Interactive Seat Maps allows users to navigate and choose from all seats and configurations. Ticketmaster’s traditional "best available" searches uses computers to search availability one row at a time, the upgraded maps allows people to look for tickets in any part of a venue.

"This is a major step in improving the fan experience of buying a ticket online," said Kip Levin, Ticketmaster’s Senior Vice President of Product & Digital. "Ticket buyers can now choose from all available seats and highlight seats by the price range they want to spend or by the type of specials and packages being offered by the artist, team or show.

"They can also pick seats from the exact location they prefer, pick groups of seats that aren’t all in the same row, or buy single tickets that might be separated only by an aisle or row – all options that have not been available until now."

Searches start with a view of the venues seat map and by scrolling over rows and sections seat summaries and availability are displayed.  Users can highlight and select the seats they want to buy. Other features include zoom and the ability to click on search filters to view price range, quantity, special promotions and discounts offered by some events.  Ticketmaster said it plans to roll-out the new maps throughout next year.

The Interactive Seat Maps are available at the following venues:

The San Antonio Spurs, Edmonton Oilers, Sacramento Kings, Phoenix Suns, Orlando Magic, Marquette University Basketball @ Bradley Center, Rochester Americans, Iowa State Cyclones, as well as select events at the Nokia Theatre at Grand Prairie, and the Heymann Performing Arts Center.

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Anne Milgram
NJ Attorney General

New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram said that more than two thousand complaints were filed by consumers with the State Division of Consumer Affairs this month in connection with online sales of tickets to Springsteen concerts.

"Everyone deserves an equal chance to buy tickets on a primary ticket selling website and shouldn’t be steered to a re-selling website where the prices can be substantially higher," said Attorney General Milgram.

Under terms of the settlement, Ticketmaster must put up a virtual wall between it and its ticket re-selling subsidiary TicketsNow. Ticketmaster has agreed that all tickets it sells to the public will be sold on its primary website.

Ticketmaster also agreed not to allow the sale of any tickets on its TicketsNow re-selling website until initial sales begin on its primary website.

The settlement creates a random drawing for 1,000 people who will be allowed to purchase two tickets for Springsteen concerts in New Jersey in May. In addition, people who filed complaints but are not chosen in the random drawing for the chance to buy tickets will receive a $100 gift certificate from Ticketmaster and the chance to purchase two tickets to a future Springsteen concert in New Jersey.

People who purchased more expensive tickets at TicketsNow will receive a refund from Ticketmaster that will make up the difference between the purchase price and the face value of the tickets.

And everybody knows it was you.

TicketMaster Logo
(Photo Credit: TicketMaster)

Remember when Wal-Mart had to fight all of the bad PR from blog-faking with $4 prescriptions*? Well, Ticketmaster may have to fight it by dropping some arbitrary fees.

Or, admittedly, they could just wait it out until the next controversy pops up to distract the blogosphere; you can count on there being one as sure as the sun coming up.

But the truth is there are many truths, and many possibilities. The sooner that is realized the better. Until then, we talk about accusations that Ticketmaster manipulated its Facebook account until it had the sixth-most fans on the social networking site. With 156,643 Facebook fans, Ticketmaster is more popular than Hillary Clinton.

Okay, not so hard. But more popular than Linkin Park, Chris Brown, and Justin Timberlake?

Well, I suppose that’s a matter of taste.

But Chris Carrara, author of EastVillageIdiot.com, says it’s all a charade. Carrara dug through Ticketmaster’s friend base and discovered many of them had blank profiles and no other friends except Ticketmaster.

"None of them have pictures in their profiles. And honestly, Tom Jones? It’s not unusual to have the name of a famous pop star, I guess, but that name seems a little generic….

"That’s a strange coincidence. All of them are ‘fans’ of Ticketmaster, yet none of them have any friends. This seems suspicious."

It all looks very bad for Ticketmaster’s PR strategy, except that on the Internet you can never be certain. In the comments of Carrara’s post, a few mention a Ticketmaster promotion offering five free iTunes downloads as incentive for signing up as a Ticketmaster Facebook fan.

This could explain why there are 33 Kjjkh Jkhjkk’s, at least one of whom are now Ticketmaster buddies. "It’s a common name in Kjjkhkhstan," says David Utter, whose biting wit reminds you not to believe anything you read, see, or hear.

There’s also one Sdfjskfj Sklfjslfk, apparently an Eastern European native.

Ticketmaster wisely refrained from comment. This could be more of a Facebook issue.

A spokesperson for Facebook said, "Facebook removes any content that is in violation of our Terms of Use, including fake profiles. We encourage users to report any violations of our Terms.  Since Facebook is based on real-world connections, users must use their real name when creating an account. Impersonating anyone or anything is prohibited."

It will be interesting to see if Ticketmaster’s profile falls from its lofty position in the top ten after purging quite a few fake profiles.

That doesn’t take Ticketmaster off the hook. It’s still possible they faked it. It’s definitely possible they weren’t vigilant enough in policing their Facebook profile and promotion to be sure everybody they offered freebies to was legitimate.

It also illustrates the dangers of not ensuring such things. It doesn’t take much in the multidirectional and forever-archived communications world to taint an image already widely tainted by blogorrheal detractors. For marketers and PR pros, it means making sure everything you do is legitimate and being ready for surprising developments. For bloggers and New World Journalists, it means looking at a situation from every possible angle before posting your expose.

_{*Okay. Admittedly, the PR team faking a blog wasn’t the only PR problem for Wal-Mart. Busting every town in America’s block, lowering wages, and finding every benefit loophole in the book probably had a lot to do with it, also. Here are some cheap scripts to help ease your mind about our presence in your community. Hopefully Kroger won’t follow suit. Oh, wait.}
 

Hat tip to TechDirt and Valleywag, the latter of which jumped on the juiciness, not the boring truth.

