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Hey, You, Get Off of My Name!

Written By Noah Mallin | June 3, 2008 | Share This |

Bo Diddley

Bo Diddley, the pioneering rock n’ roll genius who died yesterday knew a thing or two about marketing and branding. Consider this: Ellas McDaniel re-dubbed himself as Diddley, had his first hit record with a song called “Bo Diddley” (the first of many times he would work his new name into a song title and lyrics) and made sure that the ubiquitous shave-and-a-haircut beat that was his trademark was referred to far and wide as “the Bo Diddley beat.” The man was SEO before there were any E’s to S.

Now imagine if you popped Diddley’s name into your search engine of choice and the results page featured a big ol’ ad that said “Bo Diddley Music” with a click- through to Chuck Berry’s site. Though Search Engines frown on this when the name is under copyright it does happen and in some cases is part of an overall marketing strategy.

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article that focuses on the naughty folks who contravene the search engine’s ban on using another company’s copyrighted name as a paid keyword. The accompanying vid however deals with a slightly different and murkier issue, perhaps because author Emily Steel is talking to someone from a company that hopes to get paid for protecting your good brand name from being sullied. Here it is in living Murdoch-vision:

The general practice of buying up terms, phrases and even copyrighted names associated with a competitor is not uncommon, though the effectiveness is open to debate. If your brand is the victim of this kind of keyword jacking it’s a terrible scourge. On the other hand, if your brand has used it to checkmate a rival’s campaign, it’s flippin’ genius.

A good example of this can be found in Reprise Media’s own typically thorough (excuse us while we plug ourselves) Superbowl Search Marketing Scorecard from this past February. CareerBuilder did a series of ads based on the theme of “Follow your heart.” The clever folks at Monster.com bought that phrase and other similar ones and even integrated it into their online ad copy. No doubt many job seekers who may not have been aware of Monster found that they offered an alternative to CareerBuilder that met their needs.

Whether or not you are using someone else’s brand name or campaign is maybe less important than why you’re doing it, and where you’re sending people once they click. Sending a bunch of folks who are looking for Bo Diddley to the Chuck Berry product only works if the landing page you send them to doesn’t make them feel tricked and hostile. Sending them to a page that says “If you like Bo Diddley, check out Chuck Berry’s CD” and includes the ability to sample some tunes could actually create a positive experience for the user.

This also can have some bearing on the price advertisers pay for their ads. Most search engines incorporate landing page content into their quality score – the algorithm that is used to determine the price they’ll pay in the auction. In fact Google makes this very clear in their Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines for AdWords. If your landing page doesn’t feature content that’s relevant to the keyword you’re buying? Prices will go up and in some cases your ads will even be deactivated. Not the kind of ROI most advertisers want.

Ultimately, the question of whether or not companies should be able to buy competitive brand terms comes down to intent – deception vs. comparison:

The Dance Will Go On

Written By Drupad Sil | May 19, 2008 | Share This |

Dance

The big news this morning is (surprise surprise) Microsoft’s return to the bargaining table in its bid for some or all of Yahoo. The “some” part represents Yahoo’s search advertising business, which when acquired by or partnered with Microsoft would certainly help Microsoft capture more market share, although still be a far cry from a short-term threat to Google. Indeed, even a full-out acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft would not be a short-term threat to Google’s domination of the search marketplace, though it would obviously drastically change the landscape and long-term outlook, assuming it survives anti-trust scrutiny. Microsoft issued a statement on Sunday on its return to negotiations:

“Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo! an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo! but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo! Microsoft is not proposing to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo! at this time, but reserves the right to reconsider that alternative depending on future developments and discussions that may take place with Yahoo! or Microsoft or other third parties.

There of course can be no assurance that any transaction will result from these discussions.”

Aside from the wincing done by Yahoo shareholders at that last line (ah, $33 a share, we hardly knew ye) the statement, while a reversal from Microsoft’s earlier stated position of having “moved on” from its takeover bid, raises the possibility of a competing partnership offer to the Google-Yahoo alliance said to be in the works and announced as early as this week. Yahoo has not rejected the possibility out of hand, as it released a statement of its own on Sunday:

“Yahoo! has confirmed with Microsoft that it is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo! at this time. Yahoo! and its Board of Directors continue to consider a number of value maximizing strategic alternatives for Yahoo!, and we remain open to pursuing any transaction which is in the best interest of our stockholders. Yahoo!’s Board of Directors will evaluate each of our alternatives, including any Microsoft proposal, consistent with its fiduciary duties, with a focus on maximizing stockholder value.”

