Monday, January 18, 2010
Gasta Tech views : Paid Content
At the start of this new decade, we will be gathering the serious stakeholders in the content industry for a high- level, forward-thinking discussion of the major issues and opportunities facing us. Areas of focus will include:
» Business strategy and models that are working across news, information and entertainment » The people and companies driving innovation » The cross-platform approach to developing these diverse revenue streams » Music, TV and movie downloads, subscription streaming, a la carte payments, micropayments, subscriptions, donation models, subsidy models, mobile payments
Join us on February 19, 2010 as we gather the senior business leaders representing publishers, content technology companies, investors, analysts, and leading members of the press and blogging community to discuss the most pressing business issue of our day.
Gasta KupiVIP.ru
Private online shopping clubs are springing up like mushrooms all around the world in light of the successes companies like Vente Privée has been seeing, and venture capital firms are increasingly starting to invest in companies who are bringing the concept to specific niches or introducing the private online sales model to interesting geographical markets.
In the latter category falls Russian KupiVIP.ru, which has just raised a monster round of $20 million in venture funding led by Accel Partners and joined by prior investors Mangrove Capital Partners, ARLAN, Direct Group and angel Oliver Jung.
In March 2009, KupiVIP.ru had raised $8 million on top of its Series A round of $3 million, so this new capital injection brings the amount of investement to a healthy $31 million.
KupiVIP.ru sells discounted fashion goods from over 500 active brands, an offer that has so far attracted 1 million members to the online club according to the press release. Founder and CEO of KupiVIP.ru, Oskar Hartmann, said the round represents the largest investment ever into a Russian e-commerce vendor.
The company plans to use the funds to invest in logistics and operational infrastructure, as it strives to plan 2,500 flash sales events and double the number of participating brands to 1,000 in 2010.
As part of Accel’s investment, the VC firm’s Sonali De Rycker will join KupiVIP.ru’s board.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Gasta Tech News: AH Belo may Block Google
Rupert Murdoch’s ‘Block Google’ movement is picking up some new steam. Top executives at MediaNews and A.H. Belo (NYSE: AHC) (NYSE: BLC) say that they too may pull their content from Google (NSDQ: GOOG) News. The assertions, made in interviews with Bloomberg News, come as Murdoch has declared that News Corp (NYSE: NWS). may block search engines, including Google, from crawling the company’s online content and has flirted with charging Microsoft’s Bing for some sort of exclusive access.
A.H. Belo’s and MediaNews’ statements are more nuanced, however. MediaNews CEO Dean Singleton, says his chain will only block Google from crawling content that it charges for online, while it will likely continue to allow Google to link to free content on the company’s newspaper sites. MediaNews said this month that it would experiment with partial paywalls at its Chico, Calif.-based Enterprise-Record and the Daily Record of York, Penn. beginning early next year. (Singleton is also the chairman of the AP and has talked extensively about “protecting” news content online).
A.H. Belo EVP James Moroney says his company, which owns the Dallas Morning News, among other papers, hasn’t made any decisions yet. A.H. Belo, however, is considering instituting pay walls at some of its newspapers websites, and the article suggests that such a move could coincide with delisting the paper’s content from Google News.
That has to be a blow to Google, which has made a point of saying that Google News can work well with paid content. “If you’re making content paid, it’s as important if not more important to make sure that you’re still discoverable from search,” Google News’ Josh Cohen told us earlier this fall.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Push for 'instant-on' web search
Splashtop, made by DeviceVM, already lets consumers access email, chat with friends, share photos or surf the web seconds after turning on their PC.
The deal involves three search leaders including Yahoo in the US and Japan, Baidu in China and Yandex in Russia.
DeviceVM's Dave Bottoms said the deals make sense because web searching is fundamental to computer users.
"Search is the tip of the iceberg in being able to offer a lot of different web services, but when you think about where people spend their time online, it's in search," Mr Bottoms, senior director of product management, told BBC News.
"I think this is the next new start experience frontier we are witnessing at the device level."
A web analytics firm, Comscore, found that in June alone Americans conducted more than 14 billion core searches, up from 10.8 billion in 2008.
