IAC Announces the Launch of Black Web Enterprises Inc.
IAC’s Online Destination for the Black Community Prepares to Introduce First Site in the Coming Weeks
NEW YORK – February 4, 2008 - IAC (NASDAQ: IACI) today announced the launch of Black Web Enterprises Inc. (BWE), the company’s online destination for the Black community, and its newly appointed executive management team. The announcement solidifies IAC’s previously publicized commitment to launch an interactive community platform for the U.S. Black population.
“With a phenomenal management team in place, we are on the cusp of unveiling the first initiative under the Black Web Enterprises umbrella… a site that will revolutionize the internet for the Black Community,” said Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., President & CEO of BWE. “Rather than compete with existing sites already geared toward the Black community, our goal with the initiative is to expand this market in order to bring the absolute best and most relevant web experience to Black people everywhere.”
Mr. Taylor will lead BWE. His executive management team includes:
Brad Gebert, Vice President, Technology – A proven technology expert, Mr. Gebert brings outstanding experience as a Technical Development Manager to BWE to lead application development and ensure that the business will run on the most advanced technological systems available. Brad also brings to BWE a keen understanding of IAC’s brands, having spent 7 years prior at IAC’s LendingTree and GetSmart.
Kevin McFall, Vice President, Products – An accomplished executive of the media and technology industries, with experience spanning a number of interactive media companies including Zap2it.com and BlackVoices.com (Tribune Company), Mr. McFall brings more than a decade of digital product development experience to guide strategic planning, as well as product management and execution for BWE.
Katrina Witherspoon, Vice President, Marketing & Business Development – With more than 12 years of product management and marketing experience with Reach Media Inc.’s BlackAmericaWeb.com and IAC’s Match.com, Ms. Witherspoon will lead BWE’s marketing, sales, and business development strategies.
Heather Keets Wright, Managing Editor – A seasoned journalist with 15 years experience in writing and editing for national magazines (Essence), newspapers, (The Washington Post) and websites (MarthaStewart.com), Ms. Keets Wright will oversee all editorial content related to BWE initiatives.
BWE will house a number of yet-to-be-announced online destinations catering to the distinct needs and interests of the estimated 50 million Black people living in the U.S., from African Americans to Blacks from Latin America and the Caribbean. The business is a part of IAC Programming, established in 2006 under the leadership of Michael Jackson to grow branded online content properties.
“Johnny and his colleagues have spent the greater part of a year engulfed in the task of building a site that understands and meets the needs of the Black community unlike any other that exists today,” said Mr. Jackson. “Beyond our enthusiasm for bringing this venture to the forefront of IAC Programming, we look forward to building upon the knowledge and success of this first launch for future endeavors tailored to very specific audiences.”
Today’s move comes after IAC’s November 2007 announcement of plans to separate IAC into five publicly traded companies, spinning off HSN, Ticketmaster, Interval International and LendingTree. Expected to be completed in the second or third quarter of 2008, the new IAC will include:
The businesses currently comprising its Media & Advertising sector: Ask.com, Bloglines, Citysearch, CursorMania, Evite, Excite, IAC Advertising Solutions, InsiderPages, iWon, My Fun Cards, My Way, Popular Screensavers, Smiley Central, Webfetti and Zwinky;
Match.com, ServiceMagic, Shoebuy.com, Entertainment Publications and ReserveAmerica;
Emerging Businesses including Pronto and Gifts.com, Green.com, Primal Ventures, and InstantAction;
IAC Programming businesses including Black Web Enterprises, BustedTees, CollegeHumor, GarageGames, Very Short List, Vimeo and 23/6;
IAC’s current investments in Active.com, Brightcove, FiLife, MerchantCircle, OpenTable, Points.com and SHOP Channel.
