Google agreed to buy YouTube today for $1.65 billion in stock. In the conference call it was apparent from both Eric and Sergey’s comments (Sergey mentioned MySpace, Facebook, and Orkut by name), that YouTube is ushuring in the next generation of the internet: one that leverages social networks and video.
Google video will remain as a stand alone with even tighter integration with the main google services. I will be watching Google’s page creator as well as their Google personalized home pages. These were not mentioned specifically in the call, but I suspect they are robust entries for GOOG to expand into social networking.
The next generation internet is here is and it is socially networked media. Yahoo!, MSN, and MySpace, look out.
8 months after Rocketboom’s successful ebay auction, word from AdAge today is that 118 advertisers have lined up for a cable TV advertising auction powered by eBay.
Originally dreamed up March 2005 by Wal-Mart SVP-Marketing Communications Julie Roehm at her former post at Chrysler Group, Adage reports the auction is being seeded with $50m in Walmart ads.
Congrats to RB for seeing the trend early and capitalizing on it.
The ad trials are being set up for demonstration next month with an estimated launch in the first quarter of 2007. eBay’s site is located at Admarketpilot.com.
There will be two trading systems to serve both buyer and seller. The Buyer’s format sounds like it will be an RFP format from selected sellers. A marketer can set a start and end date for the trade. Anonymity will be kept during the bid process with the winner and winning bid being revealed at close.
The second system would be one for sellers. Available inventory would be posted and buyers would bid on the package.
This opinion piece ran in the local paper
I thought it would be a good launching point since they have been pretty critical of our efforts since- it must be nice to buy ink by the barrel!
