iTunes Top 100 list.

Kiptronic

Kiptronic positions itself as “the first and only provider of downloadable media ad insertion to offer built-in support for DoubleClick’s DART for Publishers and Microsoft’s Atlas Publisher Suite.” It insert audio and video ads on podcasts, which work online as well as offline on iPods, smartphones, Internet-enabled TVs, game consoles, and more.

RadioTail

RadioTail is another podcast advertising network that provides podcast stats through its service called Ripple. Some of the features RadioTail provides to publishers include insertion of ads at specific times during the day, automatic insertion and rotation of ads, customized podcast statistics reporting, and more.

VoloMedia

VoloMedia boasts of some of the largest media houses as its clients, such as MSNBC, Forbes, Newsweek, Fox News, etc. VoloMedia adds ads on video and audio content online and on portable devices while providing statistics on the consumption of media. Ad targeting can be done geographically, demographically, and by time of day. It also provides publisher plugins for the iTunes Media Player and Adobe Flash to capture usage metrics.

VoodooVox

VoodooVox says phone calls are the new page views. What it does is insert short audio ads in phone calls generated by its network, which consists of hundreds of call publishers including calling card companies, 411 services, call centers, radio stations,VOIP providers, and Web applications. Each of these call publishers generate “approximately 300 million calls monthly.” According to VoodooVox, inserting audio ads in phone calls is better for the advertiser than Web banners since the ads are “delivered directly into the ears of the intended audience.”

Audio ads are something we take for granted when we call up a company’s customer service, like our mobile phone operator, bank, satellite TV service provider, etc. But can these ads can be served without interfering much on our phone experience?

NetAudioAds

NetAudioAds claims to have more than 46 million participating webpages and that seems like quite an impressive number to start with. The service’s ads are short 5 second audio ads, known as adlets, that are played whenever a visitor opens a participating webpage. Listeners can be targeted by demographic and by location. NetAudioAds also says that its ads are measurable, and audited and verified by accredited third party auditing companies. You can run the ads on your blog or on your MySpace page as well.

Google Audio Ads

According to Google Audio Ads, “22% of Internet users make purchases after searching for something they learned about on the radio,” and so it might be a nice idea to run a radio ad campaign for your online business or site. Success stories include Gifts.com, which “received 23% more visits and a 34% higher conversion rate in markets which ran radio ads.”

To learn more, simply login to your Google Adwords account and choose the audio ads tab. You can choose to run ads on 1,600 terrestrial FM and AM radio stations across the US, choose the top stations only, or choose by location or time of day. You can also search for a specialist at the Google Ad Creation Marketplace to create a custom radio ad for your campaign. 

TargetSpot

TargetSpot starts off where Google Audio Ads finishes. It lets you run audio ads, video ads, and banners across hundreds of Internet radio stations. You can select stations by location and format, and target your ads by time of the day, region, or specific market. Will running an ad on an Internet radio station be useful? TargetSpot quotes Arbitron and Edison Media Research that “33 million people tune into Internet radio each week, and the at-work audience has grown from 12% to 20% in one year.” Also, “57% of users reported listening to streaming radio while buying at a website, according to RAEL’s Radio and Internet: Powerful Compliments for Advertisers.”

LocalVocal

LocalVocal is an audio ad network that places audio ads across free directory assistance services, radio, Web telephony, IVR systems, and calling cards. Setting up an ad campaign is very easy from the LocalVocal site and can be as low as $5. You can choose to target locally or across the US and pay only when your ad is heard or when you receive leads.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Xanga Audio LaunchesAmazon Acquires Brilliance Audio To Widen SelectionFacebook Audio NukedPump Audio Hooks Up with Redeye DistributionGetty Images Acquires Pump AudioiStockphoto Adds Royalty-Free Music to the RosterPluggd Launches Audio Search Player on CNET

I don’t know how accurate it is to say Senator Barack Obama is a Mac to Senator John McCain’s PC, but those convinced of this premise will either delight in or scorn the fact that the Obama for America campaign has presented a free iPhone and iPod touch-compatible application called Obama ’08 [iTunes URL] for supporters to use.

Having browsed the application myself, I can tell you that the experience is commendable. The 1MB download is thoroughly polished, and covers nearly everything its larger relative, BarackObama.com has to offer. Technically speaking, the development is appreciable.

Though it does not harbor a connection to the social network My.BarackObama.com, the application is, design-wise, very much in line with the campaign website. No question about that. But how it functions is far more noteworthy. If you wish to read news highlighted by campaign operatives, you can do so, with the option to specify a national or local view. If you want to browse photos and videos, you may. Events are posted, too, and the campaign’s stated issues and its positions on those issues are noted in full. (Nearly all of these items can be emailed at will.)

You can also sign up to receive email and/or SMS notifications, and call anyone within your phone’s contact list, with each noted as “have not called” until you connect with them. This is obviously meant to increase outreach. (Placing calls is of course not possible with an iPod touch.)

Digging into the menu is easy enough. There’s really no trouble to be had with navigation. You can never go deep enough to get lost, to be honest. Which is just as well, because it’s an application for a political campaign, after all. There’s only so much a user can do given the matter at hand.

