The Search Agency Highlights Growth In Revenues, Jobs | socalTECH.com

Santa Monica-based The Search Agency joins a number of privately held, Southern California firms this week reporting strong growth in 2009. According to the company, which provides search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), and other related online marketing services, it had revenue growth of 37% in 2009, and hired more than 40 additional employees.

Posted: January 27th, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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Facebook Wants To Sell Its Own Ads, Pushes Microsoft Aside

Facebook has stopped using Microsoft’s banner ads for international markets, and it plans on doing the same with domestic advertising.

Microsoft’s VP of ad sales Robin Domeniconi tells Bloomberg Facebook wants to sell its own ads.

When Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook back in 2007 at a $15 billion valuation, part of its deal involved selling ads.

Posted: January 21st, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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Apple Continues To Dominate AdMob’s Mobile Ad Business

Mobile ad network AdMob had its biggest month ever in December, delivering 11.5 billion ad requests, an increase of 1.73 billion from the month prior.

Of those requests, 46.8% come from smartphones around the world.

Posted: January 21st, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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Advertising Won’t Bounce Back Until The Second Quarter

Despite all the talk about upticks and turnaround in the U.S. advertising market, don’t hold your breath for a rebound in the first quarter of this year, a new forecast is warning. If you can hold your breath until the second quarter, on the other hand, you might be in luck.

Revenue for U.S. media suppliers will total $36.8 billion for the first quarter of 2010, according to Magna, the Interpublic Group of Cos. forecasting unit. That’s down 3% from $38 billion for the same time last year — a time that already felt pretty awful.

Posted: January 20th, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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Indian SMS-Based Social Network GupShup Raises $12 Million

GupShup, India’s largest social network, announced a $12 million series D round of funding this morning, bringing its total funding to date up to $37 million.

Posted: January 20th, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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Dropbox Announces 4 Million Users, Hires A VP From Salesforce

File sharing and synchronization service provider Dropbox this morning announced that it has passed the 4,000,000 user milestone. The startup, recently crowned the Best Internet Application at the Crunchies 2009 awards ceremony, has also announced that it has hired a VP from Salesforce.com to lead its marketing and sales efforts going forward.

Posted: January 20th, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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The New York Times’ Online Meter Will Hardly Move The Needle

The New York Times plans to introduce a metered billing system on its Website sometime next year. The newspaper will begin to charge frequent visitors to its Website along the lines of what the Financial Times does on FT.com, which starts charging people who visit the site more than 10 times a month. But the new model is unlikely to move the needle on the New York Times’ digital revenues.

Posted: January 20th, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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Yelp Taking Big Investment From Elevation Partners

Yelp, fresh off of leaving Google at the altar, is closing a hefty fifth round of financing from Elevation Partners, say multiple sources. The deal isn’t closed yet, says one source, but the guys at Elevation Partners have been telling friends that it’s a done deal.

Posted: January 20th, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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Mobile Payments Startup Boku Lands $25 Million In Funding; Rebrands Service As Paymo

Mobile payments for micro-transactions on the web are steadily gaining traction. This morning, the space received more validation as several prominent venture capital firms made a significant a investment in recently launched mobile payments startup, Boku. Boku has raised $25 million in Series C funding led by DAG Ventures with previous investors Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures, and Khosla Ventures participating in the round. This brings Boku’s total funding to $38 million since the startup’s launch in June. Boku’s marketing chief Ron Hirson tells me that the startup is also rebranding its consumer platform as Paymo, but will retain the name Boku on the merchant and publisher side.

Posted: January 20th, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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Zynga’s Secret To Success: Steal Great Ideas!

One reason people love to hate Zynga is the approach Zynga has taken to becoming so successful: The Microsoft approach.

Specifically: Copy a competitor’s product, then crush the competitor

Posted: January 19th, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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