"A lot of people use search as a basic navigation tool," said DeviceVM's marketing director Sergey Krupenin.
"Instead of typing in Facebook.com in the address bar, users are typing it into the search box."
'Accessible'
Depending on what part of the world users are in, as soon as they switch on their computer, they will be greeted by a front page that offers a free Yahoo branded search box or one that says Yandex or Baidu.
"Web search has emerged as the dominant and universal navigation tool...and providing instant search will further expand our search leadership in China, the largest and fastest growing internet search market in the world," said Haoyu Shen, vice president of operations for Baidu.
"The search distribution landscape is changing, and instant search is one of the ways Yahoo provides our users with a convenient and highly accessible Yahoo search experience," said Tim Mayer, vice president of North America search and social experiences for Yahoo.
In America analysts are not so sure this "instant-search" feature will make a big difference in driving more users to Yahoo, which has 20% of the US market versus Google's 65% share.
"I don't think these deals have a dramatic impact on market share," said Greg Sterling of search news site SearchEngineLand.
"People's habits are fairly well established now when they go online. However some people will undoubtedly use Yahoo for their search because they are lazy and it's right in front of them," said Mr Sterling.
"That might mean Yahoo will get an incremental bump, but it won't be significant."
'Instant internet revolution'
Splashtop comes pre-installed on computers. At the moment it is on over 10 million PCs across 200 models made by Asus, HP, Lenovo, Sony, Acer and LG.
Mr Bottoms said the company estimated that by the end of this year, Splashtop -and the "instant internet revolution" that it heralds - will be on 40 million devices.
By the end of 2010, he believes, that number will be up to 100 million computers.
DeviceVM said the growing popularity of netbooks is key to this success and that this new instant search feature plays nicely into how people use these low-cost mini laptops.
"Users generally use netbooks on the go for chunks of a half an hour or so compared to notebooks or laptops where they will spend around three hours at home or in an office.
"With the emergence of netbooks, we are definitely seeing a lot of consumer demand for always being connected, always on and being able, at the press of a button, to get searching on the web quickly," explained Mr Bottoms.
A report by DisplaySearch said that demand for netbooks has been hot and looks to get hotter.
They are projected to grab a 20% share of the worldwide market for this year with consumers expected to buy almost 33 million netbooks - a doubling of last year's 16 million.
"The culture of 'on-the-go' means that speed is important to these users," said SearchEngineLand's Mr Sterling.
"I think that will be a benefit to the netbook experience and this is where that quick search box will have its appeal."
Windows 7
Splashtop and other "instant-on" offerings from other companies bypasses Microsoft Windows, the dominant operating system on PCs.
But software giant Microsoft has said Windows 7 promises to be a leaner, lighter propositsion that can compete in this space.
The company has just released Windows 7 into the hands of computer makers in a process known as "release to manufacturers". This is the last big step before the product reaches users in late October.
Microsoft claims that Windows 7 test results showed PCs have gone from a "cold boot" - from switched completely off - to a ready desktop at speeds comparable to the instant-on environments.
But DeviceVM's Mr Krupenin said that still does not solve the basic problem of speed.
"It is not about how fast an operating system is but how much is loaded onto it. Six months after people have bought their computer, it works at least two times slower because of all the applications that have been added on.
"Splashtop is an optimised environment around the browser and you are not installing anything there," he explained.
The company said it expects to see their 'instant-search' page on devices from September onwards.
By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, Silicon Valley
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Gasta Research: Quality Vs Quantity in lead genertion


The Quality Volume Divide
by Editor
It is a problem old as time in the performance marketing sector, one that shows itself much more clearly and painfully in the world of online lead generation. The challenge to produce high quality with high volume. Ask almost any advertiser who has at least a modicum of experience in online advertising, and growing volume while maintaining quality will rank high among their challenges and frustrations. The unfortunate truth is that after a certain point, quality starts to degrade. What exactly is quality, though? The reason that we use lead generation as an example is that quality is easy to explain. Let's use an auto insurance offer running on a CPA network as an example. The offer looks to get users to enter their information to see if they could lower their auto insurance payments. When a user enters their information, the network receives credit and they then credit the appropriate publisher. The person buying the lead receives no money from the user filling out the form only from the percentage of users who then go on to purchase a policy. The higher that conversion rate, the higher the quality. If more people convert from lead to policy, the lead buyer can afford to pay more. If fewer people do, then they will have to lower the payout in order to continue covering the cost of buying the leads.
