The book piracy problem has fascinated us going back to our tracking of the Harry Potter spoiler two years ago.   Today, we’re proud to announce the launch of the Attributor book tracking service that takes advantage of our industry-leading, web-wide crawling capabilities and new technology to detect .pdf and other file formats online.

Over the past several months, we’ve spoken to folks at many book publishers including one whose official title was “Book Detective”.  As we investigated the problem, we were amazed at the ease in which anyone can obtain a full copy of their favorite best seller . . . for free.   Today’s agreement with Hachette Book Group offers all book detectives some help; specifically,  best-of-breed content monitoring technology to increase the effectiveness of your anti-piracy efforts while dramatically reducing the resources required.

We are proud to announce Turner Broadcasting as the latest customer of our video monitoring and enforcement service.

Our Web-wide approach, combined with the ability to detect content down to 5-second thresholds, make Attributor the ideal solution for Turner’s enormous library of animation, entertainment, and news content. Turner’s brands boast some of the most popular content on the Web, surpassing even the most popular broadcast shows in terms of distribution.  With Attributor, Turner will be able to track down that content and manage copyright enforcement across unauthorized channels.

Turner has long been a pioneer of emerging media platforms first moving from billboards to UHF in the 70s, then to cable in the 80s, and eventually launching a top 20 web site with CNN.com in the 90s.  We are thrilled to be working with them on the next great distribution platform of the Internet.

We’re proud to announce our collaboration with Creative Commons and the public release of FairShare,  marking another step in our strategy of providing web wide visibility to all content creators, regardless of size.

FairShare is a one-of-a-kind, free service where anyone creating text content can claim their posts, assign a CC license and understand how their work is shared across the Web.  Nothing like this exists anywhere today.

FairShare was built to enable The Sharing Economy – specifically,  to make it possible for millions of other people around the world to reuse content in a way that provides value back to the original content creator . . . value that each creator can define herself.

Through web-wide visibility, we believe FairShare encourages continuously higher quality content to be produced, distributed and consumed online.   We recognize that there are a variety of motivations for publishing online and encourage you to try FairShare and tell us how we can make it serve you better.

The New York Times has led a great discussion about excerpts calling out a few sites whose business is largely based on excerpts.   As we reported last November, the impact is meaningful with the average publisher missing out in over $150k of revenue a year.

The reaction has been been noble and passionate; however, the discussion is largely around fuzzy fair excerpting  concepts such as intent that can’t be measured.

We’d like to submit another concept — one that ultimately can be quantified:  Excerpts should be considered fair if the reader of the excerpt still has a reason to read the original article.

Here’s our proposal to measure whether an excerpt is fair.

1. The excerpt must contain a link. A no-brainer but you’d be surprised how many sites lift content without linking back.  In our studies, this ranges from 30-40%.
2. The excerpt must be less than 50% of the original article. The actual percentage is debatable, but it’s hard to argue that the average reader will want to click through to read the original article if over half of it has been excerpted.
3. The excerpt must be less than 100 words. Again, the number is debatable and probably too high for some blog posts, but when used in combination with the % of original article, it can provide a good guideline.

The real question is what to do when an excerpt is unfair - should Google be automatically informed to remove it from their index?   Should AdSense, DoubleClick and Yahoo be informed to pull ads from these excerpts?    What do you think?

The Google ad serving juggernaut appears secure even if Microsoft and Yahoo agree on a deal to merge their search advertising businesses.   Our analysis of ad server calls across 75 million domains shows that both Yahoo and Microsoft lost significant share compared to our March report and now make up less than 15% of the total market.

The explosion of new ad networks in 2008 had an impact, but only one newcomer  - Revenue Science- broke into the top 5.   Unsurprisingly, Google’s AdSense is dominant on smaller sites while Google-owned DoubleClick leads on larger sites; however AdSense made great strides on larger sites, leapfrogging Yahoo into 2nd place.

Read on for more details including new breakouts by content category. If you are a publisher looking to tap into the viral syndication of your content, please contact us for a free report on how your content is monetized across the Web.

Key Findings

• DoubleClick and AdSense  continue to dominate ad server market share, capturing 31% and 26% of Unique Users, respectively.

• DoubleClick continues to own the “Head” while AdSense owns the “Tail”.

