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AdBrite has announced that rich media is now available on their advertising network. Fox has been using AdBrite’s rich media to promote its new television drama, Fringe.

“Advertising with AdBrite’s network was a key part of our FRINGE fall season premiere campaign,” said Laurel Bernard, SVP Marketing, Fox Broadcasting Company. “Combining unique rich media experiences with advanced targeting, a broad range of distribution, and full transparency made AdBrite a great media partner for our launch.”

AdBrite’s 70,000 sites include 8 out of the top 20 largest media properties, according to comScore. The network reaches over 80 million Americans each month.

“Rich media allows advertisers to create unique, compelling consumer experiences, while delivering premium CPMs to publishers,” said Ignacio Fanlo, CEO of AdBrite. “We’re pleased to be working with the industry’s leading platforms to bring rich media to our customer base, and are thrilled to have been a key part of Fox’s FRINGE launch.”

Currently, the rich media format is only available by invitation. If you’re interested, email sales@adbrite.com.

Related Reading:
AdBrite Launches Marketplace for Ad-Targeting Technologies
AdBrite Opens Up to Other Ad Networks
WordPress Selling Links — But Using AdBrite Solves Search Engine Concerns

Google has added video sharing to its business applications suite, Google Apps Premier Edition. The feature is being called Google Video for business and there are high expectations for the application.

Matthew Glotzbach, product management director of Google Enterprise told Reuters, “What YouTube did in the consumer world, Google Video for business is going to do in the enterprise.”

Google Apps Premier Edition is $50 a year per user and includes e-mail, scheduling, Web site design capabilities, and other business software. Starting September 8, educational users can try Premier Edition free for the first 6 months and $10 a year afterwards for video capabilities.

Online video search engine blinkx has sent a letter to digital advertising company MIVA, seeking to acquire it for $1.20 per share. Yesterday’s closing price for MIVA stock, which trades on the NASDAQ, was $0.78.

MIVA has certainly had its share of trouble of recent years. The company has gone through reorganizations and a management shakeup in the hopes of stabilizing the business, which includes a pay-per-click offering.

Here’s the full text of the letter for your consumption.

August 8, 2008

MIVA, Inc.
5220 Summerlin Commons Boulevard
Suite 500
Fort Myers, FL 33907
Attention: Peter Corrao, CEO
Larry Weber, Chairman
Members of the Board of Directors

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
Re: blinkx and MIVA Combination

I am writing on behalf of the board of directors of blinkx Plc to make a proposal for the business combination of blinkx and MIVA. Under our proposal, blinkx would acquire all of the outstanding shares of MIVA common stock for $1.20 in cash per share. Our proposal is not subject to any financing condition. The transaction would be funded from existing cash resources of the two companies.

Proposal. Our proposal represents a 54.0% premium above the closing price of MIVA common stock of $0.78 on August 7, 2008, and a 36% premium over the average closing price for the one month prior to August 7, 2008.

By whatever financial measure one might use, we believe this proposal represents a compelling value realization opportunity for your shareholders and the quickest and most secure way to see such value, particularly given the several challenges MIVA faces in the near term, including: risk and cost associated with the new technology platform, a deteriorating cash position, continued deterioration of the Media EU business and continued decline in revenue and profitability.

We believe that MIVA’s shareholders would not be well-served by any delay in negotiating or completing the merger process, and that time and/or another round of restructuring plans will not significantly increase MIVA’s valuation.

Background. Having worked together for a number of years you will be aware that blinkx is the world’s largest and most advanced video search engine. Founded in 2004 by Suranga Chandratillake, the company completed a successful IPO on the London Stock Exchange (AIM) in May 2007 and currently has a market capitalization of approximately $160 million, with headquarters in San Francisco, CA and the UK. With an index of over 26 million hours of searchable video and more than 350 media partnerships, including national broadcasters, commercial media giants, and private video libraries, blinkx has cemented its position as the premier destination for online TV. blinkx pioneered video search on the Internet, enhanced by $150 million in R&D over 12 years, and is now protected by 111 patents.

Rationale. blinkx believes that a combination of the two companies would be mutually beneficial to both companies’ shareholders, employees, and customers. blinkx and MIVA have complementary businesses that could benefit greatly from blinkx’s technology and MIVA’s distribution network.

blinkx has worked with MIVA as a customer and partner for a number of years and has a great deal of respect for MIVA’s success in building a global keyword advertising network and growing the MIVA Direct consumer offering. We believe, however, that with the Internet’s continued progression towards rich media and newer forms of advertising, more advanced technology will play a fundamental role in achieving success.

blinkx already has in place a proven and growing video-driven revenue engine, and enjoys an unrivalled technology portfolio which is applicable across many aspects of the online market. A combination of the two companies - fusing MIVA’s advertising network with blinkx’s ability to leverage its technology portfolio into the online market - presents an exciting and compelling opportunity.

