You'll have read elsewhere that Icahn has popped onto Yahoo's radar. He's put some cards on the table - 3% of Yahoo's shares and a move to put his team onto the board.
Full marks go to Marketing Pilgrim and their lolcat inspired write up - Icahn Haz Yahoo Board!. (Picture Credit to Marketing Pilgrim too) This isn't a news blog so I'm not going to mull too much into the details except to say that the term corporate raider was pretty much invested for Icahn. Er, I mean, Mr Icahn.
In other news CBS bought CNET. Wow. Old schools swoops in and buys new school. Once again I'll let someone else explain why that's odd - how come CNET was sold for less than $2 billion when it was worth nearly $20 billion just a few years ago. This time it's Mr Arrington who's explaining why CNET isn't the one buying CBS.
Here's the thing... Icahn has had some involvement with CNET himself. I think it's an excellent illustration of what Yahoo now face (and a time when Microsoft is lurking somewhere in the shadows...).
In the States there is a law called the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. The Act means you've got to own up and say when you've bought more than 5% of someone's shares. Have you ever played cards with someone only to discover, all of a sudden, they've won the game... they've got rid of their last card and you didn't see it coming. You didn't see it coming because they kept their hand hidden under the table. The Hart-Scott-Rodino Act is designed to stop companies being bought in the same way! With the Act in place no single person can buy a dribble of shares here, a dribble of shares there and sneak into position of strength.
Although; it's worth noting that Icahn (Mr) has 3% of Yahoo and is still in a position of strength.
Given the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act you can imagine CNET's surprise when, all of a sudden, they worked out that someone had managed to sly a full %21 of their company!
No. Icahn didn't lead the charge but he was involved. It is possible for hedge funds to deal with one and other and buy shares for one another. For example, you might buy some Yahoo shares for me - and you'll own them. We'll sign a deal that at a pre-arranged time you'll sell them on to me. We'll work it so that no one looses out if the shares go up or down in value and in exchange I'll pay your a handling fee.
That's what happened to CNET. Mr Icahn was one of the players in the elaborate series of "phantom buyers" who bought shares in the snare the hedge funds circled around CNET.
The New York Times has a more thorough write up than I do.
So Yahoo... Mr Icahn holds %3 of your shares. I wonder how many of your shares his allies hold and have already signed over.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Icahn, CNet and Yahoo
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Last.fm bad currency
I know the Pound is annoyingly strong against the Dollar right now... but look what happened when I tried to renew my Last.fm subscription today in Pounds (a valid option from Last.fm's own dropdown menu).
This is a problem that can haunt some start ups. I'm surprised to see Last.fm suffering.
Multi-currency is a digital marketing element that is big in Europe but a non-issue in the States. It's one of the biggest adjustments American or Canadian search marketers need to make when they come to practise anywhere in Europe.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
The NMA Marketing Services Guide
The NMA have released their marketing services guide for 2008. The list charts the largest search agencies in the land. Once again The Search Works tops the list - congratulations guys. We came third.
The NMA list is a bit of a vanity exercise. The size of an agency is their total turnover - and this includes pass through revenue. Pass through revenue includes the money that simply comes in from clients and goes out to Google (or Yahoo or MSN).
In the US you'd never include pass through revenue as a meaningful measurement metric.
As a result PPC agencies (The Search Works) have a much higher turnover because the're passing client money on to Google. As I glance down the list and spy the likes of iCrossing (8th), Propellernet (15th), Tamar (18th), Neutralize (28th) or Site Visiblity (34th) I think to myself… wait a minute, these guys all have significant influence in the UK search marketing scene. I'm just naming a few too as there are other agencies in the list who "move the needle" in my opinion.
I should note too that the NMA points out that Efficient Frontier and Site Visibility exclude search spend from their figures and I respect that.
Here's the challenge. Is there a better metric? Up here in the North the media magazine The Drum had a go. First they required agencies to get enough recommendations from clients to qualify in the first place. Then they looked at revenue divided by staff - so an agency that made £10m a year with 50 staff was doing better than an agency that made £10m a year with 100 staff.
There's a problem with that too. What about those agencies who outsource? Do you count the outsourced staff (are they cheaper?) and how do you do it? If the £10m agency with 50 staff outsource to 150 people as well then perhaps they're not so good.