It’s a bland statement with little information, but at least shareholders know that Yahoo’s board will not slam the door on new negotiations with Microsoft (at least immediately, anyway). Indeed, the longer the talks are in limbo, the longer shareholders can enjoy holding Yahoo shares that are at a decent premium over where they were before Microsoft floated its acquisition idea. Originally trading at $19.18 back in late January, Yahoo’s shares closed at $27.66 on Friday, still at a 44% premium despite a large drop the day Microsoft pulled out of talks. Some of this is no doubt due to Carl Icahn and his push to appoint a new board more inclined to be bought by Microsoft, but I think a sizable portion of shareholders felt that despite Microsoft’s vibe of finality on the talks the software giant would return to negotiations at some point. We certainly felt the same way, thought not expecting to happen this quickly. At the time of publication, Yahoo shares are already trading up about 1.5% in pre-market buying, showing that some cautious optimism is being priced in by investors. Some commentary on the deal from the Wall Street Journal:

“While Microsoft’s statement leaves the door open to cooperating with other investors, the company still hasn’t had contact with Mr. Icahn or his team, according to a person familiar with the matter. Still, by not ruling out the possibility of cooperation with other investors, Microsoft has signaled that option could be revisited.

By floating a search pact now, Microsoft is making a defensive move. Yahoo has already held extensive talks about a search-ad partnership with Google, and an agreement between those two companies is close, according to people close to Yahoo. Such a deal would probably preclude cooperation between Yahoo and Microsoft.”

While there hasn’t been any official direct contact between Microsoft and Icahn, Microsoft’s letter outlining the details of its courtship of Yahoo was certainly released with the intention of spurring some shareholder activism. It seems to have delivered. Whatever happens, the conclusion is still the same: Yahoo has lost much of the initiative it had in the search marketplace, and Google and Microsoft are basically toying with the company until a deal manages to hold. Then we can expect some serious anti-trust roadblocks placed by whichever company was left out in the cold. Fun times.

If Search is Settled, Will History Repeat Itself?

Written By Drupad Sil | May 13, 2008 | Share This |

Google-Microsoft

A lot of talk on Google today, probably spawned in the wake of the failed Microsoft-Yahoo (MicroHoo?) merger. First up is a fantastic Financial Times article written by Richard Waters that discusses Google’s business outlook now that the company’s greatest short-term threat is out of the picture. From the article:

“The scale of Google’s victory over Microsoft in online advertising, sealed by the failure of the Yahoo takeover approach, is hard to exaggerate. By next year, half of the world’s online advertising – set to reach $55 bn in total – is expected to flow through Google’s systems. Of that, slightly more than two-thirds will come from advertisements that run on Google’s own websites. The rest represents advertising that the internet company, acting as a broker, places on other companies’ sites in return for a small cut of the action.

It is a stunning victory that raises two overriding questions. Will Google be able to use the respite provided by the disarray at Microsoft and Yahoo to carry its dominance of search over into other areas of online – and broader digital – advertising? And should it now be a cause for alarm that one company is in a position to control so much of the lifeblood of the internet?”

Even if Microsoft and Yahoo weren’t in disarray, it would be difficult to keep up with the sheer volume of projects that Google seems to be working on. Google has been sticking its fingers in every pie imaginable, from social networking to WiMax and mobile technology. Adding these to the already-placed bets on the growth of display advertising and online video with its acquisitions of DoubleClick and YouTube, Google is reminding some observers of one of its biggest competitors… Microsoft.

This has spurred some speculation as to which company will be bigger in the long run. Henry Blodget at the Silicon Valley Insider claims that Google Search will be bigger than Microsoft Windows in 2009 for the following reasons:

“Both products are natural monopolies. Google’s share of the search market should continue to approach Microsoft’s share of the operating system market (90%+).

