Too much inventory: Internet advertising is over-rated and here's a look at the future.

"We think that a modest amount of advertising is the right thing because that's going to drive atypical results for marketers."

Web site's formula for success: TV content with fewer ads
By Brian Stelter
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
"THUMBS up" and "thumbs down" ratings for commercials. Choose-your-own-advertisement options before shows begin. Interactive games during advertising breaks.
In the last year these online advertising innovations have been popularized by Hulu, the online video Web site that will celebrate its first anniversary on Wednesday. For all that has been written about Hulu's easy-to-use, aesthetically pleasing interface, the advertising experience is equally important.
In the place of the long commercial pods that TV viewers have become accustomed to, only one ad is shown during each segment break on Hulu. Fewer ads make the ones on the site more memorable, Hulu executives say, allowing the site to charge higher prices for the ad units.
"The notion that less is more is absolutely playing out on Hulu," Jason Kilar, the chief executive of the site, said. "This is benefiting advertisers as much as it is benefiting users."
While Hulu was not the first site to serve up full-length television shows or create new advertising units, it now dominates the emerging market for ad-supported TV and movie streaming. It emerged in public beta form one year ago with 10 advertisers, made its official debut in March, and now counts more than 100 sponsors, from General Motors to Old Spice.
The site has grown steadily, providing 142 million streams to 6.3 million unique viewers in September, Nielsen Online reported last week. Hulu is now the sixth-most-popular online video brand in the United States, surpassing the online video networks operated by ESPN, CNN, MTV and Disney. (It ranks far below YouTube, which streams 20 times as many videos as any other brand in the United States, and behind sites owned by Yahoo, Fox, MSN and Nickelodeon.)
With a library of more than 1,000 television series and 400 feature-length films, Hulu attracts a wider audience than individual network Web sites or competitors like Veoh and Joost. Recently, the site's biggest hurdle has been a shortage of advertising amid a sudden increase in video viewing. The cause? "Tina Fey happened to do an unbelievably good impression of Sarah Palin," Kilar said, referring to the "Saturday Night Live" skits lampooning the Republican vice presidential nominee.
Buzz about the sketches drove millions to view them online. The first skit about Palin, on Sept. 13, was viewed 14.3 million times on Hulu and NBC.com and watched by 10.2 million on television. The second sketch, on Sept. 27, has been viewed 11.1 million times on the site after being watched by 7.9 million on TV. While the comparisons are inexact because online viewers could be watching more than once, "Saturday Night Streamed" may seem a more apt title for the show.
At the same time that "Saturday Night Live" helped spike Hulu's traffic, the fall premieres of many popular TV shows attracted more visitors. To match the advertising inventory to the rapid growth in video views, "we now have to go back out into the marketplace very quickly," Kilar said.
While the site, a joint venture of NBC Universal and News Corporation, is reportedly not yet profitable, it has won over many advertising executives. "I've been waiting for this for 10 years," Greg Smith, the chief operating officer of Neo@Ogilvy, an interactive agency of the Ogilvy Group, told Kilar during a product demonstration last November.
Smith now uses the site regularly. "Hulu takes TV content, which is the best long-form video content there is — the Web has yet to come up with something as good — and it just breaks it out of the tyranny of the schedule," he said in an interview.
In a customer survey commissioned by Hulu and conducted by Insight Express in July and August, 76 percent of nearly 18,000 respondents said that the site had the right amount of ads given the can't-be-beat cost of viewing (free). Just over 17 percent said there was less advertising than they expected. The survey also found a 22 percent bump in advertiser message association and a 28 percent increase in intent to purchase among users.
Kilar is an advocate of the fewer-ads approach. The half-hour comedies that are so popular on Hulu — "Family Guy" from Fox and "The Office" from NBC — have an average of eight minutes of commercial time on TV. On Hulu, where the sitcoms are especially popular, each show averages about two minutes of ads.
"We think that a modest amount of advertising is the right thing because that's going to drive atypical results for marketers," Kilar said. He said the site had no plans to increase the advertising load.
As effective as the ads may be, it must be hard to resist adding more. ABC, a unit of the Walt Disney Company, conducted focus groups with consumers last summer to gauge potential changes to the advertising load on its video Web site. The company is now analyzing the focus group findings, a spokeswoman said.
ABC.com was the first network Web site to introduce full-episode streaming in 2006. Research by ABC last January found that the one-ad-per-segment format resulted in a 54 percent ad recall rate. ABC and the other broadcast networks now make the recent episodes of almost every TV series available for streaming. NBC put the season premieres of "30 Rock" and other shows online a week before they were shown on TV this season.
Despite all the experimentation, it is still difficult to know exactly how many viewers are watching individual TV shows and movies online. Hulu ranks its most popular content, but unlike YouTube it doesn't show the view count for each video. Still, it is clear that millions of viewers are watching some shows online. The Season 3 premiere of "Heroes" in September was streamed 8.1 million times on Hulu and NBC.com, according to the network. (All online streams are not counted as equal, because on NBC.com each segment of an episode is counted as a stream, so a full episode could count as six streams. On Hulu, one episode equals one stream.)
It is easier to count the click-through rates for the video ads. On ABC.com, nearly one in four users participate when the ads are interactive, the network said. On Hulu, companies like Nissan have offered multiple versions of commercials for viewers to choose. The site is also experimenting with longer-form advertisements, sometimes letting users choose to watch a movie trailer in place of a 30-second spot.
Hiccups remain, Smith said, noting that technology sometimes limits innovation. "I'm still getting the same spot five times in an hourlong program sometimes," he said. "If I stop watching a movie and come back a few days later, it remembers where I stopped, which is great, but I wish it would remember which spots I was exposed to."
In a glimpse of the future of ad feedback, Hulu users are encouraged to click buttons indicating whether they like or dislike each ad they see. "As we collect more and more data, we can personalize the ad experience for you," Kilar said.

