The partnership that has Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo cross-selling display ads on the other sites is now open for business and up and running, according to a blog post from Microsoft. The relationship, which first came to light in September of last year, is partly a reaction to Google's increasing dominance in the display ad universe. Google overtook Yahoo in display market share for the first time last year, according to IDC. Facebook, too, has become -- and is growing even greater -- a major threat in the display category. Microsoft says its Microsoft Media Network (powered by the Microso [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Google: Display Advertising | Microsoft | Top News | Yahoo

Rick Falkvinge, the founder of the Swedish political party the "Pirate Party," formed six years ago around issues related to intellectual property, blogged about an experience of attending a seminar on privacy at the European Parliament in Brussels. The seminar was put on by Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace, which is funded by Microsoft. The subject of the seminar was "privacy, big data, profiling, and online identities." Falkvinge was unaware of the group's funding and ties to Microsoft. He expressed indignation upon discovering the session was essentially about attacking G [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google | Google: Business Issues | Google: Privacy | Legal: Privacy | Microsoft: Business Issues

Yesterday a new feature was announced by Microsoft that allows logged-in Facebook users to link related pages to themselves.  The new product, 'linked pages,' not only allows users to link pages to themselves, but also to friends. To see all linked pages simply click on the tab underneath the search box.  Those Facebook friends with a linked page will show up in the left column.  When pages are linked to a profile, the Facebook result displays first with all other linked pages below: One missing option that may anger users is that users cannot move other pages above the Facebook [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Facebook | Facebook: Marketing | Facebook: Open Graph | Microsoft | Microsoft: Bing

Google's been taking fire for Microsoft accusing it of overriding Internet Explorer privacy controls. But Google's now out with a response: the controls are out-dated, "impractical" to follow and ignored by other companies besides Google, including Facebook, some of Microsoft's own sites and over 10,000 others. I'm on vacation this week, so I won't be doing a deep dive into all of this, though someone else from Marketing Land will in the near future. For now, I'll just share a few short comments along with the full statement that Google sent us about the issue. Not The Same As The Safari B [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Google: Privacy | Legal: Privacy | Microsoft: Internet Explorer | Microsoft: Privacy | Top News

More trouble for Google today on the privacy front: Just days after revelations that Google is ignoring privacy settings on Apple's Safari web browser, Microsoft says Google is doing the same thing with Internet Explorer. Microsoft shares its findings in a blog post this morning: When the IE team heard that Google had bypassed user privacy settings on Safari, we asked ourselves a simple question: is Google circumventing the privacy preferences of Internet Explorer users too? We’ve discovered the answer is yes: Google is employing similar methods to get around the default privacy protecti [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Google: Privacy | Legal: Privacy | Microsoft: Internet Explorer | Microsoft: Privacy

The average Internet user in the U.S. spent 36 hours online in January. That won't seem like much to those of us who reached 36 hours online by January 3rd, but comScore says it's a new record for Internet usage. That stat comes from comScore's latest ranking of US web sites, which shows that January was a good month for sites in the Career and Travel fields, along with Tax-related sites. The latter was the fastest-growing category in January; more than 30.7 million Americans visited a tax site in January, a 359 percent increase from the month before. Job-related sites saw an overall increa [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Google | Microsoft | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Yahoo

Last night Microsoft announced msnNOW, a service that aggregates content around trending topics.  msnNOW allows users to choose what the hottest trends are by showing a share count for each trending topic. Other than the web presence at now.msn.com, users can interact with the msnNOW Facebook app and mobile site. What Is It? One of the first questions that came up about msnNOW was "What Exactly Is It?"  At first glance the service sounded like the ill-fated Yahoo! Buzz, but is actually quite different.  Instead of user submitted news, msnNOW looks for current trends and provides sum [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Microsoft | Top News

When Verizon said in December that it was blocking Google Wallet on the Galaxy Nexus handset, because of "security concerns," conspiracy theories abounded. Verizon is an investor, along with AT&T and T-Mobile in ISIS, a mobile payments competitor of Google Wallet. Verizon denied that it was "blocking" customers from accessing Google Wallet. Rather the company said it was merely delaying availability until its security concerns could be resolved. Never mind that Sprint never raised any comparable security concerns about Google Wallet with the Nexus S, which has been in the market for ro [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iPhone | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Android | Microsoft: Mobile | Mobile Marketing | Top News

Less than a month to go before Google's new privacy policy changes happen. Microsoft is running an ad campaign encouraging switching to its services as safer or more private. The US Congress is still asking questions. Headlines have painted a worrisome picture. But Google's users seem largely unconcerned. That's no surprise. They probably shouldn't be. There's a big difference between a privacy policy that grants new rights and actually using those rights. That's what I tried to explain in my first article about Google's forthcoming changes. There are good reasons why the mess that Googl [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features & Analysis | Google: Privacy | Legal: Privacy | Microsoft: Privacy | Top News

That didn't take long. Google has reacted to Microsoft's ad campaign that slams Google's forthcoming privacy policy changes with a mythbusting blog post. Here's a look at the myths Google says are out there, the facts it claims are true and my own fact checking of both Google and Microsoft. Short story? They both seem about the same on the privacy front. The Google post actually tackles a few allegations beyond those that Microsoft made today, but I'll focus on the Microsoft ones. Hard To Control Personal Information? Google wrote: Myth: Google’s Privacy Policy changes make it harder [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Privacy | Legal: Privacy | Microsoft: Privacy | Top News

