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Radio Hopes for a Video Future on the Web - Things aren’t looking good for the radio business, at least according to Arbitron. Although 90 percent of Americans still listen to terrestrial radio, listenership is down 14 percent over the past decade, revenue is flat, and radio stocks as a group are down 40 percent over the past three years. Now, according to the New York Times, radio is pinning its hopes for the future on … video. The NYT‘s Richard Siklos sees plenty happening with radio stations trying to extend their brand to video, in particular web video.

NYTCO Forms Ad Alliance With Monster Worldwide - No HotJobs consortium for the New York Times Company …NYTCO is partnering with Monster Worldwide for online job services at its 19 newspaper sites, both companies announced this morning. Starting in March, the deal calls for the 19 news sites, which includes those of the NYT, the Boston Globe, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and other newspaper properties throughout the southeast and California, to co-brand their online help wanted ad sections with Monster.

Judge Dismisses Case Against MySpace - MySpace this week scored its first major victory in a civil lawsuit, when a federal judge in Texas tossed a case brought by the family of a teen, “Julie Doe,” who alleged she was sexually abused by someone she met on the site. “If anyone had a duty to protect Julie Doe, it was her parents, not MySpace,” wrote judge Sam Sparks as he dismissed the case. Sparks found that the federal Communications Decency Act of 1996 immunizes MySpace from liability based on material posted by users.

Digitas Picks Up Miller - It’s Miller time for Publicis Groupe’s Digitas, which has been named the digital agency of record for the Milwaukee brewer’s entire portfolio of brands, including Miller’s flagship Lite brand and Miller Genuine Draft. The majority of Miller’s digital work was previously handled by Agency.com.

Local Video Advertising To Reach $5B By 2012 - Local online video advertising will account for $371 million this year, or 5% of total online ad spending, according to a new report by Borrell Associates. By 2012, that figure will surge to $5 billion, or 35% of local online ad budgets.

Yahoo Music Loses Two Key Execs - At a difficult time for music subscription services, two key executives–David Goldberg and Robert Roback, vice presidents and general managers of Yahoo Music–have left the company. Goldberg and Roback have been with Yahoo since 2001, when it acquired the company they founded, Launch Media.

News Analysis: Why Can’t Google Sell Premium Radio Ads? - With the departure of dMarc founders Chad and Ryan Steelberg last week, industry observers are buzzing about Google’s ongoing attempt to penetrate the radio market with low-cost online ad sales and placement. One of the key issues is the quality of radio inventory Google can offer through dMarc’s automated interface. Here, Google finds itself in a Catch-22.

Pheedo Unveils New Ad Unit - RSS marketing firm Pheedo launched a new ad unit that allows publishers to syndicate their RSS feeds onto sites they sponsor. The ad units include articles–text or video–from the publisher’s feed, as well as links that allow users to subscribe to the feeds directly from the ad unit. Advertisers using the service include Web browser Opera, women’s health site Life Script, as well as clients in the automotive and travel spaces.

DoubleClick Launches Live Streaming Banner Ads - Online marketing company DoubleClick unveiled ad units that allow marketers to stream live events in real time into rich media banner ad units. The first company to use the ad unit was New Line Cinema in its promotion for “The Number 23,” starring Jim Carrey. That promotion allowed consumers to tape live confessions at a Washington, D.C. event, which were then edited and broadcast live into the ad units.

Earnings: Priceline Revenue Increases - Priceline.com’s 4th quarter earnings more than than tripled from the prior year, the online travel-booking company reported Monday. Priceline said it earned $13.2 million, or 33 cents a share, compared to $3.8 million, or 9 cents a share, in the fourth-quarter of 2005. Revenue rose 28%, to $260 million from $203.9 million in the year-ago quarter. Excluding one-time items, Priceline would have earned 58 cents a share. The company attributed its performance to strong bookings in its European division, Booking.com.

Presidential Hopefuls Slow to Use Search - The 2008 race for the White House is already being called the first YouTube or Googlection. Given that 17 politicians have already announced their candidacy, a Tech President blogger expects to see each begin buying keywords on Google and Yahoo. To his surprise, only six of the 17 had.

Report: Podcast Spending To Soar - Podcasting never quite took off as an ad platform. It’s just been forgotten in the wake of Web 2.0 phenomena like online video and social networking. But if Clear Channel, CBS Radio and Rush Limbaugh have entered the podcast market, there must be something to it. According to research aggregator eMarketer, podcasting continues to grow in penetration and influence, meaning the talk-radio alternative is now poised to grab a bigger slice of the online ad pie.

Future Of Online Video: “Hyperaggregation” - Here’s some food for thought: YouTube 2.0, a way to weed out what you don’t want and keep only what you do. In the chaotic online world, video clips can be five-minute cinematic masterpieces or raving paranoia from someone on too many prescription drugs. It will be noted by many in this industry that aggregation is big business on the Web. Business 2.0 says that’s exactly what would make online video more accessible to users, and thus, more attractive to advertisers. That’s the idea behind VodPod, a new startup funded by Mark Hall, the founder of RealNetworks.

Amid Sales Slide, EMI Could Make Music Files DRM-Free - In stark contrast to its music industry cousins, record label EMI is moving toward the anti-digital rights management side of the fence. Now we know why: the music giant lowered expectations for its recorded music division. Instead of the expected 6% to 10% year-over decline in the year to March, the company said it’s more likely to be in the neighborhood of $15. Following the announcement, the label’s shares plunged 20%.

Redstone: We Didn’t Miss The Boat - Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone’s interview with Hollywood Reporter has some good gems about his view on digital media. Asked about whether he company has missed the boat on digital media, he said: “We don’t miss boats. Other people miss boats, and they may have missed the Viacom boat. The fact of the matter is, without copyright protection, there is no entertainment business. And so we instructed YouTube to remove 100,000 pieces of video from their site. Why? Because they were using it without paying for it….make a deal with us that is commensurate with the value of our product…People who want to use it are going to pay us, or good-bye.”

Earnings: RNWK: Record 4Q Revenue Up 50 Percent; Increases in Music, Gaming, Tech - Real Networks reported record 4Q revenue today of $125.6 million, up 50 percent year over year but net income suffered by comparison to last year’s 4Q, which included a major payment from Microsoft. Net income was $39.3 million, or $0.22 per share, compared with $295.6 million, or $1.61 per share in the same quarter last year. On an adjusted basis, Real’s 4Q06 earnings per share would have been $9.9 million. or $0.05 per share, compared with a net loss last year of $6.1 million, or ($0.04) cents per share.