• For larger sites with over 1MM Monthly Unique Users, DoubleClick has a 36% share, a nearly 3x share advantage over its nearest non-Google competitor, Yahoo. Together, AdSense and DoubleClick capture 54% of this segment.

• For smaller sites with less than 1MM Monthly Unique Users, AdSense has a 38% share, a more than 7x share advantage over its nearest competitor, ValueClick.  Together, Google and DoubleClick capture 60% of this segment.

• Share positions for the ‘Big 3’ – DoubleClick, AdSense and Yahoo – vary widely by vertical.

• DoubleClick share is strongest on Automotive sites (58%), whereas AdSense rules Blog sites (40%).  Yahoo is strongest on Health sites (13%).

• AdSense has gained  2 points of share on large sites while Yahoo has lost 4 points since the March report.

Overall Ad Server Market Share

Ad Server Market Share Breakdown by Site Traffic

Ad Server Market Share Breakdown for Selected Content Categories

Methodology

Attributor analyzed the ad server calls across 75 Million domains as part of its October 2008 crawling operations.  For a refresher on the difference between an Ad Server and Ad Network, there is a good description here .   The data was then combined with compete.com’s October 2008 traffic data and its vertical site category classification to provide the unique user and content category breakdowns.   Each share total represents the sum of all ad networks owned by each company, with Google as the exception in which DoubleClick and AdSense are displayed separately.  For example, Atlas DMT share is counted within Microsoft share numbers and Advertising.com is included in AOL share numbers.

*** Update 12/19/08 ***

After speaking with the folks at OpenX, a popular free ad server for publishers,  we discovered that we were not detecting their share correctly.  We are working with them to fix for our next release.

If you’re a publisher, the recent months have not been kind.  Large brand advertisers are pulling back on their spending, and depending on which analyst is talking Internet advertising has either slowed or started to decline.

Logically, publishers are hunkering down and looking for ways to incrementally boost the audience and cpms from their own sites.

We can help you achieve revenue growth by tapping into the audience that is already viewing your virally syndicated articles on other sites.   For the first time, publishers can quantify their off-site audience and, by identifying how your content is monetized,  access an incremental revenue stream that averaged over $150,000 annually for each publisher in our study.

See below for our key findings - for a full copy of the study including FAQs on the methodology, please download the .pdf

What we did:

• Loaded the full feeds from over 100 publisher sites across a variety of content categories.
• Found web-wide reuse across 30 Billion pages during Sept. ‘08, discarding identifiable licensed copies.
• Eliminated any pages in which the reuse was less than 50% and less than 125 words of the original article.
• Calculated the off-site page view opportunity using estimate data provided by Compete.com.
• Calculated the audience multiplier for each publisher site and for 10 top categories.  This is the audience opportunity. expressed as a multiple of the page views on the destination site.

What we found:

• Across all sites in the study, publishers have an untapped off-site audience that is nearly 1.5 times the size of the audience that visits their destination site
• While each category has incremental opportunity, the auto and travel content categories have the largest off-site audience.
• Using a cpm of $1, 42 percent of publishers studied are missing out on up to $50k in annual ad revenue; 33 percent are missing out on up to $250k in annual ad revenue and 25 percent are missing out on more than $250k in annual ad revenue from off-site content.

Want to find out your TrueAudience™?

It’s very simple (and free).  Fill out a short form. One of our team members will contact you for your RSS feed and a list of licensees after which Attributor does all the work. You can expect to receive your free report in about a week.

Just in time for tonight’s debates, our Web-wide tracking study shows that John McCain has pulled ahead online.  For the first time since we started tracking the campaign in mid July, McCain’s messages are  viewed by a larger audience than Obama.

Please see our posts here and here to review our previous findings.

Here are our key findings (through September 24th)

• Thanks to a huge post-convention bounce, McCain took the lead over Obama in overall web traffic for the first time. The online audience viewing McCain’s messages grew 61% faster than Obama’s since the conventions.

• Palin’s convention speech has been viewed by an estimated 18,000,000 online viewers.
• The economy is the most copied issue for both candidates.  Iraq has fallen out of McCain’s top 5 issues for the first time in the campaign.
• While Obama still leads in the blogosphere, his lead has shrunk nearly 43% since the conventions.

Download a .pdf copy of full study and updates on all the charts.   We’ve highlighted a few of  the most interesting below.

True or False? Attributor Investigates Election 2008’s Conventional Wisdom

Conventional Wisdom: TV viewership follows the same pattern as views of online content.

