Archive for August, 2009

U.S. Broadband Speeds Still Lacking

The average download Internet speed in the United States between 2007 and 2009 increased by only 1.6 megabits per second (mbps), from 3.5 mbps in 2007 to 5.1 mbps in 2009, according to a new report by the Communications Workers of America (CWA).

The Speed Matters Speed Test, a project of the CWA, measures the speed of a user’s Internet connection. The 2009 Speed Test found that only 20 percent of those who took the test have Internet speeds in the range of the top ranked countries including South Korea, Japan and Sweden. In addition, 18 percent do not meet the FCC definition for basic broadband as an always-on Internet connection of at least 768 kbps downstream.

The data revealed where a user lives is a good indicator of Internet connection speed. Users who live in a Northeastern or Mid-Atlantic state, are most likely to have a good high-speed Internet options. The fastest five states are: Delaware (9.9 mbps), Rhode Island (9.8 mbps), New Jersey (8.9 mbps), Massachusetts (8.6 mbps) and New York (8.4 mbps).

Users in Southern or Western states are less likely to have access to high-speed Internet. Mississippi (3.7 mbps), South Carolina (3.6 mbps), Arkansas (3.1 mbps), Idaho (2.6 mbps) and Alaska (2.3 mbps) have some of the slowest Internet connection speeds.

Larry Cohen
President, Communications
Workers of America

“Every American should have affordable access to high-speed Internet, no matter where they live. This is essential to economic growth and will help maintain our global competitiveness,” said Larry Cohen, president, Communications Workers of America.

“Unfortunately, fragmented government programs and uneven private sector responses to build out Internet access have left a digital divide across the country.”

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act calls for a national broadband plan by spring 2010 and $7.2 billion in broadband grants for unserved and underserved areas. The CWA says a national plan to improve America’s Internet connections speeds should:

Establish a national policy goal: A reasonable initial goal would be to construct an infrastructure with enough capacity for 10 megabits per second (mbps) downstream and 1 mbps upstream by 2010. New benchmarks in succeeding years should expand the number of households capable of sending and receiving multiple channel high-definition video and reach the global standard of 100 mbps.

Encourage Public-Private Partnerships: Successful efforts-like ConnectOhio-to increase America’s Internet speeds and capacity are important. These kinds of efforts are well-suited to assess needs, create state broadband maps and technology plans and share knowledge about successful initiatives. If encouraged, they can help simulate high-speed broadband demand, deployment and adoption nationwide.

Reform Universal Service: We need subsidies, low-interest loans, and tax incentives to support broadband deployment in high-cost rural areas, and help make computers and Internet access more affordable for low-income families.

Monitor Progress: Broadband public policies should support the growth of good, career jobs as a key to providing quality Internet service and require public reporting of deployment, actual speed, price and customer service benchmarks.

“Improving broadband deployment, connection speeds, and adoption will help facilitate job and business growth,” said Cohen.

“By continuing these efforts we can make sure that America benefits from the information age.”

Forbes.com CEO Thinks Publishers are Killing Web Ad Potential

Jim Spanfeller, President and CEO of Forbes.com, who also happens to be treasurer of the Online Publishers Association and Chairman Emeritus of the Interactive Advertising Bureau spoke his mind on the state of the online advertising industry in a guest post at PaidContent.org.

He had some interesting things to say, with his main point essentially being that online publishers are driving down the prices of ads by adhering to a similar model that the airlines have used by offering lower rates when they need to fill spots. Naturally, in that industry, consumers wait as long as they can to get the lower rates, and it has not worked out the best.

Spanfeller says that as publishers have adopted a similar model with advertising, they have changed the success of metrics from ones based on “demand creation” to ones driven by “demand fulfillment.”

“Until recently, we had seen the growing use of ad networks to ‘liquidate’ the unsold remnant inventory that was [the] result of people spending more and more time online while the ad-dollar migration from offline failed to keep pace,” said Spanfeller. “The IAB (where I’m chairman emeritus) and Bain Consulting did a study on this about a year ago that showed a huge increase in the percentage of inventory sold via ad networks on a sample of seven member sites (5% to 30% increase in just one year).”