Perhaps profit is a better metric? After all; you can have a huge turnover (especially if you include pass through revenue) but do you manage to keep any of it? I've seen rival agencies drop their knickers when it comes to prices just to win a contract. I doubt they make a profit.
Agencies aren't going to share their profit figures though. The only time you get to peak at them is when the agency goes on the market and you're large enough to buy them. Even then it's pretty dull reading.
I think a much better way to 'measure' agencies is simply to talk to them. Meet the staff. Visit the office. Go listen to them speak at SMX or SES. Do you like what you hear?
Friday, February 08, 2008
$100 billion for Yahoo - likely
Over at the NMA Will 'the Search' Cooper points out that Microsoft has seen its value drop by nearly $40bn (£20.9bn ) since it began its Yahoo bid.
At the same time we're hearing that Microsoft will raise the bid if needs be. So, already, we're looking at the deal costing Microsoft over $40bn and loosing them nearly the same amount again. Hmm. $80bn. You could buy a lot of AdWords with that!
I would not be surprised if the overall tally comes to nearly $100bn before the economies of the deal start to come true.
Update: That's $100,000,000,000.00
Saturday, December 29, 2007
New Nectar Card. No Brands.
I got my new Nectar card in the post today. The first thing that I noticed confirmed to me that I'm an odd marketing-tech geek type of guy. The big brands who initially sponsored Nectar, notably Sainsbury's, are gone from the card.
My old card had Sainsbury's, Barclaycard, Debenhams and BP logos on the front. My new card is %100 Nectar.
If you're not familiar with Nectar then it's best thought of as a loyalty card. I hand it in when I buy stuff in Sainsbury's or (more commonly) Debenhams, etc, and I accrue loyalty points. In return Nectar learn what I like and I eventually get to trade my points in for free stuff. Along the way I may get special deals where if I buy this or that then I'll get extra Nectar points.
Interestingly, Nectar is also a corporate super affiliate. I can go to the Nectar website and gain Nectar points for shopping at Amazon or iTunes - as if Amazon and iTunes weren't tempting enough. You log into the site using the last 11 digits on your card (as shown in the image here).
Every now and then there's a rumble that Sainsbury's will be leaving Nectar and either doing a loyalty card which is exclusively theirs or ditching the loyalty card concept all together.
I imagine what we have here is a typical affiliate comment - why should I engage in brand building for you? What do I get out of it?
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Has an Iron Mountainview become more attractive to Google?
Just a quickie. Back in July I brain stormed the idea that Google might look at buying Iron Mountain.
This was my attempt at a left field prediction that no one else has made or would be likely to make... without it being a stupid prediction. At the time I listed a few reasons why, maybe, perhaps, it could happen. I talked about Iron Mountain's new data handling system but mainly this was a way for Google to get into the business of organising a whole lot (a mountain) of offline information.
Iron Mountain has just become the holder of some cracking 'online' information. I think this may make this "left field prediction" a little bit more likely. ICANN has appointed Iron Mountain as the data escrow holder of domain information. What does this mean? This means Iron Mountain looks after the details of who owns what domains. It is the third party who keeps the records should the main parties (such as registars) get into a mess, a fight, or some other distraction.
I know about data escrowing from my programming studies. If Company A hires Company B to develop some software - who holds the rights to functions, libraries, ideas or even the source code used in the software? Make sure that's in the agreement somewhere. It's not uncommon for Company A and Company B to agree an escrow solution for the code.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Ask.com's family is splitting up (but are still best friends)
IAC, the company who owns the search engine Ask.com, is splitting itself up. The group includes sites like Ticketmaster, the Home Shopping Network, Match.com and the Lending Tree.
Why does IAC have such an assortment of companies in the first place? Well, Barry Diller founded IAC back in 1995 and quickly invested in the Home Shopping Network and Ticketmaster. It later bought AskJeeves (and it was IAC who killed off Jeeves) and really started to focus on the internet.
Daniel Farey-Jones (log in needed) has a quote from Diller.
One of the reasons we've stayed with some of our more transactional businesses is that we needed their earnings to allow us to invest in emerging internet businesses. Now that we have real scale in the pure internet units, it makes nothing but sense to me to reorganise the whole.