Attributor says . . . False

While TV is still king in terms of total audience, the web is substantial and shows different results.  Online, the McCain and Palin speeches combined attracted an additional 35 million views of the speech text after the convention.  Palin’s speech alone garnered almost 20 million versus Obama’s 11 million.

Conventional Wisdom: By virtue of his appeal to a younger demographic, Obama is reaching a larger audience online. 

Attributor says . . . False  For the first time, McCain has surpassed Obama online.

McCain’s huge boost from his and Palin’s convention speeches now place him above Obama.   Since the convention, McCain’s online audience grew 61% faster than Obama’s.

Conventional Wisdom: Americans discount negative campaigning as “politics” and don’t pay much attention to it.

Attributor says . . . False

The rapidly increasing online negative campaigning on McCain’s behalf is paying off. People are reading the attacks- and in significant numbers. In September, almost 5 million people viewed attacks on Obama, compared to the roughly 3 million people who viewed attacks on McCain- almost 2:1

Download a .pdf copy of the latest study.

Tracking the war of words between John McCain and Barack Obama enables us for the first time to measure which messages are picked up the most across the Web and which position statements are attracting the largest audiences.

Please see our previous post to review our methodology, and you can see TechCrunch coverage here. Download a .pdf copy of the full study.

Key Findings (through August 24th)

• Obama’s messages continue to draw a larger online audience, but McCain closed the gap by almost 10% in the last two weeks. Obama’s messages received an estimated 38 million page views, compared to 36 million for McCain. Two factors appear to be driving McCain’s comeback.

1. McCain surged in the blogosphere which has been an area of Obama’s strength. Almost 350 new bloggers picked up McCain’s message, a 30% advantage over Obama. This translated into a 2:1 blog page view advantage across U.S. visitors over the last two weeks and ate into Obama’s overall audience lead in blogs.
2. McCain’s negative campaigning appears to be paying off. Obama attacks received an estimated 2.8 Million page views August-to-date – almost 3x as many as attacks on McCain over the same time period.

• Despite allegations of media favoritism, McCain’s words are featured 80% more often on news sites than Obama’s. McCain beats Obama by almost 3 to 1 on the major networks’ websites (Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN).

• McCain’s messages continue to be picked up more from his position statements (55%) than his speeches (45%) Obama’s messages are picked up more often through his speeches (67%) than his position statements (33%).

• Each candidate’s position on the economy is now the most widely read across the web with Obama’s Economic position leap-frogging his Iraq policy for the first time.

• In just 3 weeks, Obama’s Berlin speech has gone viral and has been viewed an estimated 2 million times - off of Obama’s official site.

True or False? Attributor Investigates Election 2008’s Conventional Wisdom Conventional Wisdom: The news media is in love with Barack Obama and gives his messages a disproportionate amount of coverage.

Attributor says . . . False

McCain continues to trounce Obama on major news site coverage. He’s out-matching Obama almost 3 to 1 on the major networks’ websites (Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN). When local and national newspaper and magazine websites are factored in, McCain still outdoes Obama almost 2 to 1.

Conventional Wisdom: Obama and McCain are attacking each other with negative messages at the same rate.

Attributor says . . . False

Within the last two weeks, criticism of Obama has surged with his words being attacked more than twice as much as McCain. An “attack match represents an issue or speech that is matched on a site known to be unfriendly to the candidate. We matched McCain against the 50 most trafficked liberal sites and Obama against the 50 most trafficked conservative sites to get these numbers.

Conventional Wisdom: Americans discount negative campaigning as “politics” and don’t pay much attention to it.

Attributor says . . . False

The increased negative campaigning on McCain’s behalf appears to be paying off. Americans are reading the attacks in significant numbers. Month-to-date, there were an estimate 2.8M views of attacks on Obama compared to 1.1M views of attacks on McCain.

Conventional Wisdom: By virtue of his appeal to a younger demographic, Obama is reaching a larger audience online.

Attributor says . . .True - but it’s getting much closer

Obama’s speeches and position statements continue to attract a larger online audience due to his strength in the blogsosphere. McCain’s recent gains in blogs are aiding his comeback and likely aligned with his more aggressive online blog tactics.

Please see our previous post to review our methodology. Download a .pdf copy of the full study.

