Yahoo! has announced that the Yahoo! Publisher Network program — which has been in beta for five years — will shut down at the end of April.
In the same breath, Yahoo! directed users of the ad network to head over to Chitika for a pain-free transition.

… We have decided to close the program effective April 30, 2010. We expect to deliver final publisher payments for the month ending April 30, 2010 to publishers no later than May 31, 2010. All publishers eligible for 1099s for the 2010 tax year will have those mailed by January 31, 2011.

Because our content will no longer be delivered to your ad unit spaces after April 30, 2010, we recommend removing all YPN ad code from your pages by that date.

For the opportunity to continue earning revenue, we suggest using Chitika, a leading advertising network that syndicates Yahoo! Content Match and Sponsored Search ads. Chitika has set up a special process for YPNO beta publishers to participate in its platform.

Though there don’t appear to be a lot of people still using the ad network, one wonders why Yahoo! didn’t direct its users to the Bing/Microsoft ad center instead of a third party competitor.

Advertisers on the network would be well advised to check out Chitika before the deadline to see how well it works out for them. It’s always nice to have ads in as many places as you can, but if Chitika doesn’t work out, Yahoo! users would be wise to switch completely over to the Microsoft Ad Center and Google and grow or hone their efforts there.

EQUTE — The Wall Street Journal says that Google has been testing a new set-top box to create their own schedule and find videos from around the internet and TV shows — and deliver Google ads to everyone.

Google Inc. is testing a new television-programming search service with Dish Network Corp., according to people familiar with the matter, the latest development in a fast-moving race to combine Internet content with conventional TV.

The service, which runs on TV set-top boxes containing Google software, allows users to find shows on the satellite-TV service as well as video from Web sites like Google’s YouTube, according to these people. It also lets users to personalize a lineup of shows, these people said.

This could be huge, huge, huge for Google, funneling people to its vast media pool from anywhere — YouTube especially. It also means Google ads online and on TV could get heavy rotation. Advertisers not pushing YouTube or preroll ads should take note and start planning for the device.

It surely could flop like many set top boxes, but if it takes off with the same precipitous rise that Tivo did, advertisers without a plan will have to race to catch up.

[Via Wall Street Journal (Subscription required)]

The partnership between Yahoo! And Microsoft hit another big milestone as the companies give some hint of when major changes to advertising will actually happen.

Details are few, but one thing is certain, Yahoo’s advertising center will migrate over to the Microsoft Ad Center when the process is finally complete.

Currently, according to a news release and the companies new search alliance web site, the deal is set to go through before the 2010 holiday season. The timing sure to annoy just about every advertiser currently using Yahoo, so the duo left the window open for early 2011 after the holiday search season.

Once the deal actually goes through, Microsoft says advertisers using their Ad Center will reach up to 577 million searchers; which converts to better ROI and making it easier to segment campaigns among a large group of many niches.

While Microsoft is taking control of the advertising side of the partnership, Yahoo! continues to push its content and human support system.

Yahoo! and Microsoft will each provide customer support to different advertiser segments: Yahoo!’s sales team will exclusively support high volume advertisers, SEO and SEM agencies, and resellers and their clients. Microsoft will support self-service advertisers. In addition, Microsoft adCenter will be the platform for all search campaigns.

Everyone remembers the great Google snafu that saw search results change dramatically right before the holiday season, so my bet is on this partnership actually taking off in early 2011 — despite the fact that Microsoft surely wants to demonstrate Bing in a complete form for the holidays.

Microsoft and Yahoo! promise to give a three-month warning before the actual change and provide more details about making the switch to Ad Center or how advertising will change for either company. Until then, the partners’ Search Alliance Web site has some good details mixed with the self promotion

[Via Search Alliance]

EQUTE — While press releases have been key to getting into the media, but it was murky how they affected search traffic once they made it online.

PR powerhouse PRWeb said before that it pushed search traffic by a large margin.

“Search engine rankings are arguably the most important small business marketing tool available today because it drives Web traffic — and potential prospects — to a small business’ Web site,” a PRWeb spokesperson once told WebProNews. “However, because improving search rankings is desirable, achieving results can be both challenging and highly competitive.”

A study showed that sites got 50 percent increase in traffic, and up to a 400 percent boost. The company involved in the study also said that the traffic spike lasted for days. When linked to social media, a press release creates a slew of links back to a site. Even though the site may not rank as well, those press releases will rank because of their authority and get great placement in news aggregators and news searches.

