You can’t say that AppNexus poached Ari Paparo from Google, because his last job was at Nielsen, where he spent the last nine months. But prior to that, he put in a total of five years as a product head at DoubleClick, the display ad giant, and Google, which bought DoubleClick in 2008.

At DoubleClick/Google, Paparo headed the teams for “buy-side” products–the ones aimed at advertisers and agencies. At AppNexus, he’ll join former colleague Michael Rubenstein, now president at AppNexus.

Google and AppNexus are now both commercial partners and competitors, because, among other things, AppNexus is trying to help Microsoft build a business to compete with Google’s AdExchange.

AOL CFO Artie Minson prepped investors for the call with a memo laying out expectations. Short version: AOL thinks HuffPo will earn about $10 million on revenue of $50 million this year (as long as you’re okay with using “adjusted OIBDA” as a proxy for “profit”). It also thinks the purchase will save it $20 million a year, but it’s going to spend around $20 million on restructuring charges when the deal goes through.

I’ll liveblog the call below:

8:02 am: Greetings! About to start now.

8:03 am: On the call: Tim Armstrong, Arianna Huffington, Artie Minson.

8:03 am: Armstrong makes a Super Bowl joke that I can’t quite follow, and I like football. But now praising Arianna, co-founder Kenny Lerer and outgoing AOL CEO Eric Hippeau.

“The Huffington Post is one of the best properties on the Internet.” Armstrong, Huffington and Minson are all BlackBerry users.

8:06 am: On revenue: This gives an opportunity to serve more brand marketers, who are “very interested” in the scale this gives us.

8:07 am: Spending next 30 days on integration. “Really synergies to be had.”

Next steps: Next 72 hours communicating with employees, talking to partners. 1,500 AOL workers on the phone this morning explaining deal to others.

“This may be the smallest disruption” internally of any deal I’ve worked on. Majority of integration done within 35 to 40 days.

8:09 am: We’ve looked at a bunch of companies, though we’re mainly going to concentrate on organic growth. But Arianna is great [many superlatives] and she “also happens to be a woman.”

8:10 am: Here’s Arianna.

8:11 am: “Amazing” how aligned two orgs are.

8:11 am: HuffPo was profitable last year. We were thinking about bringing in additional investors last year, and an IPO down the line. But this made perfect sense.

8:12 am: This deal provides a “dramatic acceleration” for the plans we already had.

8:13 am: Some praise for Patch, AOL’s local strategy.

8:14 am: Can’t wait to start!

8:14 am: Alrighty, then. Here’s Artie Minson with some nuts and bolts.

Actually, it’s some color on the deal. But a lot of it is in the prepared remarks he put out earlier this morning.

8:15 am: Again, $20 million in cost savings here. And again, we’ll have to pay up for restructuring: $20 million for cuts, and $10 million for purchase price.

8:17 am: Still basically reading from prepared remarks. Some bookkeeping talk re: compensation accounting.

8:18 am: Remember, display ad growth coming will finally start showing up second half of this year.

8:19 am: Q&A:

Q: Talk about content strategy. Does HuffPo become hub for content going forward? Does it replace Seed? And how long is Arianna’s contract?

A: “The press” has been talking about our content strategy, so let me be clear–we’re focusing on premium content. Things like Seed and StudioNow are platforms–you can do whatever you want with them, different quality levels, at different types of scale.

And then the other thing that is important about those platforms is the ability they give us to work with advertisers.

One of our main interests in HuffPo is their technology and publishing system. So now we have multiple systems [which he is saying is a good thing]. “Our content strategy hasn’t changed.” The “stuff that was out in the press about the AOL Way” was just one way of doing things. [This is not very convincing]

Arianna, tell us how long you’re going to stay.

8:24 am: Arianna: “I’ve told Tim I want to stay here forever. I want this to be the last act of my life.” Anything I want to do I can do here.

[Sorry, missed next part but it was a defense/explanation of content strategy.]

8:26 am: Armstrong: Arianna has a multiyear contract, but it’s open-ended.

8:27 am: Arianna: By the way, we’re going to bring back commenting to AOL stories, and socialize them.

8:28 am: Q: Why buy instead of partnering? Were there other bidders? Also, how will HuffPo politics affect AOL?

8:28 am: Armstrong: We do partnerships where there is “limited upside to those arrangements” so ” we can really spend time on the areas we want to win”–i.e., we don’t care about sports, we do care about women.

“Arianna is somebody we’d rather have inside our building than outside our building.”

“If there were or weren’t bidders on the other side,” I think we got the right price.

8:30 am: Arianna. “As we’ve said, again and again, Huffington Post was not for sale….Nobody was in a hurry to cash out, everybody believed that we could do an IPO down the road.” It’s just that Tim gave us a great offer. [hrrrm.]

