LookingConfident's  Instablog

As Posted by Andrew Goodman  (described as a person who is said to "traffic in Big Ideas"), had this to say in his summing up of Looksmart, a Co with $30M in cash and (I feel), fairly projected FY 2009 - 2010 revenues, in the region of, north of $60M:

<No company is too small or too close to the end when it comes to investors taking one last kick at the can, trying to talk other suckers into betting on a rebound.>

< One of the company's bright spots, a minor partnership with IAC, is ending soon, as announced in May. Even optimists will have trouble disputing that this company is winding down.>

http://www.traffick.com/2009/09/pump-dump-lather-rinse-repeat.asp

Looksmart - A "Management" Company

Few have taken notice (certainly, the market hasn't) of Looksmart describing themselves [LookSmart Launches Pay Per Click Search Advertising Model with Optimal Pricing] as now being, a "management" company.

This new advice came for the very 1st time in the recent (above) Aug 10th announcement with the news to the market, of Optimal Pricing.

*****************
SAN FRANCISCO----LookSmart, Ltd., the search advertising network and management company, today announced the launch of Optimal Pricing:
*****************

And coming from within the CC (after the Q2 Report), CEO Ted West had described "Optimal Pricing", as follows:

"...........we've introduced optimal pricing in the second quarter, a feature set on our AdCenter platform that gives advertisers the capabilities to segment their ad spend across our network and to bid across the traffic segments to maximize their return on investment.

In beta testings of optimal pricing with several existing advertisers during the second quarter, optimal pricing at campaigns has consistently increased consumer conversion, delivered conversions at a lower cost per conversion and as a result earned LookSmart increased advertiser budget.

I would like to point out that we believe the optimal pricing feature set is unique to the non-proprietary keyword search segment when delivered at our scale of operation."

So the newly added  "Optimal Pricing" has actually ...... 'earned LookSmart increased advertiser budget' ... That's interesting.

So what IS Looksmart's current "scale of operation" capability one wonders?

We were told (again, in the same CC) that during that (Q2) "beta testing" period (it is fairly assumed), Looksmart had actually had (says CEO Ted West) "more than ONE BILLION daily queries" going through Looksmart's AdCenter platform and, that they [these impressions], had produced over 2.2M paid clicks per day.

Traffic to Looksmart.com (of which 35.8% goes through AdCenter, according to Alexa - bearing in mind also, that Looksmart have NO consumer sites at all these days) is shown to have increased strongly during this Q3 period. And would (I'm sure), be reflecting the increased current "scale of operation".

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/looksmart.com

Only a fool would not be capable of following the above. And again, on (both) "SmartRotation" and "Optimal Pricing" CEO Ted West couldn't make it any clearer in the CC, than what he has said in his following statement:

"We have improved keyword-targeting capabilities, enhanced network traffic quality and provided advertisers with the tools to manage their campaigns in order to achieve optimal pricing and to maximize their return on investment.

Specifically, during the second quarter, we introduced SmartRotation and beta tested Optimal Pricing to improve the AdCenter's performance for advertisers.

We believe that these performance features are comparable to those from each of the leading propriety search advertising platforms, but also that they are unique at scale among competing non-propriety search advertising networks.

We fully understand that to replicate these performance features of scale would represent a significant engineering undertaking for any keyword search advertising provider."

So it would now appear to me that Looksmart have started to regularly "manage" those "more than ONE BILLION daily queries" (no doubt at a much higer TAC, as was also advised of, in the CC) going through Looksmart's AdCenter platform. (Traffic that had produced the, over 2.2M paid clicks per day, during the Q2 "beta testing" period), and that this will (I imagine?) show strongly, when the Q3 Results are given, early in November.

That Looksmart may release early provisional figures (as to how things are going in Q3), would not surprise me in the least.

It would seem that the Andrew Goodman types (including the ignorant fools on Yahoo, like OZ poster, Mike Mora) still 'struggle' with the facts, that Looksmart's growing International "Targetable Countries" reach, now includes the following.

Country Code

Australia AU
Canada CA
Germany DE
New Zealand NZ
United Kingdom GB
United States US

https://adcenter.looksmart.com/help/api?page=country_codes

Check (also) both the Region Codes and the City Codes within some of those Countries, where "users" can now be targetted down to.

As always, time will tell. But it's all surely, hardly the stuff coming from 'a company that is winding down', as was suggested by a fool, in Andrew Goodman.

Disclosure: Shareholder of Looksmart

LC

Well, a poster in OZ Mike Mora (www.SierraWebMarketing.com) says that he does .... Mike (who often posts in multiple aliases and certainly according to the side of the trade he is on), had posted on Yahoo that:

Wow: Pump. Dump. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. ."Goodman hates LookSmart".