Earnings: Content Deals Boost Baidu’s 4Q Earnings Significantly - China’s rapidly rising online population helped Beijing-based online search company Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) post significant 4Q revenue increases. The quarter’s revenue climbed 136.1 percent, coming in at $34.8 million. Total revenues for the year were $107.4 million, a 162.5 percent gain over 2005. The company’s content partnerships with MTV Networks and EMI that were initiated in 4Q, as well as a strategic alliance with Microsoft for paid search services, drove more traffic and represented the main contributions to its revenue increases.

Yahoo Defends Digital Ad Dollars At Its First Infront Presentation - As we reported last week, Yahoo hosted its first “Infront” before the upfront on Tuesday evening, during which the web portal sought to “educate” roughly 1,000 marketers and media buyers on the merits of shifting more ad dollars from the traditional outlets to the digital ones – namely Yahoo. And rather than promote new initiatives, the presentation, featured CEO Terry Semel touting Yahoo’s seven million newsgroups and the Yahoo Answers site, where advertisers can target people asking questions about specific subjects.

Brightcove Strikes Video Deals With Time, TV Guide - Time Inc. and TV Guide on Monday both announced plans to boost their Internet video offerings in partnership with Web video provider Brightcove. Time is creating an in-house studio to help produce original Web video across its 150 magazines, while TV Guide is teaming with Brightcove to syndicate online video, including behind-the-scenes footage from hit TV shows and celebrity interviews by Joan and Melissa Rivers.

YouTube To Stream ‘Gumby,’ Other Classic TV Shows - Amid ongoing tension with content owners about piracy, Google’s YouTube has struck a deal with online distributor Digital Music Group to carry kitschy TV classics like “Gumby,” “My Favorite Martian,” and “I Spy” free of charge for viewers. YouTube plans to show ads on the pages where the videos will run, and will share the ad revenue with Digital Music Group. 

About.com Adds 500 Videos - About.com has doubled its video ad inventory–adding 500 new videos in a variety of categories including home, autos, gadgets, food, health, and parenting to its site, the company said Monday. The New York Times Co.-owned site also launched a new embedded video player, designed by Brightcove.

Covering All Bases: CBS RIOT Sells Cross-Platform - CBS has announced the creation of a locally targeted cross-platform ad-selling division months after leaving behind a similar, mostly national ad unit at former sister company Viacom. The new unit, called CBS RIOT–which stands for radio, Internet, outdoor, and television–focuses on local marketing and ad deals, rather than network TV or national media.

Looking Around the Whole Online World - The US remains the single largest Internet market in the world with 181.9 million Internet users in 2006, but China is likely to take the lead before the decade is out. Morgan Stanley estimates that by the end of 2007 there will be over 1.3 billion Internet users worldwide. Included in the article are statistics on global and country-specific internet penetration.

Time For Hollywood To Expand Web Investment - The latest financial disclosures from News Corp. and Walt Disney Co. showed steady growth in the traditional media firms’ budding digital departments. The bulk of their new media revenues, however, came from either a rare original enterprise (MySpace in News Corp.’s case) or the monetizing of traditional media content delivered in digital form. Here’s the catch: with the exception of clips from YouTube and MySpace, we’re consuming the same content on a different medium. Big media needs some new ideas. Instead, it’s myopically focused on fighting piracy, which may be a losing battle.

Local Advertising 2.0 - Virtual mapping is opening new doors for Madison Avenue. It’s inevitable that tools like Google Earth and Microsoft’s Virtual Earth 3-D will help those searching local neighborhoods to find the products and services they want. Car companies like Saturn are taking the lead. This spring, the automaker is rolling out an ad campaign for its new Aura sedan that utilizes Google Earth. It’s unclear whether users have to click on an ad or listing first, but without downloading a thing, users’ screens will zoom all the way from space down to the nearest Saturn dealership, located by their IP address, where a salesperson offers them a test-drive.

Earnings: The Knot Posts Quarterly, Annual Profit Gains - The Knot (NASDAQ: KNOT), a wedding-related content publisher, posted both 4Q and annual revenue gains, though it was helped mostly by tax benefits and a legal settlement. For 4Q06, The Knot reported net revenues of $21.7 million, a 70 percent increase compared to $12.8 million posted in 4Q05. For the year that ended Dec. 31, The Knot’s revenue rose to $72.7 million, an increase of 41 percent from $51.4 million in 2005.  

Online Newspapers Are Attracting More Local Ad Dollars With Streaming Video - All forms of traditional media realize that survival depends on offering quality streaming video in order to retain and attract advertisers. Newspaper websites captured $81 million in locally spent streaming-video advertising, while local TV sites collected $32 million in ad spend last year. As E&P noted in their take on the report, this is a particularly small market, with the total ad dollars amounting to $161 million in 2006, although it’s a growing form of advertising. The Portsmouth, VA,-based consultancy projects that in five years, local online video advertising will exceed $5 billion, roughly one-third of all local online ads.

ESPN Makes Another Acq-Hire; Buys NBA Blog TrueHoop.com - Another day, another acq-hire for ESPN as the network looks to established online voices. Yesterday the Disney division announced it had picked up the Talented Mr. Roto and signed its founder Matthew Berry. Now the company has acquired TrueHoop.com, a leading sports blog covering the NBA, and signed blogger Henry Abbott as an NBA expert.

ESPN Makes Another Fantasy Sports Play; Acquires ‘Talented Mr. Roto’ Site; Free Fantasy Baseball - ESPN is making another pitch at the lucrative fantasy sports market. The Disney network has picked up Talented Mr Roto in what might be an acq-hire (I’m still looking into terms): founder Matthew Berry is joining the company as senior director of fantasy games, fantasy sports writer and on-air analyst. The site was launched in March 2004 as an online fan group and boasts a network of more than 50 contributors (columnists, reporters, scouts and stringers) who now will feed ESPN.com.

PayPerPost Beefs Up Disclosure Policies - PayPerPost, a controversial business that pays bloggers to post about advertisers’ products, is now requiring writers to include a small graphical button that denotes a post is being sponsored. CEO and founder Ted Murphy said the move marked the “next step” in the service’s efforts at full disclosure.

Google Search Personalization And You - Web searchers may not have noticed, but search marketers did. It was more than a “Google Dance” this time when the search leader integrated personalized search into natural results last Friday, said Nick Wilson, CEO of social media firm Clickinfluence; it was “cataclysmic.” Personalized search isn’t merely a new search service, it’s now the default. So now, everything you do using Google’s services contributes to results that are increasingly just for you. The implications for search marketers are vast, particularly in the field of search optimization. It will take experimentation to get it right; social media optimization is key.