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Death by a thousand cuts: cost cutting and moral stress at the NYT and the IHT

This article in the IHT, To survive, net start-ups slow their metabolism, spoke of a web company director saying how wave after wave of lay offs was bad for morale, and this time round, he had cut a third of his staff.

Firing people is one of the reasons I got out of the corporate world - what one person described as moral stress - so I don't say this lightly.


The NYT and the IHT has been relentlessly cutting its cost base for as long as I can remember, but as senior execs somehow, in someway try to juggle their 2009 budgets, I'd say, and I hate to do so, go for it


That is to say, if you're going to fire a lot of people, better to do it one go, NOT before Christmas (that is one of the great corporate cruel and unusual punishments) and then let the remaining people go on into 2009 not living in fear for their jobs. Better that, than death by a thousand cuts throughout 2009/2010 with an obvious impact on staff morale. And staff morale in many areas of the IHT, I am told, as recently as yesterday by someone on the business side, is NOT good. (Caveat emptor: that's ONE person's view.)

It's surprising how many companies don't get this, especially in businesses, like newspapers, where human input is so vital for the quality of product output.


To survive, net start-ups slow their metabolism
By Brad Stone and Claire Cain Miller
Monday, October 27, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO: Silicon Valley has always been a land of big, bold dreams. In the first Internet boom its start-ups either grew fast or died trying, sometimes spectacularly. The casualties of the bust, like Pets.com and Webvan, became legendary.
In this downturn, say investors and entrepreneurs, start-ups are adopting a strategy that they hope will let them hang on instead of flame out.
To preserve cash, many tech start-ups are rushing to lay off employees and cut expenses. They are shelving their dreams of Google-size riches and getting small, humble and thrifty, all with the more modest goal of surviving the coming economic winter.
Once upon a time, an unprofitable Internet start-up like Zivity, a social site that revolves around photos of models, might have turned into just another dot-bomb. Though it has paltry revenues and just 20,000 registered users, the company pays only $8,000 a month to rent its offices in San Francisco and has received $8 million from investors. This month it laid off 8 of its 22 employees — saving enough money to stay alive through 2011 and survive even a prolonged recession.
"We think we have a valuable product," said Cyan Banister, Zivity's co-founder. "We should be able to weather the storm."
Even in normal economic times, a majority of start-ups fail. But the same factors that have made it so easy to create Web 2.0-style start-ups — low fixed costs, access to inexpensive overseas programmers and cheap ways to advertise online — also make it relatively easy for even faltering companies to cut back their operations to the bare minimum and hang on through a slump.
Web start-ups "don't fail in the same way they used to fail," said Brad Burnham, a partner at the venture capital firm Union Square Ventures, adding that the previous generation of Internet companies lived hard and died young. Knowing when to pull the plug on the current crop of more frugal companies is now "different, more subtle, more problematic," he said. "They don't run into a wall."
The Web companies in this new generation are so efficient with capital that venture capitalists "may not have the plug in our hand," Burnham said.
The only certainty in Silicon Valley is that survival is quickly becoming more challenging. The growth in online display advertising, which helps fuel the new Internet ecosystem, is declining. Venture capitalists and other investors in start-ups, like hedge funds, are cutting back. The market for initial public offerings remains closed and potential acquirers — Google, Yahoo and the rest — are deep in their own problems. Many entrepreneurs and deal makers agree that a shake-out is indeed coming.