Ask.com and Match.com stay in the main IAC 'family' of pure internet businesses. However sites like HSN, Interval International, LendingTree and Ticketmaster are getting split off.
IAC's shareholders will own 100% of all the companies.
So why the split? It helps separate the companies. If, for example, HSN begins to spiral down towards the deadpool then Ask.com is less likely to get dragged along. I suspect some people will point out that it makes it easier to sell off these companies too.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Yahoo co-founder David Filo makes millions
It's share selling season again. This time I happened to notice that David Filo who co-founded Yahoo sold 167,000 shares and managed to get between $24.69 and $24.76 for them.
That means, at most, he made $4,134,920 and at worse $4,123,230.
Not bad David, not bad. I'll have a pint! Thanks!
It's worth noting that Filo was in an automatic sell share program so even if he did come into some juicy information - Yahoo going up, Yahoo going down, etc - those shares would still be sold. Sadly, I can't ethically stir up Yahoo! trouble mongering headlines with this post!
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Would Google buy Experian?
Google's next acquisition will make the headlines. Google always does. Being the geek that I am - it's sometimes fun to mull over which will be the next big name that Google might buy. Will it be Iron Mountain? What about Experian?
Experian is a huge company and the market leader in the United Kingdom. Experian keeps track of individual's credit records. If I want to buy a house or get a credit card then the bank will check with Experian to find out whether I'm known to be bad at paying bills or whether I've a good record of paying on time.
Experian, therefore, holds a lot of information. Google tends to be hungry for information. Is it the type of information that Google wants? Well. That's a trickier one. It's certainly not the type of information that Google normally goes for but then we have Google Health which proves the exception to the rule. Google Health does touch on aggregating some of this "flavour" of data.
I think there would be more drama and concerns about privacy if Google did buy Experian. In theory, Google could begin to investigate ways in which to target high value AdWords to people who have a history of splashing the cash. I think that, though, would be too much for many Googlers to stomach.
There is another angle.
Experian owns Hitwise.
Now Hitwise and its data certainly would seem to be the type of company Google would be interested in buying. This begs the question; why didn't Google buy Hitwise?
If you've been lucky enough to attend a presentation by one of Google's vertical account managers then you'll have noticed just how often they can lean on Hitwise data. It may be that Google didn't know that Hitwise was for sale. It may also have been the case that Hitwise simply didn't approach Google. I'm reminded of the comment Seregy recently gave to the press about Facebook.
We don’t really look at companies for acquisitions unless they are really interested.
It may also be the case that Google does not need Hitwise's data. They may have it all anyway. They just don't share it. They certainly don't brand it up and allow Googlers to present with it - not even to huge international brands. In this case it may even be quite handy to have the independent Hitwise source of some data. Google therefore avoids the situation were they are seen to giving some of their data to some clients and withholding it from others.
I'll stick my next out. "Will Google buy Experian?" I think it's a juicy question to mull over. It'll be interesting times if Google does buy the company. I don't think they will. I think Experian is too big, too expensive, too controversial and maybe even too old (even though it only recently detached itself from GUS). I think Google may get better value from Hitwise by keeping them out of Google's growing family of brands.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Another super merger coming?
Aegis and their Isobar group must be one of Google's biggest customers. They may be Google's biggest.
Aegis is one of those marketing superbrands that own a enviable collection of other agencies. They own the search firm iprospect and acclaimed agency Glue.
Companies similar to Aegis would be Omnicom, Havas and WPP (who bought the Search firm 24/7 Real Media).
Times have been... interesting for Aegis recently. One of their key share holders in a chap called Vincent Bollore. I think he has about 25%~29% of Aegis. Bollore, doesn't, however have any presence on Aegis' board.
Is that a bit odd?
There's a reason for it - Bollore also owns Havas. Havas is a serious competitor to Aegis. Aegis' current board reckon there's a serious conflict of interest there. However, while Bollore has these shares we tends to petition for board access. Let's not use phrases like "civil war" as that's far too dramatic but there are certainly hugely significant votes on the subject.
As you might expect there has been the natural speculation that Aegis and Havas might merge [free sub required].
They might. I don't think that's the mega merger the market has in mind, though.
Partly due to these difficulties and also due to the decline of traditional media (against the rise of digital media spend (yay, go team digital)) Aegis' shares have been under performer. They should be higher than they are.