On politics–we used to be all about politics, now we’re not. Just 15 percent of our traffic. We have a divorce section now.

Talking up AOL’s “college” section.

8:33 am: Q: For Arianna: More on Patch, please. What do think about what AOL’s done with it, and what you can do with it?

8:33 am: [Every time Arianna says "local level" I think she's saying "locker level." It's happened at least twice, maybe more, on this call.]

There’s a “greatest person of the day” feature we have, and I think Patch should use that. [Or maybe vice-versa, sorry.] I also like their five percent “giving back” rule, cause marketing, etc.

8:35 am: Armstrong: Again, we can do national and local. That’s important. NFL rights are important, and so are local news stories.

8:36 am: Q: Who’s going to sell what? And can you talk about pricing disparity between AOL and HuffPo?

8:37 am: Armstrong: “We would like to maintain all the people from both sales forces [except for Greg Coleman!]. I think we will end up with a large-scale, large-property organization–I don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like, though.

On sell-through rate: Slightly lower at HuffPo, because they’ve been ramping up traffic, and sales force. On CPM, same story. So we can bring up sell-through rate and CPM, and have a larger sales force. [This is pretty much the best argument for the deal that Armstrong can make.]

[BTW: Good back-channel discussion on Twitter right now about AOL's SEO skills, and the people behind it. None of that coming up during this call right now.]

[Sorry, I meant HuffPo's SEO skills, much of which stem from blueprint BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti set out.]

Q: Why not use equity for this deal?

A: Because our equity is priced too low, essentially. But HuffPo employees did roll over 25 percent of deal consideration into AOL options. So as that equity gets more valuable, they’ll get upside.

8:45 am: Q: In your statement, you talked about OIBDA growth in 2013. More on that please.

Minson–probably going to stick to my prepared remarks on that one.

8:46 am: Last Q: Your acqusitions have been about toolsets or content. As you think about others going forward, what else do you want?

Armstrong: We have long-term vision. On plumbing: We’ve wanted to get platforms and plumbing straightened out, and we’re doing that now. Think about the bones or foundation of a very large property. That’s why we’ve been doing infrastructure, like with video–5Min and GoViral and StudioNow.

Going forward, we’ll be doing infrastructure. And we’ll continue to look at “media properties and media brands” that fit our strategy. [Remember, Web site owners: HuffPo just got 10x revenue.

8:50 am: Minson: But we're very price sensitive and we've walked away from deals.

8:50 am: Arianna: And we like women!

8:51 am: Armstrong sums up: Success "in the Internet space" requires vision and execution. That's this deal. And remember, content and brands become more valuable as tech gets faster, more advanced. And "expect us to stay on strategy and on point" going forward. "We're going to overcommunicate" with both sets of employees as we integrate. [You've been warned!]

And we’re done. Thanks for reading.

[Photo credit: Arianna Huffington]

This screenshot comes from Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land, who got Google to acknowledge that yes, it is indeed playing around with conventional-looking Web ads in its mail service, which typically only offers text ads: “We’re always trying out new ad formats and placements in Gmail, and we recently started experimenting with image ads on messages with heavy image content.”

Sterling’s post sent many of us Web/ad nerds scurrying to our Gmail accounts to see if we could find evidence of Google’s experiment, but I have yet to see any others. If you find one, please pass it along to me at (peter@allthingsd.com) and I’ll share it with everyone else.

Here’s another example, courtesy of Shyam Somanadh. His pithy description: “First image ad in my Gmail right panel. I had a sudden Hotmail moment there.”

And a broken ad, from Nicholas Wilhelm’s phone:

And one from Hunter Hebert:

And Jeremy Day:

And Rob McAninch:

Here are the three data points that the search giant showed off during its earnings call this afternoon. All of them “begin with the letter B,” as product SVP Google Jonathan Rosenberg noted, and all of them come with caveats:

• $2.5 billion: Non-text display ad revenue run rate. That number includes ads from its DoubleClick unit as well as YouTube.
• 2 billion: YouTube monetized views per week.
• $1 billion: Mobile annualized revenue run rate.

All of those seem big–and they are! But they’re also deliberately fuzzy enough that it’s hard to tell exactly what they mean.

For instance: As Henry Blodget notes, those display-ad dollars are gross revenue, which means that Google only keeps a portion of them. And while that two billion YouTube views number is up from a billion a year ago, it’s proportionally the same: A year ago YouTube said it was monetizing a billion views a week while serving up a billion views a day; now the video site says two billion views a week and two billion a day.

Meanwhile Google officials, who routinely announce that YouTube is close to profitability, refused to tell analysts whether YouTube is actually profitable.

No matter! The point of b-as-in-big numbers was to impress Wall Street with Google’s ability to create new revenue streams beyond its core search ads. And the data, along with the company’s impressive Q3 performance, seems to have worked: Shares are up nine percent in after-hours trading.