Linden Lab’s “State of the Virtual World” - Second Life, the virtual world that’s built by its users, has released census data. Key metrics have long been available for the site’s home page, but the release of more granular figures last week suggests the site is trying to open up to the ad community a little more. The top five countries represented in Second Life are the U.S., France, Germany, Britain, and the Netherlands. Interestingly, Linden Lab, the game’s creator, has also published the age and gender data that residents provide when they sign up. 

Yahoo’s Pipes Clog But Impress - Yahoo Pipes, a new service for bringing disparate data streams together to a single Web site, launched last Wednesday. Maybe the positive reviews backfired, as the site “clogged” the following day due to demand. Yahoo spokespeople said the Pipes launch was intended for testing by a small pool of developers; big-time press and blogger coverage resulted in an unexpected swarm.

Why Would Google Bother With Video Games? - Marketers, pundits and analysts have wondered why Google would even take an interest in Adscape Media, a company specializing in dynamic in-game advertising. Compared to Google’s other media ambitions, in-game is small potatoes, so is this simply a contest of pride between Big G and Micrsoft? Microsoft has Massive, the biggest in-game advertising company. Google and Adscape would be closed out of the Xbox market, but the Sony’s PlayStation 3, Nintendo’s Wii, and the Internet-expected to be the future of the entire industry-are other options.

Google In Copyright Gaffe - Google again has found itself in an awkward situation stemming from copyright infringement but, this time, the allegations aren’t related to video-sharing site YouTube. Rather, Google apparently sold pay-per-click ads to other Web companies that are accused of inducing consumers to download copyrighted films, according to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal. And, beyond just selling keywords through the usual automated AdWords platform, Google seems to have sent its sales force out to personally help the companies.  

Lionsgate Films On iTunes; Starts With 150-Plus Titles - Lionsgate and Apple finally have an agreement to put the studio’s films on iTunes. The arrangement starts today; more than 150 titles, including Dirty Dancing, will go up this month. That brings iTunes’ movie library past 400—still a far cry from the numbers available on some other sites, including newly launched Wal-Mart download beta with a 3,000-plus libray. Lionsgate was one of the launch studios for that service, which has full coverage from the majors. Apple’s iTunes launched with Disney.

Viacom Circumvents YouTube, Making MTV Networks’ Video Available To All Others - It’s round two in Viacom’s war against YouTube, as the media conglomerate will make videos from all MTV-owned sites available for download to all internet users over the next few months, CNET reported. Over the coming months, individuals will be able to grab videos from nearly all MTV-owned sites and post them on their own blogs or websites, reducing the need to go to YouTube. The move is part of a strategy to bring Viacom’s websites up to “Web 2.0” standards, Mika Salmi, MTV Networks president of global digital media, told Reuters.  

Veoh Relaunches Powerful Video Sharing Service - P2P and web video sharing service Veoh will relaunch Tuesday with some important new features and a new look. Starting this week, all users of Veoh will be offered video recommendations using an algorithm developed by Ted Dunning, developer of MusicMatch (now Yahoo!Music). Pro users can charge viewers to rent or own DVD quality videos downloaded through the P2P Veoh player. Pro users can have their videos automatically cross-posted to YouTube, Google Video and MySpace Video and automatically transcoded to QuickTime for iPod viewing.  

MySpace Offers Tools to Block Video Clips - MySpace, the News Corporation’s online social network, said yesterday that it was offering free software tools to let media companies block the uploading of unauthorized video clips, expanding on an earlier program to block unauthorized music. MySpace has licensed technology developed by a Silicon Valley company, Audible Magic, that helps identify the digital audio signature in a video file. Videos with audio tracks that match those in its database will be blocked, the company said.

Yahoo Launches Pipes - Yahoo has quietly launched a new product that’s receiving rave reviews from tech blogs and emerging media sites. Somewhat awkwardly called “pipes” from Yahoo, the new service acts as a conduit for data between Web services. For example, it allows you, the Web user who can’t write code, to take data from one or more sources and bring it together-effectively aggregating a group of RSS feeds.

Earnings: Online And TV Revenue Cover Print Declines As Belo’s 4Q Profit Rose - Revenue from TV and interactive properties helped cover newspaper losses for Belo (NYSE: BLC) on Thursday, as the Dallas-based company posted a 29 percent increase in 4Q profits. Belo reported a profit of 51.3 million, or 50 cents a share, compared with a profit of $39.9 million, or 36 cents a share, year-over-year. Revenue rose to $436.6 million from $411.9 million. Belo’s print properties’ decreases were helped by growing online revenues.

ABC: Ad Agencies Want Web Site Audits - More than 2 in 3 ad agencies recently surveyed by the Audit Bureau of Circulations said they would prefer to advertise on Web sites that are independently audited, the ABC reported Thursday. Ninety-one percent of respondents said audting ad impressions and delivery was important, while 89% thought it was important to monitor Web site traffic.

Is MySpace Making Money? - MySpace appears to be on track to meet or exceed the $525 million that eMarketer projected the site would generate on ads this year. Fox Interactive Media (FIM), the News Corp. unit that contains MySpace, generated $125 million in revenues in the fiscal second quarter of 2007, News Corp. said on Wednesday. FIM is on track to break even on at least $500 million in revenues in fiscal year 2007, which ends June 30. News Corp. executives expect that in 2008 FIM will turn a profit margin of at least 20%, and News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch said, “I think we can do a lot better than 20%.”

Innovation Overload - The pace of change is set to increase again in 2007, according to advertising executives surveyed by the American Advertising Federation (AAF). The AAF surveyed ad execs worldwide, and more than half said that they expected significant changes to the media landscape to happen even faster than they did last year. YouTube, mash-ups and Second Life were among the innovations that ad execs said took them by surprise in 2006.

Online Agencies Take Lead, Agency.com Gets IKEA UK - Online ad agencies have traditionally been relegated to doing what their clients’ larger offline agency counterparts order. Usually, that’s to stick with online work only. But things are changing, as companies like Ikea, the low-cost home furnishing giant, are starting to hire online shops as their lead (or in some cases they’re only) agency for their national campaigns.

Viacom’s Post-YouTube Video Strategy - When Viacom told YouTube to take its content down last week, the media giant had a plan, of course. This week, CNET says, company reps have told insiders that Viacom will soon begin promoting the revamped ComedyCentral.com, which allows users to upload whatever “Daily Show,” “Colbert Report” or “South Park” content they wish. Experts call the new Viacom strategy a “workaround” to YouTube, because Viacom, like YouTube, will let users upload videos using embedded code to MySpace pages, blogs, personal Web sites, etc.

YouTube’s Restless Partners - To be sure, it’s been a week of bad omens for Google’s YouTube. The Viacom defection has been the worst of it, but tough talk a few days later from new NBC chief Jeff Zucker indicates that YouTube’s already tenuous relations with its partners (NBC is a YouTube partner) are growing thinner.

