Marketing

Despite widespread belief it would dig deeper into its pockets if necessary to land Yahoo, Microsoft has no plans to sweeten its offer for the Web portal, according to published reports. Microsoft sees no reason to boost its bid at this time, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing unnamed ...

Seeking to tap deeper into a key demographic for advertisers, Yahoo on Monday launched Shine, a Web site meant to become an Internet starting point for women between the ages of 25 and 54. Shine will offer content licensed from publishers such as Conde Nast and Hearst in nine categories, including f...

Will you add me? Have you written on my wall? Are we LinkedIn? Social networks are not only changing the way we speak to our friends, they are influencing our actions and behaviors. There is no question that social networks are becoming the networking standard as e-mail replaced snail mail years ago...

Yahoo shares moved higher by more than 3 percent Tuesday after an analyst upgraded the stock, suggesting that Microsoft was likely to sweeten its offer for the Web portal. Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney upgraded Yahoo shares to a buy on Monday, arguing that the strategic value of Yahoo made a more l...

Content and advertising have enjoyed a longstanding, symbiotic, codependent relationship -- although not necessarily in the unhealthy sense of the word. Content publishers need advertisers to pay the bills while advertisers simultaneously need content to create traffic they hope to draw to their goo...

From our lobby windows, I can see the ongoing construction of the much-hyped Trump International Hotel & Tower. It is slated to be 96 floors tall upon completion, and with its sleek, stainless steel facade and glassy, closed curves, it will be the perfect complement to the city's ubiquitous skyl...

That's it. Dim the lights and start counting your pennies -- if you haven't already begun. We're officially in a recession, according to Warren Buffett, or headed into one, as everyone and their mothers seem to be saying. E-tailers shouldn't panic when conducting business during slower economic peri...

Microsoft announced it will buy advertising management solutions provider Rapt, moving to help smaller online publishers cash in on the growth of online ads just a day after Google launched a service to do the same thing. Rapt provides what it calls "advertising yield management solutions" -- produc...

Executives from Microsoft and Yahoo reportedly met face-to-face earlier this week but apparently did not make significant progress on a deal for the software giant to purchase the struggling Web portal. Citing unnamed sources close to the deal, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the meetin...

Search engine optimization experts pretty much agree that there are a few important steps to improving your search engine rankings and, surprisingly, no technical knowledge is required for any of them. Step No. 1: Incorporate keywords into the title tag. This is the number one factor in achieving hi...

In an early sign of the expanded presence Google intends to have in the online ad world now that it has closed on DoubleClick, the search giant Thursday launched a Web advertising management tool aimed at smaller publishers. The company formally announced Google Ad Manager after several months in te...

Time Warner's AOL will buy the social network Bebo for $850 million in cash, acquiring a worldwide user base of 40 million as well as a developer-friendly platform. Bebo was known to be shopping for a buyer, but the move came as something of a surprise because the social networking site already has ...

Have you watched the news lately? "Credit markets deteriorate." "Housing foreclosures at 25 year high." "Unemployment on the rise." "Weakest U.S. dollar in decades." "Consumer confidence declining." It's pretty clear there could be some nasty surprises for businesses, and marketers in particular, i...

Think of this scene: A woman walks into a high-end department store on Fifth Avenue. As she enters, a salesperson rushes up to her, shouting: "Welcome back, Ms. Smith. Last time you were here, you bought some makeup. I bet you want to buy some perfume today, right?" Web-based commerce has made mass...

The European Commission has given its long-awaited blessing to Google's proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of online advertising company DoubleClick. Coming nearly a month ahead of an established April 2 deadline, the decision rested on the EC's findings that the merger would not hurt consumers or im...