Venture capitalists have begun preaching frugality, urging the start-ups they have invested in to cut costs and get profitable. Their advice shares themes: cut employees, do not count on raising more money and move quickly.
The entrepreneurs appear to be listening. AdBrite, an online advertising network in San Francisco that raised $35 million in venture capital, recently laid off one-third of its staff, or 40 employees, to get to profitability next year. The company's chief executive, Iggy Fanlo, ran the e-commerce site Shopping.com during the first dot-com bust, and he said he recalled how wave after wave of layoffs sank morale.
"I had gone through this before and we had death by a thousand cuts," Fanlo said. "I wanted to credibly look people in the eye this time and say we are profitable."
Every day seems to bring a new round of layoffs. In the last two weeks, the music site Imeem, the social search site Mahalo, the visual search engine Searchme, the real estate site Zillow, the Internet radio site Pandora and the social network Hi5 all cut as much as a quarter of their employees.
For many entrepreneurs, the lone goal has become survival. At Seesmic, a video blogging service, the day of reckoning — when it runs out of the $6 million it raised in May — will come in three years. To make the money last, Loïc Le Meur, the chief executive, recently laid off seven employees, or one-third of his staff, and cut all projects not directly related to the video service.
"If I can't make this work in three years it will be a failure," Le Meur said. "If I can and I get through this, it will be much stronger."
Even companies with less than stellar track records and revenues say they can live through a protracted slump.
Lala, a music site based in Palo Alto, California, has scrapped two music services and recently began a third site in conjunction with the major labels. The company raised $35 million three years ago and, thanks to financial prudence, has $20 million in the bank. It recently delayed plans to double its staff and it put its excess office space up for sublet.
Lala's founder, Bill Nguyen, expressed a measure of relief at the chill in the Valley. "This whole economic crisis allows me not to have to grow," he said. "I view this as a free hall pass."
That wholesale resetting of expectations might be the biggest change to settle over Silicon Valley. Instead of aiming for blockbuster public offerings or market-shaking acquisitions, most entrepreneurs now just want to endure. But if not enough people use these start-ups' services and revenue does not grow fast enough to attract potential acquirers, mere survival may not look so good.
At Faraday Media, a Palo Alto start-up that is trying to create a personalized version of the Internet for its users, there is no revenue, no office space (the five employees work from their homes) and little chance of raising any capital from the newly miserly angel investors who would otherwise support a start-up of its size.
Chris Saad, Faraday Media's founder, said the company saw no reason to give up. "We are committed to the idea that the company and technology we are building is fundamentally going to reshape the Web," he said. "We are committed to investing our time into this for as long as it takes."
If these skeletal start-ups do succumb to the downturn, firms like Sherwood Partners, which specializes in bankruptcy consulting and shutting down companies, will be waiting. Sherwood Partners has not yet had the kind of activity it witnessed during the last bust, but Martin Pichinson, a partner at the company, is preparing for a burst of new business as many start-ups acknowledge that just because they can survive does not mean they should.
Failing start-ups "are already out there, and we are starting to close some of them, when investors say it needs to be done," Pichinson said.

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Problems for new digital businesses.

If someone came to you with a business plan based on the idea of complete strangers lending and borrowing money from one another over the Internet, how would you respond?

Renaud Laplanche, the founder of Lending Club, a start-up that facilitates borrowing between members of social networks.