Nonetheless, there are some issues to be had. Browsing media isn’t handled the best way possible. For one, it would of course be a great convenience to see video playback within the application itself, but interacting with titles simply brings you out of the Obama ’08 application and over to the device’s YouTube application. This wouldn’t be something to nitpick over, but when you do venture out of the latter piece of software and back to the Obama ’08 application, you’re shown the start page once more, not the menu of videos from where you originally departed.

On the photography side of things, the supply of images is all but useless. Not because the content or presentation of individual photos doesn’t satisfy, but rather because the sheer number that is uploaded on any given day hardly makes it worth your while. The menu only allows for twenty images to be viewed, and my own time spent with the application today has shown nothing but photos titled “YouthVoteSurrogatePic….” This is not something to enjoy with any measure of frequency, that’s for sure.

Be that as it may, visual media is not the main draw here. It’s more about what the campaign is doing now and in the next few weeks leading up to Election Day, not a compendium of the last year and a half of canvassing that’s been done. For that, it will likely suffice for most users. You might not enjoy having a ‘Donate’ button that simply shows a translucent pop-up asking you to connect by phone to a campaign representative. Nor will some users like that you can only call contacts, and not send them email or SMS messages. Still, it is for the most part a solid collection of information pertaining to the Democratic ticket, making it enough of a download for iPhone-wielding Obama supporters to draw interest in.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Obama on LinkedInMake Your Own Obama Logo, With Your FaceWorld’s Simplest iPhone AppObama Does the TwitterGuiliani’s Own Daughter Shows Support for Obama on FacebookObiden?AirBed & Breakfast: For Obama’s Sake, Skip the Hotels

Source:Mashable!

Mark Davis is an NYC-based tech VC that blogs on technology and the venture world at Get Venture.

I recently wrote a post about the ways in which ad networks can differentiate themselves. One of the three key considerations is type of inventory.

With a belief that ads will continue to penetrate more facets of our lives, I think that ad networks targeting non-traditional inventory are quite interesting. By non-traditional ad inventory, I’m referring to media that does not currently have ads placed on it.

While I spend a decent amount of time evaluating companies that are targeting non-traditional inventories, there are a couple of reasons why we often pass:

- First, the entrepreneurs often haven’t completed a thorough assessment of their addressable market size – often misstating their market as their addressable market. After a bit of probing, I find that these companies have addressable markets that are too small for us and we end up passing. While there might be an opportunity for the business to be large enough to support a profitable business, the addressable market isn’t big enough to provide the types of returns that we need.

- Second, in order for ad networks to scale their businesses they need both advertisers and the owners of inventory to subscribe to their services. With truly non-traditional inventory, there is often a cultural chasm between the way advertisers and/or inventory owners think about the inventory and the way the ad network intends to monetize it. I’m told that there was initially hesitance to insert ads into magazines, radio shows and, yes, the Internet. While the opportunity associated with some non-traditional inventories is sufficient enough to drive adoption, for other types of inventories it’s not.

Ad networks targeting non-traditional inventories are generally very interesting to me (and potentially other investors). Just be sure you really understand the addressable market and try to demonstrate adoption before raising money.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:MSNBC’s First Acquisition: Citizen Journalism Site NewsvineGMail: The New Social NetworkBleacher Report Takes Citizen Journalism to Fox SportsOurStage Launches, Helps Artists Break ThroughTremor Media Gets $11M to Grow Video Ad NetworkLonelyPlanet.tv - Lonely Planet Goes the YouTube RouteGigya Gets $9.5M to Grow Widget Ads

Later today, presumably in the afternoon when everyone is awake, they will finally announce the software kit that will turn your PC into a Tivo box. Set to launch on October 15th, the Nero LiquidTV/TiVo PC will retail for $199, but those with a built-in TV tuner can opt for just the software, which will go for $99. The kit also entitles you to a year’s subscription with renewal fees of an additional $99.
Source:TechCrunch

Visible Measures, a Web video metrics company, announced today that it has closed a deal with MTV Networks that will see all of MTVN’s 340 destination video sites deploy Visible Measures’ metrics technology.

The multi-year deal will see MTVN use the Visible Measures technology to build end-to-end online video performance metrics that will help MTVN better understand who is watching videos on its service and how to better exploit those users for advertising revenue.

Visible Measures’ technology will be deployed on all the major MTVN destinations including, MTV, VH1, CMT, Spike TV, and TV Land, to name a few.

Earlier this month we reviewed offline ad marketplace Tapinko. Today we bring another local advertising marketplace, this time it’s for "flyers" on local newspaper and event Web sites. Part of the PaperG group out of the Boston area, Flyerboard provides advertisers with an easy way to reach local markets. The company says an ad can be up and running within 5 minutes.

Co-founder and CEO Victor Wong notes, "We took the concept of a local bulletin board and brought it online so that local advertisers can post flyers on their favorite local websites. Users can use the intuitive graphic interface to go through local listings. The original product took off at Yale and Harvard where the founders are attending."

Currently the Flyerboard service is available in Boston and in New Haven. Wong notes that this month they plan to roll out the online advertising service in New York City.

I found the ordering process simple and if they offer enough publisher variety, the service could work. The real key is getting buyers into the system - signing publishers is easy.

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