Google Culture Creep At YouTube
As far as I know, YouTube never changed their logos for holidays like famously Google does. But today they did, quietly adding a pumpkin to the logo in lieu of the television screen we normally see. Too bad it wasn’t something a little scarier. An evil looking clown, for example, would have been perfect.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
After the iPhone
Ever since it release last June, the iPhone has inspired lust in consumers and envy in competitors. But at least for now, business users would be smart to ignore the one-million-sold hype: Apple's refusal to accommodate third party applications and AT&T's sluggish EDGE network keep this gadget strictly in the realm of fun.
Using Pubmatic Could Land You Some Free Advertising
Advertising has gotten a lot more complicated since the early days of the internet. There are hundreds of ad networks out there. With targeting being the name of the game, efficiently allocating your ad space to visitors is nearly impossible. In response, automated ad optimization engines have started up to help manage these advertising complexities. Using one seems like a no-brainer for publishers concerned about making the most of their advertising. Advertising rates change too quickly over time and the complexity of serving the right ads to your different demographics is simply too hard to handle by hand, particularly on websites with large footprints.
There are several engines out there already, including YieldBuild and The Rubicon Project. Now TechCrunch 40 finalist Pubmatic is hosting a contest to draw more publishers to their platform. Every month, the two publishers who see the greatest gains using Pubmatic will receive thousands in free advertising on top “web 2.0 web sites” (i.e. blogs). The amount is still unknown because they are still finalizing the sites they are advertising on. You can sign up for the program here.
PubMatic’s ad optimization engine is similar to YieldBuild and the Rubicon project. Unlike these earlier two, Pubmatic is actually live with 1,300 sites and open to anyone else. The engine serves as a meta ad server that serves the highest revenue ad network for each visitor given the time, geographic, demographic, and layout aspects of your site. It currently supports ad networks like Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network and Value Click. They also provide them with a central dashboard to track all their ad networks and ad configurations. Below you’ll find more information from their TechCrunch 40 video.
Pubmatic has already picked the November winners WinCustomize and BikerOrNot, which they claim have seen over 100% increases in their ad revenue since using PubMatic. YeildBuild and The Rubicon Project have boasted similar increases for their publishers. To a degree, it all just depends on how poorly monetized your site was to start. However, Pubmatic is looking for sensible successes from fairly well trafficked sites and will double check your previous monetization metrics to ensure the increase in revenue is real.
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Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Merrill board: Too late to the game
Merrill Lynch's board of directors was instrumental in removing Stanley O'Neal from the CEO and chairman posts after the brokerage reported $7.9 billion of bond losses in its third quarter.
A Halloween Treat from the Fed
The central bank's moderate Oct. 31 rate cut aims to ward off a truly scary creature—recession
Stocks See-Saw After Rate Cut
Equities gyrated after the central bank announced a quarter-point easing but remained higher on the session