Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) today introduced a broad net neutrality bill that bans Internet service providers from discriminating based on content.
Among other provisions, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 would prohibit ISPs from blocking or degrading any lawful content. The measure also would prevent ISPs from selling content or service providers “any offering that prioritizes traffic over that of other such providers on an Internet access service.”
Additionally, while the proposed law has an exception for “reasonable network management,” it specifies that an ISP’s practice will only be considered reasonable if it “furthers a critically important interest, is narrowly tailored to further that interest, and is the means of furthering that interest that is the least restrictive, least discriminatory, and least constricting of consumer choice available.”
Broadband advocates like Public Knowledge and Free Press have already come out in favor of the new measure. “The future of the Internet as we know it depends on maintaining freedom and openness online,” Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, said in a statement. “This crucial legislation will help to ensure that the public — not big phone and cable companies — controls the fate of the Internet.”
Markey has pushed for net neutrality before, but this most recent measure is broader than one he introduced last year. That bill would have established a policy in favor of net neutrality, but wouldn’t have mandated it.
Last year, Federal Communications Chair Kevin Martin testified that new legislation wasn’t necessary, arguing that the agency already had the power to enforce neutrality principles. Indeed, shortly after Martin testified, the FCC sanctioned Comcast for violating those principles by impeding peer-to-peer traffic.
But not even that ruling guarantees that ISPs in the future will follow neutrality principles.
Comcast is appealing the decision on the ground that the FCC lacked authority to enforce principles that were never enshrined in law. The outcome of that appeal is uncertain.
But even if Comcast loses on appeal, the FCC’s decision itself was fairly narrow. The agency only found that Comcast violated the Internet policy statement by blocking peer-to-peer traffic without disclosing what it was doing. It’s not clear how the FCC would have ruled had Comcast made disclosures in advance, or had the company slowed traffic in a less significant way.
This new proposal could remove significant ambiguity by definitively establishing that ISPs can’t decide which content to prioritize or degrade based on their own financial interests.
Google’s Marissa Mayer Weighs In On Microhoo Deal
PC World
Apparently, Google’s VP Marissa Mayer had something to say about the search deal struck by Microsoft and Yahoo earlier this week at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit in Palo Alto, Calif., according to Stephen Lawson.
The effect of the deal is being debated across the tech industry, but Mayer suggests the deal reduces the three major players in the search market to two. This could lessen search innovation, leaving consumers and the search industry with limited choices. Mayer attended the AlwaysOn conference to join a panel discussion about innovation, where she talked about how Google develops and cultivates ideas. -
New Adwords Interface
Google AdWords
Austin Rachlin tells us the new AdWords interface has made a difference for business in time saving by allowing quick editing, reporting and account navigation. That’s according to feedback Google has received from companies like ClickTime. Marketers at ClickTime admit that using AdWords to improve campaign performance has increased click-throughs by 31%.
In the past month, Google released spreadsheet editing to support bulk changes to keyword lists, and location extensions to simplify the local advertising process. The new AdWords interface is built on an infrastructure that lets Google develop features more quickly than in the past. There are plans to release features regularly during the coming months. -
Explaining The Microhoo Deal
ClickZ
Kevin Lee weighs in on the recent deal, writing that the potential downside for advertisers is bid escalation caused by the merging of Yahoo’s and Microsoft’s keyword auctions. For example, certain verticals and business sectors in AdCenter may not have experienced significant competition in the past.
Lee asks a number of analytical questions, including, how will premium search advertisers transition between the Microsoft and the Yahoo teams? And what happens when a self-serve advertiser becomes large enough to be a premium advertiser? -
10 Questions For PPC Firms
PPC Hero
Looking for a new PPC management firm? Amber suggests 10 questions to ask about your potential new hire. She also reminds those who think they can handle their PPC account just fine on their own, that maybe they can make more money by hiring an agency.
Among those questions are: How do you know this firm is legitimate? Is the pricing accurate for what they’re providing? She also provides the best answers you should anticipate. -
Microhoo Deal Could Change SEO
SEOmozBlog
Rand Fishkin believes the Microhoo deal could have both negative and positive influences on the SEO landscape. Companies should optimize sites for Microsoft Bing because the search engine will likely take 15% search engine market share, he writes.
