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| UPDATED: 2006-04-12 |
 MIVA Clicks Away In Ad Market 
By: David Utter 2006-04-12 The company has pay-per-click and pay-per-call products, and the online advertising industry has swollen to a multi-billion dollar industry; MIVA wants to be a part of that but may need to be acquired to have a future.  The gaudy numbers for the Googles and Yahoos of the world, with billions in online advertising revenue, give industry observers pause and competitors motivation to join the fun. Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer has said his company makes a billion a year now in online advertising. And that's before Microsoft even launches its adCenter product, a competitor to Google AdWords and Yahoo! Publisher Network.
A lot of dreams and disappointments have occupied the thoughts of the smaller entities seeking a piece of the online ad pie. MIVA (MIVA) has been one of those fighting by linking up with partners like Intellext and iCopyright, shuffling management, and unveiling a new product: pay-per-text ads aimed at the text messaging market. That may not be enough for the company to avoid a date with destiny in the form of a takeover. MIVA has some tough questions to consider about its future. “MIVA will likely attract interest from the market, and the board will need to decide whether to sell quickly at a market price or hunker down for a longer-term rebuild.” said Tolman Geffs, Managing Director, The Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc. Overall, Tuesday was a rough day for the market, with the Dow dropping 51.70 points to 11089.63 and the Nasdaq losing 22.92 to finish at 2310.35. Other online firms felt the impact of a market spooked by Iran's claims they have enriched uranium; oil prices climbing higher ahead of the Easter holiday; and what was called a "breakdown" in the S&P 500 after the index slipped below 1295. Kanoodle, a privately held provider of contextual advertising, picked up an impressive client " Dow Jones & Company (DJ). It's a bonus coming in the wake of Kanoodle picking up a second renewal with MarketWatch, also owned by Dow Jones. The Dow Jones deal will see Kanoodle's ads placed on premium properties like The Wall Street Journal Online, Barron's Online, OpinionJournal.com, and other Dow Jones sites. Randy Kilgore, senior vice president of advertising, Dow Jones Online, said in a statement, "Kanoodle has consistently outperformed for us on MarketWatch.com in terms of relevancy, client services and revenue generation, and we're pleased to extend our successful relationship to include the other online properties within Dow Jones." ValueClick (VCLK) has remained relatively flat since combining its FastClick and ValueClick businesses under the ValueClick Media brand. Their strategy seems to be one that focuses on selling themselves as a network, an area they expounded upon during a presentation at the OMMA Hollywood conference in late March. A pair of the company's media executives touched on networks as they spoke about them and other methods of expanding available ad inventory, with networks of sites and technologies like video and RSS feeds. Those all represent ways to place the advertiser's message before a particular demographic group. LookSmart (LOOK) dipped in trading, down 17 cents to 5.00. The vertical search company reported modest success with its full-year 2005 numbers, and recently saw its social bookmarking tool Furl.net named as one of "101 Fabulous Freebies" by widely read industry publication PC World. CTO Michael Grubb cited "the ability to save the full text of the article versus a link that can quickly expire" as a feature that distinguishes it from other services like Delicious, which is now owned by Yahoo. LookSmart makes Furl freely available with 5GB of storage for accounts. View All Articles by David Utter About the Author: David Utter is a staff writer for InternetFinancialNews and WebProNews covering technology and business. |
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