| Mon, Jun 01, 2009 |
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E-Book Display Tech Firm E Ink Bought By Taiwanese Company For $215 Million
The future of e-book readers, at least most of them on the market today, now lies with a Taiwanese company: E Ink, the high-resolution e-paper display technology provider, which is used by Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Kindle, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Readers and upcoming Plastic Logic’s e-reader, has been bought by Prime View International, based in Taiwan. The price: $215 million. The deal, if approved, is expected to close by October. PVI already makes the screens for Kindle and Reader, and touts itself as the largest maker of e-paper display modules. This new acquisition gives the company a lot of heft in this still nascent market; E Ink and PVI currently support nearly 20 e-book manufacturers worldwide, the companies said. In 2005, PVI acquired the e-paper business of Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG).
E Ink sales were $18 million in the first quarter of 2009, up 157 percent over the same quarter in 2008. E Ink will remain headquartered in Cambridge, Mass. and plans to expand its employee base from 127 to 150 people during 2009, it said. It has raised about $150 million since 1997, with investors such as Intel (NSDQ: INTC), Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Philips, Hearst Interactive Media, and Japan’s TOPPAN Printing; this exit means a modest gain for the investors.
More details in release.
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| Fri, May 29, 2009 |
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More Publishers Abandon Relunctance On Homepage Takeovers
With display ad revenues trending downward over the past year, publishers have been looking for new ways to boost sales. In addition to tests of bolder display formats being coordinated among members of the Online Publishers Association and similar work by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a number of publishers have been warming up to homepage takeovers, which is when a sponsor’s ad dominates 100 percent of the opening page and no other ads are shown.
—Marketers gain leverage: This past week, MSN and TVGuide.com began running ads on their respective homepages that bled over the traditional ad units and covered up page elements like search fields. MSN was initially reluctant to run the takeover by Toyota, said Scott Huebscher, an interactive creative director on the car maker’s account at Saatchi and Saatchi, in an interview with ClickZ’s Douglas Quenqua. The Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) portal eventually went along with it when the agency agreed that the navigation elements up would not be obscured for more than three seconds. More after the jump
—NYTimes needs no convincing: When it comes to homepage takeovers, few have been as arresting and noteworthy as the ones engineered by NYTimes.com. The newspaper site’s homepage has been a canvas for the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) vs. PC campaign since last year. The recent futuristic Intel (NSDQ: INTC) ads, which featured the NYT’s own brand as part of the ad is a good example of a more aggressive display strategy. Forbes takes a closer look at the Intel ads and notes that spot was part of a collaboration with the computer chip maker and the newspaper website’s ad sales team. In general, the takeovers are part of a larger plan to move away from cheap, direct response oriented ads and trying to give display the kind of brand heft that having a full page ad in the print version has. Since the ads don’t seem to run that frequently—and they tend to be fairly eye-catching—a reader revolt doesn’t appear to have emerged. But determining whether the ads are having a significant impact is harder to tell. But the growing prevalence of homepage takeovers suggests that marketers and publishers are going to be testing consumers’ tolerance a lot more.
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paidContent.org
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More Publishers Abandon Relunctance On Homepage Takeovers
With display ad revenues trending downward over the past year, publishers have been looking for new ways to boost sales. In addition to tests of bolder display formats being coordinated among members of the Online Publishers Association and similar work by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a number of publishers have been warming up to homepage takeovers.
—Marketers gain leverage: This past week, MSN and TVGuide.com began running ads on their respective homepages that bled over the traditional ad units and covered up page elements like search fields. MSN was initially reluctant to run the takeover by Toyota, said Scott Huebscher, an interactive creative director on the car maker’s account at Saatchi and Saatchi, in an interview with ClickZ’s Douglas Quenqua. The Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) portal eventually went along with it when the agency agreed that the navigation elements up would not be obscured for more than three seconds. More after the jump
—NYTimes needs no convincing: When it comes to homepage takeovers, few have been as arresting and noteworthy as the ones engineered by NYTimes.com. The newspaper site’s homepage has been a canvas for the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) vs. PC campaign since last year. The recent futuristic Intel (NSDQ: INTC) ads, which featured the NYT’s own brand as part of the ad is a good example of a more aggressive display strategy. Forbes takes a closer look at the Intel ads and notes that spot was part of a collaboration with the computer chip maker and the newspaper website’s ad sales team. In general, the takeovers are part of a larger plan to move away from cheap, direct response oriented ads and trying to give display the kind of brand heft that having a full page ad in the print version has. Since the ads don’t seem to run that frequently—and they tend to be fairly eye-catching—a reader revolt doesn’t appear to have emerged. But determining whether the ads are having a significant impact is harder to tell. But the growing prevalence of homepage takeovers suggests that marketers and publishers are going to be testing consumers’ tolerance a lot more.
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paidContent.org
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| Wed, May 13, 2009 |
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Twitter’s New Competition For Real-Time Search
Last week, a top Twitter executive said that the company would soon not only be indexing tweets in its search results but the pages they link to as well. The new service hasn’t even launched yet, but already it’s got plenty of competition.
At least two startups have now introduced their own Tweet-plus-Tweet links search engines. On Tuesday, OneRiot started searching pages people link to on Twitter and those recommended on Digg, too. A second site, Tweetmeme, which had already been tracking the most retweeted posts on Twitter, has also expanded into searching linked pages, including text, videos, and images.
OneRiot and Tweetmeme’s real-time search engines don’t quite fully work yet. For instance, on OneRiot, none of the results for “Intel” showed that Intel (NSDQ: INTC) had been levied with a $1.45 fine from the European Union this morning. Tweetmeme’s results did—but not-so-newsworthy articles such as a press release announcing that Intel Chairman Craig Barrett would address a conference in Arizona was interspersed with the results. The two services nevertheless reemphasize that real-time search is all the rage right now—and also raise some questions about Twitter’s forthcoming service. Sure, Twitter has the huge advantage of being the place where people are actually linking from. But beyond that, how will it differentiate itself from competitors who are already well on their way to adequately sifting through the pages Tweeters link to?
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paidContent.org
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Competitors Target Twitter’s Plans For A Beefed-Up Search Engine
Last week, a top Twitter executive said that the company would soon not only be indexing tweets in its search results but the pages they link to as well. The new service hasn’t even launched yet, but already it’s got plenty of competition.
At least two startups have now introduced their own Tweet-plus-Tweet links search engines. On Tuesday, OneRiot started searching pages people link to on Twitter and those recommended on Digg, too. A second site, Tweetmeme, which had already been tracking the most retweeted posts on Twitter, has also expanded into searching linked pages, including text, videos, and images.
OneRiot and Tweetmeme’s real-time search engines don’t quite fully work yet. For instance, on OneRiot, none of the results for “Intel” showed that Intel (NSDQ: INTC) had been levied with a $1.45 fine from the European Union this morning. Tweetmeme’s results did—but not-so-newsworthy articles such as a press release announcing that Intel Chairman Craig Barrett would address a conference in Arizona was interspersed with the results. The two services nevertheless reemphasize that real-time search is all the rage right now—and also raise some questions about Twitter’s forthcoming service. Sure, Twitter has the huge advantage of being the place where people are actually linking from. But beyond that, how will it differentiate itself from competitors who are already well on their way to adequately sifting through the pages Tweeters link to?
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