Blogrolling Rolled Up...

Blogrolling, one of the early weblog services companies, has been acquired by Tucows.

My prediction: expect to see a lot more of this happening this year.

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:11 PM
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Funny Google Hack: Goodle

Via Blogoscoped, Goodle, which is a parody of Google News that shows just good news....

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:42 PM
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Page on IPO at TED

I've been traveling, so forgive my tardiness on some postings. I'm briefly in NYC for a day or so of the SES show, and also some other meetings.

Meantime, some good stuff here and there. First, Larry Page has some comments on the Google IPO craze in a Reuters story here.

The story was filed from the TED show in Monterey, one of the few places reporters can get access to folks like Larry in a relatively relaxed environment.

(Page said) he was "dismayed'' by the amount of conjecture being reported as fact.

"I have been a bit dismayed at the level of speculation that has been reported as fact. It's pretty amazing the stage we're at... Even when we don't do anything in some area, people make stuff up,'' Page told Reuters at a technology conference in Monterey, California.

Page also pointed toward new applications for Google's service:

"On the more exciting front, you can imagine your brain being augmented by Google. For example you think about something and your cellphone could whisper the answer into your ear,'' he said.

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:05 PM
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Eric S. on Orkut TOS et al

Eric S. gave a talk at Berkeley yesterday, and Geodog has posted coverage. Observations on Orkut TOS, power use, forcing Google execs offline, the IPO ("we don't feel forced to do it" or somesuch) and more.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:02 AM
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Research Asst.

I'm in need of a research assistant for my book. Lots of reporting, organizing, mind melding, and probably some dull work too. I'm interviewing grad students from UCB, where I work, but I thought I'd hang it out here as well, given what an interesting group this readership has proven to be. Some of you might know someone who'd be perfect, or, some of you lurkers out there might be perfect yourself. Ideally the right person is based in the Bay Area, practically, it's someone who is looking for experience, rather than a huge paycheck. Send recommendations my way at jbat at battellemedia.com. Thanks!

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:56 PM
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WebFountain, Technorati Visits

Spent the day talking to two very interesting companies, one huge with massive scale, the other tiny, with massive scale. I'll post a report on both soon, watch this space.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:47 PM
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And Your Point Is?

A soft-shouldered editorial in the NYT today from Verlyn Klinkenborg, an author who is also on the editorial board of the New York Times, and writes the occasional "editorial observer" column for the paper. As I was recently reminded by a good friend, it's wise to step back and remember who the audience is for these kinds of things, as opposed to jumping all over the Times every chance that comes up. So, having done that, I still don't quite get what this editorial adds...in the end, it says that Google is really important and that it won't go away, and summarizes all the things Times readers already know about the company. He concludes that the Internet is, contrary to what he thought some years ago, quite useful, in large part thanks to Google. Well, welcome to the party, Verlyn. Glad you're aboard.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:30 AM
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Being Seen As Rich Is A Burden

Don't be evil....

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:47 PM
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Yahoo Says Yes, Google Said No....

With regard to my earlier post on Oceana, cruise ships, CBS, advocacy ads, and Google...seems Yahoo has accepted Oceana's advertising, the same ads (I think) Google rejected.

Oceana (an environmental group for readers just joining us), crows in a release:

Oceana's Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Sharpless, praised Yahoo! for not bowing to pressure from big corporate advertisers and allowing Oceana to express its positive message of preserving and protecting the world's oceans.

"Yahoo should be applauded for having the courage to put freedom of expression before sales. If Royal Caribbean and the cruise industry can pay to publicize themselves in whichever venue they please, then we deserve to be able to show the facts about their environmental records. The public has a right to this information, and, much to its credit, Yahoo recognizes that," said Sharpless.

I wonder if Yahoo even knows it's "taking a stand"?

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:14 PM
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Why Stern Matters

I've been thinking lately that blogs could learn a lot from talk radio. I'd not gotten to the point of really looking into this idea, which I am sure has been discussed in the blogosphere to no end. But the whole Stern thing seems to throw it in some relief. Dan and Jeff have made the point, and I agree, if Howard Stern leaves Viacom, he should go to satellite/net radio, and that'd be the killer app those media need to take off.