In other words; it's a good time to buy shares in Aegis.
The City reckons it's such a good time to buy shares in Aegis that someone might buy the whole company.
Likely buyers would have to be agencies like Publicis or WPP. If WPP buy Aegis then 24/7 and iProspect would be brothers. If Publicis buy Aegis then Starcom, Isobar and iProspect will be brothers.
Here in the UK (and elsewhere in the world) Google incentives media spenders to grow their AdWords and try new things. This incentive is a form of a rebate - money back from Google.
If there was a merger of, say, Aegis and Publicis then I would wager that Google UK would find themselves paying hundreds of thousands of pounds to the new company.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Iron Mountainview
I do enjoy a little M&A speculation myself. I think it's my turn to ponder on which big name Google might acquire next.
Iron Mountain is a company which backs up tapes and paper files for companies. Offices run out of storage eventually and the likes of lawyers firms are obliged to keep paper records for years on end.
Iron Mountain, of course, sees the need to broaden its services towards the digital end. Last month Iron Mountain bought Accutrac Software for an undisclosed sum of money.
Accutrac offers an electronic interface for offices wishing to browse though records in archive.
There are a lot of problems with this speculation, though. Google doesn't like buying companies like this - old, established, paper based. It would be a big buy. There's also a possible backlash if Google buys even more information.
I think this combination would appeal greatly to Google and their mission to index the world's information. Iron Mountain has a lot of information in its records.
Further more, Iron Mountain as relationships with offices all across the globe and would be a useful springboard if Google wished to introduce its own online software to these businesses.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Google's VP sells shares on the same day he's given them
This isn't really news - it's just that very few Google watchers keep an eye on the stock trading.
Forbes is reporting that Google VP Jonathan J. Rosenberg was given 314 shares on Thursday. He sold them then and there for between $515.81 and $525.30.
Google, in other words, gave him at least $161964.34. Which isn't too bad!
There are all sorts of insider trading safe guards in play here. He will have done the paperwork in advance.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
iCrossing - not buying any more natural search agencies
I was lucky enough to go to a mini-conference on Mergers and Acquisitions of Digital Agencies this evening which was hosted by Results International.
Results International are the company which helped broker the Spannerworks and iCrossing deal. It was insightful to see how they calculated the worth of a digital agency. I'll have to try and reserve engineer around the amounts rumoured for the Spannerworks deal.
Don Scales from iCrossing was one of the key speakers (alongside Google, Profero and i-Level). He had some interesting comments. He said outright that iCrossing would not be buying another Natural Search company.
One of the key alignments in the Spannerworks deal was that Herzog got on well with Arjo of Spannerworks.
Scales stressed the importance of Analytics. I expect iCrossing will make one or two more acquisitions this year. Probably in Europe. If they're not going to be Natural Search then perhaps in data mining, analytics or perhaps even ad server technology.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Thought of the Day: GreenBorder, Google and expectations
One of the first lessons I learned while working for an agency was... carefully manage people's expectations. If you do something for free for a client once, twice and then three times - the client has every reason to ask "What? Why?" if you try and charge them the fourth time you do the same thing.
Review all the news about Google buying their neighbour GreenBorder.
People are now expecting free software.
Oops!
Imagine what might happen if Google try and charge for GreenBorder. Imagine the outcry if they increase the price!
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Cleaner Content
Cleaner Content may save Google a whole load of trouble. In today's impressive earnings announcement, Eric Schmidt named the copyright filter for YouTube and Google Video.
Cleaner Content is designed so to automatically detect and cope with uploaded content which annoys pesky laws such as the DMCA. It also seems likely that Cleaner Content will allow publishers to remove content they find on YouTube which breaches their copyright.
The Q1 announcement got into the finer details of Google's robust finances (up, up and up - especially from Google.com searches) and didn't really linger too much on new technologies like Cleaner Content. Schmidt did talk about offline advertising and the radio deal with Clear Channel. I imagine we'll hear more news for the search geeks a little later on.
(Update: This may be Claim Your Content instead of 'cleaner content')
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Internet Money Day
It’s the Grand National today. That’s a great big horse race which generates millions of pounds in betting. If you bet on Silver Birch then you won. If you bet on the United Kingdom’s internet payment infrastructure holding up then you would be less lucky.