——————

EARLIER

There’s the beat Wall Street was looking for. Google reports earnings of $7.67 a share and net revenues of $5.48 billion. The consensus was for $6.67 and $5.25 billion. GAAP EPS was $6.72.

Google (GOOG) has been plowing money into capital expenditures and people–it now has 23,300 employees, up from 21,800  months ago, a 6.8 percent increase–but it has been able to keep operating income quite healthy, anyway. Adjusted operating income was $2.93 billion, well above the $2.77 billion consensus.

GOOG is up considerably, now seven percent, in after-hours trading. Robot cars for all!

You can listen to (and watch) Google’s 4:30 pm ET earnings call by clicking on this YouTube link. I’ll add updates from the earnings call occasionally starting here:

As in recent quarters, CEO Eric Schmidt is sitting this one out.

CFO Patrick Pichette starts off. Aha! Teases that “we may have” Schmidt available for the first 30 minutes of Q&A before he gets on a GooglePlane.

300 of those new 1,500 employees came from acquisitions.

Discussion of “long-term” growth–”the next 5 to 10 years.” “Simply put, we’re on this growth agenda at full throttle…investing heavily in people and in product.”

There’s a “war for talent” in our industry, which is “out of synch” with the broader economy. Currently exploring how to attract and retain people. Winners and losers determined by this battle.

Re: Product investment, which you’ll hear about from product SVP Jonathan Rosenberg. He’s going to tell you about some numbers, but don’t expect to hear an update on these–they’re merely “proof points” about Google’s success.

Here’s Rosenberg, teasing new previously unreleased numbers.

Here they come. Starting with search and Google Instant:

Impact has been “very minimal” on revenue and “quite expensive” from a resource perspective.

But! “We launched it because we could.”

As search gets better, ads have to keep pace. Great momentum with AdWords.

New ad formats appear on more than 10 percent of query. Some formats show clickthrough rates as much as 10 percent on some, up 30 percent in others.

Big numbers, “which all begin with the letter B.”

$2.5 billion: Non-text display ad revenue run rate. That includes DoubleClick, YouTube.

2 billion: YouTube monetized views per week

$1 billion: Mobile annualized run rate

Mobile search queries up 5 times in the last few years.

Back to Pichette, to tamp down numbers.

In some cases, there is overlap with numbers. For instance, with AdMob, numbers counted in both display and mobile.

Time for Q&A, Schmidt is now on the line.

Schmidt says query growth is pushing click growth, and so are new ad formats. Ads are more compelling, etc.

Pichette notes that AdX numbers are included in the $2.5B display total.

Q: Please talk about YouTube. Of the two billion monetized views, what percent is that of total views? And are you profitable yet?

Pichette: Re: Profitability, “We have not made any comments on it.” [Except of course when they do, over and over.]

Rosenberg: Note that we’ve said we do two billion views per day–that will give you context.

Sorry, missed a Q.

Schmidt says growth of Android is “well past what I had ever hoped for.”

90,000 apps on Android “and growing very fast.”

Question about “proprietary benefits” of Android.

Schmidt: Android is the “largest single platform play” in mobile today.

We’re growing it by giving software away. How does that help us? Well, for starters, people who use Android search two times more than anyone else. Obvious benefit for us there, and search is more lucrative for us there as well, and that makes Android “hugely profitable.”

And we can add other value-added services to Android, but that’s not the focus right now.

Questions on cost: Cost per employee has declined. Can you continue that? And on mobile, will you stay with the “indirect monetization” Android strategy?

Pichette: Wouldn’t read anything into the cost-per-employee numbers. But we’re continuing to be frugal and generous.

Ad boss Nikesh Arora: We’re excited about the revenue model we have. We have no reason to change the model we have with Android.

Schmidt: And display will become a very big component of mobile.

Q: On display, can you break out YouTube and AdX numbers? And what do you think of competitive Android marketplaces?

Pichette: No breakout of numbers. [Duh.]

Schmidt: Goal of the app store is to make money for developers. Not a revenue goal for Google. More stores are a “win for everybody.”

Question about CPC on mobile devices. Rosenberg: They’re lower than desktop, because there aren’t many practical ways to consumate transaction. But on the iPad, activity looks a little bit more like it does on a PC, because there’s more room to enter credit card numbers, etc.

Q: Please discuss cannibalization between smartphone and PC–are iPad and tablet searches incremental or cannibalization? And can you give us color on international 26 percent growth?

Rosenberg: We don’t see cannibalization. We see mobile as complimentary to desktop. Different use patterns–mobile search is on weekends, during lunchtime, etc.

Arora: Generally, trend positive across the board. U.K. a bit weaker, but some of that is FX. Southern Europe way better than Northern. Asian markets robust.