(BTW it's interesting to note how attenuated regulatory reach has become, in that it's really only premised on the "public airwaves." I'm not anti-regulation, but it seems to me we should trust people to make their own decisions about what information they want to consume. Banning Stern and others from the "public" airwaves does very little, in the end, save create "private" channels outside of regulatory (and therefore common cultural) reach. In other words, by forcing our citizens to make choices outside of our attenuated cultural commons, by refusing to be inclusive in what we allow into the public space, we are weakening our social fabric, driving conversation underground, and lessening the trust and responsibility which binds us as a society. Is that a good thing?)

Notwithstanding the larger regulatory questions, Stern leaving radio and heading for the Net could be a great thing - for the Net, in any case (it's also quite unlikely, but...). If he did, it would create all sorts of interesting issues from the standpoint of programming and UI. The program is predicated on real-time community - the call ins, the references to breaking news, etc. When it heads to the internet, it will, I would hope, be wrapped in all sorts of new media forms - time shifted, cut and pasted, linked, etc. The show will change, for sure, and many, many new shows will thrive in the traces Stern would create. If Stern does do this, I hope he and his folks think it through. They shouldn't adopt a Clear Channel/Viacom/Comcast-like approach to the Web, but instead try to do something that feels native. Stern has a chance to be an innovator in a new medium. He already has plenty of money. Why not try this?

Though I don't listen to Stern much, I'll warrant I'd listen to a lot more if it were on the web, and searchable. Some of his bits are amazing, many are lame, and some are really offensive. But it'd be great to pick and choose, like we do with blog items, news reports, and most other media on the web. Stern being Stern, he'd also figure out how to make money on the show, which is not a bad thing for web media models to boot.

In any case, it'll be fun to watch what happens next. My guess is that nothing happens, he gets a slap on the wrist, everyone promises to play nice, and nothing changes till the next election cycle. But you never know.

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:58 PM
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Compare Yahoo and Google Results

Via Google Blogoscoped, a neat tool that visually compares results at the two giants.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:56 AM
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Semel Says: Social Networking Is Interesting...

At the (corrected) Commonwealth Club in the Valley last night, Semel said he's keeping an eye on social networking, and that he sees a day when Yahoo might have ad-free services. You bet......

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:49 AM
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Ryan Bails from MSFT

CNET reports that former Overture CTO Paul Ryan has left his job running MSFT's new paid search efforts after only four months. I wonder, why?

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:30 AM
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Patents - Simmering Under the Surface...

It's good to know there's a reporter out there covering this space who has an institutional memory. Stefanie Olsen reminds us of the importance of patents in the search game, and in particular of the simmering litigation between Google and Yahoo. She also includes this gem in her round up: "Amazon.com has also laid claim to a patent that could affect search-related advertising. In March, it updated an application for a method of auctioning off ads that appear on a Web page." I'm going to see Udi, who runs A9, later this week. I am sure interesting things are coming out of that shop.

PS - if you're a patent watcher, head to Gary's site, where he posts search related patents on a monthly basis...

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:38 PM
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News, Rumor Roundup

Off the Berkeley for the day to teach, but a few things worth pointing you toward.

First, the rumors are flying again about Jeeves being in play. CBS Marketwatch is fueling them, saying AOL might buy the company and drop Google. I don't think so, but you never know. Andy Beal has a nice interview with Ask's VP of Tech in today's SEW.

As long as we're talking rumours, my ruminations on FindWhat brought up some interesting private email, and one of them led me to thinking that, in the end, it might make a lot of sense for FindWhat to bulk up by merging with LookSmart, which is obviously hurting since its loss of MSN. What do you think?

Lastly, AP reports on Eurekster and other challengers to the search giants. Includes mentions of Grokker and Feedster, and quotes from Googlefolk claiming they are "watching the innovations" and will respond this year with their own.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:43 AM
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The New Lycos Page Is Up...

And all I can say is...it sure ain't for me. It smacks of that cloying, wannabe-cool-but-really-kinda lameness that, well, that happens when you try too hard. But...then again, I'm certainly not in the demo they seem to be going for (the same demo as everyone else in the media business, it seems - 18-34, single). It is interesting to see them pitch this in the clothes of a pure media play. The home page feels rather like a promo for a show on the WB. It just might work. Who knows.

Search is still right there at the top, anyway.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:20 AM
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Industry Brains Launches RSS Paid Listings

Our buddy Matt is a pioneer over at Infoworld. Full text of press release is in the extended entry. Snips:

IndustryBrains, the only business performance based media firm that specializes in contextual, site-specific advertising, announced today it has expanded its business to include syndication of paid listings to publishers participating in RSS-driven content feeds....
Just as with IndustryBrains’ web-based paid listings, its RSS technology is private-labeled by partner sites and is completely transparent to the user. This enables publishers to leverage their brand and relationships with advertisers who are willing to pay more for placement on a highly regarded site. IDG’s Infoworld and CMP Media’s Techweb Network have implemented IndustryBrains listings as part of their category specific RSS syndication.

