Gawker: valleywag, visa

Granting Visa's giant cupcake wish

Jackson West — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:40:00 EDT

An eagle-eyed reader spotted a shot of what looked to them like a giant cupcake building in downtown San Francisco, and immediately Google's cupcake princess Marissa Mayer came to mind. Credit-card giant Visa has recently started running an ad with lots of everyday-but-oversized objects populating urban areas (we've searched in vain on YouTube and among sites that cater to ad agencies for the full video). Based on the street furniture, I'd say it's not San Francisco. But is the connection so far-fetched?

Mayer is well known both for her love of cupcakes and the the "pink power" girliness of Sex and The City. I could see a commissioned installation in the trite, childish style of international art superstars Jeff Koons or Claes Oldenburg. San Francisco still doesn't have a Frank Gehry, and frankly, a giant cupcake wouldn't be half as ugly as the Experience Music Project building in Seattle sponsored by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen. Could be high time for Mayer, the newest member of SFMOMA's board, to make a dent on the skyline. Maybe a new storefront location for the pastry-sculpting business Mayer owns with Shinmin Li, I Dream of Cake?

Facebook and Visa ad deal proves worth of creative sales teams over automated buying

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:40:00 EDT

Visa will launch a microsite for small businesses called Visabusinessnetwork.com. To market the site, Visa purchased $2 million worth of Facebook advertising to give away in $100 chunks for the first 20,000 small businesses joining the site. Visa marketers are telling reporters that Facebook is full of small business, many of which depend on the site for internal communications. But this deal isn't about analytics or numbers. It's about Visa showing its hip enough to market on Facebook and a Facebook ad sales team smart enough to put a big $2 million price tag on the privilege. Put it this way: We're pretty sure somebody bought someone else a steak in order to get this deal done, and frankly, it makes us a little proud. We know moving past do-it-yourself dashboards and one-click purchases isn't easy in a Web world run by Google search advertising.

Visa drops $18 billion IPO, the largest ever

Jordan Golson — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:00:37 EDT

Shares of San Francisco-based Visa jumped more than 30 percent today in the largest initial public offering in U.S. history. Visa issued 406 million shares at $44 each to raise almost $18 billion. More than half of the IPO take is going to its shareholder banks, which include Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. Convenient: While the IPO has long been planned, the cash will come in handy right now. (Photo by AP/Richard Drew)

Industry news: It's everywhere you want to be. Except AllofMP3.

Nick Douglas — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 16:57:21 EDT

AllofMP3.com loses another battle as Visa and Mastercard plan to pull out of the controversial Russian music store. As of press time, credit card payment on AllofMP3 is broken. The site may switch to an ad-based model. [BetaNews]
No wonder music companies rushed to make deals with YouTube a few days back — they bought part of YouTube just before Google bought the whole company. One investor, Universal Music, had decried YouTube's copyright infringement, saying it owed "millions of dollars." This was one easy way to get those millions. [NY Times]
Sony says its battery recall will total 9.6 million batteries and cost the company $429 million plus lawsuit costs. [Washington Post]
Internet Explorer and Firefox both launched new versions, and tech blog Gizmodo says Firefox wins. Users already discovered a vulnerability in IE7. [Secunia]
Business 2.0 says AT&T's purchase of BellSouth is all about the wireless. [Business 2.0]
What's the Time Warner division making money while AOL spends it? Time Warner Cable, which just filed an IPO revealing its sweet, sweet profits. [Fortune]