The deal could take some serious time to implement, depending on regulators. Fishkin suggests companies get prepared now, though full implementation for Yahoo may lag up to 24 months behind regulatory approval, according to Fishkin.
By Dave Morgan
There is a lot of talk these days about the challenges being faced by media companies with single revenue streams, like broadcast TV networks and local affiliates and radio stations. All have seen very significant year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter drops in advertising revenue, their only true source of income. It’s hard to find an interview of a high-profile broadcast media exec these days that doesn’t contain some envious statement about the dual revenue streams of their cable network brethren, most of whom receive substantial affiliate fees in addition to ad revenue.
Yes, it’s easy to bemoan the whipsawing that broadcasters endure when their single revenue stream hits one of those terrifying, roller-coaster-like plunges in ad expenditures, like what we’re seeing in this current recession. However, I do not believe that all is lost, or that days are numbered for media companies with single revenue streams. Quite the opposite, in fact. I am a big fan of ad-supported media companies. I just think they may need to change some of the ways they operate their businesses going forward. Here are some suggestions:
• Recognize that domestic media advertising is a mature business. Yes, it’s troubling but true: Media advertising is a mature business and as a category is not likely to grow very much in the U.S. over the next 15 years It will continue to be a really big business for a long, long time; it’s just not likely to grow a lot.
• Manage cost structures to harvest value. Like businesses in other mature industries, the ad-supported media industry needs to structure its businesses to “harvest” value out of those areas that are not growing or in decline. It is all about taking out costs. This isn’t fun, but it is necessary.
• Leverage science. Technology can help companies do more with less, and do it more predictably. This is the time for media companies to automate and optimize as much of their businesses as possible. It will not be possible to compete with Internet-driven low-cost producers of content, context, audience and advertising (like Google, Facebook, Craigslist, et al) without taking this step.
• Focus. When you make all of your revenue from a single revenue stream — advertising — make sure that each and every one of the company’s activities and investments is measurable against the revenue it produces. No exceptions. Single-source dependence on a mature revenue stream with declining margins requires nothing less. If it can’t be tied to ad revenue today or in the measureable future, jettison it.
Yes, it’s nice to have two revenue streams, but many, many media and marketing businesses will never achieve this goal. It doesn’t mean that single-revenue companies can’t survive. It just means that they need to be operated more efficiently. What do you think?
This commentary is insightful. I recommend it to others.
See what others are saying on the Online Spin blog.
Dave Morgan is the CEO of Simulmedia. Previously, he founded and ran both TACODA and Real Media.
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Online Spin for Thursday, July 30, 2009:
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=110801
The Guardian
While virtual worlds have virtually fallen off the media radar, the online habitats appear to be thriving. The consultancy kzero.co.uk reports that membership of virtual worlds grew by 39% in the second quarter of 2009 to an estimated 579 million. (Regular activity in the worlds, however, remains questionable.) The Guardian takes this opportunity to chide Facebook and Twitter for their inability to effectively monetize their steep usage, while virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft, Entropia Universe, Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin and Second Life are all profitable.
Why? Apparently, “Because their business models are based on the digital elixir of subscriptions and micropayments, a formula that other websites, including newspapers, would die for.”
Best summation we’ve read in a while: “Twitter makes the noise, Second Life makes the money.” -
PC Mag
In a call with analysts Thursday Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha confirmed that many of next year’s Motorola phones will run the Google Android OS. The move is a switch from Window’s mobile, which Motorola has run for years. Incidentally, Microsoft let slip at a conference earlier today that it is changing the name of “Windows Mobile” to “Windows Phone.” Which, perhaps clears the way for the company to roll a new Android competitor.
Jah said two new Android-powered phones would be in stores for the holidays. “The majority of our new devices will be smartphones, as we expand Android across a broader set of price points,” Jha said. Motorola plans to extend the Android platform to a lower-end tier of it’s line, providing some of the cheapest smartphones yet.
GigaOm
In other virtual news, nearly 12% of Americans report having bought a virtual item at some point over the last 12 months, according to a new study by analyst firm Frank N. Magid Associates and commissioned by virtual currency provider PlaySpan. Defying all earthly logic, the virtual goods and currency market will reach an estimated $1.8 billion this year. So, who’s got money to spare on imaginary goods. Demographically, 15% of males aged 12-24 reported purchasing virtual goods, while 15% of women between ages 35-44 did so, too.