Google to Cable Execs: Web Doesn’t Scale - Google execs yesterday fired a warning to television companies: The Web is not designed for TV as we know it. In other words, partner with us. Indeed, TV companies are sorely mistaken if they think they can simply put their shows on the Web (like ABC), slap ads on them and expect to achieve a global scale. TV is shifting, but like any media transition, the shift is slow and awkward.

Telcos Target Google With New Net Neutrality Strategy - As the net neutrality debate rolls on, telecom companies have adopted a new mantra: Google is the big monster using its muscle to control the Web–not us. It’s an interesting new strategy, because in this battle the lobbyists that are most effective at spinning the issue will win. Google is a good target for several reasons: The search giant has effectively become the gateway to the Web. Its massive usage shows that people need it to find things. Because of this, the telcos say Google has far more of a choke hold on the Web than Internet service providers, which are only trying to innovate.

EMI Moves Toward MP3 Formats? - EMI Group is considering allowing online music stores to sell digital downloads of tracks in its catalog in MP3 format, according to a report in today’s Wall Street Journal. The news is coming the same week that Apple Computer chief Steve Jobs made headlines by calling on record companies to allow iTunes to sell tracks without the built-in restrictions that limit users’ ability to transfer the music to portable players.

Industry Moves: Ross Levinsohn Joins Napster Board - Still no sure sense of what Ross Levinsohn will do with all of his post-FIM spare time but the former News Corp. exec has agreed to serve on Napster’s board of directors. The company announced the appointment, which took effect earlier this week, today along with its earnings.

Earnings: Napster Revenues Up 21 Percent; Net Loss Nearly Cut In Half - Napster revenues hit a record $28.4 million for the quarter ending Dec. 31, up 21 percent from $23.5 million in the same quarter last year. The company carved away at its loss, reporting a loss of $9.5 million, or $0.22 per share, for its FY3Q07, compared with $0.40 per share the previous year. Napster chairman and CEO Chris Gorog said in the release that the addition of AOL should increase the subscriber base by more than 50 percent; the transition is scheduled for late March.

Earnings: Chinese Portal Sina’s 4Q Profits Down 15 Percent - Sina (Nasdaq: SINA), which runs one of China’s most popular portal sites, reported that 4Q profits fell 15 percent. The Beijing company cited higher expenses and a decrease in revenues for mobile services. Overall, Sina reported earnings of $11.7 million, or 20 cents per share, down from $13.8 million, or 24 cents per share, in the same quarter of 2005.

Yahoo Builds ‘Brickhouse’ To Encourage Start-Ups From Within - Yahoo is trying to get back in touch with its “inner start-up,” BusinessWeek says, by targeting business development from within. The name for this effort is Brickhouse, a new unit within Yahoo that is scheduled to be officially unveiled in March and is intended to serve as a kind of in-house VC firm/incubator.

IDG No Longer A Print Company; Online 35 Percent Of U.S. Publishing Revenues - IDG is no longer a print media company, declares Colin Crawford, the SVP of Online at the company, in a rather revealing post on his own blog. The trade behemoth is a private company, so this insight is a helpful one. The absolute dollar growth of our online revenues now exceeds the decline in our print revenues. This occurred in the US in 2006 and in Europe during the last quarter.

Nielsen To Buy Rest of NetRatings For $327 million; Ups Previous Price - Privately-held Nielsen (fka VNU) will pay about $327 million ( to buy the 40 percent stake in online measurement firm NetRatings that it does not already own. Nielsen would pay $21.00 a share in cash , and this price represents a 16 percent premium to NetRatings’ closing price on Friday, and also is substantially higher than a $16 per share offered last year by Nielsen.

Akamai To Acquire Net Optimization Firm Netli For About $178 Million in Stock - The rapid M&A activity in the CDN space continues: Akamai has bought out Netli, a network infrastructure and optimization service provider, for 3.2 million shares of Akamai common stock. Based on Akamai’s closing price Friday of $55.55, the stock is worth roughly $177.8 million.

RealNetworks Acquires Brazil-Based Casual Game Studio Atrativa - RealNetworks has made another acquisition in the games arena in an effort to bulk up its casual gaming position: it has acquired Sao Paulo, Brazil-based Atrativa, a popular casual games site in South America for an undisclosed price.

HandHeld Entertainment Acquires Putfile.com For $7.1 Million In Cash & Stock - HandHeld Entertainment is on a tear in small M&A market: it has bought Putfile.com, a user-generated video service for about $7.1 million. The site has more than 425,000 free and premium video selection and about 13.7 million unique visitors (on a combined basis) in January 2007, the company says.

Primedia Buys RentalHouses.com - Primedia, the trade media firm, has bought out RentalHouses.com, an online marketplace for small unit rental properties. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Primedia now owns Rentals.com, RentClicks.com, RentalHouses.com, HomeRentalAds.com, and ApartmentGuide.com. Between them, these sites represented an $11 million business based on annualized revenue, and received three million unique visitors monthly, the company said.

Network Solutions Changes Private Equity Ownership - Network Solutions, the domain name registration and related services company, said that priavte equity firm General Atlantic is buying out the company from Najafi Companies (formerly Pivotal Private Equity). Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Internet Brands Buys DoItYourself.com - We missed this last month: Internet Brands, the LA-based internet holding company, has bought out one of the oldest home improvement and home repair website. Founded in 1995, the site has news, info and forums on the subject. Several affiliated websites were not included in the acquisition, including consumer law and insurance information website FreeAdvice.com and a related e-commerce site, HardwareandTools.com, which will continue to be operated by the founders of DoItYourself.com.

iCrossing To Purchase U.K. Shop Spannerworks - Search engine marketing firm iCrossing plans to acquire Spannerworks, a U.K.-based company, for around $18 million, OnlineMediaDaily has learned. In addition to search engine marketing and optimization, Spannerworks maintains a marketing practice around social networking.

Cisco’s Media Group Makes First Acquisition: Social Net White Labler Five Across - Cisco’s recently formed Media Solutions Group (CMSG) is exiting stealth mode with its first acquisition: Five Across, a vendor of white label social networks for media companies, sports leagues, and affinity groups. Clients include the National Hockey League, which has emphasized social networking of late. No terms are being disclosed.

Primedia Looks To Sell Enthusiast Division: 100 Web Sites, 75 Titles - Primedia is putting its Enthusiast Media segment up for sale on, the company said Friday. The unit has 100 websites and 75 publications, with such titles as Motor Trend, Automotive.com, Equine.com, Hot Rod, Stereophile, and Wavewatch.com. If it can find the right buyer, Primedia hopes to use the proceeds of a sale to pay off its $1.3 billion debt.

