ZoomInfo Introduces Bizographics

Business information search engine ZoomInfo last week announced its plan to launch a bizographic platform. It is a website traffic analysis and advertising targeting platform based on individuals' "business demographics." The company plans to start small, making the bizographic targeting available to advertisers on the ZoomInfo web site. ZoomInfo expects to launch a full suite of related products next year.

ZoomInfo, which is known for its deep business content (profiles of 3.5 million companies and nearly 40 million professionals), has developed a proprietary mechanism for tracking and associating bizographic information (from industry to functional area to education) on business people in a non-personally identifiable way.

ZoomInfo expects this offering with help marketers target their online advertising based on the audience of a site instead of the content.

It's an interesting and timely offering, considering an ever increasing interest from advertisers to make the online channel an effective and profitable one. Still, regardless of the channel, advertisers and marketers are always looking for ways in which to reach their desired audience with the most relevant offers possible. This seems like a promising solution to many of the issues facing advertisers and marketers today. ZoomInfo is promising quick ROI for participating clients. They'll have a winner if they can deliver.

Zillow, Newspapers Form Extensive Partnership

Real estate website Zillow.com has formed a partnership with 11 newspaper publishing companies representing 282 newspapers across the U.S. that calls for the newspapers to feature their local classified advertising (for-sale listings and open house information) on the Zillow platform.

Local advertisers who place print and online listings with these newspapers will have the option to include those listings and open house ads on Zillow as well. It will certainly help them increase their reach, as Zillow boasts 4 million site visitors a month. According to Zillow, 70 percent of those individuals are in the process of buying or selling a home or plan to do so within the next year or two. While Zillow users will now have access to a much broader collection of listings as a result of this partnership, advertisers will also now be able to further enhance their online presence through real estate content and information on homes, neighborhoods and value trends courtesy of Zillow's technology.

The newspaper companies included in this partnership include Hearst Newspapers, Journal Register Company, The E.W. Scripps Company and The Day Publishing Company. Individual newspapers the companies publish include The San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, The Tampa Tribune and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Zillow and the newspapers expect to launch their collaboration during the first half of 2008. Additional companies are also expected to sign on before the official launch date.

Zillow has certainly made a lot of news lately and the announcement of this rather aggressive move is no exception. It continues to launch new products and services to attract a very active user base and this expansive partnership should only help draw even more users to the site. In such a short time--the site only launched in early 2006--Zillow has really gained a lot of credibility in the real estate marketplace as a reliable information source. Having the support of these major newspaper companies will further extend that credibility.

And, instead of competing against the newspapers for visitors' eyes, Zillow is creating a solid, unified source of real estate data for visitors across the country. The partnership will also help the newspapers in their efforts to remain on the cutting edge of technology. By relying more heavily on the Zillow platform, they will be assured that their real estate content and services will be as easy to access and use as possible, which should translate into an increase in web traffic and improved advertising sales results for all involved.

Value (Mis)judgement

A recent post in the TechCrunch blog described a decision by Technorati, a search engine for blogs, to drop content over six months old. What, may I gently inquire, are these folks thinking?

We'll leave aside the point that the cost of online storage is incredibly low and going lower. But even if disk space was expensive, for a search engine to voluntarily discard content that it has already invested in to collect and index is insanity. Like or it not, the business of search is becoming an all-or-nothing game. You either have all the content in your area of coverage or don't play.

This does put a spotlight on the issue of archive content, however. You may remember back a number of years ago when the newspaper industry decided its future was to give away current news for free, and charge for its archives. This model failed miserably, and the accepted wisdom since then has been "you can't sell your archives." This belief has been reinforced by the experiences of some magazine publishers as well.

But is it true that all this content that we build so expensively and guard so jealously has a "sell by" date? My belief is that archive content can be enormously valuable. The failed experiences to date generally reflect a combination of bad timing and bad merchandising.

What has held back the sale of archive content is: 1) a belief (real or imagined) that the same content can be obtained elsewhere online for free; 2) uncertainty about the value of what one is being asked to purchase; 3) price points that make a purchase decision difficult; 4) marketing efforts that range from subtle to passive; 5) the cumbersome mechanics of making a small a la carte purchase.

