Thismoment, the San Francisco-based digital marketing platform provider, said it has raised $7.3 million in its first institutional venture round from Sierra Ventures.

Before this funding, the company raised $4.25 million since 2008, when it was founded as a content-sharing Web site.

The company, which serves brands and agencies with its Distributed Engagement Channel platform, said it is aimed at “managing content, conversation and creative assets across earned, owned and paid media channels.” That means marketing “initiatives across Facebook, YouTube, brand sites, rich media ad units, mobile devices, tablets and digital outdoor placements,” as well as a platform to manage these social marketing campaigns.

Sierra’s Mark Fernandes will join the board. Other investors include private equity firm Fenway Partners, as well as well-known digital execs Shelby Bonnie, Jason Hirschhorn and Mika Salmi.

Thismoment said it will use the new funds to expand operations in the U.S. and also add them internationally.

Longtime media and Internet exec Bob Pittman has been named CEO of radio broadcast and outdoor advertising giant Clear Channel, the company announced today.

Pittman — who has been chairman of Clear Channel’s media and entertainment platforms after making an investment in the company less than a year ago — will join the board of directors of CC Media Holdings, Clear Channel Communications and Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, as executive chairman.

Clear Channel’s holdings include a huge parcel of radio stations across the U.S., along with a number of digital properties and a big global outdoor advertising business.

Pittman — the former MTV wunderkind who started in radio at 15 years old as an announcer at a station in his native Mississippi — has not been in a top job like this one since he resigned from the then-AOL Time Warner as its COO in the midst of the botched merger mishegas almost a decade ago.

Since then, Pittman has been doing a range of things, including making canny investments in a variety of Internet start-ups such as Zynga and DailyCandy, and even in a high-end tequila company via the Pilot Group, a New York-based private investment firm.

He made his own investment in Clear Channel last year and has since upped his involvement, which resulted in the latest move to CEO.

“I swore I would never work like this again, but when something gets me this stimulated, I knew I wanted to get into it again,” said Pittman, in an interview with me yesterday. “I think this company has everything it needs to be a great media company in the new media landscape.”

That will include a range of new initiatives, including recent partnerships with Facebook and more.

“We want to move like an entrepreneur and have the assets of a big media company,” said Pittman. “I am an addict for this challenge.”

Here’s the official press release from Clear Channel:

BOB PITTMAN NAMED CEO OF CC MEDIA HOLDINGS

Appointment Underscores Clear Channel’s Evolution to a Fully Realized, Integrated Media, Digital and Entertainment Enterprise

Media Pioneer Will Oversee the Company’s Global Media Properties, including Broadcast, Digital and Mobile, Syndication, Media Representation and Outdoor

New York, NY — October 2, 2011 — CC Media Holdings, Inc. (OTCBB: CCMO), a leading global media, digital and entertainment company, announced today that Bob Pittman will become its Chief Executive Officer. Pittman joined Clear Channel in November 2010 as an investor and the company’s Chairman of Media and Entertainment Platforms. Pittman will join the Board of Directors of CC Media Holdings, Inc. and Clear Channel Communications, Inc.; in addition, he will join the Board of Directors of Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc., as its Executive Chairman. These appointments are effective immediately.

In his new role, Pittman will oversee the company’s businesses, which include:

Clear Channel Radio, which serves 150 cities through 850 owned radio stations and an additional 100 cities and 4,000 stations through its syndicated Premier Radio Networks products. Clear Channel Radio also includes:

* Clear Channel Digital, which develops and operates iHeartRadio, the free, industry-leading digitalradio product that combines access to all of Clear Channel’s live broadcast and digital-only radio stations as well as user-created Custom Stations. Clear Channel Digital also develops the companion digital products for each radio station brand, including strong social components;

* Media Services for the radio, media, digital, mobile and music industries, including Total Traffic Network, a groundbreaking programming and technology service delivering real-time traffic data to vehicles via in-car and portable navigation systems, broadcast media, wireless and Internet-based services; The Katz Media Group, the leading media representation firm in the US for radio and television stations; and RCS, which provides scheduling and broadcast software for radio, internet and television station in addition to research studies that aid the media and music businesses.

Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, which is one of the world’s largest outdoor advertising companies with close to one million displays in over 40 countries across five continents. Clear Channel Outdoor includes:

* Americas Outdoor Advertising, which owns or operates nearly 190,000 displays across the United States, Canada and Latin America including operations in 49 of the 50 largest markets in the United States. The Americas businessconsist of various types of displays that include billboards; street furniture; transit displays; the Clear Channel Airports division, which is the premier innovator of contemporary display concepts and currently operates more than 260 airport programs across the globe; mall displays; wallscapes; and spectaculars including Spectacolor, a market leader in spectacular sign displays, with displays located in New York’s Times Square. The Company has been a leader in the development and operation of digital displays and networks across many of its U.S. markets.

* International Outdoor Advertising operates across Asia, Australia and Europe with displays across nearly 30 countries. The International business consists of street furniture and transit displays, billboards, mall displays, wallscapes and spectaculars. Clear Channel International’s street furniture division operates over 3,500 municipal advertising contracts worldwide.

Pittman will also remain a member of Pilot Group, LLC, a New York-based private investment firm.

“On behalf of the Board of Directors, I want to express how delighted I am that Bob has accepted this position,” said Mark Mays, Chairman of Clear Channel Media Holdings. “He has been an invaluable contributor to Clear Channel Radio since last November, and he is the perfect person to take Clear Channel to the next level. I look forward to his leadership of our company.”

“Bob Pittman brings a long history as a brilliant innovator and brand builder — from his days as a very successful radio programmer, creator of MTV and CEO of MTV Networks to his work helping to drive the phenomenal growth of AOL and his successful investments in other digital, media and technology companies. He has already generated a renewed sense of confidence and direction not only at Clear Channel, but across the entire radio and media landscape,” said Scott Sperling, Co-President of THL Partners.

“I’m thrilled we were able recruit Bob into the CEO role at Clear Channel. He is the perfect fit to lead this incredibly powerful media platform. He embraces creativity, and has given employees the motivation and freedom to innovate, take risks and succeed,” said John Connaughton, Managing Director of Bain Capital. “He thinks big, is not afraid of change and is intensely focused on driving new businesses, expanding our creative talent and maximizing the full value of Clear Channel’s extraordinary assets, ideas and people.”

Pittman’s appointment comes on the heels of several industry-leading achievements by Clear Channel Radio this past year. In March, the company acquired digital music company Thumbplay for its state-of-the-art technologies as well as its technology and product teams. Last week, Clear Channel hosted the iHeartRadio Music Festival, the largest live concert event in radio history, which marked the official launch of the New iHeartRadio, which combines more than 850 of the nation’s most popular live broadcast and digital-only radio stations from 150 cities with user-created Custom Stations. iHeartRadio was one of the few highlighted new products at Facebook’s f8 conference on September 22nd, where it was recognized for its technology and cutting-edge social integration.

Additionally, Clear Channel has demonstrated its unique national promotional capabilities through significant relationships with record labels and social media leaders, and forging relationships with partners like Microsoft, Facebook, Zynga, Toyota and HP that reach further and deeper than advertising.

“Over the past year, I’ve had the unique opportunity to look at the Clear Channel people and assets up close and have found myself increasingly drawn to the company, to the point where the chance to get even more deeply involved has just become irresistible,” said Pittman. “I know first-hand that we have great people and the assets that allow them to do great things. We are so much more than just transmitters and broadcast towers — we leverage our local brands, personalities, strategic relationships and programming expertise to create unique experiences that forge real connections with consumers across our multiple platforms.”

Pittman continued, “I look forward to continuing to work closely with John Hogan and the Clear Channel Radio team to grow our company as we strengthen relationships with our consumers, advertisers, artists, labels and partners, nationally and locally — and I’m excited by the opportunity to work with Ron Cooper and William Eccleshare to help them make the most of our outdoor advertising potential by tapping into Clear Channel’s assets as a whole. I believe we have the technologies, the physical infrastructure, the content and, most importantly, the people to market to consumers better than any other media company in the world.”

As BoomTown reported earlier, AOL has confirmed that Tim Stevens (pictured here in a classic Speed Racer pose, but see his real face below) will replace Josh Topolsky as editor in chief of Engadget.

Stevens has been working at the large tech gadget news and reviews site since 2007, most recently as its automotive editor.

Unusually, he was a part-timer at Engadget until a few months ago and lives several hours north of New York City, where AOL has its HQ. The company said Stevens will commute as necessary.

In his bio on the Engadget site, Stevens noted, in part, that he’s “an avid gamer, amateur motorsports enthusiast, lover of most outdoor activities, and proud creator of the first (and possibly only) two-player game for the Sega VMU.”