Q: Competitors make $300 profit per handset sold over the lifetime of a device.You’re approaching this with a different model, but do you think that’s an upper limit on that number?

Schmidt: Our model is that handset makers and manufacturers make a lot of money from the phone, and we make money from advertising. So can’t compare the two, and premature for us to guess what we can do. “It should be highly lucrative” and a “very very strong revenue stream compared to a PC.”

Q: On social search. How do you “capture the signal” without access to the data feeds, as you have with Twitter.

Schmidt: “There are some ways we can do that” now, and we’re working on new ways.

Sorry, stepped out. Back now.

Q: TAC rate seems to be lowest since IPO. Sustainable? Growth has been driven by volume, not price. Sustainable, and/or will pricing increase going forward?

Pichette: MySpace deal is now over. That saved us a bunch of money. And mix of our partners will effect our TAC. That’s about it.

Rosenberg: Can’t answer volume/price question without “being forward-looking.” [Heh]

Q: Microsoft/Facebook deal was exclusive. But do you think you’ll see exclusive data deals? And what about Groupon, etc.? Can you compete there?

A: Value of exclusive data is “swamped” by “vastness” of the Web. So no concern there.

Schmidt: Always a concern that large chunks of data are not accessible to search engines….long pause… up to the content owner to decide how much to expose. We believe the world is better off if more information is searchable. “We fundamentally believe that.”

Rosenberg: Daily deals are very exciting. “A lot of small companies doing a fabulous job there.” We participate a little bit via sitelinks. But no question “that’s a very exciting and hot space.”

Q: When will Google Instant be on the BlackBerry or iPhone? What’s Android activation rate? And why not let advertisers bid directly on mobile inventory?

Rosenberg: Instant availability on other platforms “relatively soon”–probably this fall.

Not updating Android activation numbers.

Q: Given that non-core search is more material, do you think you’ll keep allocating resources with your 70-10-10 model? And when do you anticipate mobile overtaking desktop?

Schmidt: On mobile vs. display: Even if we knew I don’t think we’d talk about it.

On core vs. emergent: We talk about this all the time. Depends. Android is very small, and growing fast, so they get all the resources they need. We end up still at 70-10-10, but that’s not really a formula for us.

Pichette: What really matters the most to us is as Eric says, “When you see a hockey stick, pour gasoline on that fire.”

Q: Big-picture data question: What does Google think about leveraging user data to better target ads (see Facebook, Yahoo, etc.)–particularly with search data and display?

Schmidt: “We have a pretty strong opinion that we’re not going to do very much of it.” We’re intensely serious about privacy.

So “we’re not going to do the kinds of things that we could do with it… without your explicit permission. And in many cases we probably won’t do it forever.”

A question on display, which I’ve missed but will have to return to.

Pichette wraps things up. Today’s data points “are not about giving you information” for coming quarters, but to give you confidence that we’re building long-term businesses.

Call ends.

Mark Mahaney’s cheat sheet will help you decipher the numbers:

Guesstimating the total size of that business makes for good Web sport, and Reuters makes a run at it today: The news service pegs Facebook’s 2009 revenue at “$700 million to $800 million” and reports a “solid net profit, in the tens of millions of dollars,” citing two anonymous sources.

Those numbers are higher than other ones we’ve seen, but they don’t sound unbelievable. Facebook now boasts enormous size–half a billion users!–and at least three different revenue streams: Traditional display ads sold by a top-flight sales team, self-serve ads (check out this do-it-yourself tweak) and virtual goods (read: Zynga).

What Facebook doesn’t have, as best as I can tell: A magic moneymaking bullet a la Google’s (GOOG) AdWords. That may prevent the company from getting a Google-like market cap when and if it goes public. But I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg and company are complaining.

Pick your data point:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau says U.S. spending on Web ads hit $5.9 billion in the first quarter of 2010. That’s a record for the first quarter of the year, but it’s a relatively modest 7.5 percent increase over a very crummy comparison in 2009.

And bear in mind that the IAB’s data include search spending, which means that the spike is in large part a reflection of Google’s (GOOG) health.

Want a bigger number? Try comScore, which says that the volume of display ads, i.e., the kind you might see on this page, shot up 15 percent in the last year. But while comScore (SCOR) says total spending on display ads hit $2.7 billion for the quarter and that the average CPM (cost per thousand impressions) hit $2.48, it isn’t reporting how those numbers compare to last year’s results.

ComScore spokesman Andrew Lipsman says his company isn’t putting out comparative numbers because it has changed its reporting methodology, so it doesn’t have apple-to-apples data. But he allowed that overall spending, and prices, have at least increased “modestly” in the last year.

So that’s not-bad news for display giants like Yahoo (YHOO) and AOL (AOL). And most definitely not for Facebook, which is now selling more ad impressions than any other Web publisher in the U.S.

