Nick Cifuentes

With the economy in such a wonderful state of mind these days (wink), it seems their might be some bad news for digital advertisers. According to a PubMatic report released this week, the price advertisers are willing to pay for ad space online is down 27 percent this year.

PubMatic tracked the sale of display ads through ad networks on Websites in more than 20 different topic areas, and saw that ads on social networks fetched the smallest price per thousand eyeballs - 21 cents. This is down 22 percent from the second quarter. Ads on sports sites were the next lowest at 25 cents, followed by ads prices on entertainment sites, which saw the steepest drop, to 33 cents.

Ads on business sites, as well as finance sites saw some high prices, at close to 86 cents, but that seemed down 22 percent from the second quarter. Web sites about technology were the only category that didn’t see ad prices fall - they remained at a static 57 cents per thousand eye balls.

Although the above seems not so promising, ads on small webs sites, those websites that get fewer than 1 million page views per month, sold on ad networks for three times as much space on big sites with more than 100 million page views per month. And get this, the average advertiser paid 61 cents for every thousand pairs of eyeballs that viewed their ads, as compared to 18 cents on large sites.

This focus is because of one my favorite aspects of smaller websites, niche content. Niche Content works brilliantly because advertisers can reach a much more targeted audience. When you don’t go through an ad network, you KNOW who will be viewing your ads, and are much more likely to yield a stronger ROI.

But, GigaOM brought up a great point this week as well, analyzing whether people even bother to look at display ads any longer.

What are your thoughts?

There is new kid in school, his name is CampusLIVE, and wants to act as every college kid’s 24/7 RA (Resident Assistant) by providing all the information you need to know as a student on campus.

The new social community website aggregates information a college kid needs to know. Besides the usual, like weather, there are customized news feeds (CNN, Boston Globe, Philly.com, Fox News, MSNBC, and even Playboy, and much more), customized search feeds; that include Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, Amazon, Flickr, Technorati and much more. In addition, each school’s page has ‘quick links’ that feature necessary housing and health information, local public transportation schedules, dining services, registrar information, library, academic calendars and more.

They also feature a great Food Finder feature that allows students to find local eateries, their contact information, whether they offer dine-in, delivery and take-out options, and they offer online menus for each in their system, as well as the ability to leave public reviews for each.

CampusLIVE also understands the need for a college kid to know what is on TV at all times - therefore implementing the ability to find TV listings using the TVGuide.com system.

One thing you might think after reading the above would be ‘another Facebook’, but they aren’t.  Actually, they have gone as far to integrate with Facebook so that students can actually see their live Facebook messages from their homepage.  They also have plans to tie in other social networks that are popular to students such as LinkedIn, MySpace, and I assume Twitter, Digg, and maybe a few others might join the force @ some point.

CampusLIVE started in UMass and has grown to cover 26 universities in nine states. They are doing well - in terms of providing useful information for students, and in a concise and clear manner. However, they need to focus their growth overall, in terms of adding more schools, and integrating more customizable features that will allow students not only have access to useful information, but also build a virtual dorm room. So for each school, they can go beyond just providing a portal for useful information, but access to teachers, other students, virtual blackboards, and so on.

CampusLIVE was started by a group of UMass students, and finished in the top 5 of Business Week’s Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25 in America 08′. CampusLIVE employs five full-time people, and interns, and had just over $100,000 in revenue during 2007. The company is currently negotiating a $1.25 million investment deal, according to Business Week. They are also looking to lease office space in Boston, moving themselves into an office and out of the dorms.

Thoughts.

I love their business model and opportunity to strike while the iron is hot, so to speak.  I just hope they do it now, and push aggressively - as you never know what the landscape for a model like this might look like in a year.

They need to build up their school database offering - at the same time, it opens up a huge door for advertising opportunities, which they must take advantage of - especially if they have angel investors now involved. You don’t want to have to carry their weight for too long, and obviously wish to become profitable in the next three years in a major way.

They have a great platform here to also explore partnerships of all kinds; building on all the above - sets themselves up nicely for an aggressive business build - before ’selling’ to a top organization, i.e. Google, Yahoo, etc…in five years or so.

Watch the CEO chat with Mashable here:

Blogs. 

As an Internet strategist - my life daily is consumed with social media feeds, blog alerts, feedburner stats, google alert updates, monitoring, strategizing, execution - all of these overused terms and time consuming tactics certainly take a toll on you.  

But one thing I do often, as I do for all my clients, is research - taking notice of the growing digital space around me - thinking of ideas to implement innovative strategies among the community and with my clients.  

One of those key strategies that are a must in today’s Internet spectrum is a blog.  A blog is key in driving not only traffic, but interest to your brand, product, or company.  Blogs help you appear authoritative in your industry - allowing you to give views on the latest events in your trade, offer reviews, insights, and so on.  

This expands into relationship building tools, as you are able to speak more freely and in a more informal and personable style, as compared to how you direct the voice on your main website.  Through the blog channel, they are more likely to trust you, and then all the more likely to visit your main website and then click your links and possibly purchase your product.   

It also offers insight for your customers, and allows them to leave comments and ’speak’ to you on a key level. In addition, blogs are extremely search engine friendly - through thousands of possible keywords and fresh, updated content on a regular basis - blogs are simply great facets to have on your website today.  Your simply misguided if you think otherwise.

*Read More for a detailed blog breakdown of the popular clothing line Free People.

Read the rest of this entry »

You figured it would happen at some point - social networking sites are popping up for conceivably every market demographic - and now a social networking site for babies has made its way to the market.  

Totspot.

This amazing feat of success has brought Totspot into a place where they might find a profitable niche.  

The service that is built on Ruby on Rails, just went through a private beta test and is now open to all parents and babies to take part in.  This Facebook for children platform allows babies (probably their parents) to enter their favorite nickname, book, food, etc…

Totspot, which as accumulated 15,000 users, is part of an social movement into the ‘newborn’ realm of social networking.  Odadeo, Lil’ Grams and Kidmondo are also some growing social networking sites for parents to spread updates of their newborn babies.  

For quite a while, Facebook, and photo websites like Flickr and Photobucket, among others, have been popular places to track a baby’s progress - things such as a first step, first pictures and video at the zoo, first time eating an oreo cookie, and so on.

Read the rest of this entry »