Things went wrong yesterday. Visa’s payment system went down. One in five transactions failed and the rest were likely to be approved by the banks’ without some of the usual checks with Visa. Mastercard’s 3D secure was also down.
There aren’t many PPC agencies out there which monitor payment services and put appropriate campaigns on pause or on “slow” while there are problems accepting cards.
I would imagine those companies which move money from the bookies to the banks where extra nervous today. I picked up rumours that ISP Pipex picked today, of all days, to run several key centres on generators rather than on main power. As it happens it’s Pipex who currently act as suppliers to those vital money-moving companies.
Did you know that the maximum BACS transfer is £9,999,999.98? Yes, I’m afraid that if you want to pay me £20m, then you’ll have to do it in three BACS transfers (or cash is fine). I wonder how Google will transfer all those millions (and billions) to DoubleClick’s investors.
This week Google launched Google Checkout in the UK. This would mean that Google would have to be regulated by the UK’s Financial Services Authority (FSA). As it turns out Google is not regulated by the FSA at all – so what’s going on? We have a new company; Google Payment Limited. Google Payment Limited (GPL) is regulated by the FSA. This means that GPL must keep $1,000,000 in cash so that it can repay all these electronic transfers if Google Checkout falls on its face. In fact, GPL needs to have more cash held in reserve if their electronic payment exposure exceeds $1,000,000.
GPL’s Directors have also been rated as an “approved person” by the FSA. At this point I am not clear whether Google’s senior American staff or senior British staff are acting as GPL’s Directors.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Evolved blogging - paying to comment
Heh. I'd ask you to file this one under "crazy brainstorming ideas" but it is the third time I've been inspired to scribble down and evolve this idea. Over at Techcrunch there's a quick feature on Seriosity. What Seriosity allows you to do is attach a virtual e-payment to emails you send. Not real money. This is a virtual currency; the Serio. I agree with the psychology. People like to collect things. One of the reasons, I think, sites like LinkedIn do well is because people like to be seen to have connections. They collect connections. Attaching Serios to emails means your email will stand out. If you're collecting Serios then you're much more likely to open an email associated to 100 Serios (and keep the 100 Serios for doing so) than you are to open an email from a name you do not recognise (and earn nothing). Serios are there to make your emails stand out.
Arrington argues that the Serio is pointless and worthless unless you're allowed to cash out (as you could with beenz and other boom currencies). He may be right.
The debate reminded me on my past ramblings on Blog Comments 2.0 and CAPTCHA versus Cash. Each post discusses the idea whether people would be willing to pay a micro deposit in order to leave a comment on a blog. Real money. You'd invest something like 0.1p (which would be 0.05c currently) in order to comment. If the blogger approved your comment then you'd get this back. If not - then you'd loose it.
The idea is that if you're an average user you might invest up to, what, 10p (100 comments!) a day. Not much of a risk. Of course, you'd loose 0.1p now and then but could make it back by not approving unwelcome comments on your blog. Once you get over the initial technological and psychological hurdles this would not be too scary at all. Spammers, on the other hand, would risk £pounds as they dumped thousands of comments a day and would be unlikely to get anything back.
This real money solution depends on Google or someone else cracking micro-payments. However, there is an alternative.
Do I think a real money solution would work? Today, right now, when I think about this - nah. No. Never. People are unwilling to comment on a blog when there's a rel="nofollow" around. It seems that if people need an incentive (all be it a small and free one) in order to be persuaded to comment then the psychological barrier that paying to comment represents would be unscalable.
Maybe Seriosity and I can combine ideas. You use a virtual currency in order to leave blog comments. If your comment is approved you get the virtual token back. If your comment is rejected then the blogger keeps it. You can cash in your virtual currency for - gosh, extra hosting space for your blog, Google Checkout cash, a mention on a Seriosity/Digg hybrid newspaper which highlights blog posts or maybe you could use your comment currency in conjunction with a site like co.mments in order to ensure your contribution triggers an email alert.
Thoughts? I promise it's free to comment!
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Google hemorrhages money but woos new Chinese searchers
Google's stock lost a lot of value today. On Thursday last week Google was trading at about 480 per share. Google Finance currently reports 448. That's nearly a %10 drop.
