Internet Business Share Discussion Threads

[slapdash] 18/6/2007 15:43

man I have to try that sometime... off to Shell CEO.... I am a shareholder and just happened to be passing can I please see the CEO asap...

Slaper

[the blackster] 18/6/2007 15:30

not surprised you got short shrift - when I was senior management at a plc we would have done the same thing

meanwhile the strategic review should throw up some interesting suitors and with valuations stateside as they are I'm looking forward to seeing where things stand with ibg

[yump] 18/6/2007 11:54

...without an appointment to see a CEO...
Did you think you had a right to see him or what ?

Hope you didn't make him think twice about a listing.

[hirschnathan] 18/6/2007 11:33

Hi

I had to be in London on Friday, and was in warren street so took the 5 minute walk to ibg hq.
The sweatband showroom is quite large and I hope it justifies the expense. They have a couple guys who seem to know what they are talking about and can give advice, what machine to buy. I imagine when you are buying a £1000 machine you may want to see it first.

Then I went upstairs and got the most unfriendly response from Maz. Well at least he didnt make me wait in the street. He couldnt talk to me (he says), because of the strategic review, not that I wanted to talk about anything to do with finance.

So my advice, if you have a spare 5 minutes, have a coffee, dont bother going to ibg hq.

[wilmdav] 18/6/2007 11:27

I've done a fair bit of work on this over the weekend. Having perused back-posts from agm onwards, am impressed by confidence generated by relationship of CEO with PIs.

Cash flow charts are now more meaningful after translating "purchase of intangible assets" into acquisitions, which is either mainly or completely what they are.

Data from City Insights research has been incorporated into the valuation sheet.

I happen to live 10 miles away from the Worthing warehouse and will take a look when next passing in that direction.

Feel slightly uneasy about the 'strategic review'. Could this be one of those opportunities for an advisor to recommend a course of action that will earn them most money?

Wilmdav/DoY

[clueless] 18/6/2007 09:57

I dont see adblocking as a problem. The vast majority of affiliate earnings dont come from ads, they come from text links in content.

EG A search results page on Henoo is really a list of ads (that the user has requested).

[shroder] 17/6/2007 22:07

Cool, thx for the detailed reply yump

[yump] 17/6/2007 21:49

shroder
My non-current Firefox blocked all pop-ups under its default setting and one of the earlier Norton issues had a privacy default setting that caused blank spaces on websites where adverts should have been. (460mm x60mm graphics from memory).

I think ad blocking based on advert sizes might eventually become a bit of an issue - but if its always opt-in, that only affects people that have opted in and also are viewing a site with a specific advert size - that shouldn't be a very large proportion of net buyers.

Cookie deletion is possibly more of an issue, although its possible that there are so many affiliate links online now, that you could delete a cookie one day and when you go to purchase again, some other affiliate cookie gets put on your PC.

So the network get their commission whatever.

For the networks, its the direct visits to retailers that lose the revenue, but its clear that a huge number of buyers for instance use price-comparison or review sites, rather than visiting all the retailers directly one by one.

If they then go and buy, then the comparison site cookie will still be there unless its been cleared from the PC and not replaced with another inbetween the buyer 'researching' and buying. Don't know what percentage that is, but my guess would be that it won't have varied much over the years. I guess it depends on how many people install automatic cookie removal on their PC after eg. 48 hours.

Possibly if some blocker 'spotted' affiliate adverts then that could be an issue, but the biggest affiliate sites I think are usually based on text-based links. So any sort of blocking would deface a site.

Blocking the code itself would be a bit iffy legally I think - also not sure how that could be done anyway.

[shroder] 17/6/2007 21:15

yump, isnt all ad blocking opt in?

Most of us choose the Google pop up blocker option when we install the Google toolbar -

[yump] 17/6/2007 20:35

Shroder
You're talking about opt-in deliberate ad blocking though, not default, so can't see why that's a significant problem. Depends what the ad-blocker is based on.

Nortons default size-based ad-blocker in a previous version was a bigger issue, because nobody knew it was doing it.

[hirschnathan] 17/6/2007 19:51

I am on the latest version of firefox, havent noticed anything that gives you the option.
If normal ads would be deleted then you wouldnt be able to visit any online retailer, the same theory would work for them.

[shroder] 17/6/2007 19:37

hirschnathan -

Thats not correct, the latest versions of Firefox/Opera all support ad blocking by either filters or you can customise your own page by a right clicking on anything you wish to remove.

IE7 is the only one you have to pay to do this hence the popularity of the other browsers.

I changed a while back which took a bit of getting used to but once you have made the switch there is no way you can go back, its just too distracting.

[hirschnathan] 17/6/2007 17:52

Shroder

Ad blockers can only stop poppads which is a miniscule part of the ibg business.
Ad blockers do not stop and can not stop banners text link,(it never will, it doent make sense for any company to do it) search buttons etc

[shroder] 17/6/2007 17:01

This seems like a sound business model with good growth prospects, my only concern is the growth in ad blockers which are incorporated in most browsers these days.

The move to other popular browsers such as FireFox and Opera (I have just changed)is their ability to block just about anything whilst speeding up page loads

There are also subscription services for IE7 which offer the same functionality but at a cost -

[yump] 17/6/2007 16:35

Re: earlier comments; I'm not sure that the soundness of IBG's performance gives reassurance that the share price wouldn't drop in a bad market / recession.

'Flight to quality' is often said, but I think it actually means 'flight to safety'. I don't recall a flight to small safe stocks in 2000 - I think it was a flight to larger stocks. Didn't help in the end as the whole lot went of course, but the larger ones not as bad as the smaller ones.

Its the pi's that hold up the smaller ones and once they're freaked, it doesn't matter how well or cheap your small company is growing relative to others.

[hirschnathan] 17/6/2007 12:03

another nutter

[68steve] 17/6/2007 10:50

That`s what we have been saying for the last year...

[roverisback] 17/6/2007 10:44

28p>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>50p

[roverisback] 17/6/2007 10:43

dead doctors don't lie

[68steve] 17/6/2007 10:42

I`m a doctor...

[roverisback] 17/6/2007 10:41

no but trust me...

[integer] 17/6/2007 10:41

rover - how do you know, have you spoken to the company?