Redmond is set to roll out AdECN, the “real-time” ad exchange it bought in 2007, within the next two weeks. But only in the most cautious of tests: Microsoft (MSFT) will open up AdECN to a handful of ad buyers and says it will only allow them to purchase a “select, limited amount of Microsoft inventory.”

Which means that even as Google’s AdX exchange, relaunched last fall, continues to gather momentum, Microsoft will still be dabbling around the edges. And some industry sources tell me they’re not sure that Microsoft is convinced it wants to launch an exchange at all.

The promise of the exchanges is that they allow ad sellers and buyers to haggle over specific pieces of inventory at the moment Web surfers are engaged with them.

That’s theoretically important because it means an ad buyer can determine if a visitor who is, say, looking at this Web page at this very second is worth more or less than the one who was looking at it just before. Or after. Etc.

Entrepreneurs and investors in ad technology think this is a big deal, because it will allow dollars to flow into online display ads much more efficiently. Traditional publishers, though, fear that the exchanges will simply function as more traditional ad networks do–that is, they will commodify most of their ad inventory and push prices even lower.

Microsoft itself is having that debate about its own exchange, sources familiar with the company tell me. They tell me that some executives in Redmond are desperate to launch AdECN in order to compete with Google (GOOG)–and likely, Yahoo (YHOO), which is testing its own real-time platform. But others aren’t eager to launch a product that may end up pushing down prices on Microsoft properties like MSN.

That would explain the long delay in launching AdECN, which has been promised for many months. Most recently, industry sources were telling me that Microsoft would launch the exchange in January.

It appears they’ll be off by a few days. Here’s Microsoft’s statement to me in response to a question about AdECN’s launch date and plans:

To date, we’ve been piloting the AdECN Federated exchange system internally with Microsoft Content Ads and through the Microsoft Media Network. In the next two weeks, we are extending it to a select group of advertising network partners in a test phase, which will enable participants to bid for media in real-time across a select, limited amount of Microsoft inventory. We’ve been intentional in our launch approach–by initiating this test with a small group we believe that will help us to refine and build future functionality. We expect to share more details about this test and our strategy in the coming months.

Quite surprising: The battered real estate industry will spend more money on ads in general this year.

Wait a minute: Aren’t ad dollars supposed to move from every other venue to the Web? And aren’t battered industries the ones that are supposed to move the fastest, since they’re the ones most in need of the Web’s efficiency?

Not in this case, says research firm Borrell Associates, which predicts that the real estate industry’s spending on Web ads will drop four percent in 2010, while its overall marketing spend will increase by two percent. ClickZ:

Colby Atwood, president of Borrell, said that real estate advertisers–typically among the more savvy of display clients–are moving away from Internet advertising in favor of more cost-effective channels, like promotions and direct marketing, and are not expected to come back in any significant way.

“Advertisers across the board are beginning to flatten out the amount of money that they put into advertising per se, and they are increasing their investment in promotions,” he said. “Once companies learn about how to contact an individual, if they’re savvy, and many of them are becoming this way, they remarket directly to that individual using e-mails and other directed forms of promotions.”

I haven’t seen the full report (I’ve asked Borrell for a copy), but I’m assuming that Borrell’s projections distinguish between different kinds of Web advertising.

For instance, I’d be very surprised if spending on search engines like Google (GOOG), which ought to be as cost-effective as any direct marketing campaign, is shrinking; I can definitely see general display ads withering though. I’ll update if I get more.

[Image credit: infrogmation]

The above is an article of faith among a certain kind of Web publisher. And some of them are even paying for studies to prove that display ads–basically all the ads you see that aren’t part of search results–really do work on the Web.

Except when they don’t. That’s the unsettling conclusion that some research funded by Yahoo (YHOO) recently reached, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The study was produced by the Web giant’s Yahoo Labs, which has been getting new attention in the Carol Bartz regime and beefing up its staff of social scientists by “adding highly credentialed cognitive psychologists, economists and ethnographers from top universities around the world.”

One of the new hires, economics professor David Reiley, tried to track the benefits of a Yahoo ad campaign on behalf of a retail chain. He found that the ads did work, but only for people born before Woodstock:

The research, conducted in partnership with an undisclosed national retailer, sought to accurately measure the impact of Internet display advertising across online and offline sales, by tracking people who had registered with both Yahoo and the store. The research found an approximately 5 percent increase in spending among those who had seen the ads–with 93 percent of those sales occurring in stores.

The potentially worrisome thing, however, was that among those under 40, the percentage was nearly zero. That could reflect the unpopularity of the particular retailer among that demographic. Or it could underscore a growing immunity to display advertising among the Web-savvy younger generation.

Yikes. I asked Yahoo for its take on the study and the company sent me a (not surprisingly) sunnier summary of the research. Some of its highlights:

Major Findings:
By combining a controlled experiment with panel data on purchases, we find statistically and economically significant impacts of advertising on sales.