Every press release has a chance to grow beyond the initial campaign. If a noteworthy site makes it into a story or a top blogger grabs onto it can spread like wildfire.

So there it is, the cat’s out of the bag. One of the oldest sources for press and public exposure still works on the Internet.

EQUTE — Augmented reality is nothing new, it was featured prominently in James Cameron’s Terminator allowing Arnold Schwarzenegger to see a slew of information on a sort of heads up display.

Now you don’t have you don’t have to be a robot, or even a star to tap into this fascinating space.

Brightkite has implemented augmented reality ad campaigns into its location-based service — based on the sleek Layar browser.

Now, along with restaurants, parks, venues and other GPS points, users of Britekite will see exclusive ads and special augmented-reality-only offers. Best Buy has signed on through the rest of the year, and others will likely follow.

It’s an interesting development, but a basic one at the heart — reach your public where they live.

The only touchy subject is scaring your public from the places they live. If their augmented reality browser is suddenly full of ads, they may be turned off and find another browser or go back to their own reality altogether.

EQUTE — John Chow has a great article about how to get featured in traditional media, something that can propel a company, blog, individual to bigger news sources and smaller alike.

In a blog entry , Chow gave some pretty good tips about how to go about getting into a traditional newspaper.

His first point was have a story to tell, it’s an obvious first step, but thinking hard about your own story is essential. Don’t just say what your company, blog or site does, make sure to insert the human element — it’s what local newspapers want to see.

Which brings him to his second point, start locally but aim high:

Generally, the bigger the news outlet, the easier it is for them to find content because they’re bombed with story ideas all the time from people or companies wanting to get coverage. Your best bet is to start at home with your local papers and magazines. Once you’ve been featured locally, you can leverage it to get featured nationally and internationally.

Shooting for a big local paper makes sure you can get coverage, but also make sure that other news outlets will see the story.

His third step is to sell your brand. Make sure that your story hasn’t already been done, newspapers don’t want to rehash news.

With one newspaper story, your company can get great placement, find your way to bigger outlets and move laterally and across the blogosphere within your industry or niche.

EQUTE — New research shows again that Microsoft users have a better click through rate for advertisers.

According to Chitika, a survey of 135 million impressions showed 1.05 percent of clicks came from consumers browsing with Internet Explorer — 40 percent higher than Firefox users (0.66 percent), 50 percent more than Safari users (0.50 percent) and 80 percent higher than Chrome users (0.21 percent). By operating system, Chitika found that 0.92 percent of its clickers were using Windows vs. 0.52 percent using Mac OS and 0.46 percent tooling with Linux.

Gavin Dunaway, of Adotas, had some interesting insights into why this might be.

Some of this I believe goes to the branding — Google is getting an increasingly snotty rep — similar to its mobile competitor Apple. It’s smarmy kids that dress like Justin Long who are Googling on their iPhones (Droids?) — a stereotype for sure, but one that is continually propagated by the media. Microsoft has long been a media punching bag — can you be more condescending than calling Microsoft users gullible?

Microsoft, as much as a misnomer as this may be, seems to appeal more to common people, something it’s shot for increasingly in its ad campaigns — and those would be who advertisers are shooting for.

Even trying to partner with the animated TV series “Family Guy,” which definitely falls toward the low end of middle brow, for the Windows 7 launch was an attempt to appeal to the masses. A friend sent me an unironic video for how to host a Windows 7 installation party — I laughed, but at the same time realized how stuck up I appeared. (I should note I’m a Mac user and a Googler, and I’d like to believe my preference is about function rather than intellectual snobbery.)

As Microsoft continues to be rolled out with new systems as normal, Bing ad clicks will keep on going up, after the holidays would be a great time to get ads going on Bing if you haven’t done so and take advantage of all those new computers.

EQUTE — The FTC started talks on targeted advertising, a first step toward stiffer regulations on what advertisers can collect and how they can use it with or without web users knowing.

According to the FTC press release, the round table and town hall will cover a slew of topics:

The FTC examined similar issues in 2000, when it held a public workshop and issued two reports on the practice of online profiling.

This round table, however, included new uses of the web in its investigation of online advertising. The FTC privacy roundtable included how information flowed from social media to advertisers, which is something that even a lot of internet professionals know much about.

Adotas had a good post about how the industry and privacy advocates differ.