Internet lending sites come under stress
By Brad Stone
Thursday, October 16, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO: It was one of the most audacious ideas of the Web 2.0 boom - that people could lend money to other people over the Internet and cut out the middlemen - also known as traditional banks.
Over the past three years, Internet start-ups with names like Prosper, Lending Club, Zopa and Loanio have all pursued that goal.
Together, these companies were on pace to broker about $150 million in loans this year, a 50 percent increase from 2007, according to the Online Banking Report, a financial industry newsletter.
But this so-called peer-to-peer lending, which until recently seemed as if it might offer a reliable source of money in this calamitous economic environment, is now experiencing a squeeze of its own.
On Wednesday, the largest U.S. peer-to-peer lending site, Prosper, based in San Francisco, stopped allowing lenders to make new loans. It said it needed to wait while the Securities and Exchange Commission evaluated its regulatory filings. Monthly loan volumes at the company have been declining since the credit crisis worsened several months ago.
Prosper, which is unprofitable after raising $40 million in venture capital, now faces the damaging possibility that lenders might pull their money from the site instead of waiting for the SEC to allow lending to resume. That could take several months.
"Regulatory agencies seem to want to make sure they have all this understood before it gets too big," said Jim Bruene, editor of the Online Banking Report. "This is definitely going to slow peer-to-peer lending down."
There are other signs of trouble as well. Last week, Zopa, based in London, closed its Web site for the United States, citing "extremely difficult consumer credit circumstances." Zopa continues to maintain lending sites in Britain, Italy and Japan.
The problems in this fledgling corner of the finance world come at a particularly bad time. As traditional lenders hoard cash and shun even dependable borrowers, peer-to-peer lending sites could have offered an alternate source of credit and, in some cases, lower interest rates.
On Prosper, for example, interest rates on three-year fixed loans are set in a format resembling an auction. Borrowers publicly disclose the amount they want to borrow, their credit histories and some personal details (stories of hardship and photographs of cute pets sometimes help).
Lenders compete to offer these people cash, and Prosper collects a fee on each loan.
Prosper's founder and chief executive, Chris Larsen, speaking Monday just before the company unexpectedly entered the quiet period mandated by the SEC, said peer-to-peer lending recalls an age when borrowers and lenders knew each other personally.
"This is the big trend right now; Wall Street firms are becoming banks again and getting back to their roots," he said. "Peer-to-peer lending is the simplest form of pure banking there is."
But Prosper and its cohorts are encountering some very modern hurdles. Last April, Lending Club, a start-up based in Sunnyvale, California, that facilitates borrowing between members of social networks like Facebook, asked the SEC for permission to create a secondary marketplace - a place on its site where lenders could resell their loans and cash out before the end of a loan's three-year life cycle.
According to Renaud Laplanche, the founder and chief executive of Lending Club, the SEC surprised the company by asking whether it should have registered as a seller of securities before it started to broker loans. In response to those discussions, Lending Club stopped all new lending on its site for six months, frustrating its lenders, many of whom withdrew their cash.
"If we had a clean situation to start with, we probably could have registered the new offering while our current marketplace continued on," Laplanche said. On Tuesday, the SEC accredited Lending Club, and the site reopened.
On Monday, Larsen said he did not believe Prosper would need to follow the same arduous route, pointing out that Lending Club set the interest rates on its loans and was itself financing about half the overall loan volume on the site.
But on Tuesday, Prosper changed its mind and also filed to create a secondary marketplace, halting activity on Prosper.com. The company would not comment, citing the quiet period, but the painful step suggests that it, too, decided it needed to obtain proper registration from the SEC and avoid any legal ambiguity that could get it into regulatory trouble.
Even before lending on Prosper was halted, the much-hyped start-up appeared to be encountering some problems. Though the company says 7.9 percent more money has been lent on the site this year than last year by this time, the monthly total actually peaked in May and has been steadily declining ever since. The average loan amount on Prosper has also fallen 13 percent from last year, as lenders have become nervous about whether borrowers will repay loans.
Francis Vasquez, a 44-year-old lawyer in Vienna, Virginia, who has lent more than $186,000 on the site since January 2007, says one reason for those jitters is the high default rates on the site.
In his first four months on the site last year, for example, Vasquez said nearly 30 percent of his loans were in default or were four months late, costing him a 1.2 percent loss on his investment.
"I don't think there is a whole lot of trust on the site," he said, citing borrowers who never had any intention of paying back loans in the first place.
Many lenders, including Vasquez, have responded by seeking out more reliable kinds of borrowers in the top credit-score categories.
Indeed, prime borrowers accounted for 45 percent of the activity on the site in September, up from 30 percent a year earlier. But those borrowers, at least in normal economic times, have plenty of other places to raise cash.