The battle between John McCain and Barack Obama is a war of words. What makes this election different is how far and fast those words can go. The Internet accelerates the reach of the candidates’ messages through online news media, and blogging amplifies the voices of both sides’ supporters. Attributor is tracking how McCain and Obama’s messages move across the Internet and, for the first time, has measured the size of the online audience reading these messages.

This is the first of a series of regular insights Attributor will be sharing on the election between now and November 4^th. Download a .pdf of the full study here.

What we did:

• Used the Attributor platform to capture each candidate’s key issues and speeches as stated on their official web sites: www.johnmccain.com and www.barackobama.com.

• Tracked the distribution of each candidate’s words across 25 Billion+ pages, including blogs and social networks, looking for unique web pages containing matches of their speeches and official position statements.

• Analyzed and categorized the individual sites and pages containing the candidates’ messages.

• Using Attributor’s Audience Finder™ Technology, estimated the reach of each candidate’s messages across the Internet.

Key Findings:

• McCain is holding his own online. The overall audience viewing each candidate’s message was virtually the same with each totaling over 65 Million page views.

• McCain’s campaign messages are more likely to be picked up from his position statements (64%) than his speeches (36%) Obama’s messages are picked up more often through his speeches (71%) than his position statements (29%)

• Despite allegations of media favoritism, McCain’s words are featured 112% more often on news sites than Obama’s. In July there were over 20 Million views of McCain’s messages on news sites.

• Obama is dominating the blogosphere with over 12 Million views of his messages occurring on blogs in July. Twice as many bloggers repeat his messages than those of McCain. Obama owns a similar advantage on social networking sites like Face book and MySpace.

True or False? Attributor Investigates Election 2008’s Conventional Wisdom

Conventional Wisdom: The news media is in love with Barack Obama and gives his messages a disproportionate amount of coverage.

Attributor says . . . False

Perhaps this is true when it comes to television or print. But when it comes to coverage of each candidate’s position statements or speeches, McCain is trouncing Obama. His lead on major network web sites (Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN) is almost 4 to 1.

Conventional Wisdom: Obama’s youthful support translates into higher support across social networks.

Attributor says . . . True

Across social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, Obama’s messages are picked up by more than 2 to 1.

Conventional Wisdom: Obama’s grassroots efforts have resulted in a substantial lead across the blogosphere.

Attributor says . . . True

Obama has an 86% edge in bloggers who incorporate his messages into blog posts. Obama’s Berlin speech fueled a 10% jump in commentary across the Blogosphere.

Conventional Wisdom: Obama’s message is best delivered through speeches, while McCain’s strength is with his position on issues.

Attributor says . . . True

Obama’s speeches are being picked up on the Web much more than his position statements. The opposite is true for McCain.

Conventional Wisdom: By virtue of his appeal to a younger demographic, Obama is reaching a larger audience online.

Attributor says . . . False - it’s virtually a dead heat.

Our Audience Finder technology shows that Obama’s advantage across the blogs and social media give him a slight advantage over McCain overall. McCain is staying close via his reach on traditional news sites.

In July, Obama’s messages reached slightly over 65 million page views whereas McCain’s estimated page views were just short of 65 million.

Obama’s reach across the blogosphere was more than double than McCain’s in July.

McCain enjoyed an 86% reach advantage on Web sites in July.

Stay tuned for regular insights on the 2008 Election from the Attributor blog.

We’ve stated our philosophy about links vs takedowns, spoken about the link opportunity for top bloggers and quoted famous SEOs.

We’ve done everything but open it up to SEOs . . . until now!

We’re excited to announce a free beta test of Attributor for SEOs looking to build links. Find more information and sign up here. To save a trip to our FAQ, here are some answers.

Is it really free?
Yes, no cost to you. All we want is your feedback.

Why are you opening this up to SEOs?
We believe in the link economy and can’t think of a better group to help us improve our service.

Does Attributor guarantee links?
No and anyone using our service to obtain paid links will be politely asked to leave. What Attributor will do is automate your backlink prospecting and track your success.

Do you only find PR7 and above sites?
We wish. Last month, Attributor identified 25,000 link opportunities with a PR5 or better. With your help, we’ll improve this number and deliver the right link candidates for you.

Is your vision to be a SEO service?
Our customers consist of many large publishers including folks who are using us for Link Building. We will soon be providing services for all types and sizes of publishers, including bloggers.

What are you waiting for? Go get some links.