Last September, Google CEO Larry Page warned Google's biggest threat was Google itself. His words are ringing true, as Google arch-nemesis Microsoft is seizing on Google's recent missteps to score some points through a newspaper ad campaign that pitches Microsoft's products as treating customers better than Google's do. The ads -- running in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and USA Today -- suggest that Google's forthcoming privacy policy changes are designed to put Google's interests over that of its customers. A related blog post also indirectly raises issues about Google's ne [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Features & Analysis | Google: Business Issues | Google: Legal | Google: Privacy | Legal: Privacy | Microsoft: Business Issues | Microsoft: Privacy | Top News

Microsoft is trying to make ads in Hotmail better. The company is replacing conventional display ads in its webmail service with deal ads that it believes will be more relevant and interesting to users. Not all Hotmail users will see the new ads immediately. Microsoft is doing a pilot in which it's testing consumer response to deals ads vs. traditional email display ads in selected cities. However, Dharmesh Mehta, Director for the Windows and Windows Live Business Group, believes users will prefer the new ads to the old. He's interested in delivering a "less distracting ad" to users. He [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing | Features & Analysis | Microsoft | Microsoft: Mobile | Statistics: Email Marketing | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Top News

This may come as a surprise to a lot of Chrome users: A new study about page speed and website performance says that Google's Chrome web browser performed slower than both IE9 and Firefox in a recent analysis of retail website home pages. The findings come from Strangeloop Networks' annual e-commerce page speed and website performance report, just released today. The company tested the home pages of the top 2,000 Alexa-ranked retail websites and found that both IE9 and Firefox 7 were about five percent faster than Chrome. In its report, Strangeloop doesn't claim that its study "d [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Firefox | Google: Chrome | Microsoft: Internet Explorer | Statistics: General | Statistics: Web Browsers

At the two-minute warning of the NFC Championships last weekend, the country got a glimpse of Bing’s new ad campaign, Bing is for #Doing. Bing just hopes that Gen Y viewers were taking notice. The spots, which take a storytelling approach and feature adventure sports athletes Kevin Pearce, Bobby Brown, Kaityln Farrington and Gretchen Bleiler, are the beginning of a long-term shift in the Bing advertising strategy -- a focus on “doing” versus being “a decision engine,” as well as a continued goal of attracting younger online users. Video: Bing is for #Doing: Kevin Pearce’s St [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Microsoft: Bing

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo sites continue to hold down the top three spots in comScore's monthly report on the most visited web properties in the U.S., but the gap between them and Facebook grew bigger in December. According to the latest comScore Media Metrix rankings, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft sites all saw an increase in unique visitors in December, while Facebook declined. That leaves Facebook about 14 million unique visitors behind Yahoo, compared to about eight million behind the prior month. Here's the full comScore top 50 chart for December 2011. The top ten sites liste [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook | Google | Microsoft | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Yahoo

Yesterday afternoon both Google and Microsoft released quarterly earnings. Google posted its highest gross revenues to date but missed analysts' Q4 expectations. Microsoft posted $20.89 billion in fiscal Q2 revenue (calendar Q4) and came in above analyst expectations. Overall, Microsoft's top-line was 5 percent above last year. All lines of business saw revenue growth vs. last year except Windows, which posted a decline. The following was the performance of the various divisions: Microsoft Business Division (Office): $6.28 billion in second quarter revenue, a 3 percent increase vs last [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Microsoft | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Business Issues | Microsoft: Mobile

Welcome to the big leagues, Windows Phone. You're now being recognized as an operating system by Google Analytics, rather than being generically reported as "not set." WP Sauce noted the change this week and alerted us to it. However, it appears to be something that happened back on November 15. I found Windows Phone appearing in several Google Analytics accounts I checked as of that date. Here's an example of it beginning to be found in one account: Unfortunately, we cannot see which devices are being used with Windows Phone. This information could be very useful when optim [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics | Microsoft: Mobile | Mobile Marketing | Top News

Some numbers released yesterday by NPD Group suggested that the iPhone was regaining some of the market share it had recently lost to Android. According to the firm's data, Q4 US smartphone sales look like the following: NPD also said that iPhone incarnations constituted the top three devices sold in Q4, followed by Samsung and HTC (Android): iPhone 4S iPhone 4 iPhone 3GS Samsung Galaxy S II 4G Samsung Galaxy S HTC Inspire 4G These sales figures are reinforced by recent ChangeWave US consumer survey data (n=4,000) asking would-be smartphone buyers what device they're mo [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Apple: iPhone | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Features & Analysis | Google: Android | Microsoft: Mobile | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Top News

If you were expecting big news from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's final CES keynote, forget it. "Windows Store" for applications is coming in February. Aside from that, his conversation-style keynote with Ryan Seacrest was more a recap than a big look forward. "In 2012, what's next? Metro, Metro, Metro, and, of course, Windows, Windows, Windows," Ballmer said, when Seacrest asked him at the end of the talk about things to come. The "Metro" user interface, those tile-like objects familiar to anyone who knows Windows Phone, was shown working on the forthcoming Window 8 operating system [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Mobile | Mobile Marketing | Top News

While Google is known for its fanciful logos, Bing takes a different approach, using a new, luscious photograph as its entire home page each day. While buttons on the page allow you to go back through photos from the previous week, until now there's been no way to see more. Microsoft Canada has compiled a gallery of 2011 Bing home page photos that lets you see the entire set from last year. You can scroll through the pictures by month, and a slider at the bottom of the page lets you view the photos on a daily basis. Microsoft plans to keep the gallery active through the end of January&m [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Microsoft: Bing