YouTube Casts Shadow Over Once-Hot eBaum’s - The online video boom that has made a household word of YouTube and launched scores of similar sites hasn’t been a boon to every video-sharing hub. Over the last year, eBaum’s World–which helped to pioneer irreverent videos online–has seen its U.S. traffic fall by nearly a quarter from 5.5 million monthly visitors to 4.2 million, according to comScore Media Metrix. Its page views have dropped by 25% over the same year-long period ending December 2006.

Lycos Adds Video Playlists To Woo Web 2.0 Audience - In the latest twist to online video-sharing, entertainment portal Lycos today unveiled a new feature, Mix, that lets users create playlists of video clips from the likes of YouTube, Google Video and MySpace video. Lycos plans to offer banner ad units and sponsorships around the Mix community features. Eventually, the company plans to offer licensed video content for Mix which would carry in-stream ads.

SEMPO: Search Marketing Spending Passes $9B - North American companies last year spent $9.45 billion on search engine marketing, according to a new report by the trade group Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization. The vast majority of last year’s spending–$8 billion or 86%–went to paid search ads, mainly pay-per-click ads.

Digital Execs: UGC Needs An Assist From Professionals - Executives from leading online companies said Wednesday that Web publishers that want to incorporate user-generated content in their sites would do well to also bolster consumer efforts with professionally created material.

WSJ Launches Fashion Blog - The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday launched a free fashion blog, “Heard on the Runway,” offering updated news, images and analysis of this year’s collections from New York, Milan and Paris. The online Journal ran a series of other event-driven blogs in recent weeks on such events as the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the Detroit Auto Show, and the Davos Economic Forum in Switzerland.

Frequent YouTube Visitors Watch Less Television - A recent Harris Poll of 2,309 U.S. adults, of whom 363 are frequent YouTube viewers, conducted online by Harris Interactive between December 12 and 18, 2006, found that almost one in three of these frequent YouTube users say they are watching less TV as a result of the time they spend there. However, 73 percent of frequent YouTube users say they would visit the site less if it started including short video ads before every clip. 42 percent of online U.S. adults say they have watched a video at YouTube, and 14 percent say they visit the site frequently.

Online Video Faves: News, Music - News for the middle-aged, music videos for young adults. Those are two of the main findings of a new study conducted by InsightExpress on behalf of Advertising.com regarding online video viewing habits. According to the study of 500 adults ages 18 and older, nearly half of streaming video users were likely to watch news clips or music videos (48.6% and 47.4%, respectively). About a third (32.6%) of the respondents were likely to watch streaming music videos.

IPTV Advertising: Profit Globally, Pine Locally - IPTV is capable of one-to-one television lineups and ad targeting. But it’s an also-ran in the US. Targeted advertising via Internet protocol television (IPTV) is expected to produce major revenues within the next year, according to IPTV executives’ opinions revealed in a new report by Accenture and the Economist Intelligence Unit. Of the executives surveyed, 46.5% said that they thought such advertising would produce “major” revenues, and another 37.4% said that they thought such ads would bring “moderate” revenues.

Diller Jumps On YouTube Bashing Wagon - In the wake of Viacom’s decision to pull its content from YouTube, media executives are piling on the criticism for the user-generated online video site. On Tuesday, new NBC chief Jeff Zucker chided both YouTube and parent Google for failing to implement a new automated system for detecting copyrighted material. On Wednesday, IAC/InterActive Corp. CEO Barry Diller sided with the traditional media companies. “What’s happened is that media companies have said, ‘We’re not gonna let you get so strong in distribution,’” Diller said, likening it to HBO’s dominance in acquiring movies for cable decades ago.

Microsoft Offers Ad Rev-Share For Game Developers - It’s a sign of online gaming’s maturity as an ad medium that publishers and developers are configuring new ways of selling casual gaming audiences to advertisers. MSN Games, one of the biggest gaming destinations on the Web, has begun an ad share program that gives participating developers between 10% and 20% of revenues on existing and future games.

Stock-Creative Shops Rise On Web - Automated ad creation, by you, the local business owner. It’s a new idea inspired by the SpotRunner, the online agency that uses an extensive library of commercial stock to help smaller advertisers create and target cheap TV spots. SpotRunner is no longer alone. Visible Worlds, another stock-creative company offers the capability of changing TV spots just before they air. If, for example, you’re an auto dealer and its snowing outside, you can change your commercial to display a car on a snowy road.

Earnings: News Corp.: Quarter’s Highlight Was Liberty Deal - Reflecting a decrease in TV income, News Corp.’s net income last quarter dropped year over year, to $822 million, or $0.27 per share, from $1.075 million, or $0.35 per share, in the same quarter. (The previous year was inflated by a tax gain.) Revenue continued to rise, up 24 percent to $7.8 billion for the quarter compared with $6.7 billion the previous year. The best news about the quarter for News Corp.: the agreement reached with Liberty Media to swap DirecTV shares and other assets for Liberty’s News Corp. shares.

PE Firms Mull Backing One-Stop Digital Marketing/Advertising Outfits - Some specialist PE firms are planning to make a move into rolling up online ad and marketing companies, with with an eye toward combining them into large-scale marketing firms. General Atlantic made the first move last week, taking a majority stake in AKQA, with plans to use it as a platform to add complementary businesses.

Deloitte: YouTube, Blogs Threaten Retail - Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu is forecasting a cash crunch for brick-and-mortar retailers this year and beyond, thanks in part to the Web. In a report issued this week, Deloitte cited online commerce, greater transparency in product information, and the PR ramifications of sites like YouTube as among the leading threats to traditional retail.

Study: Two-Thirds Of Web Users View Streaming Video Weekly - As online video became more prevalent last year, its popularity with Web users surged, according to a new study by Advertising.com. Eighty-four percent of consumers recently surveyed by the ad network said their consumption of online video last year either stayed the same or increased from 2005; 66% view streaming video at least weekly.

Jobs Blames Music Companies For DRM Controversy - Apple chief Steve Jobs issued a statement yesterday that could represent a dramatic about-face in the company’s controversial stance on digital rights management, the software that keeps the company’s music files from being played on media devices other than a personal computer or an Apple iPod. In an 1,800-word statement, Jobs placed the onus of lifting DRM restrictions on the shoulders of the music industry, pointing out that Apple’s FairPlay software (its DRM) came at the behest of Big Music.

Lukewarm Reception For Wal-Mart’s Download Service - Wal-Mart’s new digital download store, launched yesterday in beta form, received a lukewarm reception from news outlets. Owen Thomas of Business 2.0 derided the retailer for its hefty prices: At nearly $20 for a new release, it’s the same price as a DVD in one of its stores. He charges the store with forgetting its low-cost stance. Apple, on the other hand, sells movies on iTunes for between $9.99 and $12.99. Many feel downloads, with no packaging costs, should cost less than a DVD.