In the optimal scenario, conversion rates start out profitably and even increase over time as both sides optimize. At a point, though, especially in the optimal scenario where the advertiser sees good returns with good volume, they will want more. Two things start to happen here. The first is often counterintuitive for the advertiser, and we called it the price fallacy in lead generation, namely that more volume comes at a higher price. What the price fallacy fails to capture is what, more often than not, happens to quality. Once under the gun to get more volume, when suppliers attempt to do so, they end up succeeding but at the expense of the initial quality.
As the illustration above shows, the optimal phase sees volume growing with quality remaining above the break even. When the two parties switch into the forced growth phase, volume continues to increase (often it increases at a slope higher than the initial growth), but quality starts to slip. More quickly than expected it goes from the advertiser having a positive yield to a negative one.
Quite a few explanations exist for the quality-volume divide. One of the more straight forward revolves around intent. Only so many people have a given interest in a product. B2B marketers deal with this issue all the time. For some high dollar, super complex sales, e.g., a multi-million dollar database configuration, there just aren't that many people who could be buyers. With auto insurance, the number is fortunately much higher, but it's not infinite. Different traffic channels have different levels of intent - search is not surprisingly higher than co-registration. For many verticals, there are only so many keywords available. To get in front of more users it means trying other avenues - email, display, contextual ads, etc. Each one of those will have its equivalent of head users and tail users - sites / placements where users who click will have an interest as opposed to someone who places an ad on Facebook saying, "Find out how much it is to insure a Ferrari." Each incremental step in obtaining more traffic tends to come at the expense of the intent of the person who views / clicks / converts on the ad. Here is what it looks like plotted.
Saturation also plays a role. At some point, an advertiser will simply have reached the vast majority of potential users for the product. The problem is that they want to grow. They don't want to settle for the same amount, and it pushes them to continue trying even at the detriment of their quality. It's not that higher volume and good quality can't go together. It's all about the incremental lead in the growth phase. In the forced growth phase, instead of the next lead converting at or near the previous lead, it keeps slipping. Good leads still exist, but they get lost among the lower quality ones. It's a problem which, if solved, will mean incredible gains but it currently falls outside the skill set of both the lead buyer and lead seller. Each can get better - they can implement various levels of verification (quality, scoring, call centers) but to get really good, means each getting away from what they do best. Buyers and sellers get closer, but they will never close the divide fully. It's too complex, too distracting, and not urgent enough for them. All of which means one of two things will happen. The divide will come and bite everyone in the behind and/or someone else will come along, solve it, and do very well. A note of warning though, there is another reason why no one has done so to date. It's anything but easy.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Gasta News:Hibernia Atlantic to link Northern Ireland to an underwater transatlantic communications cable for the first time.
Northern Ireland is to be linked to an underwater transatlantic communications cable for the first time.
The fibre optic cable, a telecommunications link which runs along the seabed, connects North America with Europe.
It will improve the speed and extent to which firms in NI can trade information with the rest of the world.
A new 22-mile extension will be built from an existing cable and will come ashore near Portrush.
Access to the new telecommunications will be available in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, according to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment.
Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster said the 30m euro investment (£28m) "would provide opportunities for Northern Ireland companies selling goods and services overseas and also improve our attractiveness to knowledge based inward investment".
"Northern Ireland businesses are competing more than ever for business in global markets," she said.
"This project will deliver the kind of international telecommunications, companies located in London, Amsterdam, Dublin and New York already depend on."
The department said Project Kelvin would involve connecting a new submarine cable to the Hibernia North Transatlantic cable located 22 miles off the north coast of Northern Ireland.
It said the new cable would come ashore in the Portrush area initially and then go onto a location where it could interconnect with Northern Ireland's existing telecoms infrastructure.