Specifically, blinkx’s advanced and scalable matching technology will enable immediate platform improvements for MIVA. As a result large portions of relevant search traffic from MIVA’s search ad network will be monetizeable at higher rates through blinkx’s technology. Furthermore blinkx’s technology holds the potential to build on MIVA’s existing toolbar network, adding the latest functionality and an entirely new revenue stream. Finally, MIVA’s consumer sites and portals, that already attract large audiences, will immediately benefit from blinkx’s advanced video technology and AdHoc advertising platform.

Process and Employees. We would value the opportunity to further discuss with you how to optimize the integration of our respective businesses to create a leading global technology company. We believe that the management and employees of MIVA are critical to realizing a successful transition and foresee an important and central role for MIVA employees in the combined company.

Any acquisition of MIVA would be subject to the opportunity to conduct a limited confirmatory due diligence investigation, the negotiation of a definitive merger agreement containing customary terms and conditions, including customary conditions to closing; no material adverse change to MIVA’s business; appropriate shareholder approvals; and any regulatory requirements. Given our participation in the industry and MIVA’s public status, we envisage an efficient due diligence process appropriate to a public company. We are prepared to deliver a draft merger agreement to you and begin discussions immediately.

Due to the importance of these discussions and the value represented by our proposal, we expect the MIVA Board to engage in a full review of our proposal and discussion of its contents with MIVA’s shareholders. We are prepared to meet at a time and location of your convenience to complete due diligence and commence definite agreement negotiations.

We believe this proposal represents a unique opportunity for MIVA’s shareholders to realize value, and the combined company will be well positioned for future growth. We hope that you and your Board share our enthusiasm, and we look forward to a prompt and favourable reply.

Yours sincerely,

Suranga Chandratillake

CEO and Founder

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Yahoo Second Quarter 2008 Financial Results
• Revenues were $1,798 million for the second quarter of 2008, a 6 percent increase compared to $1,698 million for the same period of 2007.

• Marketing services revenues were $1,587 million for the second quarter of 2008, a 7 percent increase compared to $1,486 million for the same period of 2007.

“Yahoo!’s transformation gained momentum in the second quarter as we announced new product initiatives and partnerships along with solid financial results,” said Sue Decker, president Yahoo! in a statement. “We advanced our position with users by opening up Yahoo! through new innovative offerings like SearchMonkey and BOSS in search and have seen great improvements with Buzz in the freshness of content on our home page. Our commercial agreement with Google is another great example of our open strategy and we expect it will strengthen our competitive position as a leading provider of search and display advertising. On the advertising side, our growing list of major agency partners including Publicis, WPP, Havas and premier publishing partners including walmart.com, and CNET and Turner are great examples of our ability to be the partner of choice across search and display advertising. We remain confident that our efforts will lead to a stronger and more profitable Yahoo!.”

o Marketing services revenues from Owned and Operated sites were $1,016 million for the second quarter of 2008, a 14 percent increase compared to $892 million for the same period of 2007.

o Marketing services revenues from Affiliate sites were $571 million for the second quarter of
2008, a 4 percent decrease compared to $594 million for the same period of 2007.

• Fees revenues were $211 million for the second quarter of 2008, a less than 1 percent decrease compared to $212 million for the same period of 2007.

• Revenues excluding traffic acquisition costs (“TAC”) were $1,346 million for the second quarter of 2008, an 8 percent increase compared to $1,244 million for the same period of 2007.

• Operating income for the second quarter of 2008 was $101 million, a 45 percent decrease compared to $185 million for the same period of 2007.

o Operating income for the second quarter of 2008 includes incremental costs of $22 million
incurred for outside advisors related to Microsoft’s proposals to acquire all or a part of the
Company, other strategic alternatives, the proxy contest, and related litigation defense costs.

• Free cash flow for the second quarter of 2008 was $231 million, a 30 percent decrease compared to $328 million for the same period of 2007.

• Net income for the second quarter of 2008 was $131 million or $0.09 per diluted share compared to $161 million or $0.11 per diluted share for the same period of 2007.

“Despite a difficult economic environment, we posted solid results in line with the ranges we indicated in April,” said Blake Jorgensen, chief financial officer, Yahoo! in a statement. “GAAP revenue was $1.8 billion, with operating cash flow on a normalized basis coming in at $449 million. Our diverse advertiser base and compelling value proposition for our customers were key factors behind Yahoo!’s strong second quarter performance.”

The Register reported today that Google Docs disappeared in the cloud computing stratosphere, leaving users hoping for a house call from the Google guys. No word yet on the outage on the official Google Docs blog.