Omar Tawakol, CEO of BlueKai, suggesting that by using the FTC’s definition of privacy principals, which might even drill down to frequency capping would include 70% to 80% of the online advertising industry, a figure far larger than the $1 billion normally tossed around.
While privacy advocates and academics were represented in force, executives from Google, Microsoft and WalMart, as well as smaller behavioral targeting companies, pleaded the industry’s case. Zaneis found WalMart’s presence particularly refreshing as e-tailers have not been in the forefront during this ordeal. The company obeys an extensive privacy policy when dealing with third parties.
Though the gap in views on regulation was wide, the two agreed on one thing: consumers are not well enough informed about how targeting works.

The Privacy Matters campaign was created to combat that ignorance and was created soon before the roundtable to explain how it worked, but the roundtable showed that no matter how much was done to promote understanding, there was little in the way of education at the user end.

EQUTE — Google has finally started cracking down on the multitude of “Google Cash” business opportunity offers

They are, of course, suing for trademark infringement since many of these affiliate marketers were prominently using Google’s name and logo all over their sites and landing pages.

This action seeks to stop a widespread Internet advertising scam that is defrauding the public by misusing the famous Google brand. The scam victimizes unsuspecting consumers by prominently displaying the famous GOOGLE mark, by suggesting sponsorship by the plaintiff, Google Inc. (“Google”), and by urging consumers to obtain a kit supposedly showing them how to make money working from home with Google.

The kit is advertised as free, except for a nominal shipping and handling charge or access fee. However, people who sign up for these offers have their credit cards charged with substantial recurring monthly fees. They also receive little of value, or nothing at all, in return for their payments.

Google filed a lawsuit against Pacific WebWorks and a slew of unnamed affiliates and other people. The offers came under many trademark infringing names:

The offers were provided to affiliate marketers, who got readers looking for a get-rich quick scheme to pay a dollar or two for shipping for an information packet. These sites featured a lot of fake user stories and big checks with Google in the corner. They promised fat checks, fancy houses and the lot. Google Cash orders, however, signed them up for a rebilling offer of $80 a month. And as the suit says, buyers “also receive little of value, or nothing at all, in return for their payments.”

So once buyers saw their bank account, it appeared Google had just ripped them off — a textbook case for dilution on top of the trademark infringement.

The Pacific WebWorks also got hit with a federal cyberpiracy charge — which can come with up to $100,000 per site fine for each site that registers, traffics in or uses a domain name that infringes on Google’s trademark. (Cornell Law Collection)

Going through all the law of the case is a promethean task, but this single fact gives an idea of the scope of the suit.

If the lawsuit extends to every affiliate site, landing page, affiliate network site etc., Google stands to make a lot of money — or at least the legal team does. But the suit also makes an example out of trademark infringers, and since Google is doing it, it may set major legal precedent for trademark law on the Internet.

Pacific WebWorks is going to be hurting if it exists very long, Google’s suit basically knocked their stock to zero. But that was no surprise — what will be interesting to see is how much each affiliate is hit with. The suit could rework how affiliates are affected by the law.

EQUTE — A teeth-whitening company fingered for its shady marketing rebilling practice went legit, but the affiliate company, affiliates and all the ad servers continued to advertise under its trademarked name.

Now, the company behind the product is getting litigious.

When Dazzlesmile and its parent company Optimal Health Science decided to become squeaky clean and ceased their dealings with Epic, Epic allegedly continued to run the ad campaigns, according to the suit. But the new ads were funded by a Canadian named Jesse Willms, who allegedly operated infringing websites including DazzleSmilePro.com and DazzleSmilePure.com — both of which have since been removed. Dazzlesmile LLC is also suing Epic, Willms and AtLast, which filled the orders, for trademark infringement among other things.

Dazzle Smile said that despite their actions, the big three search engines continued to run trademark infringing ads “thus creating actual consumer confusion.”

The big three didn’t have much to say, but this suit and suits like it could mean that more filters will be put in place to find people illegally using trademarked names.

Dazzle Smile had previously stated that they were the ignorant pawn in Epic’s marketing ploy — though that sounds suspicious.

Dazzlesmile CEO Roger LeFevre said his company was duped by its outside marketing agency, New York-based Epic Advertising, which he claims engineered the deceptive language used in its offers without his knowledge. He said Epic currently represents Farend, and that he ended his relationship with Epic when his customer-service department began fielding irate calls over unauthorized credit card charges.
“Epic is the one that creates all the ads, their own creative people create all the landing pages, and companies like ours just get led down the primrose path,” he said.