@ Media Summit: User-Generated Content Is The New Punk Rock - Jon Fine, BusinessWeek’s media columnist, hosted a freewheeling (though sometimes rambling) McGraw-Hill Media Summit panel on user-generated media. The discussion generally centered on issues of whether the form can be adequately monetized (”"of course it can”) and how it will influence popular culture.

Earnings: DIS: Profit More Than Doubles; On Track For $700 Million Digital Revenue This Year - Another good quarter for The Walt Disney Company, which saw profit more than double to $1.7 billion, or $0.79 per share, from $734 million, or $0.37 per share, the previous year. Results include $1.1 billion from sales of interests in E Entertainment and Us Weekly. Excluding special events, earnings per share were still respectable: up 43 percent to $0.50 from $0.35. Revenues rose 10 percent to $9.7 billion, up from $8.85 billion the previous year. The results exceeded analyst expectations of $0.39 cents per share on sales of $9.5 billion.

Tech Trade Media Firm TechTarget Files For Smallish $75 Million IPO - So it has finally happened…TechTarget, the tech trade online media firm which did the M&A round last year before deciding to take the company public, has filed for a smallish $75 million IPO. Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers are leading the deal’s underwriting. The Needham, Mass.-based company will list on Nasdaq under “TTGT”.

YouTube Founders Got $650 Million in Shares; Sequoia Got $442 Million; Nothing For Music Labels? - This is based on the $470.01 closing share price of Google on Wednesday. Google did an SEC filing today which detailed the shares split between the three YouTube founder and investor Sequoia, among others, for the total $1.65 billion acquisition deal, reports WSJ. Chad Hurley received 694,087 Google shares and another 41,232 shares in a trust. Based on Google’ market price of $470.01, that values Hurley’s stake at $345.6 million. Co-founder Steve Chen received 625,366 Google shares and another 68,721 in a trust, indicating his stake is valued at $326.2 million.

Earnings: WMG: 45 Percent Increase In Digital Revenue Not Enough To Stop 74 Percent Profit Drop - Highlighting digital is becoming a habit with the music companies; it comes in especially handy when overall results are disappointing as was the case at Warner Music group today. WMG’s profit dropped 74 percent to $18 million, or $0.12 per share, compared with $69 million or, $0.49 per share, in the same quarter last year. Revenues dropped 11 percent to $928 million from $1.044 billion in FY1Q06.

Hachette To Launch Home Improvement Portal; CondeNet’s Flip Opens Today - Hachette Filipacchi Media plans to launch PointClickHome.com, a web portal targeting in-market home buyers and/or those about to take on a major home improvement project, Mediaweek reported. The site, expected to be introduced during 2Q07, will pull together tools, e-commerce and content from the websites of other Hachette properties including Elle Décor, Home and Metropolitan Home.

Earnings: InterActiveCorp Q4 Profits Off 85 Percent - Interactive Corp announced its Q4 earnings today, and hefty charges pushed down profit by 85 percent, but revenue climbed in each of its divisions. Net income after paying preferred dividends dropped to $16.7 million from $113.1 million a year ago. Revenue rose 8 percent to $1.82 billion from $1.69 billion in the prior-year period. Buoyed by robust search spending, revenue at IAC/InterActive’s media and advertising unit grew to $159.8 million last quarter, marking a 46% increase from the same quarter in 2005, the company reported Tuesday.

It’s Official: Zucker, president and CEO, NBCU; Comes Swinging At YouTube - As expected, GE chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt this morning announced that Jeff Zucker is the new president and CEO of NBC Universal. In a conference call this morning, Jeff Zucker stressed the need to get paid for moving content to new platforms, saying NBCU wants to put its content “in front of new eyeballs on new platforms with new money attached to it.” He also came out swinging at YouTube, saying “YouTube needs to prove that it will implement its filtering technology across its online platform. It’s proven it can do it when it wants to. They have the capability. The question is whether they have the will.”

Disney.com Revamp Goes Live; Radically Different - The new Disney.com that we’ve been writing about for months is live—just in time for Disney’s investors’ conference in Orlando this week—and it’s a radically different, video-driven experience. The new home page puts familiar Disney faces out front, rotates promotions across Disney properties, and actually looks like someplace you might like to stay for a few minutes instead of someplace to leave as quickly as possible—although some elements may change too often for comfort.

Super Bowl Advertisers Beef Up Paid Search Campaigns - This year, most marketers who bought air time during Sunday’s Super Bowl also purchased paid search ads on their brand names, according to search engine marketing firm Reprise Media. The advertisers who most successfully integrated search campaigns with their Super Bowl ads include Snickers, GoDaddy.com, Blockbuster and CareerBuilder.com.

Gather.com Strikes Deals With Publishers, Columbia Records - Social networking site Gather.com has forged partnerships with three major publishers and a record label to sponsor sections within newly created content categories. Under the deal, Harvard Health Publications, Publishers Weekly, McGraw-Hill Professional and Columbia Records will each provide exclusive content and experts online to connect with Gather.com. members on topics including books, music and health.

NBC Touts ‘Heroes’ On Gaming Site - Aiming to draw new viewers, NBC has tapped gaming and entertainment site UGO to promote its prime-time show “Heroes.” The network also has run promotions for the 2004 Summer Olympics and 2006 Winter Games on UGO.

MySpace Is America’s Favorite Internet Time Waster - Visits to MySpace accounted for nearly 12% of all time spent online by US Internet users in December 2006, according to Compete Inc. The firm’s December 2006 Internet traffic data put US Internet user time spent at MySpace higher than any other sites, including eBay, Google, AOL and YouTube. Yahoo! came in second, accounting for 8.5% of time spent online by US Internet users.

Wikia’s Target Is Google - Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has made no secret of the fact that he wants the public to beat Google at its own game. Speaking publicly for the first time about Wikia, his wiki search project, Wales shared his vision for the for-profit open-source search engine during a speech at New York University. “For developers, it would be kind of cool to say ‘Google has 11 gazillion dollars, and we’re going to get a bunch of people together on the Internet, and we’re going to kick their butts’ “, he said.

Media Buyers Question Google’s Game Play Strategy - Digital media buyers had a lukewarm reception to the possibility that Google may enter the video game ad business. A few weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google had entered talks to acquire the video-game advertising shop Adscape Media. Nothing has been said since, but media buyers said they have difficulty seeing how Google’s simplified, automated approach to selling ads would be effective in the in-game ad arena.

