Deal Radar 2008: Adap.tv Trying to Tackle the Video Ad Problem

After the success of shopping.com (now owned by eBay), Amir Ashkenazi, stepped into the hairy world of video advertising through his recently founded Adap.tv in Nov 2006. It claims to provide publishers and advertisers the best tool to make video ads more effective without interrupting the streaming flow. [see interview: Cracking the Online Video Monetization

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What is John Donahoe’s Gameplan with eBay?

The big news this week is eBay’s CEO change. Meg Whitman retires, John Donahoe will be taking her place. There is wide-spread skepticism about John Donahoe’s choice as the successor to Meg Whitman. We just completed a comprehensive analysis of eBay’s business and a comparative analysis of eBay vs. Amazon.

Deal Radar 2008: Wize Ranks Products

We profiled Tom Patterson, CEO of Wize.com last year. The site compiles both expert and user reviews and inserts them into a scoring algorithm to rank products. The site’s proprietary WizeRank gives each product a 1 – 100 score, utilizing collective wisdom ferreted from all over the web.

Web 3.0 & eBay (Part 5)

Conclusion We have had a look at eBay’s business and verticals and discussed them from a Web 3.0 perspective over the last few days. eBay has been experiencing a slow down in its growth rate. Skype is struggling and the Company is working on better monetizing Skype. PayPal on the other hand has been doing

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Web 3.0 & eBay (Part 1)

Introduction Founded in 1995, eBay Inc. provides consumers with Internet platforms for global commerce, payments and communications. Since its inception, eBay Inc. has expanded to include some of the strongest brands in the world, including the eBay e-commerce marketplace, PayPal, Skype, Shopping.com, and others. Today, eBay has three operating segments: Marketplaces, Payments and Communications. The

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Yaniv Ben-Saadon, CEO of FixYa: Using the Social Web for Technical Support (Part 2)

SM: Where did you get the idea for your current venture? What is your domain experience in the segment? YB: Like any other consumer out there, I had a hard time finding relevant and updated support information for my products, and therefore decided to create this site. As for experience in the industry, I have

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Cracking the Online Video Monetization Nut: Adap.tv CEO Amir Ashkenazi (Part 8)

Here I challenge Amir some more on the business strategy. Technology is wonderful, but are they solving the right business problem? Just because I am looking at a car chase in a movie segment doesn’t mean I am ready to jump and buy a BMW. There is little relevance. On the other hand, if I

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Cracking the Online Video Monetization Nut: Adap.tv CEO Amir Ashkenazi (Part 7)

We continue our discussion about the technical and strategic implementation of the Adapt.tv technology. The core behind it is a learning system which is fed data from contextual matching as well as inputs from user interaction with ads. Over time, this produces an optimized ad campaign for video-content providers, addressing a validated market need. SM:

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