About IAC
IAC operates leading and diversified businesses in sectors being transformed by the internet, online and offline... our mission is to harness the power of interactivity to make daily life easier and more productive for people all over the world. To view a full list of the companies of IAC please visit our website at http://iac.com
Contact Information:
IAC Communications Office
Stacy Simpson / Leslie Cafferty
(212) 314-7470 / 7326
IAC Investor Relations
Eoin Ryan
(212) 314-7400
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Gasta News: Launch your own search engine for your community, your needs
Web searches for minority groups
The genesis of the World Wide Web, in a Swiss laboratory, to serve a multi-national team of physicists, might lead many to think that the network is blind when it comes to race, sex, creed and colour.
But some sites are taking steps to address shortcomings in the way that the web serves some sectors of the population.
In October, Ask gave its search engine a fresh interface to help with its new-found focus on its core search audience, 60% of which were women.
In the US, a search site aimed squarely at black Americans, launched in April 2008.
Rushmore Drive's creator, Johnny Taylor, said search results can be more relevant to some social groups than to others. He cited the example of Type 2 diabetes, which predominantly affects Afro-Caribbean and Asian people.
He said: "If a user were to search for diabetes on Google, why would [Google] rank diabetes results as it pertains to black Americans early on in the result set, when only 14% of the US population is black?"
Results ranking
All search engines generate their results by looking at links leading to a webpage to get a sense of how important it is to web debate on that subject.
In such a set 'relevance' is a quantitative rather than a qualitative measure, and it is a short step from the 'wisdom of the crowds' to the 'tyranny of the majority'.
Said Mr Taylor: "People can affect change on Google, but the black population has less of an influence on Google to affect the result rankings."
With Rushmore Drive, said Mr Taylor, "it is more a matter of optimising the relevancy ranking based on one's cultural identity."
Rushmore Drive's editorial team seeks out sites relevant to the black community, and uses a unique algorithm which weights "black results" higher. It also exploits user feedback to tweak the relevance of results.
Aleks Krotoski, a social psychologist researcher at the University of Surrey, argued that such initiatives need to be seen in a wider sociological context.
"Each community has its own social norms, its own mores which are part of how its members make sense of the world," she said.
"Technology isn't a passive tool. It reflects the social norms and the mores of the people who developed it.
"So, the results of any search come from the algorithms and databases of their cultural perspectives," she added.
"They may not speak to or reflect the identity or needs of the minority group, who would achieve much better results by developing their own system from the bottom-up rather than to use one imposed from the top-down," she continued.
Web ownership
For Bill Dutton, director of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), there is no doubt that the web is a divisive force.
"There's still a relationship between using the internet and socio-economic status," he said.
"Those that have higher socio-economic status tend to be more likely to be online; that's to do with having a PC in the home," said Mr Dutton. "That's a barrier."
Research in the early 90s by the OII suggested that those living in "distressed" inner-city areas tended to feel that in using the web they were using someone else's technology.
"With web use becoming more common among younger people, there is a greater sense of ownership," he said.
Also, he added, there was no doubt that the web was getting more representative as it started to include more languages.
Search engines such as Google and Yahoo have already picked up on the trend towards more niche web use by providing the means to develop individual search engines via Custom Search and Search Builder sites.
Yahoo's BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) even allows developers to customise their own results ranking, and so create bespoke search engines which can reflect the needs and interests of a particular search community.
"If the web community at large becomes niche-centric, then community search, for those people, could be much more effective than Google or any other search engine, said media consultant Mihaela Lica.
But, she pointed out, community-based search sites face problems when pursuing a relatively narrow audience.
Ever-decreasing relevance, when drilling down within certain socio-demographic groups, is one factor.
Once an algorithm is developed to appeal effectively to one sociological group, further subdivisions within that group become an issue; between male and female searchers, or young and old searchers, for example.
Ms Lica said there were practical problems as sites letting their narrow groups help refine results. In the case of Rushmore Drive she said "How would they know that the user who gets involved in the rating, searching, refining process is actually a member of the black community?"
And, she added, those who believe in the unifying power of the web may baulk at the notion of "black" and "white" search results.
