Would you prefer to see .brand or .com going forward? What do you think?

Advertisers are outraged by ICANN’s decision and have even contacted the corporation to express their concerns about the changes. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) is among the groups in opposition because it believes the expanded generic top-level domains (gTLD) could be harmful to brands and consumers.

“The reality is, when we looked at the ICANN report when they adopted this, their benefits that they’re expressing are purely speculative,” said Doug Wood, General Counsel for the ANA.

As he explained, the expansion of domain names has been debated since the 1990′s, even before ICANN existed. The hope was to help consumers find information more easily. ICANN believes that this move will help to solve this problem. Wood, however, told us that this problem no longer exists since search engines and technology have become so advanced.

“Consumers have no problem finding what they’re looking for on the Internet through search engine technology,” he said. “This is more of a solution looking for a problem that doesn’t exist, and the costs that will be incurred by brands and then, ultimately, pushed on to consumers… is going to be far in excess of any justifiable cause.”

The costs he is referring to involve the $185,000 that brands would have to pay to simply apply for a new domain name. Many corporations have multiple brands, which means that they would need to purchase 100s of domains. Although these high costs would likely be transferred to consumers in order to make the investment worthwhile, brands believe that they would have to consider them to prevent cyber squatting and phishing.

Wood told us that it might be different if there were a shortage of domain names, but that is not the case. He said ICANN introduced new domain names including .biz and .travel a few years ago, but that they haven’t been widely adopted. Esther Dyson, who is the former board chair of ICANN, also wrote in a piece on the Australian Broadcasting Network that there was no shortage of domain names.

She opposes the move from ICANN as well and even wrote that it didn’t have any value:

The problem is that expanding the namespace – allowing anyone to register a new TLD such as .apple – doesn’t actually create any new value. The value is in people’s heads – in the meanings of the words and the brand associations – not in the expanded namespace. In fact, the new approach carves up the namespace: the value formerly associated with Apple could now be divided into Apple.computers, apple.phone, ipod.apple, and so on. If this sounds confusing, that is because it is.

ICANN justifies their action by saying that it will create new opportunities. While Wood agrees that the new domains will do this, he said that the people who would benefit from them are domain sellers, trademark lawyers, and domain consultants.

“The bottom line is simple – the Internet has matured quite well, brands have supported it from its inception, [and] consumers have used it now to increase their choices in the marketplace,” he pointed out. “They don’t need any more TLDs to accomplish that.”

“The only thing that these new TLDs will do, from what we can see, is increase the income and opportunities for consultants,” he added.

When the ANA notified ICANN of its concerns, Wood said ICANN defended its decision based on the grounds that it had debated the topic for several years.

The ANA and other organizations such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) are continuing to fight the domain changes. According to Wood, they hope to create enough awareness that ICANN will reconsider its decision.

Do you think ICANN should reverse its expansion of domain names?

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Facebook (and a number of other social-networking sites) have been sharing users’ personal data with advertisers. The problem is that this data is being shared without the users’ knowledge or consent.

The issue was first raised back in August last year by researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and AT&T Labs, but Facebook chose to ignore their concerns. That is until the Wall Street Journal stepped in, and then the site’s stopped sharing the data.

Here is what Facebook had to say to the Wall Street Journal about the issue:

We were recently made aware of one case where if a user takes a specific route on the site, advertisers may see that they clicked on their own profile and then clicked on an ad. We fixed this case as soon as we heard about it.

The information included usernames and ID numbers that could be traced back to individual profiles. Large advertising companies including Google’s DoubleClick and Yahoo’s Right Media were identified as having received the information although they claim to have not made use of it.

The information could be used to look up individual profiles, which, depending on the site and the information a user has made public, include such things as a person’s real name, age, hometown and occupation.

This is definitely bad timing for Facebook. There has been quite a revolt of late with many users closing down their accounts in protest over Facebook’s lax privacy laws.

Will this news cause you to think twice about clicking on Facebook ads?

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By searching for hotels on Google Maps, users will be able to plug-in dates they plan to stay and see prices on selected listings.

Google’s Lat Long Blog offers more details. "You can click on the price to see a list of advertisers who have provided pricing information for that hotel, indicated by the "Sponsored" text, and click through to reserve a room on the advertiser’s site."

"By showing you this relevant hotel rate information directly in the Google Maps results panel we hope to make this aspect of your trip planning more speedy and efficient."

Google emphasized the new feature will not change the way hotels are ranked in Google Maps. While testing the feature, Google said it is working with a limited number of advertisers and it will only be visible to a small number of users. If the test goes well Google said the feature will be made available to more users over time.
 

Google says the feature is part of its continuing effort to make ads more relevant and useful to users and help advertisers reach the people who are most interested in their products and services.