“What this study also showed, though, was the incredibly low amount of revenue that these impressions garnered as the pricing for inventory sold in this manner was outlandishly low (less than 2% of total ad revenue was generated by these impressions and the pricing from ad networks has fallen even further since this study was done),” he continued.

Spanfeller’s piece should prove to be an interesting one to publishers and advertisers alike, but some think it is just simply too late for the industry to adopt a different model. Publishers that try to go a different way face the very real possibility that their advertisers won’t follow them, when they can simply get lower rates elsewhere.

Local Video Display Ads On the Rise

Online video advertising platform Mixpo is sharing some stats regarding the growth of local video and interactive display ads.

“Year-over-year, Mixpo has seen, primarily, local TV advertisers, extend their broadcast strategy and campaigns to the Web by more than 300 percent,” a Mixpo spokesperson tells WebProNews. During that time, according to Mixpo, over 1.2 million minutes of video display advertising have been watched. That translates to over two years of 24/7 non-stop TV viewing.

In addition, over a third of these user-initiated views have resulted in additional clicks and interactions. Really these types of ads cater to more than just the click though.

Video Display Ad on One of Our Own Sites

“Pre-roll ads are not the right solution for local advertising.  They’re expensive and have limited availability, interactivity and targeting, to drive effective local promotion. Video display ads are more affordable, can be targeted to the right customer, and allow viewers to interact as they wish, rather than being forced to watch an ad,” said Mixpo President and CEO Anupam Gupta. “This new ad unit – takes the static banner to the next level with higher engagement and local response.”

“We are seeing a trend unfolding and that is an extension of local TV advertising strategies to the Web, with the benefits of measurement and interactivity,” Gupta added. “Advertisers have already spent tens of thousands of dollars to produce high quality TV creative. Leveraging that is the easiest way to take advantage of online video advertising.”

Last week Mixpo and the National Cable Communications, which is comprised of major cable companies Comcast, Cox, and Time Warner, launched an initiative to let cable advertisers extend their TV commercials to the web. These are treated as banner ads, rather than pre/post roll.

Yahoo Messenger Goes Video with New Version

Yahoo Messenger Version 10 is now available in beta. New features include enhanced video calling, courtesy of GIPS, friend updates from Yahoo, Flickr, Twitter, and others through the new updates view, and improved language support.

GIPS has provided the underlying voice technology for Yahoo Messenger for the last three years. Now GIPS is providing its VideoEngine to add the video element to the messenger.

“With the launch of Yahoo! Messenger 10, we’re allowing people to instantly communicate with friends and family around the world through new interactive and social features like video calls,” says Dave Merriwether, senior director of Yahoo! Messenger. “The GIPS VideoEngine enables us to provide the Yahoo! Messenger community with the best video experience possible. Now people can enjoy full-screen, face-to-face chats with friends and family at no cost, in the familiar Yahoo! Messenger environment.”

“Yahoo! Messenger is the leading communication platform that provides people with the greatest choice to stay connected to one another through text IM, PC-based calling, mobile text messaging and now video calling,” says Emerick Woods, GIPS’ CEO. “”We’re proud to work with Yahoo! to deliver a truly differentiated high quality video experience for the hundreds of millions of people on Yahoo! Messenger around the world.”

On a semi-related note, Google just recently launched a new voice/video chat application for the iGoogle homepage. You can read more about that here.

Social Networks Leaking Users Data To Tracking Sites

Many popular social networking sites typically make personal information available to companies that track users’ browsing habits and allow them to link anonymous browsing habits to specific people, according to a new study by the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).

“When you sign up with a social networking site, you are assigned a unique identifier,” says Craig Wills, professor of computer science at WPI.