Yahoo's shares have also dropped. As have Microsoft's.
This is not a search engine specific issue though. In America the stockmarkets (the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq) have "corrected violently". Shares across the board have fallen over fears on a slowing (American) economy and investment in China.
I'm using the phrase "corrected violently" because I suspect many people would argue that share prices have been floating high recently. There's been a flurry of mergers and relief that oil prices have been coming back down. Today that reached a tipping point and many bankers decided that there was the danger of over-reaching themselves.
Comparing the search engines in China and the emerging Asian markets is interesting. Microsoft's Live Search really does not yet factor although Hotmail is significant. Google has a fight on their hands. It's Yahoo who tends to do well in Asia. Yahoo's Email is the market leader in many Asian and Australasian markets. We need to factor in email has, increasingly, web-based email systems are used to present a tempting search box to as many people as possible.
In some ways this means Yahoo is more sensitive to changes in Asian markets. However, when American investors begin to worry about how hard it is for American companies to reach China then, I suspect, it'll be Google's market price which suffers.
Notice how well Google is doing at wooing their Western fans with their Chinese office and staff, though? Just today Philipp has a cracking post on Who plays Who in the Google movie. Who plays Who? Hu plays Hu! Google's Chinese President is included - and without a good actor match. See anyone from Google UK there? No? Anyone from Google Europe? Nope. There's a method here. Actually, Google tends to do things which are fun and cool - let's not say "method", let's say "positive side-effect". The positive side-effect here is that Chinese abroad in the States and elsewhere in the West will go home and be more likely to be use Google than before. Students are a common target for marketers. Grab someone's loyalty when they're a student and someone else will have to work hard to shift that loyalty.
Friday, February 09, 2007
iCrossing buys Spannerworks
Hehe. Media Post and Andy Beal report that iCrossing is due to buy Spannerworks. My post about people buying seo agencies was a fluke in timing. Honest.
Congratulations to Spannerworks. I hope this works out for them. In the cut throat UK agency world Spannerworks are one of the few to act with honour. I'm not sure about the £9m price tag though. That seems awfully low. Let's assume a x3, x4 or x5 price value based on turnover. Back in 2005 Spannerworks had a £2m turn over. This means they either got a low deal or they've not increased their turnover. Either seems unlikey.
Spannerworks will buy links. Other than that Spannerworks tends to walk the White Hat path. If I ask the bigmouths with an iProspect, Diddit, Media Partner, Google, etc, background then it seems like there may be a culture clash between Spannerworks and iCrossing.
Anyway. What does this mean?
It means Spannerworks have made it to the USA. We're yet to see whether the brand makes it. iCrossing have made to the UK. We're yet to see whether the brand comes with them.
Will General Atlantic buy an SEO firm?
I know "two moves" does not make a trend but let's pause and examine what the private equity firm General Atlantic have been doing lately.
Three days ago they announced that they're going to buy Network Solutions. It's a shame we don't get to find out how much Network Solutions is worth.
At the start of the month General Atlantic took a big chunk of the independent creative agency AKQA. I was fortunate enough to watch Michael de Kare-Silver present to a small audience once. He's good. You know you're in for a good presentation when the presenter produces two powered speakers and the video intro begins to roll.
If there is an investment firm who might be eying up an SEO agency then it is likely to be General Atlantic.
Are they a stalking horse? Could there be others?
Back in January Gord Hotchkiss mused whether SEO agencies were attractive for acquisitions. The conclusion seemed to point towards an uncertain new future. Personalised search worries people. However, full search agencies are about traffic and conversions rather than just position. The future for the best full search agencies is rosy.
In the same article Hotchkiss cited Aegis' acquisition of iProspect for $50 million. People remember the iProspect deal because it was the first big one.
Over at Search Engine Land it was Barry Schwartz who broke the news of the bigmouthmedia merger. The figure he went with was £150m. That's $300m today or about six times the iProspect deal. One again, "two moves" doesn't make a trend but this is certainly an increase. The bigmouthmedia deal wasn't a full service agency grabbing at search, it was one set up by Carlyle, who dominate private equity and was with Global Media another large SEO agency.
Carlyle is a trend setter. They are involved in deals involving SEO agencies and so others - players such as General Atlantic - are certainly considering similar moves.