Geek credentials–check!

The appointment comes amid a fair bit of hubbub, with the announcement last night of a new competing tech site with eight new staff members, all of whom have recently left Engadget.

An Apple-obsessed, gadget-loving, nerdy-McNerd Gang of Eight!

That includes Topolsky, who is joining Jim Bankoff at his well-funded SB Nation sports and news start-up to launch the still-unnamed site.

Bankoff–in even more only-in-tech interconnectedness–was key to the purchase of Engadget many years ago when he was AOL’s top content exec.

An AOL spokesperson said in an email that “Engadget stays the same, with an obsessive focus on news.”

He correctly pointed out that “there’s a long tradition of handing down the editor in chief baton to someone from within: Pete Rojas to Ryan Block to Josh Topolsky to Tim Stevens.”

The site’s editorial director since 2009 has been Josh Fruhlinger. Recently promoted managing editor, Darren Murph, will also remain in the job at AOL.

In a statement to me, Fruhlinger said:

“As a member of Engadget since 2004, I know that we built our success on a commitment to what matters most to readers: staying focused on the latest technology news. Tim has a reputation for sharp news coverage and is a natural leader–our staffers are deeply loyal to him and stand behind him as we move on to the next generation of Engadget. Darren has an intuitive sense for discerning news and trends that matter. And we’re thrilled to be working with Arianna Huffington as part of The Huffington Post Media Group, as Arianna has a history of die-hard support for the work of journalists.”

Earlier Fruhlinger also tweeted: “In case anyone wondered, Engadget will be hitting tech news when we all wake up. Just like today. Just like 2004.”

Thus, everyone back to work as before!

Until more Engadget news is committed, here’s Stevens–who thinks he looks more like Racer X in the photo above–with an actual face on display (“I AM THE STIG” is yet another car-racing reference):

Does tea with Silicon Valley venture capitalist Ron Conway and 1990s rap legend MC Hammer sound too legit? What about spending the day harvesting crabs under the Golden Gate Bridge? Or maybe a hands-on coffee-crafting session with an expert barista?

Skyara, a buzzy little start-up has created a marketplace for people to sell experiences to folks who are looking to do something other than the same old thing.

“It’s sort of like Airbnb for experiences,” co-founder Dennis Liu explained, referencing another buzzy start-up.

He continued: “It’s one part Etsy, some Expedia and a little of Groupon built on top of our own robust scheduling platform.”

In practice, users log in and are asked if they want to purchase or provide a service. The providers are taken through a process of describing their offering, providing images, setting up times and providing enough personal info so the Skyara team can contact them and verify they are legit. Skyara takes a 12 percent fee on the transaction on the seller’s side.

The purchasers can currently browse or search through about 200 different experiences, ranging from a boudoir photography session (Skyara checked–the photographer is well known in the arena) to the less understandable half-hour of punching dozens of plastic inflatable clowns that someone has collected in an apartment.

But according to Liu, the service has an almost three percent conversion rate from visit to actual sale on their Web site, including all the diluting traffic it gets from outside of the San Francisco area, Skyara’s only market so far.

He said that about 10 percent of all visitors do something valuable on the site, whether that’s offering a service, buying one, telling Skyara where they live and that they’d like to have the service there or signing up for updates.

An interesting wrinkle has emerged in the last few days, as Skyara has partnered with the ongoing UCSF Children’s Hospital charity challenge. This is where the current deal to meet Conway and Hammer came from–which you may enter to win by donating to the UCSF challenge. It brings the “experience sales” idea right back to its ancestral home–charity auctions.

Skyara came together as the brainchild of Liu and Jonathan Wu, former classmates at the University of Pennsylvania, who had moved to New York for jobs as business consultants.

They originally conceived of it as an Expedia for outdoor activities and brought on Steven Ou, the third co-founder, to help them build out the scheduling platform.

The trio was accepted into the i/o Ventures incubator this past March and decided to pivot into Skyara’s current “experience marketplace” model shortly before its first public demo in late September.

“It was like two weeks of fighting, but we decided to pivot because we’d all spent several weeks cold-calling outdoor activity businesses and it was really slow,” Liu said.

Wu, who now heads business development, explained that the founders were concerned that they were going to have an “Open Table” problem, referring to the restaurant reservation service.

“We didn’t want it to take 10 years to have it be really useful,” said Wu.