“This is a string of numbers or characters that points to your profile. We found that when social networking sites pass information to tracking sites about your activities, they often include this unique identifier. So now a tracking site not only has a profile of your Web browsing activities, it can link that profile to the personal information you post on the social networking site. Now your browsing profile is not just of somebody, it is of you.”

Craig E. Wills
Computer Science Dpt.
Worcester Polytechnic Insti.

Social networks use third-party tracking sites to learn about the browsing habits of their users. Cookies are managed by a browser and contain information that allows tracking sites to build profiles of the websites visited by a user. Each time a user visits a new website, the tracking site can review those cookies to offer ads that might be relevant to the user.

Wills says social networks go to far by allowing the transmission of unique identifiers. “Users put a lot of information about themselves on social networking sites,” said Wills.

“A lot of that information can be seen by other users, by default. There are mechanisms users can use to limit access to their information, but we found through previous research that most users don’t take advantage of them.”

With a unique identifier tracking sites could gain access to a users personal information. Wills says this could lead to having one’s identity linked to inaccurate browsing profiles, depending on how many people use the same computer.

“Tracking sites don’t have the ability to know if, for example, a site about cancer was visited out of curiosity, or because the user actually has cancer,” said Wills. “Profiling is worrisome on its own, but inaccurate profiling could potentially lead to issues with employment, health care coverage, or other areas of our personal lives.”

“Once someone is in possession of your unique identifier, there is so much they can learn about you. And even if tracking sites do not use the information themselves, can they guarantee that it will never find its way into other hands? For these reasons, we feel this issue is something that we should to be concerned about.”

Yahoo Unveils New Search Design

Yahoo discussed the future of Yahoo Search today. They are launching a new search design that goes along with the new look of the Yahoo Home Page, which was recently launched itself.

The new search has a three-column layout (Search Engine Land has a bunch of screenshots), with most of the changes occurring in the left-hand column. This is where filters and search applications reside.

Image from Search Engine Land

One interesting aspect of the new Yahoo Search is that they are going after Google (apparently calling them out by name) with regards to searching for people. When you search for a person you will get their Facebook, Twtitter, LinkedIn, and FriendFeed profiles when applicable.

“When we launch this, you’re going to come to Yahoo to search for people,” Larry Cornett, VP Search Products and Design is quoted as saying. There appears to be a heavy focus on personalization with the new Yahoo Search.

As you are probably well aware, Yahoo has a deal in the works with Microsoft that will have Bing delivering the search results for Yahoo searches, should the deal get through regulators. Yahoo says it will still compete on the front-end. They want to give users the best front-end search experience, which they will build themselves, based on Bing’s back-end technology.

When asked how different search results will look on Yahoo from those on Bing, Yahoo said, “We are not a version of Bing. We are the Yahoo search experience.” They also said that they will have freedom on the advertising side, but that some would be provided by Microsoft as well. That’s interesting.

Yahoo also announced the new version of Yahoo Messenger today with a focus on social networks and video. Read more about that here.

Here’s some more on the new Yahoo Search from the press release:

Demonstrating its commitment to continued innovation in the search experience, Yahoo! is testing a new search results page, aligned with the design of the new Yahoo! homepage and aimed at making Web search more personally relevant. The test, available randomly to millions worldwide, delivers a differentiated search experience that lets people better explore the things, people and websites that matter to them most. New functionality being tested includes:

• Results Filtering Options – The page provides new tools for refining search results including exploring related concepts, displaying only results from popular Yahoo! and third-party sites, and narrowing results by different types of content such as people, videos and discussion forums.
• Intelligent Search Results – Enhanced assistance creates a more personally relevant experience that better understands what people are looking for based on prior searches. It is powered by search session science that detects intent by looking at search behavior over time. For example, a search for “Paris” followed by searches for “flights” and “cheap hotels” helps Yahoo! Search understand that someone is seeking travel-related content versus gossip about a Hollywood heiress.
• Easy Access to Search Controls – The new site provides quick access to Search Scan/SafeSearch, which helps protect users from viruses, spyware and search spam, and Search Pad, the personal research assistant that lets people capture, organize, save and share information they find while researching online.
• Search Assist Expansion – Yahoo!’s popular real-time query suggestion engine, Search Assist, has been introduced to the search box on every Yahoo! page in the U.S. with the launch of a new universal header. This new header unifies key design and navigation elements, with links to popular Yahoo! destinations such as My Yahoo!, Finance, News, Sports, Mail and the Yahoo! homepage.