IndustryBrains Introduces Paid Listings
on RSS Feeds

IDG’s Infoworld and CMP’s TechWeb Network Computing First to Sign On

NEW YORK (February 25, 2004)  IndustryBrains, the only business performance based media firm that specializes in contextual, site-specific advertising, announced today it has expanded its business to include syndication of paid listings to publishers participating in RSS-driven content feeds.

RSS, “Really Simple Syndication” as some may call it, is content syndication method used by many online publishers to deliver news and story content to users that have opted in to a particular topic.  Users, on a daily basis, have the ability to specify content topics, which are presented mostly in summary format. A user, if interested in a particular article, must click to the web site to get the full content. RSS is viewed by many as a more efficient way to aggregate news and content tailored to individual interests.

“As more and more people turn to RSS to gather news and information, we want to meet them with listings resources than helps them contact advertisers with product offers that match their RSS content interests,” says IndustryBrains CEO Erik Matlick.  “This is a natural extension of the paid listings service we now provide for scores of websites.”

Just as with IndustryBrains’ web-based paid listings, its RSS technology is private-labeled by partner sites and is completely transparent to the user. This enables publishers to leverage their brand and relationships with advertisers who are willing to pay more for placement on a highly regarded site. IDG’s Infoworld and CMP Media’s Techweb Network have implemented IndustryBrains listings as part of their category specific RSS syndication.

“The success we have experienced from IndustryBrains’ paid listings on our web sites gives us confidence that the same results will be generated by using their technology to deliver listings on our RSS feeds, said Matt Mcalister, General Manager of Infoworld. “We expect that advertisers will also want to pay a premium to appear in RSS enabled pages and stories. Users are actively expressing an interest in a particular subject matter by subscribing to specific content offered by a specific publisher.”

Maria Bradley, Business Development Manager of CMP’s Techweb Network, also concurs. “This is a far superior model for us than generalized listings from SEM networks. Advertisers know they are reaching an audience of extraordinary composition, and are willing to bid far more aggressively to be near the top of our RSS listings.  This simply means more revenue for us.”

IndustryBrains already services more than 2,000 paid listing advertisers in the technology category.  The company expects to syndicate a great many of them over to RSS enabled listings.

Launched in 2002, New York-based IndustryBrains , is the only business performance based media firm that specializes in contextual site specific advertising. IndustryBrains offers custom publisher solutions for monetizing content and search pages. Real-time tracking and reporting allows publishers to easily manage advertiser relationships and optimize revenue. For advertisers, IndustryBrains offers contextual category placement on premium sites like Infoworld, ComputerWorld, PC Magazine, EETimes, Network Magazine and BusinessWeek. Advertisers bid for placement on site-specific categories that are related to their business. Listings are delivered whenever a customer performs a search on the specified terms throughout its network of 50+ premium sites.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:08 AM
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Joi On Search in Japan

Joi Ito, who I first met at Wired in the early 90s, has been at the cross of a lot of very interesting roads. In this post he reminisces about his role in search in Japan, with anecdotes about Yahoo Japan and Infoseek. A fun read....

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:35 PM
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Whitman Again Stresses Google Is Not Competitor...But Plans Local Play....

In this AP story covering a Goldman conference in AZ, eBay chief Whitman says she sees Google and Yahoo and other search players as enablers of her business. "We think both natural search and paid search are allies of ours," she said.

But, in the same speech, she noted that eBay is planning to get back into the local auction market, something they tried in the late 90s that did not take off. The story failed to note the obvious: local search is a very hot market right now, and I doubt that has escaped Whitman. Search is not a competitor? Perhaps. But just to be sure...better shore up the local angle. (AP story via Gary, thanks!)

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:03 PM
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Froogle Goes Wireless

Google Labs announced today they've enabled Froogle over wireless. Cool - now you can compare prices using your mobile phone or PDA....

From the release:

Users may find this service especially helpful when they're out shopping at a retail store and are interested in searching Froogle to compare prices online...Using the Froogle wireless service is simple:
- From a WML-enabled phone, point the browser to http://wml.froogle.com
- Enter search terms in the box and select the 'Search' button
- Use the phone's keypad arrows to scroll through the results.