Both products are wildly, fantastically profitable. Microsoft’s Windows business has operating margins of 75%-plus. So does Google’s search business (once you factor out the billions Google is spending on products that produce zero revenue).

Google natural monopoly is growing a lot faster than Microsoft’s. Google’s search business should be bigger than Microsoft’s Windows business by early next year (at the latest). Google is also growing faster than Microsoft’s two monopolies combined – Windows and Office. Google has yet to develop a second huge, fantastically profitable monopoly - the Office equivalent – but AdSense is getting there.”

While I certainly agree with Blodget’s general analysis, I think he’s missing a couple points. First off, I think the barriers to entry are a little more complex than described here. On the one hand, you could make the argument that barriers to entry in online search are low – there are a large number of engines out there with significant market share, especially outside the US market (Baidu comes to mind). However, the counterargument here is that while producing engines may be relatively simple, getting people to pay for ads on their pages is another story entirely. With Google dominating the online space the way it is, its conceivable that more and more people will have to turn to them to deliver the search volume required, leaving other engines out in the cold. And, as we learned in the late ‘90s, it actually takes real revenue to build a successful company, not just a cool idea.

That being said, people dismissing anyone else’s chance at competing with Google are forgetting the lessons of the not-so-distant past. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that Yahoo was cruising out in the lead. Then Google appeared with its streamlined search results and quickly crushed the apparent king. In order to avoid the same fate, Google has wisely diversified its services beyond just search, increasing the company’s long-term profitability and causing talk like that at SAI and this at HipMojo by Ashkan Barbasfrooshan:

“So in 2010, Google’s current historical growth rate projects a revenue figure of $34 billion, with 25% profit margin of $8.2 billion, and with a P/E of 35, could technically command an enterprise value of $287 billion. It currently boasts some $10 billion, so at these levels it would carry enough cash to push up its market cap northwards of $300 billion.

Today MSFT has a market cap of $284 billion, and that includes a wallop of cash.

Tale of the tape: Google $287 billion; MSFT $284 billion…

There you have it. Told you it’s not a bubble, we’re actually talking revenues, profits and P/E.”

That last was a posted estimate from 2006, but the general sentiment is echoed by many observers. While I agree that Google’s outlook is definitely strong, there’s a real danger in extrapolating historical data points to predict future performance, especially in Google’s case. The company hasn’t made a mistake yet, but there’s no guarantee of this going forward. Getting complacent, pushing a shoddy product out the door, a poor acquisition – these are all very real possibilities. Even the highly touted purchase of YouTube hasn’t generated serious cash yet, a la NewsCorp and MySpace. Furthermore, the company’s reputation may begin to create more problems than goodwill. Despite longstanding positive perception of its brand, Google’s growth and massive access to data have brought this angelic standing under some fire, both from individual supporters, who are starting to worry about the privacy of their data, or the monopolistic power the company is starting to wield, and companies it works with in other domains, like phone companies hesitant to partner with Google to serve ads on mobile networks. Today, however, Google is making all the right moves and is a tech story for the ages, but it’s still premature to declare victory, even just in the search domain.

MicroHoo: Still a Mirage

Written By Drupad Sil | May 5, 2008 | Share This |

MicroHoo

Unless you’ve been in a cave the last three weeks, you’ll have heard of Microsoft’s unsolicited bid for Yahoo! and followed the complex tango performed by the company’s respective top executives, Steve Ballmer and Jerry Yang. The soap opera-like unfolding of this financial ordeal played out daily in newspaper headlines, with assurances and deadlines from both sides ultimately being worth less than the ink it took to print them as Microsoft pulled its offer, abandoning talks three months into the process.

Well, in the end the magic numbers were 19, 33, 37, and 24. $19 is what Yahoo was trading at on January 31, immediately before the Microsoft acquisition story broke. Overnight, Yahoo daily share volume increase tenfold and share price skyrocketed about 53%, where it remained during the three months of talks. Microsoft’s final offer for Yahoo was $33 a share (a 72% premium over January’s pre-acquisition talks price), with Yang holding out for a sky-high $37 a share. Not unexpectedly, as today is the first full trading day since the end of negotiations, Yahoo’s share price has plummeted about 15% to around $24, the biggest drop for Yahoo in two years.