The whole team agrees that their growth model will be all about expanding into new markets, the first of which will be New York and Chicago. Skyara plans to raise capital to expand early next year.

Besides new markets, the company is adding tools to help people come up with ideas for experiences to offer, and to boost the community aspect of the experience, building a little more of Etsy’s users-as-both-buyers-and-sellers model to its service.

Said Liu: “I’ve met some incredible people on these experiences, and that should be a part of it.”

We spoke with the fresh-faced Skyara trio at Park Chow restaurant in San Francisco. Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101210/for-the-person-who-has-it-all-skyara-sells-new-stuff-to-experience/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100414/using-laptops-in-direct-sunlight/ http://allthingsd.com/20100414/using-laptops-in-direct-sunlight/#comments Wed, 14 Apr 2010 21:22:19 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/?p=624 Q:

With summer coming, I will be outside a lot but still need to get some work done. Is there a laptop that you can read in direct sunlight?

A:

To my knowledge, most consumer and business models use LCD screens with backlighting, which makes them wash out and become harder to read in direct sunlight. Adding to the problem, most laptop screens have a glossy finish these days, which produces glare in strong light. But some companies still offer matte screens on certain models. You might look for one of those, though they won’t entirely solve the problem. Another option is a stick-on, anti-glare shield. And, if you don’t mind extra bulk and some clumsiness, there are even hoods you can buy to shield laptop screens from the sunlight. There is another approach: Some “rugged” laptops meant for outdoor workers have screens specially designed to be legible in sunlight.

Q:

Does the iPad have any drawbacks as a reading device when compared to the Kindle? Does it have access to all the same book downloads as Kindle?

A:

Yes. It weighs 1.5 pounds—more than twice what the smaller, standard Kindle weighs. And even its impressive 11.5 hour battery life is much less than the Kindle’s battery life, which is a week, because of that device’s low-power monochrome screen. Also, Apple’s iBooks store has many fewer titles available than Amazon.com’s Kindle store.

However, you don’t necessarily have to choose. Amazon (AMZN) has released a free Kindle app for the iPad that allows you to buy and read Amazon’s larger catalog of e-books on the Apple (AAPL) device’s bigger, brighter, color screen. Like other Kindle software—for the PC, Mac, iPhone and BlackBerry—this new iPad app obviates the need for Kindle hardware to access the Amazon e-book collection.

Q:

If you have an iPhone or iPad, why does Apple recommend you use iTunes to back up data like calendar, contacts, bookmarks and apps to your computer, when iTunes is a player for music and video?

A:

Yes, iTunes used alone is meant to organize and play music and videos. But Apple has also built into it the ability to manage the backing up and synchronizing of other sorts of data between its portable devices and the computer. It’s also the method by which users upgrade the operating systems on iPhones and iPads and can be used to buy apps for those devices and transfer them over.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox and my other columns, free of charge, online at the All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100414/using-laptops-in-direct-sunlight/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20091215/yahoo-sticks-with-the-its-you-expanding-pricey-ad-campaign-and-pushing-hero-products/ http://allthingsd.com/20091215/yahoo-sticks-with-the-its-you-expanding-pricey-ad-campaign-and-pushing-hero-products/#comments Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:40:19 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=20852

When Yahoo launched its massive advertising campaign–featuring the tagline, “It’s Y!ou”–earlier this fall with splashy events in New York and slick marketing rollouts all over the U.S., not everyone at the Internet portal loved it.

“It’s not M!e,” joked a longtime Yahoo (YHOO) exec to BoomTown in an email, one of many like it that I got from inside the company, all of which worried about whether the motto and ad effort had enough punch and point to get Yahoo back on track.

And, outside the company, several too-early reports purported to show that the $100 million campaign to revitalize the Yahoo brand was not working because it had not increased audience–although both Forrester Research (FORR) and Nielsen penned counterarguments.

In any case, none of the noise seems to have bothered the Silicon Valley-based Yahoo, whose execs say they are thrilled with the results so far. Thus, Yahoo is staying on message as it moves into the latest phase of the multiyear effort.

That includes adding to the overall brand promise more specific “product proof points” that focus on Yahoo’s “hero products,” such as search, email, homepage, mobile and more.

Yahoo’s new lead creative team at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners has been working on the next direction, which will roll out after the new year and stress “relevance.”

The next push will include even more online advertising, as well as more outdoor branding. But it will also add guerrilla marketing, such as live demos at analog locations, from Internet cafes in Malaysia to senior citizen centers here in the U.S.