Cade Metz noted that Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets disappeared today for close to an hour, proving that the world’s largest search engine is a long way from perfecting the art of online business applications.

Metz said many businesses paid good money to look at this screen, which appeared from about 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. at least to customers in Silicon Valley.

The Register quoted a less-than-thrilled Google Apps Premiere customer, San Francisco-based open source outfit MuleSource. The company pays Google for the use of Docs and Spreadsheets, and it describes the experience as a game of chance.

“As businesses look to move their systems and applications into cloud-based services, we expect them to work minimally as well as if we ran them ourselves,” Mule Source CEO Dave Rosenberg tells us. “With Google Apps, we are at the point of taking bets to see if the services will actually be up.”

We’re not sure the phrase “When clouds die” is part of the official Google server error message.

Apparently Chicago-based firm LimitNone is suing Google for misappropriating the trade secrets of its “gMove” application that Google allegedly used to develop its Email Uploader.

The two-count lawsuit also claims Google violated Illinois’ consumer fraud laws.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday by Kelley Drye & Warren LLP - “the same commercial litigation group which challenged Google over the company’s online advertising system,” SlashDot noted.

Details of the suit can be found in the press release sent out by the law firm.

“Its shocking that Google would engage in this type of conduct; particularly when the other party is a small software company that built its business specifically to help Google sell its existing and future products,” said Susan Greenspon of the Chicago office of Kelley Drye & Warren LLP. “People need to realize that Google is just another large publicly traded corporation that will do whatever it takes to increase its revenue, even if that means risking its reputation among developers.”

The lawsuit alleges that in February, 2007 Google launched a suite of business software applications called Google Apps. The software was designed to challenge Microsoft’s Office suite of products (Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.) which has 500 million users. According to the lawsuit, unlike Microsoft’s products, Google Apps does not require a customer to download software onto his or her computer. Instead, Google Apps is a collection of web-based applications that reside on Google’s servers. The lawsuit alleges at the time of its launch, however, Google did not have a workable way to enable Microsoft Outlook users to easily migrate their email (called gMail), calendar and contacts to Google’s platform.

In early 2007, LimitNone developed just such a product to solve this problem and in March confidentially demonstrated the migration tool to senior members of the Google Apps team. According to the complaint, the Google Apps executives invited LimitNone to be part of the Google Enterprise Professional Program, to further develop and market the tool, and assured the company that it had no intention of developing a similar product.

The lawsuit alleges the tool, which was originally named “MY GRATE” was later renamed, at Google’s insistence, “gMove”. Though the product retailed for $29, Google asked that LimitNone sell it to Google’s customers for $19.

The lawsuit claims that throughout the remainder of 2007, Google promoted LimitNone and gMove and repeatedly told company executives that it would not develop a competing product. Google highlighted gMove on its website and introduced the company to its largest customers (including Proctor & Gamble, Intel, Orbitz, Morgan Stanley and Toys “R” Us). In addition, Google asked LimitNone to present the product to its technical sales personnel, to meet with the Google Open Source team and to continuously share updated versions of gMove.

In December, 2007, as detailed in the complaint Google told LimitNone that it would, in fact, be releasing a competing product and giving it away for free to its “Premier” customers. The lawsuit alleges that Google’s product, called “Google Email Uploader” steals gMove’s look, feel and functionality.

According to the complaint, Scott McMullan, a senior executive in the Google Apps partner program, told LimitNone that the potential for 50 million users – was “just too big to come from someone else” and that “this is how Google operates.”

Albert Michaels, a Senior Account Executive at Moniker, discusses his company’s suite of domain asset management services at SES London 2008. Moniker Online Services, LLC is a leading provider of domain name registration, management, and monetization services for individuals and businesses that wish to have a unique address and branded identity on the Internet.

Moniker will also be exhibiting at SES New York 2008. It is also one of the sponsors of the WebmasterRadio.FM / SEARCHBASH. To ensure that you get in the door, stop by the Ask Sponsored Listings, Bruce Clay, Moniker.com, or WebmasterRadio.FM booths.

Albert Michaels, Moniker, at SES London 2008

In addition to getting into the party, you might also want to check out the serious stuff in Moniker’s booth. It is the first and only provider of Domain Asset Management, a complete set of business services that provide companies a single-point-of-access to help manage and maximize the value of their domains. These services include name creation, registration, acquisition, portfolio management, appraisal and escrow services, traffic monetization and after-market sales — all backed by unsurpassed customer service and security. With more than a decade of experience, Moniker is a top 10 domain registrar, holds the industry’s highest customer retention rate, and pioneered the industry’s first domain appraisal formula. It is considered the industry’s premier marketplace to buy and sell domain names.

Hulu, the video search engine for copyrighted and trademarked entertainment, will premiere Wednesday.