The questions being asked are how will Microsoft expand its online market share without Yahoo, and what Yahoo’s next move will be. There is some speculation that Microsoft is eying AOL, or waiting to get back at the table with Yahoo in a quarter or two (about the time it’d take to think of a better name for this deal than ‘MicroHoo’). Since Yahoo’s share price is hovering above the original $19 a share, I’d wager the latter is getting priced in.

Another issue that is getting priced in is the potential of a Yahoo-Google deal. The two had a mutually-described successful implementation of Google’s search advertising on Yahoo’s properties, which could point to future joint projects ahead. However, I think Google may have pushed a little harder to get in with Yahoo because of the pressure from the Microsoft offer. Now that there’s no competitor at the table, Google can take its time in whatever it chooses to implement, leaving Yahoo the big loser in all of this.

Indeed, it’s difficult to get away from being negative on Yahoo after everything is said and done. Despite Yang’s assurances that all is well, there is little that points to investing in Yahoo as a defensible long-term strategy that will produce returns. No doubt this aggravates shareholders and execs, who could have escaped with a sweet profit from the Microsoft deal. Any combination of the Big Three would be subject to government review and antitrust regulations, but this first move represents the opening gambit of an acquisition chess game as Microsoft looks to combat Google on its home turf, search.

Facebook: Worth Two Times Mozilla?

Written By Drupad Sil | April 29, 2008 | Share This |

Market Crash

Henry Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider unveiled the SAI 25 Live, an auto-updating list of the world’s “Most Valuable Digital Startups” as assessed by Blodget and his associates. More from SAI itself:

“Like public companies, the value of private change in real-time, but there’s no convenient way to track these changes… until now. We’ve created a real-time tool, the SAI 25 Live, that indexes the value of the SAI 25 companies to the NASDAQ. The SAI 25 Live updates the values in real-time (with a 20-minute delay). So if you’re jealous of all your friends at public companies who can recalculate their net worth all day, just check out the SAI 25 Live. This will tell you how much your stock options are worth right now.”

Now, there are a multitude of techniques available to perform valuations of public companies practiced by investors, ranging from the textbook (dividend discount model, earnings multiplier model) to the obscure (ask James Simons at Renaissance). However, they all have one thing in common: a heavy reliance on the availability of financial data, like revenue and profit numbers, free cash flow and balance sheet results. Unfortunately, these numbers are rarely publicly available for private institutions like those on the SAI 25 Live, leading one to wonder how accurate these valuations are. From the SAI 25 Live valuation page:

“Valuing companies is a subjective exercise, one that is highly dependent on information. In theory, companies are worth the present value of future cash flows, but since no one knows exactly what future cash flows will be (or the perfect rate at which to discount them), theory and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee. An additional challenge of valuing private companies, as opposed to public ones, is that detailed financial information is often unavailable or outdated. And many private companies are often early in their growth cycles and therefore haven’t reached mature profit margins.

Ultimately, of course, private companies are worth what any stock or asset is worth – what someone will pay for them.”

Of course, here Blodget is correct twice. Private companies are certainly worth what people will pay for them. Also, theory and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee, which is exactly the value of this analysis. The SAI 25 Live takes into account implied valuations in private financings (a terrible absolute indicator, but of some value directionally given an existing valuation), financial performance (nonexistent for most of this list), market share and market size (doable), and growth rate (dependent on revenue numbers, which are rarely reported and so must be guessed) making this list a poor indicator of anything other than relative valuations (Facebook is worth more than Ning, who knew?), and even there it can only be used sparingly (company X being worth Y times that of company Z on this list is probably meaningless). In the words of Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch:

“Putting a value on private companies is hard enough for insiders and venture capitalists who have full access to the company’s financial statements. When outsiders try to do it, even well-informed ones, it is nothing more than a guessing game. But it is nontheless perhaps one of Silicon Valley’s favorite parlor activities.

Some of these valuations have more merit than others. Some have none whatsoever. For instance, SAI gets at its $125 million valuation for Digg by ‘splitting the difference’ between a $200 million buyout rumor we reported and the $60-to-$8- million that Kara Swisher came up with. Splitting the difference between the two rumors is not exactly the height of financial analysis.”