She said: "Online we have no colour - 'segregating' knowledge is not something that gets my vote. Search results should be unbiased and impartial."
nod to Murray Dick and Mark Ward
The genesis of the World Wide Web, in a Swiss laboratory, to serve a multi-national team of physicists, might lead many to think that the network is blind when it comes to race, sex, creed and colour.
But some sites are taking steps to address shortcomings in the way that the web serves some sectors of the population.
In October, Ask gave its search engine a fresh interface to help with its new-found focus on its core search audience, 60% of which were women.
In the US, a search site aimed squarely at black Americans, launched in April 2008.
Rushmore Drive's creator, Johnny Taylor, said search results can be more relevant to some social groups than to others. He cited the example of Type 2 diabetes, which predominantly affects Afro-Caribbean and Asian people.
He said: "If a user were to search for diabetes on Google, why would [Google] rank diabetes results as it pertains to black Americans early on in the result set, when only 14% of the US population is black?"
Results ranking
All search engines generate their results by looking at links leading to a webpage to get a sense of how important it is to web debate on that subject.
In such a set 'relevance' is a quantitative rather than a qualitative measure, and it is a short step from the 'wisdom of the crowds' to the 'tyranny of the majority'.
Said Mr Taylor: "People can affect change on Google, but the black population has less of an influence on Google to affect the result rankings."
With Rushmore Drive, said Mr Taylor, "it is more a matter of optimising the relevancy ranking based on one's cultural identity."
Rushmore Drive's editorial team seeks out sites relevant to the black community, and uses a unique algorithm which weights "black results" higher. It also exploits user feedback to tweak the relevance of results.
Aleks Krotoski, a social psychologist researcher at the University of Surrey, argued that such initiatives need to be seen in a wider sociological context.
"Each community has its own social norms, its own mores which are part of how its members make sense of the world," she said.
"Technology isn't a passive tool. It reflects the social norms and the mores of the people who developed it.
"So, the results of any search come from the algorithms and databases of their cultural perspectives," she added.
"They may not speak to or reflect the identity or needs of the minority group, who would achieve much better results by developing their own system from the bottom-up rather than to use one imposed from the top-down," she continued.
Web ownership
For Bill Dutton, director of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), there is no doubt that the web is a divisive force.
"There's still a relationship between using the internet and socio-economic status," he said.
"Those that have higher socio-economic status tend to be more likely to be online; that's to do with having a PC in the home," said Mr Dutton. "That's a barrier."
Research in the early 90s by the OII suggested that those living in "distressed" inner-city areas tended to feel that in using the web they were using someone else's technology.
"With web use becoming more common among younger people, there is a greater sense of ownership," he said.
Also, he added, there was no doubt that the web was getting more representative as it started to include more languages.
Search engines such as Google and Yahoo have already picked up on the trend towards more niche web use by providing the means to develop individual search engines via Custom Search and Search Builder sites.
Yahoo's BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) even allows developers to customise their own results ranking, and so create bespoke search engines which can reflect the needs and interests of a particular search community.
"If the web community at large becomes niche-centric, then community search, for those people, could be much more effective than Google or any other search engine, said media consultant Mihaela Lica.
But, she pointed out, community-based search sites face problems when pursuing a relatively narrow audience.
Ever-decreasing relevance, when drilling down within certain socio-demographic groups, is one factor.
Once an algorithm is developed to appeal effectively to one sociological group, further subdivisions within that group become an issue; between male and female searchers, or young and old searchers, for example.
Ms Lica said there were practical problems as sites letting their narrow groups help refine results. In the case of Rushmore Drive she said "How would they know that the user who gets involved in the rating, searching, refining process is actually a member of the black community?"
And, she added, those who believe in the unifying power of the web may baulk at the notion of "black" and "white" search results.
She said: "Online we have no colour - 'segregating' knowledge is not something that gets my vote. Search results should be unbiased and impartial."
nod to Murray Dick and Mark Ward
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Gasta Vertical Ad Network
As advertisers look for more ways to yield greater efficiency, going narrower but still with some scale means looking seriously at vertical ad networks.
