Cashing Out: Week of January 18-24th, 2009 in Online Marketing News

January 25, 2009 No comments

In weeks like this past one, when the nation seems to change overnight with the inauguration of President Barack Obama it is easy to lose sight of anything else happening. The moment was historic on so many levels it was literally breathtaking. We will soon know how Obama’s policies will impact the online as well as the offline market. We here at Revenews, whether or not we agree with his policies, welcome our new President and are eager to see where this Administration will take us.

Online World Grows a Bit Bigger, Passes Billion User Mark

Despite only 15-22% of the World’s population having access to the Internet a milestone was reached when according to ComScore the number of people using the Internet passed a billion users in December. Here are ComScore’ breakdown of the Top 10 countries by Internet “population”:

1. China: 179.7 million
2. United States: 163.3 million
3. Japan: 60.0 million
4. Germany: 37.0 million
5. United Kingdom: 36.7 million
6. France: 34.0 million
7. India: 32.1 million
8. Russia: 29.0 million
9. Brazil: 27.7 million
10. South Korea: 27.3 million

Layoffs Continue

Several major layoffs continued the bad news from last week’s Circuit City announcements. Companies announcing layoffs included:

Intel – Which quietly cut 7,800 jobs an undisclosed amount of its workforce
Microsoft – Created a stir in the media when for the first time in its history it announced layoffs. 5,000 jobs lost about 5% of its staff
Ericsson – Eliminated 5,000 jobs about 6% of its workforce
Bose – Let go of 1,000 jobs about 10% of its staff
Digg – Cut 7 jobs about 10% of its workforce

Belkin Gets Slapped for Poor Judgment

Companies paying for fake user reviews on sites like Bizrate or Shopping.com maybe slimy but is nothing new. What earned Belkin a slap in the face was brazenly soliciting on Mechanical Turk for reviewers to post false reviews on NewEgg and Amazon. The bad publicity from such missteps is never worth the few customers a glowingly fake post may snag.

Dating Maybe Mobile’s First Big Thing

According to TechCrunch, Juniper Research has revised its estimates on the potential growth for dating services in the mobile space. Juniper Research now forecasts that the mobile dating and chatroom market will grow to nearly $1.4 billion by 2013. With people’s addictions to texting and social services like Twitter it is easy to imagine that technology like 3G-enabled video chat will play well in the dating market.

Israeli Startup Creates Clickable Video Canvas

Although many companies already do overlay advertising in video or serve up contextual products next to a video player based on a timecode, Israeli startup Innovid just raised the stakes. Innovid released a new technology allowing advertisers to increase user interaction by allowing users to click on areas of the screen. Advertisers could use the technology for interactive prompts or to highlight products on screen that catch the users interest. Innovid’s examples are pretty fascinating. Question is whether marketers will use the technology wisely or just irritate video watchers.

Missy Ward Steps Out of Retirement to Fight Breast Cancer

Affiliate Summit Co-Founder Missy Ward announced this week that she is coming out of retirement to manage a single lucky merchant’s program. 100% of proceeds from Missy’s management of the program will go the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Look for Revenews’ upcoming interview with Missy this week.