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:24 PM
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Google Pioneered It, Jeeves Does It, Now...

...an alert reader points me to the fact that Yahoo is giving Google serious imitation-is-the-best-flattery treatment today (Thanks, Steve).

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:07 PM
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Taunted by Tatas

The folks behind Booble are at it again, taunting Google and posting press releases at "Tauntedbytatas.com" seeking to portray themselves as a harmless parody site that is being bigfooted by the evil Google. I don't buy this. When Booble came out, it was claiming to be a serious adult search engine, serving a real need. It wasn't very good, but it claimed that it was going to be a business. Now that Google's asserting its trademark rights, which in this case I think is entirely warranted, they have changed their stripes, and are a "parody site". The whole thing is sophomoric. In fact, I'd not be surprised if this whole thing is being run by some bored kid in a college dorm room interested mainly in porn and selling mugs and tshirts.
(thanks, Gary)

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:21 AM
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Net Penetration Surpasses Cable...

But of course, that's due to cable modems....MediaPost reports....

This is important as it relates to the psychology of the media buyer. Cable is a huge market, nearly $81 billion or so if I recall (more media revenue stats, head to the census, thanks Gary...). When advertisers realize that that net has better distribution than cable, there will be something of an "aha" moment. I'm feeling ever more confident of my prediction that online ad revenues will surpass expectations this year....

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:45 AM
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SEW: Local Search Needs Small Biz

Good overview of the local search market on SEW today, in particular a good summary of some of the hurdles to sustaining growth in what might be called the "Yellow Pages" sector - those really small businesses which account for billions in local radio, newspaper, and Yellow Pages advertising:

To achieve any sizeable revenues from the local market, paid search needs to gain small business advertiser adoption. But how much of the small business market will pay-per-click (PPC) be able to penetrate? There are some very practical challenges, which include:
* The complexity and time involved in keyword bid-campaign management
* Limited ad inventory and competition between national and small business advertisers for that inventory
* The absence of local sales channels to "push" PPC to small business advertisers
* The lack of websites among as much as 70% of small businesses

These are not insurmountable by any means, though they should not be minimized.

Worth noting that Verizon's SuperPages deal with FindWhat to OEM FindWhat's auction process goes live next week on Superpages site...It's also interesting to note that Verizon did *not* do this deal with Yahoo or Google...

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:07 AM
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KeepMedia Launches RSS Feeds

KeepMedia has decided, it seems, that RSS will aide them in promoting singups to their service. From a spokesman: "We launched an RSS feed today at http://www.keepmedia.com/rss/featurednews and plan to launch others in the near future. Our RSS feed contains an average of 12-15 stories per day. Our editors pick several big stories each day and provide related articles from our 160+ magazines. We will frequently select stories from the archives that serve to provide historical background. At this point, we have found that we are the only RSS source for the overwhelming majority of magazine and newspaper titles on the KeepMedia newsstand. Linked stories are free to RSS users and to anyone who accesses those specific stories. ...If a blogger links to one of the stories in our RSS feed, his audience will have free access to that story, however, if they want to further browse or search on KeepMedia and are not subscribers they will hit our paid-wall."

This means some stuff previously behind registration walls will be available for blogging...The company also announced new relationships with The Atlantic and USA Today.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:40 PM
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FindWhat Buys Again...

Pretty soon I'll have to take the time to really grok FindWhat. The company has been on an acquisition tear, merging with espotting, buying Miva, and today announcing it has purchased Comet (best known for that cursor download in the late 90s, now a search/platform/web privacy company).

OK. So FindWhat, in the end, is a strong second-tier pay-per-click network. Like Overture or Adsense, they match buyer and seller via paid search keywords. They have a distribution network, and they have an advertiser base of tens of thousands. Their biggest client is Lycos. They serve a significant base of advertisers, and with the addition of espotting, which has 20,000 advertisers, they are now a force in Europe.

The also have an SEO business, and with Miva, which sells ecommerce software to small businesses, they are looking to be a force in the SME website building space. In essence, they hope to sell loads of SME services to their advertising clients. Yahoo has a similar play. With Comet, FindWhat has acquired a company in the metabrowser/privacy/OEM space. I'm not sure I get the play here, but I aim to find out when I head to the Search Engine Strategies conference next week in New York.

Findwhat's stock is on a tear, up about 110% over the past year. It's earnings and revenues are also on a tear - its last quarter revenues were up 57%, and earnings have increased for 11 consecutive quarters. The company posted about $72 million in revenues for 2003.