Agreed. Some have even gone so far as to call it an attention-grabbing activity, like FakeSteve:

“To make it fresh and dynamic, they somehow yoked these made-up numbers to the NASDAQ so their made-up numbers change into new made-up numbers all day long. That way all these [employees] working for worthless companies will click on that list all day long…generating loads of stupid traffic for Alley Insider. And trust me, that’s the real point of this list. It’s a cheap ploy for ginning up traffic.”

Or for pulling financial information straight from the horse’s mouth. There are so many requests for data that could correct these valuations that it almost seems like a device for getting these companies to divulge their actual numbers straight to SAI. Regardless, it is difficult to accept a 25x revenue valuation for Facebook common stock, given that Google trades at between 10.5x and 15x revenue, which in itself is unusual. Also, Wikipedia, valued at $7 billion, is a nonprofit, meaning the assessment measures Wikipedia’s asset value if it were to change into a for-profit organization. This change would certainly affect its users, which in turn would affect the site’s operation, affecting the valuation.

Perhaps the best thing to take away from this is that it is indeed just an entertaining parlor game to perform these valuations. Serious investors should already be familiar with this.

Skype Announces Unlimited Long-Distance Calls to 34 Countries

Written By Drupad Sil | April 21, 2008 | Share This |

Skype

A big announcement today by VoIP services provider Skype. The eBay-owned company unveiled unlimited calling to 34 countries including Australia, China, Germany, Japan, and the UK, essentially covering a third of the world’s population. Skype’s version of “unlimited” is 5 hours a day every month, which for most people is effectively unlimited.

Skype is one of eBay’s biggest divisions and caused the online auction company to take a $1.4 billion writedown last year when it purchased Skype for $4.3 billion. The issue was an inability to monetize largely free Internet calling. However, with 309 million users, there’s plenty to be optimistic about. Mark Evans has more to say:

“Consider Skype’s first-quarter results: another 33 million users came on board…year-over-year revenue climbed 61% to $126 million and Skype-to-Skype minutes rose 30% to 14.2 billion. So, what you’ve got is a high-growth business that will likely have sales of $500-million in 2008.”

With those growth prospects and owner eBay looking to recoup some of last year’s losses, there’s growing speculation that a Skype spin-off or telecom acquisition could be in the works. From iLocus:

“In the meantime, which direction should Skype pursue and what should be the eBay criteria in deciding the future of this business unit? I think the criterion should be future growth of Skype itself…So I think the first choice should be to spin off Skype as an independent company rather than selling the asset at a substantial loss to some other company. If, however, selling Skype to another company is the only choice, I think a telco acquisition could make sense for Skype…Through Skype acquisition, not only does a telco get the most popular telephony interface on the Internet, it also inherits a large pool of developer partners that a telco could only dream of.”

We’ll keep a close eye on Skype and its tremendous growth. This could be the year that it all pays off.

Google to Sell Performics, Lay Off 300 at DoubleClick

Written By Sepideh Saremi | April 2, 2008 | Share This |

google performics doubleclick layoffs

Google’s DoubleClick growing pains are making themselves clear today, as the company announced it is selling part of  Performics, the search marketing arm of its DoubleClick acquisition, Search Engine Land reports. From the Google Blog:

Recently we completed this process for the DoubleClick Performics businesses, and have decided to split them into two separately-run business units: Affiliate Marketing and Search Marketing.

It’s clear to us that we do not want to be in the search engine marketing business. Maintaining objectivity in both search and advertising is paramount to Google’s mission and core to the trust we ask from our users. For this reason, we plan to sell the Performics search marketing business to a third party. We believe this will allow us to maintain objectivity and the search marketing business to continue to grow and innovate and serve its customers. While we have not yet identified a buyer, we’ve received preliminary interest from a number of our current partners. Search Marketing will continue to run as a separate entity until the division is sold.

And in its first layoffs ever, Google will reportedly bid goodbye to a quarter of its American employees at newly acquired DoubleClick, though the company’s mum about the exact number of axed jobs right now. The NYT reports:

The cuts represent about a quarter of DoubleClick’s American work force of about 1,200. The company has about 1,500 employees worldwide, and the chief executive of Google, Eric E. Schmidt, has suggested that job cuts would also affect DoubleClick’s overseas operations at a later date.