The department added that the new link could be interconnected at a number of different locations including Armagh, Ballymena, Belfast, Coleraine, Londonderry, Omagh, Portadown and Strabane.
The contract to construct the link to North America has been awarded to Hibernia Atlantic Limited.
The project is being funded by the European Union and the British and Irish governments.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Gasta News:Baidu news Ecommerce platform
Baidu has launched “Youa”, its own consumer to consumer e-commerce platform, which has up until now only been available to 50,000 people in a closed beta. The current market leader, Alibaba’s Taobao has a 57% market share and is reportedly investing around $700 million over the next five years to strengthen its position. However estimates suggest that Baidu’s offering will do well – and form 3-5% of its revenues in 2009.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Gasta News:Microsoft, Google and Yahoo
The Global Network Initiative follows criticism that companies were assisting governments in countries like China to censor the Internet.
The guidelines seek to limit what data should be shared with authorities, in cases where free speech is an issue.
"This is an important first step," said Mike Posner of Human Rights First.
He told the BBC "What this is is a recognition by all these tech companies, the human rights groups and social investors that there has to be a collective response to this growing problem.
"Companies need to step up to the plate and be more aggressive in challenging unwarranted government interference," he said.
The initiative states that privacy is "a human right and guarantor of human dignity," and the agreement commits the companies to try to resist overly broad demands for restrictions on freedom of speech and the privacy of users.
They will also assess the human rights climate in a country before concluding business deals and make sure their employees and partners follow suit.
"These principles are not going to be a silver bullet, but the most important point for me is to provide transparency," said Danny O'Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"We have joined this initiative because we know that a wide range of groups working together can achieve much more than the company acting alone," said Andrew McLaughlin, Google's director of global public policy.
'Valuable roadmap'
The impetus for such an agreement follows years of criticism that a number of businesses, including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have complicity built what has been dubbed the "Great Firewall of China".
Google has been accused of complying with Chinese government demands to filter internet searches to eliminate query results regarding topics such as democracy or Tiananmen Square.
Microsoft has come under attack for blocking the blog of a prominent Chinese Media researcher who posted articles critical of a management purge at the Beijing News Daily.
Canadian researchers uncovered that a Skype joint venture in China monitored users' communications.
And a Chinese reporter Shi Tao was jailed for 10 years after Yahoo China provided his personal information to the Chinese government.
Today Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang welcomed the new code of conduct.
"These principles provide a valuable roadmap for companies like Yahoo operating in markets where freedom of expression and privacy are unfairly restricted.
"Yahoo was founded on the belief that promoting access to information can enrich people's lives and the principles we unveiled today reflect our determination that our actions match our values around the world," said Mr Yang.
While China has been painted as the worst abuser, Colin Maclay of the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard University said there are other countries and governments all over the world at fault.
"The number of states actively seeking to censor online content and access personal information is growing.
"And the means employed - technical, social, legal, political - are increasingly sophisticated, often placing internet and telecommunications companies in difficult positions."
'Business case'
The Global Network Initiative was drawn up by the internet companies along with human rights groups, academics and investors.
Adam Kanzer who is the managing director and general counsel at Domini Social Investments said as well as being the right thing to do, it also makes good business sense.
He told BBC News "When you see the industry being caught up in the tactics of various regimes around the world, the business case is very clear. Freedom of expression and privacy is core to their business.
"They depend on a wide open, freely accessible and secure internet. That's what they are about. If people don't trust the internet and believe they are secure, then that is counterproductive to their business."
The effort is already being seen by some as not going far enough.
"After two years of effort, they have ended up with so little," said Morton Sklar executive director for the World Organisation for Human Rights USA.
"It is very little more than a broad statement of support for a general principle without any concrete backup mechanism to ensure that the guidelines will be followed."
Mr Posner of Human Rights First disputes that and said this agreement has not been set up as a "gotcha system" but as a way "to work with companies to get them to improve what they are doing, credit them when they do it and call them out if they fail."