We estimate the total effect on revenues to be more than eleven times the retailer’s expenditure on advertising during the study.
93% of the effect was on offline (in store) sales.

Persistence: The effects of the campaigns were persistent over time, meaning that the sales impact could be tracked for a period of time after the campaign ended.

Demographics: there was no significant correlation or differences w/r/t location (by state) or gender.

But there was a significant difference w/r/t to age: customers over the age of 40 were significantly more responsive to the ads in terms of sales. The largest effect came from senior citizens (65+).

Clicks versus non-Clicks: Though clicks are a standard measure of performance in online-advertising, we find that online advertising has substantial effects on those who merely view but do not click the ads.

We find that 78% of the effect in sales comes from those who view ads but do not click them, while only 22% can be attributed to those who click.

Count me among the group disposed to think that brand ads on the Web do work, by the way. But then again, I have a vested interest in this being true since it’s what’s supposed to keep me clothed and fed. I’d hate to see scientific proof that it’s all a pipe dream.

For a contrary perspective, funded by people whose interests align with mine, check out this study funded by the Online Publishers Association.

[Image credit: pedrosimoes7]

Eun, who runs partnerships for Google’s site, confirmed earlier reports that YouTube is looking to stream movies and/or TV shows that aren’t available on the site now and won’t be supported by advertising. So someone, either consumers themselves or a sponsor who picks up the tab, would need to pay for them directly.

When? “In the not too distant future,” Eun says–while leaving enough wiggle room for Google (GOOG) to avoid actually saying that it is committed to any particular plan.

Here’s an excerpt of an interview I conducted with Eun a few days ago (you can see all of it in the video below):

David Eun: We’ve been thinking about how to provide access to more and more content, and a lot of that content isn’t available through an ad model. So we’ve been thinking about different ways to access content and have producers of content come to YouTube and pick different monetization models.

Peter Kafka: Just to be clear, when you say that when it’s not accessible through ad models, you’re saying a consumer would pay for it in some way directly? A one-off or a subscription model?

DE: Potentially. A consumer. Or a sponsor. But there’d be a different business model behind that….

PK: And when might we see some of these alternate [paid] versions of YouTube products coming out?

DE: We’re still testing things, and we want to make sure that we’re working with partners and making sure that we’re meeting their expectations. But timing? In the not too distant future.

PK: First quarter, second quarter?

DE: In the not too distant future.

YouTube officials will want me to note that the site isn’t talking about charging consumers for the stuff that’s on the site now and that none of this is a done deal yet. Noted.

But YouTube’s plans synch up with plenty of other video players hoping or planning to do something along the same lines. Hulu, for instance, is trying to put together some kind of premium service that will sit on top of its free site. And Apple (AAPL) is exploring its own subscription service for TV shows.

Eun, like every other Google executive, doesn’t like to get nailed down on specifics about YouTube’s performance or plans. But he did walk through a few other things of note with me in the interview:

• The role of DoubleClick, the display ad network Google acquired last year, in boosting the site’s revenue.
• The prospects for YouTube’s eventual profitability, which he says is also “in the not too distant future.”
• The structure of YouTube’s deal with Vevo, big music’s video site, and chances that the company could do something similar with other types of clips.

If you want to skip past some awkward introductory stuff, head to the 1:40 mark in the video below. And turn up the volume after the preroll ad because Eun is a soft talker.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091216/youtube-paid-video-could-come-in-the-not-too-distant-future/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091110/more-money-for-real-time-ad-tech-appnexus-raises-5-million/ http://allthingsd.com/20091110/more-money-for-real-time-ad-tech-appnexus-raises-5-million/#comments Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:11:16 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=12866 More money for ad technology: AppNexus, an ad-buying “platform,” has raised $5 million in a round led by Kodiak Venture Partners, along with Venrock and First Round Capital. The company is one of many trying to take advantage of “real-time” bidding for Web display ad inventory.

The funding is an “inside round”–only existing investors participated in the funding–which sometimes, but not always, raises a red flag. In this case, AppNexus says the funding is also an “up round”–its existing investors now think the start-up is worth more than they did the last time they bought in–but didn’t disclose a valuation.

There’s also a bit of fuzziness, still, about what exactly AppNexus does. The company says it provides a “gateway” to ad buyers who want access to ad exchanges like the ones operated by Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO)–Microsoft (MSFT) will launch its exchange next year–though many industry types think that AppNexus is itself an ad exchange.