Google Wants Your Location for Live Traffic Reports

Google is expanding its traffic layers in Google Maps. They’re now showing traffic conditions on arterial roads in selected cities, but is working on doing this to cover all U.S. highways and arterials when data is available.

Google is capturing this information based on the commutes of people using phones with GPS. They are also encouraging more people with such phones to enable Google Maps with My Location so that their phones send anonymous data back to Google indicating the speed at which you’re moving.

Keep in mind that some phones like the T-Mobile myTouch 3G and the Palm Pre, come with Google Maps and traffic crowdsourcing pre-installed. The iPhone Maps application doesn’t support it though.

Google presents the concept as an initiative to call upon users to help create live traffic reports that everybody can use, but there is no question that many won’t be entirely enthusiastic about the idea. Google Maps Product Manager Dave Barth talks about privacy concerns:

We understand that many people would be concerned about telling the world how fast their car was moving if they also had to tell the world where they were going, so we built privacy protections in from the start. We only use anonymous speed and location information to calculate traffic conditions, and only do so when you have chosen to enable location services on your phone. We use our scale to provide further privacy protection: When a lot of people are reporting data from the same area, we combine their data together to make it hard to tell one phone from another. Even though the vehicle carrying a phone is anonymous, we don’t want anybody to be able to find out where that anonymous vehicle came from or where it went — so we find the start and end points of every trip and permanently delete that data so that even Google ceases to have access to it. We take the privacy concerns related to user location data seriously, and have worked hard to protect the privacy of users who share this data — but we still understand that not everybody will want to participate. If you’d like to stop your phone from sending anonymous location data back to Google, you can find opt-out instructions here.

More information about Google’s plan for traffic reporting via Google Maps can be found here and here. It’s an interesting concept, but Google Latitude creeped a lot of people out, despite Google’s privacy defense, so this probably won’t be much different. I have a hard time believing that enough people are going to be on board with this for it to really deliver accurate traffic information.

In a world that was inhabited entirely by users of the necessary phones and the will to help, it could be possible, but I think we have a ways to go before we get to that point. What are your thoughts on the concept? By the way, I hope checking Google Maps info on your phone while driving isn’t considered as dangerous as texting while driving.

Short URL Spam a Big Threat in August

Spammers are taking particular advantage of the heightened interest in health-related issues like swine flu and healthcare reform to distribute large shortened-URL spam runs using the Donbot botnet, according to Symantec’s MessageLabs.

“In August, the ongoing abuse of shortened-URLs as a delivery mechanism resulted in a number of legitimate URL-shortening services being forced to close their businesses due to their inability to handle the malicious use of their tools,” a spokesperson for MessageLabs says. Here are a couple of screenshots from such services:

Shortened URLs have created a huge breeding ground for spammers, but cybercriminals have plenty of other methods of spreading ill will. MessageLabs shars a few other threats from August that they say should be on your radar:

- Cutwail’s nine lives: On August 1st, Latvian ISP Real Host was shutdown, causing Cutwail’s activity levels to drop by 90 percent. However, it only took Cutwail a matter of days to recover, demonstrating just how powerful and intelligent this botnet has become.

-  DDoS attacks on social networks: A number of social networking websites were recently reported to be victims of DDoS attacks. MessageLabs found that the attacks may be linked with a spam run against an anti-Russian blogger. MessageLabs Intelligence suggests that this small but strategic spam run contributed to the DDoS attacks on these social networking sites. A botnet was also used to conduct the DDoS attack in parallel, with compromised computers under the botnet’s control commanded to open the page of the targeted social networking website.

