Dragon Media Online: Blog

I read a post on Paidcontent.org yesterday (here is the link : http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-done-with-google-american-airlines-targets-yahoo-with-trademark-lawsuit ) that got me thinking about the challenges and risks that Google’s initial decision to allow competing companies to bid on trade marked terms of their competitors and whether this might have an impact on the SEM Agencies and ultimately Google’s market.

Due to the rules that Google established that allow companies to bid on trademarked terms, until requested otherwise, a bidding frenzy was created for smart, small upstarts, and large forward thinking competitors.  For example today if you do a search on American Airlines within Google, there will be no advertising, but if you do a search on the key words United Airlines, there are multiple advertisers, though in this case United isn’t one of them, and therefore an SEM would recommend that United actually compete on this keyword, as they know that a large percentage of “search traffic” actually clicks on the paid placements versus the “organic” placements and therefore not bidding on your trade term decreases your audience opportunity.  Or, another option that American Airlines determined was appropriate, and Google ultimately agreed was to defend the trade mark and prohibit advertising on the trade term period.

I don’t know, but I believe at least 10 - 20% of Google’s revenue comes from trade term related bidding, not all terms are defensible or protected, so it may be less, but it definitely in my humble opinion is a material amount of Google’s revenue generated terms, as they are highly competitive.  I will not speculate further than this, but am curious about the actual percentage of revenue, the brands that know and those that will also pursue the legal strategy, and if there is potential for a greater amount of damage to Google than just the revenue?

My former colleague and friend Ben Straley has posted some very thoughtful and insightful stories on his companies blog. One is related to the ongoing discussion related to adnetworks versus ad exchanges. The other more recent piece is specifically related to Google’s recent press release related to their new Ad Planning tool.

Check them out here:

http://blog.reachmachines.com/

Really? Sir Martin Sorrell, the highly respected CEO of WPP Group, has moved from calling Google a “Frenemy” to “Froe.” What’s the difference between an enemy and a foe? Both are working against you, as far as I’m concerned. But hey, it’s a catchy tagline. I guess it’s not as bad as “staycation” - the latest creation of American media…

For more details on Sir Martin Sorrell’s latest thinking, click here to read Paidcontent’s take - which is a must read if you are doing anything online.

PubMatic just released their April AdPrice Index. The punchline is that Large Websites’ ad network sourced eCPM’s fell 52% from $0.38 in March to $0.18 in April. While a drop in one month a trend does not make (especially since small sites fared better while medium sites stayed even), it is another datapoint in the increasingly heated discussions centering around the effect on online marketing of a US slowdown (or recession as many like to call it). It could just simply signal a glut of inventory, since much of the weakness has been attributed to social networking sites. Full report and data here.

PHP/Web Developer

Dragon Media Online, Inc is a technology-enabled advertising company that provides best of breed online marketing services for its global advertiser clients and distribution partners in the international and multicultural marketplaces. Our clients’ and partners’ return on investment is maximized through our unparalleled client service focus, our selective relationships with top-tier partners and our proprietary DragonStar^TM technology platform. For more information, visit dragonmediaonline.com

Founded in 2005 by industry veterans, we have been profitable since inception and continue to grow rapidly while keeping a small company atmosphere. Our offices are conveniently located next to beautiful Lake Merritt in Oakland, two blocks from BART.

We are currently looking for an experienced PHP developer to join our dedicated team.

Must know Technologies

• PHP
• MySQL
• Linux
• XML
• Javascript
• (X)HTML
• AJAX

Helpful to know, able to learn

• PHP Object Oriented Programming
• MySQL Stored Procedures
• Subversion
• XSLT
• CSS
• Shell Scripting
• Webservices (SOAP, XML RPC, REST)
• Database abstraction layers like PDO and ADODB
• Smarty Template Language
• Server and Client Side Frameworks like JQuery and Zend Framework

Position Requirements

Strong PHP knowledge is a must, with a knowledge of PHP’s Object Oriented structure a great benefit. An understanding of Web Standards is also a must, you don’t have to be a CSS designer, but knowing how to build applications to make use of standards based CSS and XHTML is required. Strong knowledge of MySQL, SQL itself, and database design is recommended, as you’ll most likely be the architect of your applications from the database up. Knowing one’s way around a Linux environment is a must, but you’re not expected to be a system administrator (though understanding how to build PHP and related modules is helpful). General performance and scalability conscious design should be employed in all steps of development.

Job Functions

Responsible for maintenance of several legacy sites written in PHP. Will be working in a small team of other developers in building new applications for internal and external use. May be called upon periodically to do data mining and comparisons to help others in the company with reporting tasks.

The Ideal Candidate…

Is able to work independently and unsupervised. Has strong written and communication skills. Is well organized and able to respond to interruptions and a quick and efficient manner, while still remaining focused. Is able to identify the short, mid and long term components of a given project. Is able to work with other developers whether they work in the same office or from a remote location. Is familiar with current web technologies and techniques and is able to leverage these technologies in his/her own work. Is a good problem solver, especially when restricted by uncontrollable limitations.

What we offer
Dragon Media Online is headquartered in Downtown Oakland, two blocks from BART station (19th st. Station). We offer competitive salary, full benefit package including medical, dental and vision care insurance, 401K plan, bonus and equity plan.
Qualified candidates should send resume along with a sample code written in PHP to dragonmediaonline@gmail.com.

Golf is about efficiency, efficiency is about making intelligent choices to reduce the energy required to achieve the desired goal. In golf, as in business, accuracy, patience, and the ability to adapt are all critical to more efficient path to the desired result. In our business we’re focused on creating transactions that lead to new customers for our clients. In golf evaluating various information and then leveraging that information in an efficient way results in success.

In our business we’re investing in technology that enables this efficiency, rather than recognizing the lie (fairway, rough, behind a tree), distance (200, 150, 90 yds to the pin), pin placement (front, center, back), club distance (3 iron, 7 iron, or Pitching wedge), our technology recognizes the country, city, based on that it provides the appropriate language, intelligently makes adjustments to the creative based on behavioral information, delivers the appropriate message/call to action and in turn efficiently enables global consumers to become customers for our clients.

As the number of world wide consumers continues to grow and more and more of them adopt to the online world, efficiency in marketing to them will become more and more critical for marketers. We’re focused on building a solution that enables that.

Like so many growing companies in the market place we decided we needed an efficient way to communicate with the many constituencies that we work with. Over the past year we’ve been heads down and focused on developing our new technology platform, expanding our worldclass team, and building partnerships to be able to deliver on our vision of providing Advertisers with new customers from international markets. We’ve invested countless hours in developing new technology, building partnerships, and expanding our team to be able to support this effort. We’re very excited about the market opportunity and our prospects within the marketplace, we’re seeing predictable and sustainable growth within our company.According to Piper Jaffray non-US advertising is projected to grow at a CAGR of 27% and exceed $39 billion dollars by 2011. Needless to say this is a big opportunity for both advertisers as well as publishers. We’re building our business to support this growth. The majority of our partners today are US based companies that are looking to expand into non-US markets. If you as a publisher have non-US users/traffic/inventory that you’d like to monetize please let us know. Or if you’re an advertiser and would like to expand your market opportunity by reaching consumers in global markets, we’d be glad to help you. Global markets definitely have there own challenges and nuances that aren’t always obvious. The obvious ones are language barriers, and currency challenges. The less obvious ones are the many culture nuances that exist, and knowing how to navigate those from a marketing perspective.

Our team is global in experience, the majority of our staff has either lived abroad, has dual citizenship, or speaks at least two languages. Our technology platform is built with these global perspectives in mind.