Vertical ad networks are all the rage. If they aren't the toast of the town these days, they certainly are the talk of it.
However, vertical ad networks are nothing new. They are online advertising networks that have a particular focus. They aggregate a collection of sites together that have an affinity with one another and bring those "passion places" together in a way that provides advertisers meaningful scale without the uncertainty of a vast collection of unknown and dissimilar sites.
The appeal of a vertical ad network is first and foremost its focus. Second is the modicum of control it offers. As advertisers look for more ways to yield greater efficiencies and better accountability, going narrower but still with some scale means looking more seriously at vertical ad networks.
Travel Advertising Network is one such vertical, and company representatives gave the folks at the iMedia Agency Summit in La Quinta, Calif., a good look at what they are doing and why vertical ad networks are so important.
Travel Ad Network actually has the largest travel information audience in the world, with 19 million users worldwide (14 million in the U.S.). Notice that I did not say "travel" audience. This is an audience looking for information about traveling, be it destinations or transportation or boarding. This is not where they transact, according to Cree Lawson, founder/CEO, and Brian Silver, president. Their users are "in the aisles."
Why a vertical ad network?
The reason Travel Ad Network went this route was for three reasons: They listened to their clients who were demanding some level of transparency; they could get a better quality of advertiser; and they offered exclusive representation.
The guys from Travel Ad Network proceeded to deliver some valuable information in the form of a kind of Trivial Pursuit game. These questions and their answers make a terrific primer on vertical ad networks (particularly of the travel variety).
1. Are consumers different at vertical ad networks than horizontal ad networks? No. The reason advertisers should use vertical ad networks is not necessarily because the audiences there are so different than horizontal ad networks, but because those audiences are more engaged. As Lawson and Silver pointed out during their Spotlight presentation, people found in either horizontal or vertical ad networks are equally diverse. But those found within the confines of a vertical network have a higher degree of engagement and specialization. They are in their passion places.
2. Which ad supported property is in comScore's Buying Power Index top 10 list? Yes, Yahoo is there. But at the very top is Travel Ad Network, with a BPI of 280. That means that the average person found within Travel Ad Network has 2.8 times more buying power than the average person online.
3. What percentage of brands that advertise in verticals are endemic versus non-endemic? It turns out a lot more non-endemic advertising is going on. Just to give you a sense of what is meant by this: Less than 25 percent of advertising in a travel magazine is from travel product advertisers.
4. How many visits to travel sites does the average consumer make before booking a trip? Twenty-two. Before you click that "buy" button to book your airfare or hotel, chances are you've been to sites 22 times. That doesn't mean you've been to 22 sites, but you have made 22 different trips online before making your decision. It turns out that 15 percent of people don't know where they are going when they start planning, and 39 percent don't know when they will be traveling. This provides ample opportunity to talk to people in the questing frame of mind, to inform their seeking.
5. How much has the share of total page views changed for travel agencies in the last two years? It's down 15 percent. With all the information out there, people are starting to go around booking engines to find out what they want to know, and then pop onto that booking engine at the last minute to get the transaction done. If you are looking for an audience that is a travel audience, or has affinity with it, there are many chances to message that audience before they get to buy.
6. How much of every dollar spent online is spent on travel/travel products? Forty-four percent. That's right, $.44 of every dollar is spent on travel. This does not mean that travel makes up the bulk of the transactions. As someone in the audience pointed out, the dollars per transaction for travel are much higher than they are for, say, books. But all that means is that the online travel buyer is someone comfortable with spending a good deal of money online. The point here is that verticals are good for those "spending" audiences.
Vertical ad networks, like any ad network, may consist of a lot of sites an advertiser has never heard of. But if the audience they are looking for has, and that audience is at those sites, it makes sense to be there when the audience is there. You may not recognize the cover of the book, but if the book is being read, isn't that all that matters?