What’s not changing at all is the main brand declaration, as the message rolls out to more countries in the months ahead.

“We are committed to ‘It’s You,’ and it is a foundational element that will remain intact,” said Penny Baldwin, SVP of Yahoo’s global integrated marketing and brand management, in an interview with me. “Now we are going to be demonstrating and tuning the experience.”

Added Baldwin, who arrived at the company this summer: “The first chapter has been to root the brand position…since the image and stance was muddied in the past. Now, we are going to clarify our position.”

And that position is that Yahoo execs believe feedback from sales, consumers, employees and advertisers to the campaign has been largely positive and will goose its business.

More to the point, said Baldwin, the effort has started to show some results, especially in international markets such as India and the U.K, where the brand campaign first launched.

“Our main message has been to say that we have more of what you want and less of what you don’t want and showing relevance is working,” said Baldwin. “We are simply give it more meaning and more evidence, so consumers will spend more time with us.”

Baldwin points to several different and more recent polls, including from comScore (SCOR) and Nielsen, that do indeed show increases in Yahoo homepage engagement of three to five percent from September to October.

A Yahoo spokesman said that the company’s goal has been mostly to “increase engagement with U.S. audience (where we saw positive results in page views, time spent) rather than on unique visitors, which will take longer as we already have about 80 percent penetration.”

In less mature markets, the spokesman noted, both traffic and engagement are the goals.

As for any grumpy employees, the spokesman said a recent internal Yahoo survey showed that about 80 percent of employees responded favorably or very favorably to the brand, and another 13 percent were neutral.

(Apparently, that was the 13 percent who all emailed me!)

Most important, he said, Yahoo was sticking to its guns because it has seen “statistically significant lifts in ‘brand familiarity’ and ‘future brand usage.’”

That’s a fancy way of saying people are noticing the ads, which would be hard not to, since they are everywhere (including on this Web site).

And there will be more where that came from, said Baldwin, as the company leans further into its initial efforts at making consumers think again about Yahoo.

“This is a brand transformation issue,” said Baldwin flatly.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091215/yahoo-sticks-with-the-its-you-expanding-pricey-ad-campaign-and-pushing-hero-products/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20091019/yahoo-hires-goodby-as-top-creative-agency-for-its-ongoing-brand-revitalization/ http://allthingsd.com/20091019/yahoo-hires-goodby-as-top-creative-agency-for-its-ongoing-brand-revitalization/#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:55:05 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=19543

In a shift that is sure to be much commented on by the advertising industry, Yahoo has tapped Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to take the lead for creative, advertising, digital marketing and strategic planning efforts.

The San Francisco-based Goodby, which is owned by the Omnicom Group (OMC), is known for its innovative ideas and has done such memorable campaigns as the Slowsky turtles for Comcast (CMCSA), the weird folk of Emerald Nuts, owned by Diamond Foods (DMND)–as well as campaigns for tech companies such as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Adobe Systems (ADBE) and Netflix (NFLX).

Also, of course, the terrifically memorable “Got Milk?” campaign.

Perhaps a “Got Yahoo?” campaign is in the future?

Until now, the top job of goosing Yahoo’s tarnished brand, as part of a recently launched $100 million marketing push, has been helmed by Ogilvy & Mather, a unit of the WPP Group (WPPGY).

While Goodby will lead on creative initiatives worldwide, Ogilvy will remain in the mix, Integrated Marketing and Brand Management SVP Penny Baldwin told BoomTown in an interview this afternoon, focusing on international marketing efforts, including all upcoming brand launches in France, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Brazil and Indonesia.

And, via it Neo and Mindshare units, Yahoo said, Ogilvy will also run all media buying for the Internet giant globally.

Yahoo (YHOO) is also keeping strategic branding firm Landor & Associates.

Goodby, Ogilvy and Landor will apparently form a Brand Advisory Board at Yahoo, run by Baldwin.

Baldwin stressed that the move was a broadening of its outside marketing advisers and was not a replacement of Ogilvy, or any indication that the current new marketing campaign needed to change.

She said internal reports on the effectiveness of the overall big theme, “It’s Y!ou,” launched last month, have been strong.

Nonetheless, Baldwin added that the new agency is sure to bring more ideas to the mix in the massive effort, which has included television, print, outdoor and online ads.