"AdWords uses a host of targeting and relevancy signals to determine the best ads for each query. However, sometimes a user’s query doesn’t provide enough information for us to confidently predict what they want," explains Dan Friedman of Google’s Inside AdWords Crew. "Take, for example, users who search for "mortgage." Do they want a new home loan or a refinance? Do they want a fixed rate or an adjustable rate loan? Comparison Ads improves the ad experience on Google.com by letting users specify exactly what they are looking for and helping them quickly compare relevant offers side by side."

If a user clicks a promotion, they are taken to a page with more detailed, sponsored results. There they can choose from the offers listed on the page or refine their search further. If a user finds an offer they like, they can call the advertiser or request a quote.

"If a user requests a quote, Google automatically anonymizes the user’s phone number and sends you a unique code that you can use to contact the user," says Friedman. "You only pay if a user calls the phone number on your offer or fills out a form to request a quote."

Google cites speed, transparency, and privacy as the key points of focus with Comparison ads. They show targeted offers in less than a second, they only show real products (meaning no teaser rates, baits or switch offers), and they won’t send advertisers any user information.

Related Articles:

> Google Launches Latest Version of AdWords API

> More "Ads by Google" Across the Web

> Google Gives Local Businesses New Way to Advertise

At the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, there was a Bing Toolbox workshop that went through various tools offered in the Toolbox.

The "toolbox" section of the Toolbox features:

- Add a Site
- Submit Your Sitemap
- Get an AppID
- New Silverlight Tools

The Add a Site feature lets you submit your domain URL directly to Bing. The sitemap feature lets you submit a sitemap file via Bing’s Webmaster tools. The Get an AppID lets you get started with the Bing API, and the new Silverlight tools section takes you to where you can download the Silverlight software developer kit and manipulate search results with the click of a button.

Also in the Toolbox area are snippets from the Webmaster Blog and the Developer blog.
 

The "Developers" section of the Toolbox features:

- A whitepaper
- Access to the Bing Software developer Kit
- Bing Product Guidelines
- Libraries and apps for getting started with the API, the Bing Maps developer center, and Bing Translator
- Related resources for Silverlight SDK for Bing, PowerToys, and the Code for Green Contest
- Bing API Terms of Use
 

The "Webmasters" section of the Toolbox features:

- Bing product guidelines
- Site submission
- Sitemap submission
- Bing API Web Page Error Toolkit
- Malware detection
- SEO toolkit
- Related resources like the Bing whitepaper, Channel Bing video, and Webmaster help guidelines

The "Ads & Campaign Tools" section of the Toolbox features:

- Access to register for the Ads Pilot Program
- Access to adCenter
- Microsoft Advertising Intelligence tools
- Search advertising tools
- adCEnter adExcellence program
- Resource for all ad tools

Beyond these four main sections there are also navigational tabs for support and community, which can be used to connect with Bing and other Bing users. Community provides access to blogs, forums, media, and events, while support gives you access to FAQs, webmaster help, developer help, and Bing API documentation.

"Today search has become an integral part of our life. Search has become a platform," said Bing Principal Group Program Manager Rajesh Srivastava. "Bing Toolbox is a tool that helps you connect with search. What is Bing’s strategy? What are our goals for Bing? We have to deliver the best, most comprehensive experience for users. Bing is about delivering great results. We are also looking at organizing the results to enhance the search experience. If you are doing a search you have a decision making process in mind. Bing is all about making the user get to their decisions quicker!"

This was a sponsored session, in case you couldn’t gather that from such a quote, but Bing is still new to the search block, and webmasters still have questions. This is all the more reason to pay attention to what Microsoft’s doing, and the features they’re offering in this Toolbox.

On a related note, Bing says they have a "treasure trove" of data and are working to get that info to developers via the Bing API 2.0. They say they’re adding more and more pieces of data to the API that users can extract.

The Toolbox is an organized set of tools for the entire Bing community. It’s a one-stop portal to all of the services you need to drive traffic and increase engagement with your site and applications.

Included in the Bing Toolbox are

- An add-a-site feature, which allows you to directly submit your URL to Bing

- A submit-your-sitemap feature, which lets you do so using Bing’s Webmaster tools

- A Get an AppID feature, which lets users get started with the Bing API

- A feature called "Go to PowerToys," which gives tools, samples, and best practices for using the API.

"The Toolbox provides everything you need to work with Bing in one place—as well as the site you’ll want to regularly visit for announcements of cool new features the moment they’re ready," says Bing Webmaster Center’s Rick DeJarnette. " This is a first effort and we’ll be building out the site with new content and updated tools as they become available."

The Bing Toolbox provides links to the webmaster blog, the developer blog, and relevant threads from the Bing forums. Beyond the actual "toolbox" section of the Toolbox, you can get to separate sections for Developers, webmasters, ads & campaign tools, community, and support.

Yesterday, they kicked it off by highlighting the new site and what users will find there. This includes a section for videos on the new interface that look at features and how they can help you better manage your account.

There is also a section for beta resources, which includes a how-to guide, a known-issues page, etc. Users who find bugs can use the known-issues page to see if it is known and report it if it’s not listed.