Jim Meskauskas
Vertical ad networks are all the rage. If they aren't the toast of the town these days, they certainly are the talk of it.
However, vertical ad networks are nothing new. They are online advertising networks that have a particular focus. They aggregate a collection of sites together that have an affinity with one another and bring those "passion places" together in a way that provides advertisers meaningful scale without the uncertainty of a vast collection of unknown and dissimilar sites.
The appeal of a vertical ad network is first and foremost its focus. Second is the modicum of control it offers. As advertisers look for more ways to yield greater efficiencies and better accountability, going narrower but still with some scale means looking more seriously at vertical ad networks.
Travel Advertising Network is one such vertical, and company representatives gave the folks at the iMedia Agency Summit in La Quinta, Calif., a good look at what they are doing and why vertical ad networks are so important.
Travel Ad Network actually has the largest travel information audience in the world, with 19 million users worldwide (14 million in the U.S.). Notice that I did not say "travel" audience. This is an audience looking for information about traveling, be it destinations or transportation or boarding. This is not where they transact, according to Cree Lawson, founder/CEO, and Brian Silver, president. Their users are "in the aisles."
Why a vertical ad network?
The reason Travel Ad Network went this route was for three reasons: They listened to their clients who were demanding some level of transparency; they could get a better quality of advertiser; and they offered exclusive representation.
The guys from Travel Ad Network proceeded to deliver some valuable information in the form of a kind of Trivial Pursuit game. These questions and their answers make a terrific primer on vertical ad networks (particularly of the travel variety).
1. Are consumers different at vertical ad networks than horizontal ad networks? No. The reason advertisers should use vertical ad networks is not necessarily because the audiences there are so different than horizontal ad networks, but because those audiences are more engaged. As Lawson and Silver pointed out during their Spotlight presentation, people found in either horizontal or vertical ad networks are equally diverse. But those found within the confines of a vertical network have a higher degree of engagement and specialization. They are in their passion places.
2. Which ad supported property is in comScore's Buying Power Index top 10 list? Yes, Yahoo is there. But at the very top is Travel Ad Network, with a BPI of 280. That means that the average person found within Travel Ad Network has 2.8 times more buying power than the average person online.
3. What percentage of brands that advertise in verticals are endemic versus non-endemic? It turns out a lot more non-endemic advertising is going on. Just to give you a sense of what is meant by this: Less than 25 percent of advertising in a travel magazine is from travel product advertisers.
4. How many visits to travel sites does the average consumer make before booking a trip? Twenty-two. Before you click that "buy" button to book your airfare or hotel, chances are you've been to sites 22 times. That doesn't mean you've been to 22 sites, but you have made 22 different trips online before making your decision. It turns out that 15 percent of people don't know where they are going when they start planning, and 39 percent don't know when they will be traveling. This provides ample opportunity to talk to people in the questing frame of mind, to inform their seeking.
5. How much has the share of total page views changed for travel agencies in the last two years? It's down 15 percent. With all the information out there, people are starting to go around booking engines to find out what they want to know, and then pop onto that booking engine at the last minute to get the transaction done. If you are looking for an audience that is a travel audience, or has affinity with it, there are many chances to message that audience before they get to buy.
6. How much of every dollar spent online is spent on travel/travel products? Forty-four percent. That's right, $.44 of every dollar is spent on travel. This does not mean that travel makes up the bulk of the transactions. As someone in the audience pointed out, the dollars per transaction for travel are much higher than they are for, say, books. But all that means is that the online travel buyer is someone comfortable with spending a good deal of money online. The point here is that verticals are good for those "spending" audiences.
Vertical ad networks, like any ad network, may consist of a lot of sites an advertiser has never heard of. But if the audience they are looking for has, and that audience is at those sites, it makes sense to be there when the audience is there. You may not recognize the cover of the book, but if the book is being read, isn't that all that matters?
Jim Meskauskas
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