Channel | Digital

A ploy to promote Google

Less than a week after a Yahoo! shareholder meeting blamed CEO Terry Semel for failing to keep the perennial second-ranked Web portal/ search engine abreast of Google, Semel has stepped aside and will let Yahoo! cofounder Jerry Yang take over the company's leadership.

Whatever you do, don't call direct marketing an industry around DMA president John Greco. "It's a process, in which we interactively engage with buyers, collect information and improve experience," he said during a welcoming speech at the Direct Marketing Days New York conference.

Direct marketers are facing a dialog that may cause them to squirm in their seats. With the rise of social networks, they are increasingly having to listen to, and cede control of their messaging to, consumers.

(Promo) This month, the Coca-Cola Co. plans to launch a social community for teens via mobile phones for its Sprite brand.

Pet Food Direct Inc. has received an infusion of $10 million in investment capital from LLR Partners Inc., a private equity investment firm based in Philadelphia. The money has been designated to finance growth initiatives for the online direct marketer.

The latest online advertising projections from JupiterResearch predict total online advertising spending will grow to just shy of $20 billion by the end of this year and increase to $35.4 billion by 2012.

A ploy to promote Google's Checkout automated payment system has led auction Web site eBay to pull its Google search advertising, depriving Google of its largest single AdWords client.

The Federal Trade Commission is conducting a review of Microsoft's $6.1 billion proposed bid for interactive agency aQuantive, according to press reports. Yahoo's $680 million offer to acquire the 80% of ad exchange Right Media that it does not already own will also come under FTC review.

Search marketing will continue to attract growing ad budgets from now until 2011, but its share of total online ad spending will slowly decline during that time from 40% in 2006 to 32% in 2011 due to the rise of Internet video advertising, according to a report from research firm International Data Corp.