It will be a minor Internet miracle if the GE-NewsCorp JV Web site can keep up with online demand and search engine searchers.

Get ready for the Invasion of the YouTube Snatchers. The iPod people are coming … and their PC’ed.

Are you searching for The Simpsons?

Can’t find The Big Lebowski?

Is Buffy the Vampire Slayer in your database of intentions?

Do you need to do a local search for Mulholland Drive? Can’t find it on Google Maps, Microsoft Virtual Eath or on YouTube (legally)?

Hulu promises to run hoops around YouTube. The NBA and the NHL will deliver sports programming.

News Corp, NBC Universal, Warner Bros. and Lionsgate will showcase films.

There’s even a SuperBowl Ad Gallery for the search marketers ready to take over TV budgets and bounce traditional advertising agencies from the upfronts.

No doubt YouTube will feel pressure to protect copyrights and clean up trademark infringement.

The message from Hulu? Monetize this.

If you read only one blog post this weekend, let me micropersuade you to read Steve Rubel’s SEO Shenanigans Pose a Clear and Present Danger to Social Media.

Before engaging in the debate, I’d like to invite Steve to expand on his Micropersuasion post in Search Engine Watch, home of Sergey Brin’s Internet Doomsday Scenario.

Hey, we don’t hate debate. We like controversy. We love search engine optimization, SEOs, social search, SMM and search engine marketing.

Steve: help our readers around the world understand what specific search engine strategies are “SEO shenanigans.” You listed this Search Engine Watch blog post first: Boost Organic Results. Link Build with Social Media.

I think it’s a brilliant guide: How to earn more money, improve online reputation and build brand equity online — goals, Steve, you share for your clients?

Even so our blogger received death threats. Marty’s blazing new SEO and SMO trails and that takes courage.

Wikipedia (Slate’s new BFF) defines a shenanigan as a “deceitful confidence trick, or mischief causing discomfort or annoyance.”

I don’t think your brilliant linkbait blog post is a con game. It’s a great SEO shenanigan!

Anonymous Wikepedian(s) go on to say, “However, in some regions, shenanigans can merely refer to harmless mischievous play, especially by children. It should be noted that the word itself is considered humorous, because of its unique sound.”

So Steve were you - a PR maven - just joking around? Let me know. I think I may agree with you to a certain extent but I’m not sure.

So let’s dynamically insert “search engine optimization” and “social media” keywords into Dictionary.com’s definitions from the Random House Unabridged Dictionary:

1. SEO mischief; prankishness by SEOs: Halloween shenanigans.
social media marketing deceit; SEO trickery.
2. mischievous or deceitful SEO trick (Googlebombing?) practice, etc.

Here’s the revised American Heritage Dictionary version of SEO shenanigan:

1. A deceitful SEO trick; an underhanded SMM act.
2. Online social media remarks intended to deceive; SEO PR deceit.
3. A playful or mischievous search engine optimization act; an SMM prank.
4. SEO mischief; SMO prankishness.

None of the above seems to pose a clear and present danger.

Graywolf points out in your post’s comments that everyone’s playing by Google’s rules. Here’s what The Google says:

Google’s number two SERP (search engine results page) suggests shenanigans engaged in by couples present a clear and different danger.

Shenanigans - Indiana - Midwest’s Premier “Couples Only” Club for …
The Midwest’s Premier “Couples Only” Club ! Shenanigans “Where Adults Come for Fun”. Couples Only!

For inquiring minds, that’s shenanigans.net. Since the keyword’s in the title, it’s not SEO shenanigans at work (or in play).

Google’s paid search algorithm matches “shenanigans” with the “biggest losers” crowd: diet, fat and weight loss tips and tricks:

Sponsored Links
10 Rules to Cut Belly Fat
Lose 9 lbs every 11 Days with these 10 Idiot Proof Rules of Fat Loss.
www.FatLoss4Idiots.com

Steve, did your database of intentions intend SEO shenanigans to encompass a Google broad match/Thesaurus.com semantic search? For example, did you mean:

SEO antics, SEM capers, SEO dirty trick, fooling around with SEO, social media optimization frolicsomeness, search engine optimization funny business, SEO gag, search engine optimization hanky-panky, SEO high jinks, SEO PR horseplay, SEO PR horsing around, social media misbehavior, social media marketing mischievousness, monkey business*, SM naughtiness, SEO nonsense, search marketing prank, SEO trouble, social media marketing vandalism

If so, Google contextual advertising (content advertising) seems to think shenanigans are just a joke: Super Trooper-style (see YouTube result for keyword “shenanigans”) or in a Superbad Knocked Up kind of way.

Here’s another AdSense ad matched to “shenanigans” on Thesaurus.com:

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