While it is hoped many more companies will sign up, two European telecommunications firms, France Telecom and Vodafone, are already said to be considering adding their names.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Gasta to team up with Russian Search Engine Yandex
History of Yandex
Monday, July 14, 2008
Gasta ® Trademark process completes
Gasta ® international trademark application complete. Murgatroyd and Partners international Law Firm has completed the successful application of the word ‘Gasta’
As the world trademark of Applied Multimedia Innovations. Gasta ® will now be appearing as the legal protection of all Gasta owned domains and websites.
Francis Higgins CEO of AMI says “that he is delighted that this long process is now complete and that Gasta ® is now protected from cyber squatters and trade infringements” AMI has a number of proposals for Gasta music and licensing rights for the new trademark including a fashion label and branding company.
Gasta Property Domains: Gasta now reaching 450 Property sites
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Gasta Branding: Organic Search listings
Purchasing your keywords in InstantAds or SearchMatch on the Gasta and Europasearch network will significantly increase you web presence for the minimum price.
Google has unveiled its first major piece of research to prove search can have a big impact on a company brand . The move could help to drive significantly more brand budget online. The findings, from a pan-European research project commissioned by the search giant, showed coming top of organic listings raised purchase consideration of a brand 4%. It also found exposure to a listing in the top paid position, with no organic listing on the page, increased purchase consideration 20%. The new and (to the tech savvy generation) most important factor in branding your company is to get into search listings and Gasta.com is a really simple and inexpensive way of doing that.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Gasta Search Branding and Direct Response
Gasta Search Branding and Direct Response,
We love it when a plan comes together1 The Gasta.com strategy of aquiring and hosting new domains to launch the gasta white label search is gathering momentum as more Brands recognise that Search is the key branding tool of the future web.
In this week's NMA Podcast, Microsoft's senior vice president of strategic partnerships, Yusuf Medhi, talks about the software giant's acquisition plans following the failure of its bid to buy Yahoo!. Plus Winston Binch of US hot-shop Crispon Porter + Bogusky explains how digital agencies are moving up the pecking order, and the NMA team discuss the role of search in brand-building.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Gasta News:Brand Identity
COST. A memorable, highly targeted and keyword-rich domain name, garners free organic search engine traffic. By acquiring a domain name from the secondary domain market, you are spending less money in traffic than by engaging in often costly keyword search buys or print advertising.
BRANDING. Acquiring domains related to your products and or services sends a strong and consistent message to your customers and builds brand equity while avoiding customer confusion and lost traffic. For example, a photographer's website would benefit from camera, weddings and portrait themed domains.
GLOBAL REACH. Although the "dot com" is the most common extension, you should cast your net wider by getting as many extensions possible, including country code specific extensions. Act locally, think globally!
CAPITAL INVESTMENT. Like fine wines, domain names appreciate in value as they get older, thanks to the navigation traffic they acquire from prominent search engine positioning. By acquiring multiple premium domain names you are building a valuable portfolio of assets.
Are you ready plan a multiple domain strategy for your business? BuyDomains has the largest inventory of premium domain names — let us help you find one that matches your business needs. Contact domains@buydomains.com.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Gasta News:Brand Identity
This change is due to the new rules introduced by Google about brand keywords, and the savvy marketers are the ones using the Gasta search marketing keyword tools to capitalise, Big brands you have been warned. buy your brand keywords now!
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Gasta.com launches 150 new web Domians
The Domains are for various regions throughout the UK and Europe expanding the gasta search network to 172 search engines across europe. The next set of domains are scheduled to be launched later this week all concentrate on the UK and European Property market, and include http://www.propertydublin.com http://www.propertyedinburg.com and http://www.dublinproperies.com
www.andersonstown.com
www.cathedralquarter.com
www.eastbelfast.net
www.ardglass.com
www.ballsbridge.net
www.glencolin.com
www.maloneroad.com
www.southbelfast.com
www.dublin4.net
www.dublincitylive.com
www.dublincityonline.com
www.jordanstown.com
www.westdublin.com
www.lisburncity.net
www.lisburnroad.com
www.southarmagh.com
www.stranmillis.com
www.westbelfast.com
www.westbelfast.net
www.westbelfast.org
www.westbelfastonline.com
www.derrycity.net
www.doire.com
www.glengormley.net
www.haroldscross.com
www.leopardstown.net