- Google and the Case of the Exploding Ads
- Industry Buzz & Snippets: 11/20/08
- 1/5 of Marketers Send Emails After Users Unsubscribe
- Google, P&G Conduct Labor-Swap
- Affiliates: Commission, Product & Brand Most Crucial
- MSFT to Pass on YHOO — But Search Might Do, Ballmer Says
- Mobile Users Tolerate Ads for Lower Bill
- 'Hyper-local' CitySearch: Facebook-, Mobile-Friendly
- Gift Card Spend Drops as Holiday Shoppers Chase Deals
- Samsung Unveils 115 ‘Charging Stations’ at Major Airports
- One-Fifth of Marketers Send Emails Even After Consumers Unsubscribe
- Volvo Gets HD as Standard across Models
- ‘Cottage Living’ Folds
- ‘Project Runway’ Look-Alike Comes to Bravo while Lifetime Twiddles Thumbs
- Forbes Combines Print, Web
- Moms More Stressed, Worried about Kids
- Economy Gooses Some Magazines to Growth, Others Hunker Down
- Arbitron Continues to Fight for Smaller Markets
- Google Nears 72% of U.S. Searches in October
- Online Time Critical to Teen Learning, Development
- Q3 Internet Ad Revenues at Nearly $5.9 Billion
- Journalists Use New Media More than PR Pros Think
- US Mobile-Ad Viewers Top 100 Million in Q3
- Consumer Shopping Backlash Could Reverse ‘Misery Effect’
- Top 10 Brands Advertised on Radio - Week of 11-10-08
- Top 10 Financial Services Online Advertisers by Image-Based Impressions - October 2008
- Top 10 Cable TV Show Websites - Week Ended 11-15-08
- One-Fifth of Marketers Send Emails Even after Consumers Unsubscribe
- Majority of Mobile Users Would View Ads to Get Bill Discount
Acquisitions/Biz Buzz
PA, NJ Governments May Bail out Boscov’s
Some $35 million in Pennsylvania taxpayer money is going to be used in an attempt to save Northeast department store chain Boscov’s from bankruptcy, reports the AP.
The money would come through a program that allows state government to guarantee loans for economic development with federal community-development block grants. An additional loan of several million may come from the cities of...
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Carrefour Gives CEO the Boot
French retail giant Carrefour will appoint Swede Lars Olofsson, a former top manager at Switzerland’s Nestle SA, as CEO of the company, effective Jan. 1, ousting current CEO Jose Luis Duran.
The change was a long time coming, writes the Globe and Mail. Last year, a consortium controlled by French billionaire Bernard Arnaults and US private-equity firm Colony Capital took a 9.1% stake in...
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Ann Taylor Axing 19% of Staff
Ann Taylor Stores Corp. will cut 19% of employees at its New York headquarters as part of an expanded restructuring effort expected to save $80-90 million annually over the next three years.
The cuts, which are already yielding savings, would enable the company to withstand the deepening economic conditions, VMSD writes.
Ann Taylor will also scale back on capital spending in 2009, said Kay...
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Talbots to Dump J. Jill
Managing just one brand is hard enough in the current retail environment, and Talbot’s has two - its namesake and J. Jill, the business it acquired in Feb. 2006 for about $517 million.
Now Talbots is looking to unload J. Jill in order to focus on its core business, which like many retailers, is declining. Same-store sales fell 13.9% in the third quarter, following a 12% decline in Q2, VMSD Continue Reading »
Whole Foods Profits Hit by Merger Battle, Sells 17% Stake
Whole Foods’s fourth-quarter earnings were down nearly 100% due to acquisition costs and weak sales as consumers are thinking twice about paying more for premium and organic foods, the AP reports.
Whole Foods also announced that it sold 17% of the company to an affiliate of Leonard Green & Partners, L.P. in a preferred stock deal worth $425 million. It was sold at a premium of 32% to Wednesday’s...
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Value City Goes Under, Shutters Shops
Value City Department Stores (Columbus, OH) and its subsidiaries filed a voluntary Chapter 11 petition in Manhattan last week, announcing plans to close their 66 remaining stores, reports the Mansfield News Journal.
The filing follows a series of restructuring efforts and layoffs that included shuttering 75 stores since Dec. ‘07. But in the seven months ended Aug. 31, the discount retailers...
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Walgreens Pushes In-Store Clinic, Acquires Specialty Pharmacy
Unlike most retail outlets for pharmaceutical products, volumes of which were down 1.9% in Q3, Walgreens filled more prescriptions in the quarter, with sales volume up 0.6% and comparable sales up 2.8%.
Those figures were a strong boost to total earnings, since 66% of the company’s sales revenue is from prescriptions.
Now the drugstore is moving its focus to its in-store health clinic, Take...
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Adrenalina Makes Ludicrous Bid for PacSun
After being rejected by Pacific Sunwear’s CEO, extreme sports company Adrenalina appealed directly to the company’s board of directors to accept its $293 million takeover bid.
The offer made last week to purchase all issued and outstanding shares of PacSun common stock at $4.50 per share is a 24.3% premium on the stock’s closing price on Oct. 17 ($3.62), reports The Daily News Record.
In the...
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Chapter Closed on CVS-Longs Acquisition
The $2.7 billion buyout offer that CVS Caremark extended to Longs Drugs on Aug. 12 has been deemed “successful,” as the owners of 27.7 million shares - or 76.5% of Longs stock - voted in favor of the offer, Forbes.com reports.
The deal needed two-thirds majority approval from Longs shareholders, which it got when its largest shareholder, Advisory Research, tendered its 3.3 million shares (9.2%...
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Circuit City Likely to Shutter 150 Stores
Some 150 Circuit City stores, at a minimum, will likely be shuttered and thousands of jobs terminated as the second-largest US consumer-electronics retailer attempts to avoid filing for bankruptcy protection, according to (sub. req’d) a Wall Street Journal report (via AP/BusinessWeek).
The store closings would allow Circuit City to pay real-estate expenses by liquidating $350 million in...
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