IAC Moves Into Online Video - Barry Diller and IAC/InterActive Corp. has purchased Manhattan-based CollegeHumor.com, originally a content creator/UGC destination for videos of frat parties and wet T-shirt contests. However, IAC plans to focus solely on the creation of original programming, uploading one or more comedy video shorts per week. The site will be edited by Daley Haggar, a comedian and writer who has worked on “South Park” and NBC’s “The Apprentice.”

Interview, Kevin Swint, Divisional Merchandise Manager, Digital Media, Wal-Mart - Kevin Swint is Wal-Mart’s point person for digital media, responsible, among other things, for making sure the high-profile, multi-studio download service announced Tuesday will succeed in an increasingly crowded online marketplace. Swint is proudest of the studio buy-in, which makes Wal-Mart the first download service to launch with all major Hollywood studios. But this is just a first step for the retail behemoth.

Last.fm Cuts A Deal With Warner, While Viacom Looks For A Way Out of the Music Biz - Steve Jobs’ latest call for the death of music DRM has gotten most of the attention, but that’s not all that’s happening in digital music today. Last.fm, the popular music-recommendation engine and social network, has signed a deal that lets it stream the Warner Music Group catalog.

Facebook And Comcast Combine To Create VOD TV Series - Here’s an interesting programming mash-up courtesy of Comcast and Facebook: the AP reports the two companies are working on a joint effort to create a TV series that will mesh online, user-generated videos with Comcast VOD. The shows, scheduled to air later this year, will be seen simultaneously on Facebook and Comcast’s Ziddio.com, the cable operator’s answer to YouTube that was launched late last year. The deal also is expected to increase more web traffic to Ziddio from Facebook’s more than 16 million users.

Amazon, TiVo Pair Up For PC-To-DVR Downloads - Amazon ups the download ante, at least among the 600,000 or so folks with TiVo hooked up to their home networks—well, actually a few hundred of them in a deal that is already getting attention beyond its real scope. A few hundred Amazon Unbox users who also have the right TiVo devices (DirecTV TiVos don’t count; neither will those coming from Comcast) will be able to take part in a test to download purchases to their pcs and watch them.

MySpace’s Deal With Google Hits a Bump, With eBay In The Middle: WSJ - Some of this was hinted after it became clear Google would be buying YouTube, and News Corp was passed over in the YouTube “auction” process. Now MySpace’s interest in striking a separate deal with eBay is holding up the finalization of its $900 million online search advertising pact with Google, reports WSJ.

YouTube To Remove Viacom Clips - YouTube Friday said it would remove clips from MTV Networks, BET and other Viacom properties in response to the company’s request to take down more than 100,000 of its clips. Viacom demanded the purge Friday, after talks with YouTube and Google collapsed.

DivineCaroline Launches With Target, DoubleTree Ads - Betting the Web has room for another women’s portal, AKQA vet Kate Thorp today formally unveiled DivineCaroline.com, the first of three female-oriented sites to be launched by her Real Girls Media Network this year. Initial display advertisers include DoubleTree Hotels and Target.

Federated Media, comScore Partner For Blog Metrics - Aiming to provide more metrics for blogs and community sites, comScore Networks and blog network Federated Media have forged a research partnership.

Autobytel To Launch MyRide.com - Online automotive marketplace AutoBytel said this weekend it will launch a new consumer site, MyRide.com, during the second quarter. The new site includes content and auto search results aimed at allowing consumers to find new or used cars, parts, accessories or local repair shops.

Search Engine Ad Spending Forecast Up 39 Percent in ‘07 - According to the second annual report on ad spending from Outsell, Inc., U.S. advertising is expected to grow 5.8 percent in 2007. The national study of advertisers, controlling about $6.5 billion of spending, shows that companies plan to increase their online spending by 18 percent this year, faster than for any other major media type. Advertisers also plan to raise their spending for advertising on search engines by 39 percent, the fastest of any online media method.

Yahoo’s Panama: Will It Deliver? - With a great deal of fanfare, which was met positively by investors, Yahoo’s new search system, Panama, has gone live. The overarching question: will it deliver for advertisers? Search blogger Amr Awadallah says yes, while providing insight as to how the new system will affect pricing and relevance. However, a big disclaimer is in order: He works for Yahoo, so his comments should be taken with a big grain of salt.

E-Commerce Using Online Video - E-commerce companies are hoping Web video can result in more product sales. Companies like 1-800-Flowers and Blendtec, which sells blenders, are experimenting with video, though they don’t know what to expect. For Valentine’s Day, 1-800-Flowers is trying to get its customers to create a “Video Valentine,” which lets you upload photos, write messages and choose musical themes and graphics to send to loved ones. Videos can also be posted to several online video sites, which company CEO Jim McCann says he hopes will drive traffic back to 1-800-Flowers.

Industry Moves: LinkedIn CEO Trades That Role For Another - Reid Hoffman, the founder and chairman of business social networking site LinkedIn, is stepping down from his other role as CEO and will hand the reins to Advent Software executive Dan Nye, Reuters reported.

Earnings: Sohu.com 4Q Revenues Rise 16 Percent - Chinese internet company Sohu.com (Nasdaq: SOHU) reported that 4Q revenue rose 16 percent to $34.4 million in the fourth quarter, thanks to an increase in brand advertising. In particular, brand advertising revenues for the quarter amounted to $22 million, up 30 percent compared to the same period the year before. Overall ad revenues came in at $24.9 million, an increase of 23 percent year-over-year.

Super Bowl’s Fifth Quarter: Online Traffic For Ads Matches The Hype—Even If The Ads Didn’t - Akamai, which handles online traffic for 21 of the 35 in-game advertisers, reported 300,000 visitors a minute to those sites by noon Monday, up 85 percent. AOL says it delivered more than 15 million SB ad streams and its ad poll had more than 250,000 votes. (The Blockbuster “Mouse” beat out A-B’s faux “Dalmation.”). MSN drew more than 246,000 votes for ads shown at FoxSports.com and MSNVIdeo.com.

Falco’s Scaled State Of Mind - Randy Falco, the new CEO of AOL, gave his first public speech yesterday at an iMedia advertising conference. He argued that the value of networks is only increasing, as is each network’s share of marketing dollars. “Today, Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN have a combined market share of 58 percent. That’s up from 48 percent just two years ago. What’s more, there’s a big fall-off from these big four to the next tier of companies. While these four all have a billion dollars plus in annual ad revenues, the number five company, CNET, has less than four hundred million dollars,” Falco said.

Wal-Mart’s Movie Download Service; Same Day As DVD; All Studios And Some TV Networks Aboard - Wal-Mart has muscled its way into the still-small online movie downloads market, after some experiments late last year with “Superman Returns” movie: it is launching a full-fledged movie download service with about 3,000 movies on offer, including including such hits as Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Paramount’s Mission: Impossible III, Sony’s The Da Vinci Code and Warner Bros.’ Superman Returns. It becomes the first traditional retailer to do so.

