The New Economics of Advertising

November 2, 2008

Installing tEarn on WordPress 1.x/2.x

Filed under: AdNet, social network — Dash @ 11:16 pm
Tags: , ,
Note: The following instructions are not for use with blogs hosted at WordPress.com or any WordPress MU–powered installation.

 

tEarn’s exitmercial services are delivered at your site via the tEarn script. Once you’ve installed tEarn code on your site, you can control the tEarn service from your tEarn Control Panel. The code connects tEarn and your WordPress, so adding exitmercials to your blog couldn’t be easier!

To add tEarn to a WordPress-powered blog, you’ll need to insert a small piece of code in your templates. Fortunately, this is easy — follow these steps.

  1. Create an account at tEarn for your blog and copy your tEarn code.

    Sign in to your WordPress Admin dashboard.

  2. Click the Presentation tab, then the Theme Editor sub-tab. You should see a dropdown menu of installed themes and a list of template files associated with the currently selected theme to the right of the editor. The remainder of this example assumes use of the WordPress Default theme.

    wordpress 2 dashboard

  3. Click Main Index Template in the list of template files. Its contents load in the editor. (For WordPress 1.5: “Main Template”)

  4. Paste the code you copied in step 1 in the body of the template. We recommend the line following the BODY tag. It can also be inserted before the closing BODY tag.

  5. Click Update File » to save your changes. 

The tEarn tag has no visible parts on your page. Click on links that exit your blog to test. Use your tEarn Control Panel to monitor results. 

Original version at Blogger.

October 29, 2008

LinkedIn Means Business With New Application Platform

Filed under: LinkedIn, social network — Dash @ 4:05 am


Announcing Applications on LinkedIn

Reid Hoffman Profile Pic.jpg

Hi Everyone. I’m writing today to announce the launch of LinkedIn’s applications platform that will enable over 30 million professionals on LinkedIn to communicate, collaborate, and share information even better than before.

This initial roll out features productivity applications that range from gathering information that professionals around you are generating to enhancing your abilities to collaborate and communicate more effectively. You’ll be able to work much more closely with your contacts on LinkedIn with tools such as file sharing, project management, business trips and many more.

The nine applications that you see live today on LinkedIn include productivity enhancing applications from Amazon, Box.net, Google, Huddle, Six Apart, SlideShare, Tripit, and WordPress as well a Company Buzz application developed by LinkedIn. Each of these applications will help you stay current and competitive as a professional in today’s rapidly changing business world…


LinkedIn Means Business With New Application Platform

LinkedIn has launched its new OpenSocial-based application platform called InApps – an answer to the platforms found on social networks like Facebook and MySpace, but without the clutter and “junk” apps that plague those sites. Unlike most other social networks, LinkedIn apps must go through an approval process before they will go live on the store, and all apps must be deemed “professional” in purpose to appear on the business-oriented social network. To prevent an overwhelming amount of clutter, users will be restricted to including a maximum of 15 applications on their main profile pages, though they will eventually have the option to install more apps on a separate page.

Beyond the quality assurance process, LinkedIn is also limiting the flexibility apps will have when it comes to monetization. Apps won’t be allowed to use third party ad networks – instead, they’ll have to work with LinkedIn’s ad system. For now applications will only have access to LinkedIn’s current ad inventory, which could make targeting ads less effective (though it sounds like there will be more options for targeted ads in the future). Apps will still be allowed to charge users for individual goods, and can also implement a paid subscription service (launch partner Box.net is using this model)…

October 10, 2008

Facebook is number 2 website among 10 million

Filed under: Facebook, social network — Dash @ 3:59 pm

Facebook is number 2 website, but the growth of social networks is slowing

Of the 10,583,351 websites visited by UK Internet users in September, Facebook was the second most popular after Google UK. The number one social network in Britain received 3.16% of all UK Internet visits last month, equivalent to one in every 32. For the 4 weeks ending 27/09/08, one in every 50 UK Internet searches was for the single term ‘facebook’,

top 10 uk websites september 2008 Google Facebook Hotmail ebay MSN YouTube Bebo Yahoo BBC.png

Facebook’s success in the UK (and many other markets) is undeniable, and – as the chart below illustrates – the growth hasn’t stopped yet. However, it has slowed: traffic to the site increased by 4% between August and September this year, down from 50% over the same period last year. The site’s annual growth rate remains impressive at 88% between September 2007 and 2008, but was significantly less than the 2905% it experienced the previous year.

UK Internet traffic to Facebook 2005 2006 2007 2008 chart.png

Another ominous sign is that Facebook’s average session time has flattened out at 20 minutes; both MySpace and Bebo experienced a fall in average session time in tandem with their declining UK market share. So, Facebook has a while to go yet, but there is no doubt that its growth is slowing. Of course, social networking is about more than just one site – we recorded visits to over 7,000 during September – so what about the market as a whole?

October 9, 2008

MySpace and Facebook with $1 Billion in Advertising, Says eMarketer

Filed under: social network — Dash @ 7:09 pm


Social Nets Still Promising, Says eMarketer

-By Adweek Staff

adweek/photos/stylus/41836-Chart.jpg

NEW YORK Social networks rank among the most popular destinations on the Internet — particularly for the hard-to-reach youth audience — and marketers will continue to look for ways to reach consumers at those sites, according toeMarketer.

Combined, MySpace and Facebook are expected to account for 72 percent of the total U.S. social network ad spending pie this year.

Spending at all other online social network sites (including general social, niche and marketer-created networks) is expected to reach $370 million this year.

Widget and application ad spending is projected to rise to $40 million in 2008, from $15 million in 2007.

September 26, 2008

Yahoo Email Dominates Web-Mail Landscape, but Losing Mindshare to Social Networks

Filed under: Yahoo, social network — Dash @ 12:43 pm
comscore-average-visits-visitor-yahoo-august-02008.jpg

Yahoo Email Dominates Web-Mail Landscape

Yahoo’s email service dominates the web-mail market with the highest number of email users, monthly minutes spent per user and times users check mail, according to data from comScore(via a New York Times blog post by reporter Saul Hansell.) 

comscore-unique-visitors-new-york-times-august-2008.jpg

AOL’s email also appears to be holding its own with its user numbers, while Gmail is increasing its number of users but lagging behind other web-mail providers in how often users check mail and how much time they spend on the site.

Among the findings:

  • Yahoo leads in email users, with 88.4 million in August 2008, according to comScore. Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail has 45.2 million users, AOL has 44.8 million, and Google’s Gmail has 26.0 million.
  • Yahoo mail users spend the most time (286 minutes/month) reading their email, Gmail users spend the least (82 minutes), with AOL and Microsoft in the middle (229 and 204 minutes, respectively).

comscore-average-minutes-visitor-yahoo-new-york-times-august-2008.jpg

  • Google users check their email the least – 13.6 times on average in August, while Yahoo users visited 18.8 times. AOL and Microsoft fall between these two.

comscore-average-visits-visitor-yahoo-august-02008.jpg

  • In terms of total minutes spent reading email on each of the web-mail services, users spent 25 billion minutes in August on Yahoo mail. They spent 10 billion minutes on AOL mail, 9 billion on Microsoft’s mail, and 2 billion on Gmail.

comScore’s numbers also show that AOL is performing worse than Yahoo and MSN in what is a stagnant portal arena, Hansell said.

AOL’s audience of 110.6 million users is down 3% from last year, while its rivals grew slightly. The average number of minutes spent per user on the AOL portal declined 22%, while time on MSN fell 11%. Yahoo’s average time rose, though only a small amount.

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