Alert Blog Reviews

Yahoo’s taking ad targeting to a whole new level with its new Ad Interest Manager . Now advertisers aren’t the only ones who can target you—you can target yourself, too! The new AIM system enables users to select their interests and block ads outside of those interest areas. According to the press release , the tool: Provides a central point where Yahoo! visitors can assert even greater control over their online experience. Gives visitors an unparalleled view into the information used to deliver interest-based advertising. Shows the visitor both Yahoo!’s educated guesses about their interests and a summary of observations, along with other information they have provided. Provides a list of specific interest categories that Yahoo! has placed a user into and lets people turn those categories off. Allows people who don’t want to see interest-based ads to turn them off entirely. As the quote indicates, the system gives you a list of ad categories Yahoo believes you’re interested in, based on your activity on the site, including search history, and properties including Yahoo Answers, Flickr and Yahoo Groups. You can then switch off each individual category. Switch off seven categories, and the system prompts you, asking if you want to switch off all behavioral targeting. Overall, this is a smart move—allowing users to target ads to themselves insures greater value for advertisers. But the system will only work as well as its implementation—both the targeting and the promotion of the system must be good enough for the system to gain widespread use. Yahoo will have to use fairly prominent, probably front-page, promotion to not only show that are they behind this system, but to make their every day users aware of the improvements. What do you think? Will you use the AIM targeting system? As a user or an advertiser, are you excited about this?

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Yahoo Lets Users Customize Ads

Sometimes, what looks like it will be as tasty as chocolate and peanut butter, ends up tasting more like pickles and ice cream. Nothing matches that last culinary disaster better than the merger of AOL and Time Warner. Well, on December 9th, that union will be no more. You can read the wordy Time Warner press release , but you’ll probably either fall asleep or your head will explode, before you reach the end. Instead, we’ll turn to trusty Reuters to translate the announcement into plain English: Time Warner shareholders of record on Nov. 27 will receive an AOL stock dividend for every 11 shares of Time Warner common stock they hold…Based on the closing price of Time Warner’s stock at $32.35 and its 1.17 billion outstanding shares, the ratio would effectively value AOL’s market capitalization at around $3.44 billion…AOL common stock will begin trading on a ‘when-issued’ basis on the New York stock Exchange on Nov. 24 and will start trading under the ‘AOL’ symbol on Dec. 10. Of course, it’s been almost 6 month months since Time Warner announced the AOL spin off, but now we finally get a date to watch. On December 9th, former Google exec and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong , will get to show us what he–and AOL–are made of!

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Things That Should Never Go Together: Pickles & Ice Cream, Time Warner & AOL

Big day yesterday. Bing announces it is getting Twitter results for its index ahead of Google announcing the same thing . I wonder if that is a balm for Mr.Ballmer that at least he one-upped Google on one occasion. But wait there appears to be yet another rabbit that Microsoft can pull out of its hat. Drum roll please. It’s Facebook! Ok, before we move on which is your favorite; Facebing, bingbook, MicroFace, In Your Face Google or something else? Your input is required . Microsoft is showing some chutzpah in getting aggressive by striking deals with the largest public provider of real search data (Twitter) and arguably THE largest, but not completely public, gatherer of information about what people are doing as you read this. The Telegraph reports Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, has confirmed its search deal with Microsoft’s Bing is expected to launch within two months and that Facebook isn’t making any money from the arrangement. Talking exclusively to the Telegraph at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, Ms Sandberg said: “We should have our public updates integrated into a Bing beta within a couple of months. Unlike Twitter’s data stream, which is already totally public, we have to be very careful about making sure the correct data is streamed.” This is big news for the search and social media industries as the lines blur further and further. It’s a natural progression, in that it makes sense to be able to search what is being said in real time as well as index alk of this information. Why it hasn’t happened until this point is not about logic but rather it’s about business. It’s easy to sit on the sidelines and write about how it makes sense and why isn’t anyone doing it but it’s quite another to make these things happen so there is business benefit to all involved. On that point it is interesting that Ms. Sandberg is trying to make it look like Facebook is taking the high road and saying that Facebook does not intend to make money from its data. Huh? Please don’t say that you think we are either that stupid or gullible. It’s the data that you have and the further reach of that data that will make advertisers come to you with their wallets open. OK so there may not be any fees attached for access but there are dollar signs attached to the move for sure. So this should be interesting for sure. Sandberg made sure to put aside any fears about the data privacy that has been one of the attractive features of Facebook will not be compromised. Facebook will only stream data from users who have set their privacy settings to “everyone on web”, which Ms Sandberg thinks will allay anyone’s concerns about breaches of confidence. “Only people who have agreed to share their updates with everyone on the web will have their updates streamed to Bing. This move is about giving people more choices about how they share their information,” she said. So will you make your information available to everyone? That is the real question here. Facebook has a shady history of TOS shenanigans so it will be important that those who are not savvy (which I venture is the vast majority of Facebook users) are educated as to whether they are or are not opted in to having their information on display for the entire world and not just their friends. I think that will be the real test of how this works or not. As for me, I am not sure whether I want the world to see everything I do on Facebook. I am doing nothing illegal or immoral (as for matters of taste that is up for debate) but I also like the fact that not everyone is looking at the stuff I put up there. So, let’s sit back and wonder how this will play out. Will it be a winner or just a really good press release? Your take?

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Facebook and bing – Perfect Together?