The company certainly boasts lots of ad exchange bona fides. Co-founders Brian O’Kelley and Mike Nolet are both veterans of Right Media, the ad exchange Yahoo bought in 2007. And in September, the company brought on Michael Rubenstein, who had been running Google’s exchange.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091110/more-money-for-real-time-ad-tech-appnexus-raises-5-million/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090312/aol-gets-a-new-ceo-google-sales-boss-tim-armstrong/ http://allthingsd.com/20090312/aol-gets-a-new-ceo-google-sales-boss-tim-armstrong/#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:40:44 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=5183

Everyone who wondered why Randy Falco and Ron Grant were still running AOL gets an answer: Time Warner (TWX) was lining up their replacement.

Google (GOOG) sales chief Tim Armstrong becomes chairman and CEO of the troubled Web property, effective immediately.

The move is getting immediate cheers from current and former AOL employees I’ve talked to. The snap consensus is that anyone would have been better than Falco, a longtime NBC executive, and Grant, who was Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes’s chief lieutenant before being elevated to his role as President and COO of AOL.

But they’re particularly happy to see a sales guy running the organization: AOL once had a much admired sales operation. But in recent years, the group has been roiled, as a series of sales chiefs came and went. (From Kara Swisher, here are more details on the shakeup, and an interview with Armstrong. And here’s some early betting on Armstrong’s replacement at Google — former Doubleclick CEO David Rosenblatt has a lot of fans).

The current AOL sales chief, former Yahoo (YHOO) sales boss Greg Coleman, was installed just last month. He’s been deep into a reorg of his own.

It was desperately needed after AOL’s miserable performance in 2008, which concluded with a quarter that saw ad revenue drop 18 percent. But those plans may be up in the air now.

In any case, here is the full press release from Time Warner about the firing of Falco and Grant, after the jump:

NEW YORK, March 12, 2009–Tim Armstrong, Google Senior Vice President, has been named Chairman and CEO of AOL, LLC, Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) Chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes announced today. Current AOL Chairman and CEO Randy Falco and President and COO Ron Grant plan to leave the company after a transition period.

In making the announcement Mr. Bewkes said: “Tim is the right executive to move AOL into the next phase of its evolution. At Google, Armstrong helped build one of the most successful media teams in the history of the Internet–helping to make Google the most popular online search advertising platform in the world for direct and brand marketers. He’s an advertising pioneer with a stellar reputation and proven track record. We are privileged to have him preside over AOL as its audience and programming businesses continue to grow and its advertising platform expands globally. He’ll also be helpful in helping Time Warner determine the optimal structure for AOL.”

Tim Armstrong said: “I’m very excited about the opportunities presented in leading AOL. AOL has a wide-ranging set of assets and audience. The company is well positioned to enhance those assets into a larger share of the Internet audience and advertiser communities. AOL and Google have been partners for years and I look forward to collaborating with Jeff Bewkes and his team as we explore the right structure and future for AOL.”

Mr. Bewkes added: “Randy led AOL in its transition from a subscription business to an audience business. Under Randy and Ron, AOL’s programming sites exhibited year-over-year growth in unique visitors for 23 consecutive months with many of its sites now in the top five of their categories. They also assembled Platform-A, the number one display ad network in the U.S. with a reach of more than 90%. They also aggressively cut costs as they restructured the Audience business portion of the company into three distinct operating units: People Networks, MediaGlow, and Platform-A. As Randy and Ron move on, they leave AOL with our gratitude and appreciation for remaking the company and bringing it to a new and promising level.”

Tim Armstrong was a member of Google’s Operating Committee and served as the president of the Americas Operations. Under the Americas Operations, Armstrong’s team managed publishers and advertisers’ relationships and platforms with some of the world’s most widely recognized media and agency brands.  Armstrong started at Google in the year 2000 and opened the first office outside of the Mountain View, CA headquarters.

Mr. Armstrong joined Google from Snowball.com, where he was vice president of sales and strategic partnerships. Prior to his role at Snowball.com, he served as director of integrated sales & marketing at Starwave’s and Disney’s ABC/ESPN Internet Ventures, working across the companies’ Internet, TV, radio, and print properties. He started his career by co-founding and running a newspaper based in Boston, MA, before joining IDG to launch their first consumer Internet magazine, I-Way.

Mr. Armstrong sits on the boards of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the Advertising Council, and the Advertising Research Foundation, and is a trustee at Connecticut College and Lawrence Academy. He is a member of Mayor Bloomberg’s MediaNYC 2020 committee.  He is a graduate of Connecticut College, with a double major in economics and sociology.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090312/aol-gets-a-new-ceo-google-sales-boss-tim-armstrong/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081031/washington-post-turns-in-another-lousy-quarter-but-it-could-have-been-worse/ http://allthingsd.com/20081031/washington-post-turns-in-another-lousy-quarter-but-it-could-have-been-worse/#comments Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:26:45 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=388 MediaMemo worries that it is going to be writing grim stories about layoffs at media companies for many months. So it’s going to try very hard to find some good news whenever it can.