Google declined to confirm the number of layoffs.

In a statement, the company said: “Since our acquisition of DoubleClick closed on March 11, we have been working to match and align DoubleClick employees in the U.S. with our organizational plan for the business. As with many mergers, this review has resulted in a reduction in headcount at the acquired company.”

Ask.com Parent IAC Will Break Up

Written By Sepideh Saremi | March 31, 2008 | Share This |

ask.com IAC barry diller

Barry Diller and IAC officially won their day in court on Friday: The parent of Ask.com will break up its conglomerate into five branches. According to TechCrunch, the new companies will be the Home Shopping Network, Ticketmaster, Lending Tree, Interval International, and the new IAC, which will be an umbrella for various web properties, including Ask.com. The move is expected to revitalize IAC’s online businesses, but TechCrunch notes:

The problem, as came out during the trial, is that those underlying Web businesses are not growing as fast as Diller had hoped either. Ask.com failed to reach its goal of doubling its market share of search, and Ticketmaster missed out on the growth of the secondary ticket market and recently had to buy TicketsNow for $265 million to compete with StubHub (owned by eBay).

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EBay To Cut Jobs and Restructure

Written By Sepideh Saremi | March 20, 2008 | Share This |

ebay

Reuters reports today that eBay will be cutting some staff in what a company spokesperson calls a “globalization and centralization effort.” The number to be cut is less than 1% of eBay’s workforce, the spokesperson said, which could be as many as 150 people, as eBay has around 15,500 employees, according to Portfolio.com. With recent news that eBay dumped its partner ValueClick in favor of handling its affiliate network in-house, it looks like eBay is focused on making a lot of improvements in advance of its Q1 earnings call in April.

Despite a seller’s strike over increases in fee listings, Wired reports that eBay’s doing very well, though Don Reisinger at CNET’s News Blog argues that’s because eBay’s got no competition. Reisinger writes that eBay’s decisions over the last few years have made the company forget its core service as an auction site:

eBay is an auction site much like Christies is an auction house. Do you see “Buy it Now” features promoted at the Christies auction? Can people attending the auction make VoIP calls during it? Do they really want buying advice?

eBay has lost its way and the only reason it’s able to enjoy these profits is because there’s no company out there that’s willing to compete on such a grand scale. But why not? eBay is obviously worried about the future and auctions are still a viable way to buy products. If a company came along that finally revolutionized online auctions, the entire landscape of the business could be changed forever and eBay would be long forgotten.

EBay’s CEO Meg Whitman is leaving at the end of this month, and with eBay’s new focus reportedly being on platforms and distributing its content, I think that might be the revolutionary push the company needs to restore its past glory.

Yahoo: Financial Plan as Negotiation Tactic

Written By Sepideh Saremi | March 18, 2008 | Share This |

yahoo.jpg

Yahoo yesterday filed its three-year financial plan from December 2007, detailing expectations of doubled cash flow by 2010 and reiterating that it believes Microsoft’s takeover bid offer of $31/share undervalues Yahoo. But it may be too little, too late, as the economy has taken a bit of a nosedive since December ($2 shares of Bear Stearns, anyone?), making those Yahoo’s financial forecast optimistic. Mashable lays it out nicely:

Unfortunately, they’re forgetting that in December 2007 Dow Jones was some 1500 points higher than it is today, and a lot of crappy things have happened for the US economy in the meantime. Thus, what they predicted last year probably doesn’t hold water anymore; and let’s not forget that they weren’t doing all that well in 2007, either. There’s a reason why Microsoft went with an unsolicited bid - they knew where Yahoo was at and they knew where it was heading.

Yahoo has been trying to fight off Microsoft’s $44.6 billion takeover bid, made at the beginning of February, by engaging in talks with AOL, News Corp, and private firms in efforts to avoid a union with the software giant. CNET notes that part of Yahoo’s presentation to investors detailed its investments in Asia, which are doing very well and Yahoo complains weren’t adequately taken into account when valuing the company. Despite the presentation (or maybe because of its slightly desperate timing), it’s looking more likely that Microsoft will end up owning Yahoo - something that analysts polled by Reuters are still convinced will happen.

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