Internet Search Engine Report
Z SCOUPE: July 1 - July 2, 1996
"Crunching the Big Apple"
Major search engines on the internet, including Excite,
Infoseek, and Yahoo (along with its recent acquisition, Alta Vista)
charge about $60 for every thousand times your ad banner
flashes across the screen in response to a specific keyword querry.
That may seem cheap, until you hear that the "click-through" rate
is less than 5 percent. But the search engineers are holding out on
committing to contracts of more than a year, because the future is
still uncertain. Nobody knows how many hits they'll be getting
twelve months down the line, but they're all very optimistic.
On the safe side, sites like Excite project pricing by building in
a 10% per month increase estimate, ostensibly erring on the side
of the advertiser.
But what if a hot new search engine comes along and makes
all these guys obsolete? There are no guarantees of future hits.
Will the search engine keyword real estate be the next
profit ground for entrepreneurs to stake their claims?
Keep an eye on what the search engineers do about selling
exclusivity to keyword searches. Currently, the most popular
words can't be monopolized. But search engine advertising
managers may find that in holding out, they lose the early
supporters who can provide necessary working capital.
Stay tuned to Znews for the shakeout...
Znews TRAVEL COMMENTARY:
Apple Jacks
Only in New York can you eat at a restaurant where all
the servers are twins. They joke around with eachother,
talk at the same time, reveal tidbits and secrets about
life together, and generally play up their Twin-ness. And the
plaid-dressed owners, a couple of generation x-ers who stop
by the tables for a double-talking chat, well, they're just too
much. Twins is on the upper east side. No after dinner mints,
just Doublemint gum.
And what's up with K-9s in "The City?" Dogs are all over the
place in New York. There may even be twin dogs at Twins
restaurant. Estimates peg the NY dog population at about
700,000. Officially, there are 175,000 licensed dogs, some of
which are not walked by their loving owners, but by professional
dog walkers, who earn about $20 per walk. A walk of 20 numbered
blocks is a mile.
For getting around, it's cabs and subways, subways and cabs...
Yellow cabs are plentiful and a great bargain if there's no traffic.
There's almost always traffic. Sometimes you have to get out and
walk because the city's constantly under construction, streets are
blocked off, and all cars come to a painful standstill.
On Sundays, Manhattan is dead...
relative to the rest of the week.
Znews WEB FEATURE:
Is the Content Worth the Soft-Sell?
Let's face it: Someone's got to pay the piper, and on the Internet, just like on radio and television in the old days, site content will be funded by advertising. Advertising on the Internet still makes marketing exec's a bit nervous when it comes to divying up budgets. Some go way overboard (Levi Strauss & Co. reportedly spent over $3 million on their extensive web site), which certainly has a lot to offer. Many other companies haven't been able to justify the plunge... yet.
When people are interested in something, they'll want to know more about it. If you're thinking of buying a car, your interest will be piqued by an easy-to-navigate site full of information about a specific model you like. For example, you've been thinking about buying a Honda, have no idea what they go for and what you get for your money, and you're nervous about going to the dealer and surviving the hard-sell. Then you'd love Honda's website. That's the beauty of the medium. You go where you want. You don't bother with the stuff that doesn't interest you.
One of the most compelling aspects of the Internet for the marketing folks is that if you see their banner ad and have the split-second impulse to click on it, then you've entered the advertiser's site. Also, new tracking software can tell advertisers who you are (up to a point), what site you've come from, how long you linger on each page, and it may even reveal your email address.
All this is great for Marketing, but what about privacy? Enter The Anonymizer, a service of Community ConneXion. The Anonymizer protects your privacy by allowing you to surf the net without leaving a trail. Every site you hit goes through their server. When asked if The Anonymizer keeps track of its users, company representative Anthony Polito responds:
"NO. NO NO NO NO NO and NO. We are a privacy provider. We don't cheat.
The only thing we keep records of are the number of hits we receive."
There you have it... straight from the mouth of The Anonymizer.
Znews FREE SPEECH FEATURE:
Communications Decency Act
on Hold
By P.M. Goggin
A three-judge federal panel in Philadelphia
handed down a decision granting a preliminary
injunction against federal enforcement of the
Communications Decency Act (CDA), on the
grounds that certain sections of the CDA are
unconstitutional.
For the full story...
Here are the judges written decisions on the matter:
Znews DAILY REPORT:
Computer Programs
Just Get Bigger and Bigger...
As software applications grow in megabyte-size, they slurp up more and more
disk space as well as an increasing amount of your computer's brainpower,
or RAM. Back in January of 1995, 8 megabytes of additional Random Access
Memory (RAM) would have cost you about $275. Due to a glut on the market,
prices have plummeted over the past 12 months, and are just about as low
now as they're going to get. Some markets have seen the beginnings of a
slight rise in price, and industry analysts expect that prices are on their
way back up. For information on major suppliers, send an email to Znews...