Microsoft: Victim Of Search Promotion-Fraud

According to Information Week, MSN's tremendous gains in search share for Live Search. After the report, readers openly questioned the merits of the company's astonishing 67%t gain in search volume. At the time, the gains were attributed to the prizes users were awarded for using Live Search in the new MSN game zone, Live Search club.

As it turns out, a huge chunk of the statistical spike can be better-attributed to bots, says one Live Search Club user. "The reason their search engine is being hit so frequently is that people are running automated 'bot' programs to play the Live Search games for them," says user Jack Krause. "Microsoft is essentially being DDoSed by thousands of people hundreds of times per minute, but they are mistaking this rise in traffic for people actually using Live Search."

Live Search club users are awarded tickets for participating in the clubs' games; the tickets are redeemed for Microsoft prizes, including Xboxes, Zune media players, a new Windows Vista operating system and other expensive items. Microsoft confirmed that the number of winners was so high for last week's prize--Windows Vista--it was later removed. Microsoft said it was due to high demand, but another Live Search Club member rebuffed those claims, saying: "You can completely max out the number of tickets available within six to eight hours without even being at your computer."

Is it ridiculous that MS cannot identify click-fraud on its own search promotion? Reading this, I have to question how Microsoft prevents click-fraud on its paid search engine marketing platform - AdCenter. I believe if this ever happened to Google, Google cannot achieve high growth rate in the search engine marketing area, namely, adWords.

Four Out of Five Newspaper Website Readers Also Read the Printed Edition

A new study recently released by the Newspaper National Network LP, conducted by Scarborough Research, found that 81% of newspaper website users also read the printed newspaper. Crossover users (those who used both print and online newspapers) have deep affinity with both their printed newspaper and their newspaper website, and 83% say "I love both my printed newspaper and visiting my newspapers website." Crossover users visit their newspaper website to:

Access breaking news (96%),
Find articles seen previously (85%)
Find things to do/places to go (72%)

The main reasons newspaper website-only users cited for using newspaper websites include:

Accessing local news (84%)
Entertainment information (74%)
Food or restaurant information (58%)

Newspaper website-only users are web-savvy group as 52% write or read blogs and 46% have joined a web community.

The survey results suggest when doing online display advertising on news websites, you need to be able to segment your customers. However, it might be always a good idea to sponsor the breaking news and local news sections. Of course, you need to pay attention to the potential branding damage if coincidently your product is associated with some bad events in those news.

Social Networks Adversely Affect U.K. Ad Growth

The news from the U.K. shows that MySpace -- in about 12 months -- has easily catapulted to the top of the social networking pile, attracting more than 10 million visitors in the U.K. last month, more than double second-place Bebo, with 3.96 million uniques, and Facebook, 3.2 million.

However, in a separate study, GroupM media forecasters said that the surging popularity of social networks in Britain is proving to be a drain on the growth of Web advertising. Why? Two reasons: one, consumers are spending more time social networking at the expense of professional news and entertainment publishers; two, the fact that users create the content is a detractor to big-spending global advertisers, which don't want their brands placed on content with no corporate control. Of course, any slowdown in U.K. Web advertising would be relative, especially when compared with the stagnant growth rates of U.K. broadcast and print advertising. The firm predicts Web spending in the U.K. will rise 34% this year, down from a 48% rise in 2006.

Does the same hold true for the Australia? Please, anyone who knows, give me a buzz.

Are You Still Using Page Views as Engagement Metric?

Are you still using Page Views as the important engagement metric of your website? If yes, you are out-of-date: Nielsen rejects Page Views! Nielsen/NetRatings said on 10/07/2007 that it will no longer issue rankings based on page-view although it will continue to compile page-view data.

Nielsen announced this in favor of time spent at a Web site. Time spent has become the "best engagement metric" in the wake of Web 2.0 technologies like Ajax, which can deliver photos, maps, email, video and other content without requiring users go to a new page.

This move drew a mixed response from online advertising experts, who note that many Web sites make no use of Ajax technologies.