- Old malware comes back to haunt us: MessageLabs Intelligence analysis highlights how cybercriminals are three times as likely to favor repurposing malware across numerous domains rather than developing new tactics. In August, analysis of malware being blocked each day highlights that only 11.9 percent was newly developed malware.

MessageLabs has a report covering the month of August in threat trends here(pdf). It talks about how one in 296.6 emails contained malware, but there have actually been decreases in spam, phishing, and blocked malware sites.

YouTube Reaches Out With Revenue-Sharing Program

YouTube’s Partner Program has, as a general rule, allowed in only content creators who produce original and heavily viewed clips on a consistent basis.  This was a smart and safe approach.  But it’s an approach that also excluded a lot of very popular one-off videos, and YouTube’s now seeking to correct the problem.

A post on the YouTube Biz Blog announced this afternoon, “[W]e’re extending the YouTube Partnership Program to include individual popular videos on our site.  Now, when you upload a video to YouTube that accumulates lots of views, we may invite you to monetize that video and start earning revenue from it.”

This move makes sense for several reasons.  First, you have to consider how content creators will react.  The ones who are contacted by YouTube will no doubt be thrilled to receive money.  The ones who aren’t will at least know that the possibility exists, and may make more and better videos as a result.  That, in turn, should benefit the average YouTube user.

Then there’s the corporate perspective.  Google has been trying to monetize YouTube for years, and by extending the Partner Program, should be able to sell more ads and bring the site closer to profitability.

Anyway, here’s one last detail that’s both a drawback and a hint at the next step: the YouTube Biz Blog post stated, “For now individual video partnerships are available only in the United States, but we hope to roll these out internationally soon.”

Today’s Content Relevant to Tomorrow’s Real-Time Searches

We all know that social media is “where it’s at” these days. People are spending more and more of their time on social networking sites. Many are checking their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts before even checking their email (or even getting out of bed in some cases).

Real-time search, while still in its infancy (if not in utero), is on the rise, and people are searching for up-to-the-minute, what’s happening right-now results for many of their every day queries. Real-time search isn’t a replacement for Google, its a compliment. That’s why Google knows it needs to gravitate in its direction and offer as fresh of results as possible, particularly when relevant.

Google already has a “sorted by date” feature (under “recent results”) in its list of search options that users can use to customize their search experience. The jury is still out on how frequently these search options are and will be used, but that option’s there, and chances are that it will get better at indexing fresh content. Chances are also that more and more people will realize that option is available. It hasn’t been around that long yet.

People aren’t just searching on Google and the traditional search engines. They’re searching on social networks too. You know about Twitter’s real-time search, and Facebook recently rolled it out too. Facebook also acquired FriendFeed, which utilizes pretty much every other social network out there.

I’ve already written about why social media is only going to become more important to search, but it’s not just about search. It’s about the way people obtain, absorb, and relay information. They’re doing it on Twitter. They’re doing it on Facebook. They’re doing it on MySpace, and they’re doing it on plenty of other networks (and believe it or not, they’re still doing it through email too).

These are the reasons your content should be as shareable as possible. If you want more people to see it, word of mouth is just as important as search. Social media is the word of mouth of the web.

Include buttons and icons that make your content easy to share on social networks. “Post to Facebook,” “Retweet,” “Digg,” etc. are all buttons that can put your content a click away from going viral. Obviously the content has to be up to par for this to work.

This can work in your favor on down the road as well as the present. Even if an article is a month or a year old, if it is still relevant, someone may happen across it and tweet it or share it some other way. This will not only place your content within the streams of that person’s followers/friends, but also on the radar of any related real-time searches taking place.

Real-time search isn’t just about what’s happening right now. It’s also about what people are talking about right now. It’s up to you to provide content that people will still be talking about later. Giving easy access to sharing features will only ease the way.

How important to you think real-time search is to the future of online marketing? Share your thoughts.