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About.com

Please find below press release from the NYTCompany about not very interesting new stuff at About.com.

I'm not a heavy About.com user, it is has to be said. I've looked at it this year, out of interest, but I've never actually gone to it to find out About something. I wonder why this is? Must reflect more but I think they're are things that prevent me, conciously or subconciously.

a) they're not leveraging the NYT brand and no credibility equity has been transferred from my devotion to all things NYT to anything about.com;

b) the logo looks like its made by a graphic designer who doesn't know much about graphic design and to my particular eye says 'amateur', 'cheap' low quality citizen journalism;

c) the fact they only have 750 experts who are constantly referred to as 'REAL PEOPLE' unlike say, real academics, real researchers, real journalists or even real experts. (cf Wikipedia) Of those 750 experts only 20 of them have been named Forbes “Best of Web,” in 8 years. By industry standards this may be good but as a consumer it doesn't seem to be enough, for me at least. Of their 57 million users, only 8 million have thought the stuff good enough to subscribe. I know you can argue this is a very good conversion rate, as a business, but as a consumer it doesn't instill me with confidence.

d) any strapline that uses such a strong negative (Guidance. Not Guesswork.) usually leaves a take out that the lady doth protest too much and it isn't offering that much guidance - which is a weak abstract noun for a brand statement - and could well involve a fair amount of guess work;

e) an Internet business like this surely needs to be global and although I haven't done a thorough analysis of their topics or experts, my sense is that both are predominantly American focussed (e.g for example, and not a particularly good one, but you get the drift, there is no topic for Brazil or Australia but there is about Brazil and Australia Travel) and it's all in English. (Save About China)

f) the crappy advertising that pops up.

That all said it is one of the webs top 15 content sites, reaching 38 million unique visitors each month in U.S.* and 57 million globally.** (About.com metrics, bien sur).

Of those 19 million 'foreigners' who use it may I refer them to User Promise No. 5 of the About.com's 6 user promises, which is "We'll speak your language".

If you'd like to read more about About.com scroll down past the latest gripping installment from it's development and have a look at Channels and Topics, plus some other stuff.

About.com Health Expands Its Online Community with Calorie Count Groups
NEW YORK, Oct 14, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- About.com Health (www.about.com/health), which is among the top three consumer health Web sites in the U.S. (September 2008 Nielsen Online), announced today the launch of Calorie Count Groups, a free online social dieting network that allows members to connect and communicate about topics of interest, and motivate each other to achieve health and weight goals. Calorie Count Groups is the latest addition to About.com Health's Calorie Count Web site, which provides guidance and support to dieters, information on foods, exercise programs and dieting tools. Calorie Count passed the one million member mark in August.
"More and more people are embracing social dieting as an effective method of weight loss and maintenance," said Igor Lebovic, director, Calorie Count. "Calorie Count Groups allows members to benefit from the knowledge and experience of others and provides an environment through which they can share tips and lend support."
Using Calorie Count Groups, members can also create their own public or private groups and connect with people who share similar interests, live in nearby neighborhoods or have common goals. Thus far, approximately 26,000 Calorie Count members have joinedmore than 300 Groups in categories such as Motivation and Challenges, Foods and Cooking, and Losing or Gaining Weight, among others.
Since 2005, Calorie Count members have collectively lost over 1.3 million pounds - the equivalent of 85 adult elephants, nine Boeing 737 aircrafts and almost three Statues of Liberty.
About About.com
Founded in 1996, About.com is one of the Web's leading producers of original content. The site's expert Guides provide users with accurate and unbiased information to help them live happier, healthier and more successful lives.
In March 2005, About.com was acquired by The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT), a leading media company with 2007 revenues of $3.2 billion, which includes The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, 16 other daily newspapers, WQXR-FM and more than 50 Web sites, including NYTimes.com, Boston.com and About.com. The Company's core purpose is to enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment.
This press release can be downloaded from www.nytco.com
SOURCE: The New York Times Company
About.com Erica McDonald, 212-204-1724 emcdonald@about.com

READY FOR THE INTERNET LIKE NEVER BEFORE
About.com is an online neighborhood of hundreds of helpful experts, eager to share their wealth of knowledge with visitors.