TicketsNow is a ticket reseller, and in that field, comes in second only to eBay’s StubHub; Chief Executive Cheryl Rosner said her company sold $202 million in tickets during 2006.

2007 figures remain unavailable, but it looks as if TicketsNow is destined to remain on an upward trend.  Ethan Smith reports, "Ticketmaster President and Chief Executive Sean Moriarty said the company plans to share revenue from its new division with clients that own venues or promote events," and that’ll certainly be a popular way of handling things among potential customers.

This is a fairly tumultuous time for IAC, however, with a switch at the top level of Ask.com taking place less than a week ago.  Looking farther back, a year-long view of IAC’s stock is downright depressing, and in the near future, there’s the impending five-way split of the corporation.

The TicketsNow acquisition won’t be a cure-all, then, yet it should help bring in a few more dollars.

The multiyear deal with the National Football League includes branding and promotion for the site, according to Ticketmaster. Financial terms of the deal were not released. Ticketmaster currently runs separate ticket exchange sites for 18 NFL teams where fans can resell their game tickets online.

Ticketmaster trails other online ticket resale outlets such as StubHub, which is owned by eBay, and auction sites like eBay. "It’s fair to say we’re an underdog in the category right now," said Eric Korman, Ticketmaster’s executive vice president. "We need to really aggressively compete to win dollars and grow ahead of the competition."

Ticketmaster will guarantee the resold tickets, which are sent to buyers through email, the same way it does with regular ticket sales. The company is relying on that security feature and the NFL branding to attract potential ticket buyers and sellers.

"It’s going to be safe, it’s going to be reliable, it’s going to be efficient," Korman said. "When you show up at the gate, you’re ensured that ticket is going to be valid."
 

Reuters reports IAC will keep Ask.com, Match.com, Evite, Citysearch, and Excite, while spinning off its HSN home shopping network, Interval time-share business, Ticketmaster ticket service, and its mortgage referral business LendingTree.

IAC’s Barry Diller said, "We’ve been a complex enterprise almost from the very beginning 12 years ago, with hundreds of transactions over those years. And while we’ve created a lot of value, I’ve always believed our complexity and many mouthfuls of sentences to explain who we are and what our strategy is have hampered clarity and understanding with all our constituencies, particularly investors."

Sure, it makes sense to spin-off those units that don’t gel together, but it seems that IAC will retain a mishmash of companies: search, dating, invites, local. Not a whole lot of synergy there.

No, wait! I get it….

• Find a date on Match.com
• Check they’re not a criminal using Ask.com
• Find a restaurant for that first date using Citysearch
• Invite a few friends using Evite–in case he is a psycho
• Over dinner, reminisce about the days when people actually used Excite.

Makes perfect sense.

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IAC will keep its Media & Advertising sectory, which includes Ask.com, and its Emerging Businesses sector, along with a handful of investments in other firms.

However, the IAC board has decided a few brands and their underlying parts will have to fend for themselves in the marketplace. Lending Tree received particular attention from IAC chairman Barry Diller during the company’s third quarter earnings announcement, as that unit suffered from the global real estate and lending slowdown.

The moves take IAC out of the mortgage, event ticketing, travel, and most shopping businesses that had been under the corporate umbrella.

"I’ve always believed our complexity and many mouthfuls of sentences to explain who we are and what our strategy is have hampered clarity and understanding with all our constituencies, particularly investors," said Diller in a statement.

Those spun-off units provided IAC with the resources it needed to invest in Internet brands, like Ask. Now that those Internet business units have begun to show "real scale" according to Diller, it became time to cut loose the other companies.

Imagine if 1 minute before the end of the auction you thought you were in row 1, and then in the last 5 seconds of the auction a network of scalpers bid and you got a notification that you were in row 4. Paying $500 for row 4 tickets could feel a bit salty, but I imagine that many flat priced commodities will eventually move to an auction model that finds a way to squeeze money out of people bidding on the most expensive item even when they lose. It makes them more efficient, but will also frustrate many consumers.

eBay the largest general auction site, bought StubHub, a leading ticket reseller site, earlier this year for over $300 million. SnapNames recycles domain names. Google makes billions hand over fist as an ad auction (and likely eventually a content auction and an attention auction). What other businesses do you see becoming more efficient or growing due to a web auction based model?

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Chairman of comScore Networks Gian Fulgoni said, “The single-biggest online consumer spending day last year was Monday, December 12 with $556 million spent, but this year we’vealready seen 7 days eclipse $600 million in spending. In fact, each of the
five days in the most recent work week (Monday, December 4 – Friday,
December 8 exceeded $610 million.” He went on to say that the biggest spending days are still approaching. He expects this week to be the peak for online holiday shopping with sales nearing $700 million on a single day.

Amazon.com ranks first in online holiday sales for 2006. Rounding out the the top 3 spots are Dell.com and Yahoo. In overall sales growth Best Buy has seen a 50 percent increase. Ticketmaster, Wal-Mart and Circuit City have also seen increased growth in online sales.

With online holiday sales soaring retailers must be thankful for consumers online goodwill.

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Just one question for Ask.com. How hard is it to coordinate the launch with your own blog announcement? This is a great launch and shows how Ask will continue to benefit from IAC, so this two-line note on your blog doesn’t cut-it. Sorry.

“AskCity local search, Our latest and greatest product, hit the streets as of the wee hours this morning, and we couldn’t be happier. Look for a more detailed post about AskCity later today”

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.