Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Mark's E-marketingclass Blog

Here is a link to my Blog

This is not about having a bad hair day

It's about having a bad domain name, such as Waveradio.com. When Bose -- the electronics firm that has rights to the WAVE trademark -- complained to the National Arbitration Forum, the NAF ruled that Waveradio.com infringed.

The decision provides a look into some of the legal principles involved. For example, infringement is based on the idea that a name confuses consumers. So, typically, when one mark is found to infringe on another, the two marks are in the same class of consumer goods.

If Waveradio.com had offered hair care products (that let you curl your hair while listening to the radio) instead of "...all you've dreamed Internet radio to be," I doubt there would be infringement, because consumers are not likely to confuse a hair care product with a radio.

But what's not clear to me is exactly why the NAF ruled the party that registered Waveradio.com as a domain name was acting in bad faith. The board notes the party registered it then tried to sell it to Bose for a large sum. But I see lots of domain names for sale on Websites that register domain names for the public. Did the board issue its bad faith finding because the party registered Waveradio.com with the intent to target a particular company? Did the decision stand up to an appeal?

I'm not sure and I'm not an attorney and do not claim to dispense legal advice. Anyway, have a good (hair) day!
link to decision

Creating Your Own Blog

In class yesterday we walked through the basics of setting up your own blog. Thanks to everyone who took this step. I encourage you all to go through this exercise so you can see just how easy it is for someone to generate web content. With any luck, we'll begin to have visibility on a search engine especially if we remain diligent about generating meaningful commentary (on your individual blogs as well as the class blog).

A few notes to consider...

Remember to always include a reference to the keyword we're trying to establish visibility for, "e-marketingclasss". Try to incorporate this keyword in each of your posts along with other variations (like e-marketing class, emarketing class, etc). e-marketingclass is not a real word (nor is it used on any other sites) so this should make it a little easier for us to learn about how search engines index keywords (which is what I want to demonstrate in our class).

Also, please be sure to reference the class blog in your post (e-marketingclass.blogspot.com). However, don't just put a link to the site with no content around it...we need content as well as the link.

See you in class!

E-marketingclass Article Summary

With a lot of the recent e-marketingclass discussion surrounding the consequences of advertisements being placed on web sites such as MySpace and FaceBook, I found the following article to be rather interesting and appropriate for our e-marketingclass.

The article discusses the recent deal struck between Microsoft and Digg. Digg, a relative newcomer to the online market is one of the fastest growing web sites. The two companies both hope to benefit from the deal. According to Kimberly Hill of Ecommerce Times, “Microsoft now stands to be a major player in the online advertising space as the company struck a deal with Web content aggregator Digg to be its exclusive provider of display and contextual advertising. The plan is to bring integrated programs to Digg’s users and advertisers.”

So what does this mean exactly? Very simply, Digg will be able to focus less on advertising infrastructure and more on innovation. Furthermore, Microsoft is getting a chance to become a serious player in the online advertising space. Rob Enderle summed it up nicely by stating, “These two companies are playing Monopoly using the world as a board, and Microsoft is the old master that has been getting its butt kicked by Google, the new player.”

So what does this deal mean for consumers and marketers? First, some marketers do not believe that consumers will even notice the changes on Digg, at least in the short term. With Digg, user-generated content is the sites strong point. Users of Digg are able to look at articles and than rate and rank them on the Web. According to Hill, “News publishers, bloggers and even corporate public relations teams are fair game for readers who either like or don’t like what they see.” By teaming up with Microsoft, Digg is hoping that the consumer will appreciate a more sophisticated approach to online advertising rather than advertising that offers no value. In hopes of this, the two companies are working together on future technology and advertising initiatives in addition to Microsoft running Digg’s current advertisements. Here is where the battle between Google and Microsoft heats up. There is an increasing effort for marketers to improve on targeting and segmenting their audiences in order to provide content relevant advertisements. With Google's recent purchase of DoubleClick, it appears that they are committed to becoming a dominant player in display advertising. However, Google does not have the relationships required to make that happen. Through the purchase of DoubleClick, they believe that this can happen. It may also be important to point out that Google also owns YouTube. Microsoft has realized that Google is heading in the direction of online advertising and that if they are successful, they will own the revenue that comes with it. I believe that the deal between Microsoft and Digg was a move designed to respond to Google's strategy. However, Microsoft was one of the companies complaining about anti-trust issues related to Google and DoubleClick. With this new deal in place, it may only help Google.

The plan between Digg and Microsoft is to bring integrated programs to Digg’s users and advertisers. This is going to allow consumers to receive ads that they are interested in seeing. One of the problems facing MySpace is that it has become cluttered with advertisements that have no value to the user. Digg is attempting to target their advertisements so that the users do not defect or view Digg as selling out. Digg has been attempting to position itself as an online community, however, if it becomes cluttered with display ads they risk losing those members of their community. Through this new deal, Digg will be able to keep intact the “Digg Community” without it becoming cluttered with ads. In return, Microsoft will benefit by becoming a bigger player in online advertising. Advertisers will benefit by having the opportunity to target specific consumers with content specific ads.