Every month, over 60 million people* visit us for help with everything from health care and parenting issues to advice on travel, cooking, technology, hobbies and more. And we offer solutions in the form of over two million hand-crafted, original articles, recipes, product reviews, videos, tutorials and more.

All created by our network of expert 'Guides' - real people who, like all good neighbors, help others so that everyone's life gets just a little better.

Founded in 1996, About.com was acquired in March 2005 by The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT). Today, About.com is recognized as a top 15 content site and one of the largest producers of original content on the Web.

ABOUT.COM LEADS THE WAY

• About.com is America's single largest developer of original content on the Web. Offering almost 2 million pieces of original content spanning 21 diverse channels.



• Only About.com features expert Guides. With a network of 750 Guides, About.com provides practical solutions to everyday problems across thousands of topics. Consistently providing rich and relevant content and guiding key decision, Guides turn About.com into a trusted community.



• About.com is a top 15 content site. Reaching 38 million unique visitors each month in U.S.* and 57 million globally.**



• About.com is the answer or end result for many Internet searches as well as a "direct destination" for loyal users.
  About.com continually maintains its relevance to users.



• About.com covers 70,000 topics, and adds more than 6,000 pieces of new content each week.



• About.com offers a valuable contextual environment. Offering unique Guide-based content and a robust online experience, About.com provides a leading means for advertisers to surround their message with relevant content and is a powerful driver of an enhanced brand experience.

ABOUT.COM FINANCIALS

Source: http://www.nytco.com/pdf/annual_2007/mda.pdf

"The About Group principally generates revenues from display advertising, that is relevant to its adjacent content, cost-per-click advertising (sponsored links for which the About Group is paid when a user clicks on an ad), and e-commerce (including sales lead generation). Almost all of its revenues (95% in 2007) are derived from the sale of advertisements (display and cost-per-click advertising). Display advertising accounted for 51% of the About Group's total advertising revenues."

About.com accounted for just 3% (US$102.7 million) of the NYT Company's 2007 total revenues of US$3.195 billion. (By comparison the NYTMG - accounted for 64% - basically the NYT - and the NEMG - basically the Boston Globe - accounted for 19%; the Regionals delivered 14%.) That was a 28% increase over 2006 and 82% over 2005. So it's revenue base isn't far off the IHT in a good year, or more to the point and more exactly, the revenue base of the IHT isn't that far off About.com when the IHT has a good year.

The difference however is that the NYT paid cUS$50-70million dollars for 50% of the IHT but paid US$410 million for 100% of About.com in March 2005. At that time About.com had 57,000 topics and a library of 1.2 million pieces of content and had, according to Nielsen//NetRatings 29 million unique users nationally and 47 million worldwide in October 2005. Today those figures have increased (in 3 years) to 38 and 57 million respectively.

I'll leave you to judge:

a) whether you think those growth figures are good, bad or indifferent given the explosive growth rates we've seen in other Internet businesses, especially social-networking sites;

b) where the IHT could be today if that US$410 million had been poured into the IHT, iht.com, reporters, thickening the book and redesigning it and marketing it from March 2005.

Now let's take a look at the profitability of About.com

In 2007 it's costs were US$68 million, a profit of, give or take, US$ 34 million. That's not bad going on a revenue base of US$102 million and on that front, the IHT can't even touch it. In fact, I don't think the IHT has been profitable since it was fully acquired by the NYTCompany

However, the About.com cost trend isn't terrific. Up 37% over 2006, up 53% over 2005 and some would argue that the revenue growth, impressive as it may look (28% increase over 2006) was in fact off a low base and these big number revenue growth rates need to be continued for years to start getting near the print properties. And that is not a given.

There are of course a whole number of variables at play in these cost growths (compensation, content and amortization cost increases primarily due, we are told, to new initiatives and acquisition costs in 2007). What those acquisitions brought with them in increased revenue the NYT Company is less than clear on. They do say that the 2007 revenue increase was primarily due to increased ad revenue (from About.com or the new acquisitions the language does not make clear, saying that 'in addition, revenues increased due to the About.com acquisitions'.)

Alors, I could bang on about about but for now I have had about enough.

Feel free to explore many of the interesting subjects in the experts hands of REAL people.



About About.com Guidance. Not Guesswork

Channels

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