And, she noted, the location of Goodby’s HQ in San Francisco, not far from Yahoo’s Sunnyvale digs, was also a plus.

“Goodby has the caliber to serve worldwide needs,” said Baldwin. “And with the way the Web moves so fast, we thought it was also important to have deep resources locally.”

Up next, she added: to “root our brand strategy with more hard-hitting” messages about Yahoo.

“This is far more than just an advertising effort,” said Baldwin of Yahoo’s efforts to revitalize itself in the eyes of consumers–and, while she did not say so, to the digerati of Silicon Valley. “This is a business transformation.”

Here is Baldwin’s boss, Yahoo CMO Elisa Steele talking about the company’s marketing efforts of late in a video interview with Nicki Dugan on the company’s Yodel Anecdotal blog in a new feature called Yodelcast (sorry, Nicki, but it is simply too professional and unjiggly for BoomTown’s seal of approval):

And here are two examples of Goodby’s creatives–Comcast’s Slowskys and Robert Goulet for Emerald Nuts:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091019/yahoo-hires-goodby-as-top-creative-agency-for-its-ongoing-brand-revitalization/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20081113/ad-market-nightmare-dead-ahead/ http://allthingsd.com/20081113/ad-market-nightmare-dead-ahead/#comments Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:00:17 +0000 Eric Savitz http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=5973 If you think we are going to get out of this mess in a hurry, think again.

UBS analyst Matthieu Coppet today cut his expectations for advertising spending for this year, next year and 2010. He now sees overall spend up 3.7 percent this year, down 3.9 percent next year, and then up three percent in 2010. His old forecast: up 4.1 percent, then down 0.7 percent, then up 4.8 percent.

Particularly sobering is his forecast for the U.S., where he sees an 8.7 percent drop in spending next year, including an 11 percent decline in “traditional media”–print, broadcast and outdoor. That would be the worst year for those categories in 60 years.

Read the rest of this post

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081113/ad-market-nightmare-dead-ahead/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080516/advertising/ http://allthingsd.com/20080516/advertising/#comments Fri, 16 May 2008 16:46:52 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080516/advertising/ If the old media advertising economy is in the toilet, then its new media counterpart is sitting atop it.

According to figures compiled by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, spending on Internet advertising in 2007 rose to $21.2 billion, up 26% from the prior year. That’s a record high and one that exceeds the $20.9 billion spent on print, radio, outdoor and cable TV.

Unsurprisingly, keyword search, Google’s (GOOG) cash-cow ranch, generated the most revenue and claimed the largest market share–41%. Display advertising followed with 34%, classifieds at 16%.

(Image Credit: Tyler Jordan, eVisibility Insider)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080516/advertising/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080515/cbs-cnet/ http://allthingsd.com/20080515/cbs-cnet/#comments Thu, 15 May 2008 12:05:22 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080515/cbs-cnet/

The leadership of CNET Networks Inc. (“CNET” or the “Company”) has presided over massive value destruction, with CNET’s shares declining (21)%, (52)% and (25)% in the one, two and three year periods ended March 28, 2008, respectively, compared to (1)%, 6% and 39% returns, respectively, for its stated benchmark peer index. CNET has also consistently underperformed numerous peers in profitability and growth, ranking last among these peers in key metrics, as set forth herein. This underperformance comes despite CNET’s premiere assets, including the tenth largest collection of Internet sites in the world and strong brands and content.”

–Jana Partners, CNET: Value-Unlocking Change for All Shareholders

“The Stars’ Address is CBS.” And now it is CNET Networks’ (CNET) as well. CBS this morning said it agreed to buy the Internet news and entertainment laggard for $1.8 billion in cash. The deal values CNET at about $11.50 per share–a 44.6% premium to yesterday’s closing price of $7.95. That’s $.50 more than the $11 Jana Partners, the investment management firm plotting a proxy fight for control of the company’s board, had hoped to squeeze out of CNET, so presumably even dissident investors are glad to see CBS (CBS) stepping in here.

The deal, expected to close in the third quarter, will vault CBS into the top 10 Internet companies in the United States, with a combined 54 million unique visitors monthly, and about 200 million visitors worldwide. CBS CEO Les Moonves says he expects interactive revenues to hit $1 billion by 2010. “I think the ability of this company to grow together with us just made sense for right now,” Moonves told paidContent. “We’ve stated our goals are to expand in three areas: content, Internet and outdoor. This accomplished two of the three.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080515/cbs-cnet/feed/ 0