According to Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors, the boys are getting virtual swords for their MMORPGs, while the women are buying virtual flowers on Facebook. Categorization by ethnicity was also diverse, with Asian-Americans on the high end – 16% — and the rest some 1-to-5% behind
TechFlash
Microsoft appears to have significantly slowed its pace on acquisitions in its recently completed fiscal year, according to new data released by the company as part of its annual Form 10-K fiing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company spent $925 million in cash to buy nine companies during the year, according to the filing. Only one of those, the purchase of video-game company BigPark Inc., was significant enough to warrant a notation on the company’s official list of corporate acquisitions. By comparison, Microsoft spent more than $8 billion on more than 20 acquisitions in its 2008 fiscal year, primarily to buy Seattle-based online ad company aQuantive.
Chris Liddell, Microsoft’s chief financial officer, said earlier this year that Microsoft planned to sit on the sidelines while valuations of companies adjusted to the new economic realities. But recent debt offerings have given the company additional funds that it could use in acquisitions, if it were to find the right opportunities. The company is also believed to have acquired Israeli startup 3DV Systems, but that deal was never formally announced.
DigitalBeat
Arguing that their employer’s legacy infrastructure is flawed to the core, TechCrunch founder and editor Michael Arrington suggests that its “top” 50 reporters quit to form their own startup. “If the top 50 journalists out of The New York Times walked out the door, raised $100 million from a hedge fund and started a site, it would be profitable,” Arrington said, speaking at the AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford this week. One problem? New media, with all its fat-trimmed lower overhead costs, doesn’t appear to supporting writers — even at Arrington’s own site. Indeed, Arrington admits that only 10-to-20% of TechCrunch’s revenue comes from normal online ad on the website, while 50% comes from conferences (the remaining percentage is apparently unspecified).
“We don’t think of our business in terms of creating page views and figuring out RPM [revenue per 1,000 impressions],” he added. “We’ve always had a brand and we’ve always monetized the brand. We’ve always focused on keeping costs under control and we’ve grabbed the biggest money we could, while still being ethical.”
We compared statistics from Warrillow Research’s Canadian Insight event of October 2008 with Sales Spider survey of 800 members in August 2008 and found the following results.
Business Owners will use multiple social networks for different purposes. Canadian’s tend to use facebook for social reasons and do not consider it a business tool. The opposite is true of Sales Spider.
The following graph is from Google Analytics for the month of May 2009. It demonstrates the distribution of Sales Spider’s Canadian users. Overtime, we have found demographic geography closely resembles that of the general population.
Social Media Marketing Industry Report – Micheal Stelzner March 2009
http://www.whitepapersource.com/socialmediamarketing/
This white paper is based on a 900 person study of social media by Michael Stelzner and found some interesting statistics. The following pages outline graphs and slides which are from the white paper study.
The below bullets represent a summary of many of the main findings of the survey with respect to small businesses.
Marketers are mostly new to social media: A significant 88% of marketers surveyed are using social media to market their businesses, But 72% have only been doing so for a few months or less.
How much time does this take? A significant 64% of marketers are using social media for 5 hours or more each week and 39% for 10 or more hours weekly.
The top benefit of social media marketing: The number-one advantage is generating exposure for the business, indicated 81% of all marketers, followed by increasing traffic and building new business partnerships.
Business owners were more likely to use social media marketing (90+%) than employees working for a business (81%).
The largest group just getting underway with social media marketing was sole proprietors (30.2% reported just getting started) and owners of 2- to 100 employee businesses were the most experienced (29.3% reporting doing social media marketing for years).
Owners of small businesses (2 to 100 employees) were more likely than others to report greater exposure (84.8% reporting benefits). Nearly all marketers who’ve been doing social media marketing for years report it generates exposure for their business and a significant 64.86% strongly agree.
After only a few months and with as few as 6 hours a week, more than half of marketers have generated qualified leads with social media marketing.
Google stated that one of the top methods for effectively stretching a marketing budget was using social networks to connect. There view was marketers had to either build an SMB community or advertise on a social network for maximising marketing ROI.