Take the Washington Post Company’s (WPO) Q3 report card, for instance. It’s bad. But it’s better than the last one the troubled newspaper and education company earned.

And yes, you have to be in the media business to look at a seven percent yearly decline in revenue, which is what Wapo’s newspaper group recorded, as a positive. But that decrease is better than Q2, when newspaper revenues were down 13 percent.

And there are more lemonade-from-lemon stats available:

• Online ads are up 13 percent year-over-year, an acceleration from the four percent growth they recorded in Q2. And given that most publishers saw decreasing growth this summer, that’s a decent achievement. Display ads were up 32 percent. (Flipside: Lucrative online classified ads were down eight percent).
• Print ads declined 14 percent y/y, but that’s better than the 22 percent decrease last quarter.
• Revenues at WPO’s magazine group were down four percent, but that’s better than Q2′s 15 percent decrease. And ads at Newsweek were down 13 percent, but last quarter they declined 21 percent.

Meanwhile WPO’s Kaplan education unit, which now accounts for more than half of the company’s revenue, did just fine. And its cable group did well, too.

There. Doesn’t that feel better?

Alas, MediaMemo does have to point out that the company’s local TV group did poorly, just like most local TV groups have been doing.

The unit’s revenues were basically flat at $78 million. But if you strip out one-time boosts from political and Olympic-related ads, it’s down some 8.5 percent, which is worse than last quarter’s six percent decline. Happy Halloween!

[Image Credit: cliff1066]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081031/washington-post-turns-in-another-lousy-quarter-but-it-could-have-been-worse/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081031/googles-plea-to-publishers-please-keep-using-us/ http://allthingsd.com/20081031/googles-plea-to-publishers-please-keep-using-us/#comments Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:55:59 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=375 Yet another sign that even mighty Google feels unnerved by the slowdown: A “Hey! Don’t Forget About Us!” note sent out to its AdSense customers.

Those would be the Web publishers, large and small, that hand over some of their ad space to Google (GOOG), which generally fills it with its ubiquitous text ads. Kim Scott, who runs AdSense sales, would like those publishers to know that Google knows times are tough, and that it wants to help, and that it’s improving AdSense all the time, and that they should hang in there.

Nothing wrong with the note–it’s always good form to send customers a little pick-me-up. But since most publishers we know use AdSense as an ad solution of last resort–because they have extra space to sell, or because they have no way to sell space, period–it’s hard to imagine a missive like this will be very persuasive.

Here’s the note , courtesy of VentureBeat’s MG Siegler:

Dear Publisher,

We understand that the recent economic turmoil has created a lot of uncertainty in the lives of AdSense publishers. During these difficult times, we’re continuing to invest in innovations that improve publisher monetization and advertiser value in the content network.

We’re focusing on further developing our product offerings and boosting ad performance for publishers. We recently announced advancements in AdSense for search and experiments to make ads more effective. We’re bringing DoubleClick technologies to AdSense publishers, and we’ll continue to launch new products and features. We’re also continuing to improve our offerings for AdWords advertisers, making it easier for them to target the Google content network. Features for advertisers, such as the new display ad builder, are designed to improve ad performance on AdSense publisher sites.

We’ll keep driving technological progress, but our best asset will always be our publisher partners. The strength of AdSense lies in the value of the content you bring to users and the quality of the sites you bring to advertisers. Our success is tied to yours. We look forward to partnering with you for the long term, and remain dedicated to helping you succeed.

Sincerely,

Kim Scott
Director AdSense Online Sales & Operations

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043″

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081031/googles-plea-to-publishers-please-keep-using-us/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080826/great-news-steve-we-beat-the-dancing-mortgage-people-for-top-display-advertiser/ http://allthingsd.com/20080826/great-news-steve-we-beat-the-dancing-mortgage-people-for-top-display-advertiser/#comments Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:55:14 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=3934 Microsoft’s Live Search Cashback may not be doing much to improve the company’s share of the search market, but it’s doing wonders for its marketing reach. Microsoft bested University of Phoenix and LowerMyBills.com (the company responsible for those silly dancing cowboy ads that festoon the Web) to claim the title of top display advertiser in June, according to comScore. Microsoft (MSFT) ads were viewed 5.5 billion times by 126.4 million unique visitors during the month. That’s 1.7 percent of all the online display ads served in the states and a reach of nearly 70 percent of the total unique audience. Comscore said the company’s 5.5 billion display ad views in June were “due in large part to its promotional campaign for Windows Live Search, including ads for Windows Live Search Club games and the new Windows Live Search cashback program.”

Incidentally, June, as Todd Bishop notes over at The Seattle Post Intelligencer, happens to be the last month in Microsoft’s fiscal year, which means it’s also the end of the period in which Microsoft executive bonuses are calculated.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080826/great-news-steve-we-beat-the-dancing-mortgage-people-for-top-display-advertiser/feed/ 0