Baidu released a list of hottest search keywords for 2008:

1 QQ
2 Mp3
3 Novel
4 Movie
5 Game
6 Xunlei
7 NBA
8 Handset
9 Music
10 Kart Rider

While Google China’s most popular search keywords for 2008 are:

1 Sina
2 NetEase
3 Taobao
4 Youku
5 Tudou
6 QQ
7 Sohu
8 Xunlei
9 UUsee
10 NBA

Technorati Tags: Baidu, China, Google

VC backed search service Xalo.vn just made a change to it UI (now seems a front page) that would bring me back to the pre dot com bubble with many search engines mushroomed around the world in 90′.
We did not understand why Tinh Van Media decided to change to a portal like search service, that could make users think of many local portals such as Timnhanh, Zing …
We think focus is better, users come to search engine to find relevant information not to read news.

Technorati Tags: Timnhanh, Xalo, Zing

A new study by Yahoo and Nielsen conducted in Southeast Asia said the online ad spend in the region could reach $182.3m by 2010.
The joint study covers Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam, and forecasts spend levels for both display and search advertising for the next two years.
“Stuart Pike, industry solutions director for Nielsen Online in APAC, said while Singapore would be the most “mature” market in SE Asia and Vietnam the most “immature”, all five markets have “the basic fundamentals for growth”.

“Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines will be driving 90% of the growth in the next five years. Indonesia has a bigger scope for growth. [But] it’s definitely an exciting time to be in the online industry in Singapore,” he said.

They did not released the detail number of Vietnam market but we estimated Vietnamese market should hit US$20 millions (conservative) with increasing share of pay per click advertising.

Technorati Tags: Nielsen Online, Yahoo

While many ad networks were closed down or scaled back, the world’s largest online retailer Amazon has created an online advertising company named Adzinia Media Group LLC. Amazon spokeswoman Patty Smith confirmed that Adzinia is a separate company that “sells online display and email advertising products to advertisers” and said it has been around for almost a year. Adzinia will handle ad inventory of Amazon properties including some world biggest websites: amazon.com , imdb.com, alexa.com.
With years of experience in affiliate marketing, Amazon will not have much difficultly in managing ad network business.

Technorati Tags: Affiliate marketing, Amazon

Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) plans to officially release its right-side advertising system, “Phoenix Nest,” in the second quarter of 2009, reports qq.com citing sources. September reports said the new system, similar to Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) AdWords, would be released soon, but Baidu has yet to announce a release date. The report said Baidu planned to spend three years developing the new product, but has speeded the release in response to recent press.

Technorati Tags: AdWords, Baidu, Google

In the world of search service with big names such as Google, Yahoo, MSN … there are some vertical search: Truveo for video, SimplyHired and Recruit.net for job. Another way to go is visual search by Like.com (just raised $32M Series C)
Now came the Modista that “simplifies online shopping by searching inventories across multiple retailers and displaying results in an intuitive interface. Our patent-pending technology organizes items according to their visual similarity using digital image processing and machine learning algorithms.”
Modista’s UI seems fit female users while Like.com is better for savvy searchers.
Let’s see how Modista team develop their product in the coming time.

Technorati Tags: Google, Like, Modista, MSN, Yahoo

After Overture and Google revolutionized the contextual text link ads on Internet, many startups now trying to use the technology to automate display ads based on some algorithms. There are three companies claimed to build these tools for advertising industry.

Adisn’s approach has been to build a database of related words so it can assess the content of a Web site or blog based on the words on its pages. Adisn then buys space on Web sites, and uses its information to find an appropriate ad to show visitors to those sites. If a visitor views pages about beaches, weather and Hawaii, it might suggest that the visitor is interested in Hawaiian travel. Based on that analysis, Adisn’s system pulls different components — actors, fonts, background images — to make an ad.

Tumri’s approach is slightly different. It creates a template for ads, including slots for the message, the color, the image and other elements. Unlike Adisn, it does not buy ad space, but lets clients — like Sears and Best Buy — choose and buy space on sites themselves. And rather than building a contextual database like Adisn, Tumri uses whatever targeting approach advertisers are already using, whether it is behavioral or contextual or demographic, and assembles an ad on the fly based on that information.

Advertising simplified. “One click” does it all with iPromote.
Gone are the days of needing huge budgets and creative teams to run successful promotional campaigns on the web. With iPromote, you can promote your webpage across hundreds of premium web destinations using beautiful rich-media display ads, all with the simple click of a button!

Technorati Tags: Google, Overture

China’s leading search engine Baidu stock fell sharply after the bad news of its sales practice. Some medical product companies can pay Baidu to get a high ranking in the search engine results.
It might be the pressure from Wall Street as a public company to maintain revenue growth. But in the long run, the action should destroy its brand image. And who could benefit from the error: Google, Yahoo.
Google had passed Overture in PPC advertising by not accepting paid inclusion and now the chance showed up to Google again in China.
For an emerging market such as Vietnam (behind China online market 3 to 5 years?) while Google is an incumbent search service, the chance for local search players is at niche market like video, music, local search. But be prepared not to burn yourself with some “pretty money” from clients. Put users experience first and your services would win the heart and mind of clients too.

Technorati Tags: Baidu, China, Google