This week, The Inside AdWords Crew also discussed some new metrics for conversion tracking that come with the new AdWords Interface. The metrics will be introduced into AdWords Editor, the AdWords API, and the new AdWords interface over time. Google says they’ll also improve conversion tracking for display advertisers through the release of view-through conversion tracking.

You can learn more about the new metrics here. Google’s Help Center will also provide you with more useful information.

Among the people who watched primetime programming both online and on a DVR, 35 percent watched four or more episodes online, compared with 15 percent for people who watched primetime programming both online and on live television.

"During the past year, there has been much debate about the perils of making television programming available via the Internet," said Amanda Welsh, head of research for Integrated Media Measurement Inc.

"While some have speculated or feared that online accessibility would cannibalize television audiences, our data shows that the affinity of DVR users to view television episodes online offers advertisers new opportunities to recapture a desirable audience that had been slipping away."

Among people who watched primetime programming both online and on a DVR, 30 percent went online only once, compared with 57 percent for people who watched primetime programming both online and on live television.

"Rather than simply cannibalizing audiences as has been feared, offering content online presents a huge opportunity for television content providers and advertisers to reach elusive ad-avoiding audiences and to achieve higher engagement with them," said Welsh.

Through the training program, participants can hone their adCenter knowledge for improving their campaigns. Those who wish to do so may take the adExcellence accreditation exam; US residents who have had an adCenter account for 30 days or longer are eligible to take the exam, which costs $50.

Materials in the adExcellence training program appear as Flash content. They cover six categories:

Introduction to Microsoft adCenter
Getting Started
Targeting
Tracking Ad Performance
Optimizing Ad Performance
adCenter Budgeting and Billing

Currently the course materials only appear in US English, but Microsoft plans to keep updating adExcellence with new materials and support for more regions of the world.

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Facebook Loses Advertisers As Concerns Deepen

Coca-Cola, one of the largest flagship partners in the program when it launched early last month, not only bailed on Beacon, saying they’d adopted a "wait and see" attitude, but agreed with New York Times blogger Louise Story that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had originally described Beacon as an opt-in program.

Even more disturbing than gradually taking away that ability – there was a point where Facebook users could opt out of all of it, rather than just one site at a time – was Facebook spokesperson Matt Hicks’ response to Story:

Mr. Zuckerberg had meant that users would be given the opportunity to opt out of having information sent out by Beacon, and the company had assumed that anyone who didn’t say no meant yes. 

And by that logic, if I don’t say no to you using my bathroom, I’m saying yes to you rummaging through my medicine cabinet.

Well, whatever the initial understanding of how Beacon worked, advertisers are bailing as user-backlash increases. Overstock.com let it go shortly after MoveOn launched its campaign, followed by Travelocity the next week.

That may have been just in time to avoid possible legal hassles coming out of New York and California. As William McGeveran pointed out on a Harvard Law blog when Facebook’s Social Ad program launched, such wrangled user-endorsements from Beacon could be a violation of privacy laws:

Privacy law, as it should, treats advertising uses differently from other uses. One of the four common-law privacy torts forbids “appropriation.” Specifically: “One who appropriates to his own use or benefit the name of likeness of another is subject to liability to the other for an invasion of his privacy.” (Restatement (Second) of Torts Section 652C) Even more significantly, several states including New York and California have statutory provisions that are similar. New York’s well-known statute creates both a misdemeanor and a civil cause of action for “[a]ny person whose name, portrait, picture, or voice is used within this state for advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade without the written consent first obtained.”

As this issue was also brought up in the New York Times at that point (the first week of November), it appears that Facebook ignored all warnings about privacy concerns, and did not attempt to address them until MoveOn made a proper stink about it.

What’s also not helping Facebook’s case is that Beacon is still sending information to Facebook even when users opt out or are logged off. Stefan Berteau did his own investigation, just a day after Facebook announced they would be "evolving" the Beacon program. Berteau found that Beacon was using cookies to silently track Facebook user actions:

"Despite the fact that I was not logged in, Facebook just received enough information to tie the activity I took on their affiliate to my individual account, which combined with the social data they already have, such as circles of friends, level of education, communication patterns, and geographic locations, would allow them to profile individual consumer behavior on a nearly unprecedented level of detail. "

Facebook eventually admitted that was going on, but said it was not using the data:

"When a Facebook user takes a Beacon-enabled action on a participating site, information is sent to Facebook in order for Facebook to operate Beacon technologically.  If a Facebook user clicks "No, thanks" on the partner site notification, Facebook does not use the data and deletes it from its servers. Separately, before Facebook can determine whether the user is logged in, some data may be transferred from the participating site to Facebook.  In those cases, Facebook does not associate the information with any individual user account, and deletes the data as well."

It begs the question, though, why is sending the information to begin with?

It looks like the troubles are just beginning for this program