So...what's up with FindWhat? Any readers out there have experience with this company?

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:54 PM
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Mainstream 2: Google Founders on the Hustings

When Peter Jennings calls, you usually pick up the phone. In the ongoing battle for the PR edge, Larry and Sergey have been named "Person of the Week" by ABC News. The piece is pablum - warmed over TV Dinner fare - but it's interesting nonetheless to see the founders on this new press offensive. (Thanks, Beal.)

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:52 AM
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Search Ratings for January

Via MediaPost, Neilsen Netratings reports that 39% of the US population used search engines last month.

The top five search venues in January were Google (59 million visitors), Yahoo! Search (46 million), MSN Search (45 million), AOL Search (23 million), and Ask Jeeves (13 million).

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:07 AM
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Bravo...

Scoble asks search giants for "access to the variables." In other words, let users play with the guts of the engine, so they can tune the results to their liking. I hope the folks at MSFT are listening to one of their own. This kind of transparency, while problematic from a spam standpoint, would be most excellent.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:26 PM
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Surprised? TIA Lives On

Via IP, this Newsday piece reminds us that the TIA never really went away...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:19 PM
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NYT, Wired Weighs In

As predicted, the big boys have turned their attention to the Yahoo-Google story. The NYT has a piece today (I'm quoted, I'm quite sure it's one of the few times "full-tilt boogie" has made it into a business story) giving an overview of the Yahoo side, and Wired, in a cover package, pretty much runs what's left of the Google story into the ground.

Now, I'm not going to spend *too* much time on this, but I did give the Wired package, which runs 15 pages - an eternity for most magazines - a hard read over the weekend. It fails on all kinds of levels. (When they post it, the package will be here.) And yet, it succeeded on the meta level, which is to say: Google *is* a huge story in the Wired space, and should be treated as such.

(more in extended entry below)

The Wired piece (it's the April issue) was clearly a concept play, driven, it seems, by an editorial meeting where someone said - "Hmmm...April. What's happening in April?" ...and someone else said "That's when Google is supposed to go public."
Response: "Well then let's get a story on that!"
"Well, they aren't talking to anyone."
"Ummm...OK, how can we do it anyway?"

The result is this package. The cover features a tricolor (yes, red, blue, green) lithographic treatment of Larry and Sergey, with the one word proclamation "Googlemania!" Not exactly advancing the story, nor giving us the wonderful concept covers Wired often does so well. The cover and table of contents promises all sorts of insights into the pre-IPO Google, but in fact, delivers none. Instead we get a generalized essay about what it's like to be in a white-hot Valley company before an IPO - not Google, mind you, but we do get to hear from various entrepreneurs who've been there. OK, but...not exactly what we were looking for, or what we felt was promised to us. The package then goes on to introduce us to a search engine optimizer (Bruce Clay, for those keeping score), a runner who uses Google in some inexplicable way to train better, an entire page of Peter Norvig's head (I mean, I like him, but...). There's an essay on how Google and Microsoft are now competitors (nothing new), a spread on how AdWords works (again nothing new), a two-page spread with the Google interface re-imagined by various au courant designers (ranging from silly to simply masturbatory), and some other random stuff, including a bunch of "Google is super-bitchin" quotes from luminaries. Sigh. It's all so...2002.

The best stuff was an essay on comment spam from the wonderful Steven Johnson, and a page on "four scenarios for the future," the only place I found any thinking on what might come next (and not that original - Google becomes either Microsoft, Yahoo, Netscape, or eBay). To my mind, the whole thing should have been about where things are going and what it all means (Wired's mission is usually to scout the future and report back...). But instead, just four paragraphs, four boxes of text, and none of them in any way thinking about the larger issues Google represents.

So why am I so on about this? Because Wired has been getting better and better lately, and I'm disappointed by this effort. The magazine should be moving this story forward, like it did a year ago January. Instead, the package they put together was so cursory, so void of deeper thinking, so clearly positioned to time a potential news event, that the whole damn thing could have run in Cosmo. Or, put another way, while reading, I had an odd sense I had already seen just about everything in the package somewhere else before in the past few months. But where? Ah yes...I think it was the New York Times.

(caveat: I was a founding editor of Wired).

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:05 PM
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Signs of Marketing Prowess To Come...

