advertising

Internet users are spending less time on social networking sites. Why? Because they are fed up with excessive advertising; although sites like Facebook and MySpace are still increasing their audience, the average time each user spends on the site is ... falling overall. The average MySpace visitor now spends 203.9 minutes on the site each month, while Facebook visitors are logged in for an average 172.1 minutes. Though Facebook has had more 'online buzz', its users appear to be getting bored with the various applications. Meanwhile, MySpace has copied some of the more popular Facebook features, ... (view more)

Since the launch of the highly successful AdSense campaign, Google has been synonymous with online advertising. Thanks to a new initiative that will merge online and print ads, Google is making the leap from the screen to the printed page and ... hosting ads in a newspaper near you. Google's new Print Ad program will allow organizations with an existing AdSense account to convert their campaigns to print format with just a few mouse clicks. Advertisers will be able to search for ad space within over six hundred international newspapers. Linking online ads with print media could cause a ... (view more)

Microsoft researchers are working on ways to make web advertising even smarter. They want to teach computers to do a more accurate job of targeting ads, by specifying which to put into video clips, and those for more specific users. They ... demonstrated the techniques at their headquarters this week. The timing may be an intentional effort to boost their bid for Yahoo which, if successful, would make Microsoft the second biggest Internet ad seller behind Google. (Source: informationweek.com ) The demonstration included a 'dashboard' which advertisers can use to predict how well particular ... (view more)

Microsoft has struck another blow in its advertising war with rivals Yahoo and Google. On Tuesday, the Redmond-based company announced it was becoming the exclusive third-party provider of contextual and paid search advertising for The Wall Street ... Journal's network of sites. (Source: microsoft.com ) The Wall Street Journal Online, Barrons.com, MarketWatch.com, AllThingsD.com and others will now become part of Microsoft's ever-expanding network; the agreement is expected to bring 20 million unique visitors per month in traffic to the ad platform. "The Wall Street Journal Digital Network is one ... (view more)

What a difference a year makes! At this time twelve months ago, Google was the darling of the online world. As 2007 progressed, however, the search firm found itself under scrutiny for 'collaborating' with the Chinese government, questions arose ... about Google's role in privacy issues via its web advertising, and it is in the middle of a lawsuit with Viacom over proprietary content on YouTube. Perhaps the most interesting development is the head-to-head battle between Google and Microsoft, the undisputed heavy-weight champion of the software world and new contender for the advertising crown. A ... (view more)

Adobe announced last Thursday that it was partnering with Yahoo! to bring ads to PDF (Portable Document Format). Through an opt-in service, publishers of PDF files can now have relevant text ads appear alongside their instruction manuals, stock ... reports, and press releases. After registering online with Adobe, businesses upload their documents for keyword analysis which matches advertisements with the file. "By partnering with Yahoo! on this innovative advertising service we are creating opportunities for publishers to build new businesses around unique content that previously was just given ... (view more)

Just weeks after Microsoft made a big score by buying up part of rising web titan Facebook, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has now stated that it will be clamping down on Internet advertising. It's a measure the group hopes will ... reduce the amount of user tracking associated with the practice. According to John Leibowitz, the FTC's commissioner, the initiative is meant to keep children safe while they're clicking around online. If Mom or Dad views a not-so-appropriate site, there's a chance that marketing tools custom-designed for the individual and his or her tastes will pop ... (view more)

As if social networking site Facebook wasn't already enough of a titan on the web, it's about to become even more powerful. Why? Because the Redmond gods have just injected it with $240 million bucks. That's right, Microsoft recently purchased a ... minority stake in Facebook, which accepted the bid over another from search engine giant Google. The deal with Microsoft will lead to an expansion of social networking services (as if Facebook didn't already have enough), and, sigh, more advertising. For those of you who have yet to dabble in Facebook -- and that number continues to dwindle every day ... (view more)

AOL wants to enhance its online advertising business by partnering with Tacoda, a company that offers ads based on a person's online behaviour. Tacoda was founded in New York in 2001. It caters to well-known publishing clients such as The New York ... Times, and has more than 4,000 websites in its ad network. Tacoda's job is carried out in a series of steps. First, the online behaviour of Internet users is evaluated across a wide number of sites. This task is done in order to determine the active and passive interests of visitors. Next, the online audience is divided according to these interests ... (view more)

In the beginning, there was Yahoo, Lycos, and even a little search engine 'that could,' called AltaVista. While each offered varying abilities in crawling the web, none could quite match the rise of Google. And although its roots were only modest, ... Google's impressive search capabilities quickly rocketed it to the top of the web, with the power to control the rise and fall of companies vying for space in the Internet community. Now, less than a year after buying YouTube, Google is flexing its muscle again, buying advertising firm DoubleClick for an astounding $3.1 billion. The sheer value of ... (view more)