MediaSavvy

Yahoo bought Overture for $1.6 billion or so.

I’ve always thought that OVER was underpowered and overpriced. Their margins are plummeting. Their revenue is too dependent on a few large customers (especially Yahoo). And any idiot could build their own paid search business if push came to shove.

But Overture is probably worth more to Yahoo than to anyone else. Yahoo will save a lot of money over the next couple of years by not having to pay commissions to Overture. Add to that the savings of not building a paid search business and the strategic advantage of keeping Overture from MSN and Google.

In a sense it was inevitable.

Date.com used to rely on direct email marketing for the bulk of their new users.

Now, it turns out that spam filters are wrecking their marketing efforts:

“A year ago, I would have said e-mail was critical to our business,” said Brad Shapiro, vice president of sales and marketing at the Toronto-based company. “We were sending over 100 million prospecting e-mails a week. But a lot of those e-mails weren’t getting through or the response rates were too low. Now we’re sending out 60% less.”

Let’s face it, nobody is sending out 100,000,000 legitimately-sourced emails a week. These guys are stinking up the Net with spam.

When will the direct marketing industry finally get the message that defending spammers is not in their best interest, and cut sleazeballs like Date.com loose? Using Congress to put the entire nation on opt-out status with every company in the world isn’t going to do them any good if their messages can’t make it through the filters.

It’s hard to believe the following isn’t parody.

The Scion story is interesting. Toyota’s customer base is aging rapidly and their cars don’t appeal to the twenty-somethings depicted in the VW and Mitsubishi ads.

Apparently, these new cars are inexpensive and designed to be cheaply customized. This is a great concept, but the way that they explain it on their site is remarkable for its obscurity.

The overall theme of the site is clumsy double-think: don’t confuse your identity with brands (“In this brand-heavy world…We want to be recognized as unique beings who revel in the freedom of expression. “) and instead express yourself by customizing your Scion ( “the re-appropriation of mass culture…the challenge and the successes of keeping it real”):

In this brand-heavy world,we are constantly inundated with messages about what to wear, where to go and how to be. However,we know that independent thought doesn’t come from picking and choosing an identity from a series of prefab selections. Although we may like some of the individual elements of what’s available, on the whole we would rather be able to mix and match, choose those pieces that support our distinct qualities as independent creatures. We want to be recognized as unique beings who revel in the freedom of expression. SCION (the car company and the magazine) recognizes the value of the individual and the remix, the re-appropriation of mass culture, and it will focus on the struggle, the challenge and the successes of keeping it real.

The idea of the remix has become more common and now can be applied to entire identities, from music to fashion, from technology to art. The lines have been blurred. The opportunity for independence is vital. We are now active participants in the process, tricking out the smallest details, tweaking the characteristics to fit our lifestyles. By changing color palettes, textures and soundscapes, we can be recognized by our peers for who and what we are.

The tragic truth is that modern popular culture is indeed about keeping it real by wearing, drinking and driving what the cool kids are wearing, drinking, and driving.