Via Wonk...Toyota sponsors section of eBay....this exclusive arrangement points to where online marketing is going. Why? Because major advertisers are looking for traction in the medium where the customers are...and that's this one. I smell a significant uptick in online advertising this year, far larger than what is predicted...

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:13 PM
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Proof of Search's Powers...

Look no further than this. BBC reports that via internet research, a boy found out that his mother abducted him (when he was young), told his teacher, teacher told authorities, mom's in jail. Yow.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:54 PM
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Posting Will Slow, Disneyland Ho...

I'm off to take my two older kids to Disneyland (it's their winter break week). So posting will slow. Lemme know if there's anything we can't miss down in Ahaheim...

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:16 PM
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A UI Designer at Google Rants...

About Yahoo Search. Interesting reading...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:07 AM
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WSJ Does A Test

Beal points us to a WSJ article comparing the new Yahoo search with Google. The paper threads the needle and doesn't have an opinion on who's best, saying it depends. Sigh. We'll have to wait till the pros at SEWatch do it right.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:03 AM
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Scraping Orkut

I'm late on this, but apparently someone has scraped data off orkut and developed an app that shows how close other orkut users are to a particular zip code or city. Corante has the goods here. This is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it's against orkut's Terms of Service - it explicitly says you are not allowed to scrape data. Second, it's cool, and an example of what can be done when the web is viewed as an application. It points to something worth paying attention to.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:56 AM
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Cool.

Search for Wi Fi in Google Location, with a zip, and find your hotspots...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:51 PM
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Industry Brains: Context and Quality Matters, Slashdot Added

I've found this company popping up a lot lately. Their model is interesting and they seem to address an evolutionary problem in the paid search field. Industry Brains is essentially a pay-per-click network, like Overture or AdSense, but one that offers advertisers the ability to insure their ad is placed in specific vertical content areas, such as IT. The model basically asserts that there is value (and profit) in the voice and focus of an editorial site, as opposed to the unvariegated sweep of Overture and AdSense. This approach promises to raise the advertising revenues of niche sites which draw influential but smaller audiences. Such sites to date have not been able to make much of a go at it with AdSense alone.

The problem IndustryBrains solves sets up this way: Say you're an advertiser interested in selling laptops to IT professionals. if you were to buy laptop-related keywords on AdSense or Overture's Content Match, your ad could be placed anywhere on their vast networks, as long as a site on that network has the keywords which trigger your ad. This leads to your laptop ads being attached to general interest news sites, or blogs, or literary sites which might mention laptops in a totally unrelated context (funny example here). When you buy IndustryBrains' network, your ad will only be shown on sites like ComputerWorld, CNET, and, in a move that is bound to give them some serious geek cred, Slashdot. (I heard this through a reader and industry colleague who passed along an IndustryBrains announcement, I can't find anything about it on their site or on Slashdot.)

This is a natural evolution in the paid search market. I'm sure it'd be pretty easy for Google and Yahoo to develop these kind of vertical buys (if they haven't already). As soon as it's proven that there's money to made, they will. I certainly hope there is. IndustryBrain's PPC pricing is above typical AdSense pricing, for good reason. They are delivering more qualified audience, which is the essence of what good publishing is about. The site even has a search tool that let's you see the cost per click in real time for any search term.

If any of you out there have tried this, let us know how it went!

(thanks to Hylton and Gary and Jeff for forcing thought on this)

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:34 PM
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Google's Brin on AdSense; Watch DCLK

Editor&Publisher interviews Sergey Brin via email, and while his responses have clearly been given a once-over by Google's professional PR staff, this response struck me as a bad omen for the DoubleClicks of the world:

2. Many newspapers are publishing display ads on the Web, with photos and graphics. Will AdSense evolve beyond text-based advertising? Or is text the best medium for these types of ads?

SB: At this point, text ads are the best solution for our users, advertisers and partners. However, online advertising, especially contextual advertising, is evolving rapidly. Google is committed to a leadership position in online advertising technology and we continue to explore new technologies in every aspect of targeting, delivery and display.

In other words, it won't be long before Google combines the contextual relevance of AdSense text links with more brand-driven, rich media ad units. And that means they start becoming a major ad serving service in the vein of Doubleclick and its kin. Perhaps Google simply buys DCLK, which Safa recently claimed is undervalued. It could make a lot of sense...if Yahoo/Overture doesn't get there first. I'm not a stock picker, nor a seer, so don't hold me to this. Just noting an interesting trend.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:28 AM
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Ink Stained Google Hacks

A fun piec