As it becomes increasingly evident that lots of information on the web doesn't stay readily and freely available forever, value perceptions of online content are increasing. Too, while a la carte access to archive content hasn't taken off, there are a growing number of publishers successfully making their archives available for unlimited access for an annual subscription price, often a hefty one. Combine this trend with this selling model and all the issues I cited above suddenly go away.

Archive content is growing in value every day, particularly if you organize it well and/or associate it with structured data content. Successful monetization seems largely a function of the right revenue model. The time is now to start tapping into an opportunity that is only going to grow. Gone, I hope, are the days when (true story) a publisher I know used to erase its archives in order to reclaim those oh-so-valuable ... floppy disks.

Labels: techcrunch, technorati

TechTarget Acquires KnowledgeStorm

TechTarget has acquired KnowledgeStorm Inc., a search resource that targets the needs of IT professionals and vendors. The purchase price was approximately $58 million, which included about $52 million in cash at closing and 359,820 shares of unregistered common TechTarget stock.

TechTarget will certainly benefit from an established base of those professionals and vendors. According to a press release announcing the deal, KnowledgeStorm boasts an active advertising client base of about 700, most of which will be new to TechTarget. KnowledgeStorm also attracts about 3.5 million visits per month from IT professionals.

TechTarget expects the acquisition to help increase its value among both IT professionals and vendors--and the company predicts that will happen rather quickly. Also in the press release, Greg Strakosch, chairman and CEO of TechTarget, said the company expects KnowledgeStorm to yield revenues of $12-$14 million and adjusted EBITDA of $4.5-$5.5 million during the first 12 months after the two firms are integrated. That integration should be complete by the end of the second quarter of 2008, according to Strakosch.

This deal shouldn't be surprising to anyone in the industry; and it certainly makes perfect sense for TechTarget to acquire an organization with such complementary services. In fact, just last month, TechTarget launched a new service very similar to those KnowledgeStorm provided in that it helps educate IT professionals on topics of interest. ITKnowledgeExchange.com is a user-generated content site that enables visitors to collaborate with each other on industry-related issues.

The combination of content and resources from both KnowledgeStorm and TechTarget should be win-win for the companies and the customers they serve (both content-seeking professionals and lead-seeking advertisers). Their universe just got a little larger; something both customer segments expect from their resources these days.

Zillow Launches New Ad Program

Real estate web site Zillow.com last month launched Zillow Home Direct Ads, a set of tools that will help advertisers identify and connect online with homeowners who are most likely contemplating a home-related purchase (such as moving or remodeling).

The backbone of the tool was created from Zillow's data: the web pages of more than 70 million homes that are visited by homeowners. Zillow Home Direct Ads is designed to help advertisers target ads to these homeowners by individual address, value of their home, psychographic cluster (such as urban families with children) or if they are planning to move.

The Home Direct Ads offering consists of four products: Home and Geographic Targeting (enables advertisers to target their online ads to visitors of a specific home's page on Zillow, similar to an offline direct mail campaign. Advertisers can target specific addresses, streets or ZIP codes.); Zestimate Value Targeting (by learning the Zestimate values of individual homes, advertisers can show their ads to specific home value sectors, by individual home or neighborhood); Move Predictor (Using data on homes for sale and traffic activity on a home's page views, Zillow can predict if a household is moving. This can enable appropriate service providers--such as financial institutions, cable providers and home improvement stores--to reach out to homeowners before they make any move-related purchasing decisions), and Psychographic Clusters (Advertisers can choose to target households that are comprised of any of the 65 psychographic clusters identified by the U.S. census data.)

While Zillow created Home Direct Ads for large advertisers, the company also offers Zillow EZ Ads for local and individual advertisers who want to create and buy ads to display in specific ZIP codes.

Regardless of their size, advertisers are always looking for new ways in which to reach their targeted audience. It's an enormous challenge for advertisers to understand the behaviors and motives of their potential customers in order for them to approach prospects with the right offer at the right time.

Zillow's new suite of tools provides this intelligence that advertisers truly need. If Zillow can deliver on the promise expected by its Home Direct Ads program and advertisers achieve ROI rather quickly, interest in this service will grow just as rapidly. Other online players should keep a sharp eye on this one as they assess the viability of their own online ad sales programs.