I had then followed Mike's posted Link to the story to find the latest Andrew Goodman comment to be a 2nd he'd made, that I feel I have reason enough (once again), to disagree with. Many share price values have fallen dramatically during the financial crisis. That Looksmart has $30M in cash and a Market Cap of $20M is simply a sign of the times. IMHO, of course.

You can see my reply and any 'follow-up' from Andrew Goodman on his site, here:

 http://www.traffick.com/2009/09/pump-dump-lather-rinse-repeat.asp 

My reply (as can be seen, twice in fact) is as follows:

Traffick.com Comments

Hi Andrew .... You have posted: 

"A few would-be investment gurus chimed in with comments, asking us to "look again" at the company's bright future."

And that:

"One of the company's bright spots, a minor partnership with IAC, is ending soon, as announced in May........... Even optimists will have trouble disputing that this company is winding down."

Here's a quick note to let you know that I remain an optimist.

Check the rise in traffic to AdCenter and who it is from, here:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/Looksmart.com

12 months ago Looksmart had announced of the addition of 30 high-quality distribution partners, some of which (they advise), resulted from expanding internationally into the UK and Australia. It's clear that they now operate and have representation in 6 Countries in all. [Private labeled, no doubt]

http://investor.shareholder.com/looksmart/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=337996

https://adcenter.looksmart.com/help/api?page=country_codes

Andrew. Have a little 'play around' in that above link to check the extent of 'geo-targeting' that's on offer. You may not realise that through the AdCenter platform, LookSmart's distribution partners are able to monetize their international search queries and advertisers are able to target down to the city-level in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.

In relation to the "minor partnership with IAC" you mentioned, I'd like to advise you of Looksmart's own message on this from within the CC, following the Q2 Report:

Looksmart CEO Ted West told us:

"While no definitive platform transition plans have yet been discussed with ASL, LookSmart does plan to support ASL in transitioning to its new platform, however long and in whatever capacity their transition process requires. We also expect to continue to exchange valuable keyword advertising fees under a separate and mutual distribution agreement between ASL and LookSmart in the future"

The Looksmart CEO had also advised that:
 

"During the second quarter, the [AdCenter] platform processed well over 1 billion search queries and delivered over 2.2 million paid clicks per day.The AdCenter platform is build to scale, and importantly to operate and deliver paid click transactions both quickly and reliably at that scale"[Yes Andrew, PER DAY]

Andrew, again, you (yourself) had wrote:

"Even optimists will have trouble disputing that this company is winding down."

What I do have trouble with is trying to understand exactly where you (yourself) are coming from, Andrew?

You may need to have yet another (perhaps a closer) look here, possibly?

Cheers!
LookingConfident | 09.12.09 - 4:47 pm |
______________________________

I do hope that the celebrated "political scientist turned internet analyst" and legend in his own lunch-hour http://www.traffick.com/about/default.asp#bios (Andrew Goodman) can find enough time to check a few things out in regards to Looksmart prior to his next effort. Here's hoping he has something nicer to say then, too!

LOOK: On Sep 11: 1.17 0.03 (2.50%) 
 
Cheers!

Disclosure: Long time shareholder of Looksmart

Enter an era when advertisers are finally gaining the upper hand. For hundreds of years publishers have ruled over them with an iron fist ......

In recent times (on the web) the "don't be evil" Google (in fact) have been doing very nicely at the hands of advertisers paying the bills. Times are a changing, as readers of this board have so often been told.

http://www.sharecafe.com.au/board.asp?a=BV&boardid=2117&sym=LOK&lot=0&ps=0

And Google's (oh so quiet) announcement through it's blog (today), that it's AdSense publisher partners will soon have the ability to allow multiple ad networks to compete for display ad space on their sites is now 'the beginning of the end' for AdSense, is what I truly feel. - http://adsense.blogspot.com/

Suddenly Google have recognised their need to "go with" the stream rather than persist in paddling it's own (very lucrative), AdSense canoe..... Suddenly that Ted West talked of $1.2 billion US marketplace for secondary Ads (remnants), has now gotten to grow a whole lot bigger. And (in time), Globally of course.

And the "full gloss spin" surrounding the announcement comes in bucket-loads, led by spinmeister TechCrunch, here:

Google To Open The AdSense Gates To Other Ad Networks — That They Approve Of

But a usual blind faith abounds from within their comments section. Save for one early responder, that I have just read. The poster "Firebrand" says:

<..Ahh so now they can take their cut from even more stuff? I get it.. Not content to suck the little guy dry by only passing along 20-30% of what they get from the advertiser now they want to take 10-30% from ads that they don’t bring in directly.