Ask Sponsored Listings, a division of Ask.com (itself a subsidiary to IAC) has acquired Sendori, a startup that introduced interesting advertising exchange technology about two years ago that enabled advertisers to purchase direct navigation traffic generated by top tier domain names, bypassing PPC advertising providers like Google and Yahoo when it comes to monetizing parked domains.
Sendori… → Read More
Barry Diller’s InterActiveCorp announced a minor enhancement to the demographic and behavioral ad targeting available across its sites today—something it is calling “Audience Cubes.” Advertisers can now run ads targeted at different demographic slices including 18 to 34-year olds, sports fans, homeowners, and parents on 26 IAC sites (Citysearch, Evite, Match.com, Ticketmaster… → Read More
IAC reported first quarter earnings this morning, and broke out the financials of what the new IAC would like after the pending five-way breakup of the company is completed. (A March court victory against dissenting shareholder Liberty Media clears the way for the spin offs). What’s clear from the financial statements is that the new IAC very much owes its 22 percent jump in revenues and 15… → Read More
Barry Diller won a court battle today against Liberty Media’s John Malone. Now Diller can finally go ahead with his plan to break up InterActive Corp. into five pieces—HSN, Ticketmaster, Lending Tree, Interval International, and the new IAC (Ask.com, Bloglines, Citysearch, Evite, iWon, Match.com, BustedTees, Vimeo, GarageGames, and CollegeHumor). Malone, IAC’s largest shareholder… → Read More
Rumors last week that Ask, the IAC-owned search engine, was about to cut 100 jobs overestimated the body count. In fact, Ask is trimming 40 jobs, or about 8 percent of its workforce. Newly appointed CEO Jim Safka, who replaced Jim Lanzone, is also going to refocus the brand to go after women in their late 30s and older, who already make up a disproportionate amount of Ask’s users (65… → Read More
While Google dominates the top slot in search both in the U.S. and worldwide, with a global search market share of 62 percent, there is still a lot of elbowing going on below, especially when you look beyond the U.S. In a comScore ranking of the top-10 global search engines as measured by number of searches during the month of December, 2007, Yahoo comes in at a distant No. 2 with only 13 percent… → Read More
Just in time for the Super Bowl and ahead of IAC’s breakup, Ticketmaster has struck a deal to acquire online ticket scalper TicketsNow for $265 million. This follows eBay’s acquisition of StubHub for $310 million last year. TicketsNow is the second-largest online ticket scalper after StubHub, having sold $200 million worth of tickets in 2006. Sources tell us Ticketmaster first looked… → Read More
In late October we reported on well placed rumors that IAC was in talks to acquire movie-centered social network Flixster. Those discussions reportedly stalled, likely over IAC’s preferred deal structure (partial buyout with an option for the rest) and/or Flixster’s declining traffic and visitor count. Now perhaps, those discussions are back on track. One source says the deal is done. → Read More
Liberty Media has acquired a controlling stake in online retailer and fitness website Bodybuilding.com for $100 Million. Bodybuilding.com sells a broad range of fitness supplements, clothing and supplies as well as offering general fitness articles and a social networking service where over 100,000 users swap exercise goals or post pictures. According to comScore, Bodybuilding.com had around 2… → Read More
IAC got serious about its Ask property this year, investing $100 million in the United States alone on a bizarre “Ask the Algorithm” campaign that even sunk to the depths of using the Unabomber as a marketing tool. Unfortunately for good taste there’s nothing like a bit controversy to draw attention to a service and Ask’s traffic was up this year, proving once again perhaps… → Read More
Jakob Lodwick, the co-founder of IAC owned video site Vimeo, left the company today. The reason? Apparently Lodwick didn’t see eye to eye with the IAC brass on creative issues, and specifically had a run in with IAC chief Barry Diller three weeks ago. That’s not surprising, given the picture Lodwick chose to include with his goodbye post. A source close to Lodwick says “he was… → Read More
IAC is planning on spending $100 million on new ventures in China and is also looking to launch a Chinese version of Ask.com According to the Wall Street Journal, IAC CEO Barry Diller said the new push into China would involve something that is “unique” and does not compete directly with existing players. The IAC owned travel site eLong has not be doing well in China, with Diller… → Read More
Barry Diller is finally streamlining his life by deconglomerating IAC. The Internet giant (with quarterly revenues of $1.5 billion) announced this morning that it will break up into five separate companies, each one publicly traded. They will be: —HSN (the Home Shopping Network, both TV and online) —Ticketmaster —Lending Tree —Interval International (a marketplace for vacation timeshares… → Read More
After sprucing up Ask.com earlier last summer, parent company IAC began spending $100 million this year on marketing to raise awareness of the Ask brand. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been seeing a lot of Ask.com ads on TV lately. (And I pretty much only watch TiVo, yet they are so ubiquitous that they still catch my eye as I fast-forward through the commercials). So how is that ad… → Read More
iWon, the site owned by IAC that attracts people with the promises of instant prizes, is revamping it’s look, going from a very 1.0 portal to a Flashy, casual-games site, complete with spinning wheels, slots, and lots of bright colors. The games are also now going to become widgetizable so they can live on people’s Facebook or MySpace pages. (And you thought you could avoid the shrill… → Read More
A strong second quarter by IAC saw a 78% increase in profits, mostly driven by assets sales and reduced costs. The positive headline results did not flow through to the struggling 4th ranked search engine Ask.com, which saw a decline in revenues. The second quarter decline comes despite a $100 million Crispin, Porter + Bogusky advertising campaign that should be resulting in increased traffic and… → Read More
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