Yet another social shopping network acquired

Sugar, Inc, formerly known as Sugar Publishing, the online publishing company that publishes popular blogs targeted towards women has acquired a social shopping startup ShopStyle, reports Om Malik.

Today, the company decided to take the next step in its evolution and has bought Los Altos, Calif.-based ShopStyle, a social shopping site for an undisclosed amount of money. “We had content and community, and now we are adding commerce,” said Brian Sugar, CEO of Sugar Publishing. The company is also changing its name to Sugar Inc., in order to better reflect its broader focus.

The acquisition is seen as a move to make use of ShopStyle’s existing infrastructure and business model that is aimed at revenue generation to monetize the sugar network of blogs that currently lot as many as 5 million unique visitors a month.

More on GigaOM ->

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Google’s widget ads announced

Suddenly, a lot of major players have started announcing widget advertising initiatives. This time, it’s google announcing the launch of their widget gadget ads, which will now be available to select adwords advertisers.

Google Gadget Ads have been spotted before, but now Google made them official with a press release – albeit they’re still only available to some select AdWords advertisers. Gadget Ads, as opposed to normal text link or image ads, contain interactive content such as Flash or HTML connected to a potentially updating data source… as they’re part of the iGoogle gadgets API. Google presents a gadget ad example (a small Flash game, basically) saying that of the 94.5 million impressions the ad got, it was interacted with 0.3% of the time.

Google Gadget Ads - Google Blogoscoped

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BTW, In other (bigger) google news that I just read (I’m catching up with the RSS feeds after almost a week of social media inactivity), Adsense for Mobile was also announced yesterday!

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Amazon 2.0s it’s affiliate program even more, launches (monetizable) Widgets

After context-links, Amazon has taken yet another step to let the latest generation of internet publishers make use of amazon’s huge catalog to monetize their web properties/presence.

According to a press release sent out earlier today…

“Bloggers and active online social networkers have asked us for a fun and interesting way to display Amazon products on their pages as a way to showcase their favorite things. With Amazon Widgets, they can now do this and make money at the same time,” said Sean McMullan, Manager, Amazon Associates.

Amazon today launched seven new widgets in the Amazon Widgets Gallery, and there are more specialized widgets coming soon.

Some of the widgets released today (available at widgets.amazon.com) include widgets for wish lists, product searches, product previews, slideshows and amazon unbox videos previews.

This widget below is a tag cloud of some of the popular products on amazon:

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6PM on CJ - New, Improved commissions - $0.00 per sale!

I was about “bulk accept” new program terms for some merchants on CJ, when I decided to randomly click on a merchant’s name and see what the new commission structure was.

The Merchant I clicked on happened to be 6PM.com - the shoe and handbags merchant that’s been on CJ for a few years and has always had performed okayish - both networkwide and for me.

Looks like a lot of people won’t be promoting them any more. Take a look at the screenshot yourself before you hear about their new deal with CJ affiliates from me.

Yep, what used to be 13% per sale is now $0.00.

Makes you wonder how and why the network - CJ - is allowing this. how would they make money off a $0 commission!?

Maybe it’s just a mistake - even if it is, that means a lost commissions for 6PM affiliates Just emailed 6PM’s Affiliate manager to see if I get a response. If it is not a mistake, that means 6PM is basically - instead of shutting down it’s program, trying to see if they can get some traffic from affiliates - without having to pay for it.

Update: got an email just a few hours after posting this that their affiliate program has been suspended. Reason - the company is now being operated by new owners.

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“Rich Ads” on Google SERPs

It so happens with google, that if I write something about them, the very next post here also has to be about google and nothing else.

Anyway, Google has, since the beginning, opposed the use of image ads (or banners as they were called back then) in it’s search results, this is probably about to change soon, and it doesn’t seem as unlike google as it would have, say, a year ago, now that SERPs are universal search results.

The ads could include image or video ads in a variety of ways, offering more options to advertisers. Google insists that whatever image and video ads are shown, they will match the type of content you’re searching. So you’re more likely to see an image ad if you’re conducting an image search. The same goes for video. Remaining relevant with these types of targeted ads is a self-proclaimed objective for Google.

Google might soon include image and video ads on SERPs arrording to this post on google sytem.

[via mashable]

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Adsense now let’s publishers create an “Allowed sites” list

According to the latest blog post and adsense, some publishers are afraid that someone will steal their adsense code and put it on inappropriate sites - which could get the publisher banned from adsense.

In order to prevent this, Google has introduced a new “Allowed sites” feature to the adsense interface where publishers can list the websites they actually are using adsense codes on, so even if your code is on an ‘inappropriate’ site (in which I hope MFA sites are counted) - that’s okay, the publisher won’t get banned or paid for that.

There is, ofcourse a google twist to all this. Free Advertising (on websites that woudl otherwise get publishers banned from adsense):

Sites that aren’t on your list can still display ads using your ad code; however, impressions and clicks for these sites won’t appear in your reports, advertisers won’t be charged, and you won’t receive any earnings from them.

Allowed and Clear - Google Adsense blog

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Amazon adds NBC shows to Unbox

In a Press release Amazon posted a few moments ago (and only a few days after Apple decided to stop selling NBC shows on iTunes), they announce the availability of NBC shows for download at Amazon Unbox - the (unfortunately DRMed) Tivo-compatible video download service.

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and NBC Universal today announced that a wealth of quality TV content from NBC Universal is now available on Amazon Unbox (http://unbox.amazon.com), Amazon.com’s digital video download service. Amazon Unbox and NBC Universal are offering customers a variety of content packages, including up to 30 percent off when purchasing full seasons of their favorite TV series.

Popular NBC shows now available on Amazon Unbox include the Emmy(R) Award-winning series The Office, the critically acclaimed drama Heroes, and Emmy(R)-nominated comedy 30 Rock. Beginning on September 10, Amazon Unbox customers can download for free — in advance of their network premieres — the pilot episodes of NBC’s new shows Bionic Woman, Chuck, Journeyman and Life. New episodes will be available on Amazon Unbox the day after they air on TV.

NBC Universal Television Content Now Available on Amazon Unbox

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Wikipedia bans overstock’s IPs for spamming.

Looks like overstock’s IP range has been banned at Wikipedia:

[Wikipedia] just blocked 65.116.112.0/21, which is an IP range (a) owned by Overstock.com (b) widely used by them for spamming, COI editing and attempted intimidation of administrators dealing with them.

Wikipedia bans Overstock.com - Gary Weiss has the full story ->

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