Click Fraud Reportedly Up - Major search engine sites do not want to hear about it, but new data from Click Forensics indicate that click fraud threat levels to online advertising campaigns running on search engine content networks are not only continuing, but also rising. Fourth-quarter numbers from the Click Fraud Index show that the overall industry average click fraud rate was 14.2%, compared with 13.8% for the third quarter, 14.1% for the second and 13.7% for the first.  

40 Million IPTV Households by 2011 - The total number of IPTV households around the globe is projected to grow dramatically over the next five years. According to the “Global IPTV Forecast: Homes, Users and Subscribers” report from Strategy Analytics, the number of households worldwide paying for IPTV services will rise from 3.3 million in 2006 to 40.9 million in 2011.  

VH1 Launches UGC Push - VH1 has entered a partnership with user-generated advertising platform ViTrue to create a series of user-submitted content sites for the music network. The first site developed, talentload.tv, serves as a promotional tool for advertisers, as well as a filter for casting reality shows on VH1 and MTV.

ComScore Offers Ad Network Metrics - Media research firm comScore Networks has begun offering data on the reach and frequency of 20 major ad networks, allowing media planners to compare their reach with those of individual Web properties, side-by-side.

Technorati Launches Wiki Tool - Blog search engine Technorati this week launched “Where’s the Fire,” a wiki-like tool that allows users to explain the backstory of Internet discussions and phenomena, and vote for the best explanations.

iVillage Hosts Second Life Fashion Show - Aiming to boost its real-world popularity, NBC Universal’s iVillage Monday will host a “fashion show” in the simulated world Second Life. “If we can get this group of women–who are chatty, who look to one another, who frequently are bloggers themselves–that’s a great way to market ourselves in a new form of media,” said iVillage Chief Marketing Officer Linda Boff.

comScore: Microsoft Sites Draw Most Global Traffic - Microsoft drew 508.6 million visitors worldwide in December–surpassing traffic at all other companies’ sites, according to new data by comScore. Google drew around 494.1 million visitors worldwide during that month, while Yahoo rounded out the top three with 476.8 million.

Yahoo Media Struggles With Identity - Yahoo’s media group is struggling to justify itself. Lloyd Braun, the former ABC programming expert who was put in charge of the division, is now gone, as is his strategy to create compelling new content. The media group hopes Yahoo is back doing what it does best: licensing content. Going forward, Vince Broady, Yahoo Media’s head of games and entertainment, says one of the Web giant’s strategies is to show TV shows online.

Times Company Takes Page From Google - It has to be more than a trend if The New York Times, that great bastion of traditional journalism, is jumping on the user-created content bandwagon. At the SIAA Information Industry Summit in New York on Wednesday, Nicholas Ascheim, the Times digital’s director of video and audio, said video is key to the company’s future. Because creating professional video content is “expensive,” the Times, like other news broadcasters, is now encouraging its readers to become citizen journalists.

Wider Variety Of Video Games In Future - Video games have become an advertising medium. Casual games, in particular, have contributed greatly to the business’s steady march into the mainstream. Panelists at a recent discussion on the booming game business agreed that the future of the casual genre belongs to shorter, easier to play games that appeal to a wider audience.

Consumer Mags Online: A Sticky Situation - Do consumer magazines online represent a real strategy or is it just a band-aid for the widening problem of subscriber defection? Laddie mag FHM is closing its print doors as its core demo spends more time in front of a computer and less with magazines and newspapers. FHM’s Web site is sticking around, however. In fact, the site already has nearly double the audience of its print subscribers.

Viacom To YouTube: Remove Clips - Negotiations between Viacom and Google’s YouTube have faltered, prompting Viacom to demand today that YouTube remove about 100,000 clips from its site. “After months of ongoing discussions with YouTube and Google, it has become clear that YouTube is unwilling to come to a fair market agreement that would make Viacom content available to YouTube users,” the company stated Friday.

SI Acquires FanNation.com; Time Inc. To Buy Interest In Parent Company - The Sports Illustrated Group will announce Thursday that it has an agreement to acquire sports social net FanNation.com and its underlying technology. At the same time, Time Inc. will acquire a minority interest in the site’s parent company, Sports Technologies, Inc. The deal is at least $20 million for both FanNation and the STI investment but far less than $30 million and nowhere near the valuation of $60 million being floated in December for the site alone.  

Interactive Ad Shop AKQA Sells Majority Stake To General Atlantic - Private equity firm General Atlantic has bought a majority stake in digital ad shop AKQA, the WSJ reported. The deal, terms of which were not disclosed, comes a day after the closing of Publicis Groupe’s $1.3 billion purchase of interactive agency Digitas. The latest news ends weeks of ad industry speculation over which interactive would follow Digitas in leaving its independent existence behind.

Earnings: Monster’s International Growth Raises 4Q Income, Revenues - Jobs website owner Monster Worldwide (Nasdaq: MNST), saw quarterly profit rise 8.3 percent on Thursday, pointing to its growing international presence. Net income was $39.1 million versus $36.1 million 4Q05. Monster Worldwide revenue grew 33 percent and to $298.6 million in 4Q from $223.8 million a year earlier.  

A NYT Must-Read on Internet Advertising & Bud.tv; New Shows From Bud.tv Announced - Updated below: We’re not sure what you’re planning to do this weekend, but we highly recommend you punctuate it with a reading of Lorne Manly’s “Brew Tube” in the Sunday New York Times Magazine. It’s a deeply researched, extremely rigorous look at how Anheuser-Busch, which has jumped with both feet onto the new-media bandwagon, is developing Bud.TV and trying to extend/preserve its dominance in the new age of advertising.

Fraud Fears Likely Slow Spending On Pay-Per-Click Ads - Ad spending on pay-per-click ads will stall this year, a survey of advertisers by market research firm Outsell found. Outsell forecast online spending for pay-per-click ads will fall 1 percent in 2007. Click fraud concerns are a driver in pay-per-click’s drop in share, the survey respondents indicated: about 49 percent of advertisers have reduced or plan to reduce their pay-per-click spending because of click fraud, up from 37 percent when Outsell first surveyed advertisers on this issue last spring.

Times Exec Questions Online Subscription Model - Placing premium content from The New York Times behind a paid wall could potentially scare off new generations of readers, Nicholas Ascheim, the company’s director of entertainment, video and audio products, said Wednesday. “New generations will never get exposed,” he said.

Web 2.0 Companies Launch YouTube Channel - At the turn of the century, a handful of high-flying dot-coms announced their presence with flashy, but break-the-bank Super Bowl ads. This year, the up-and-coming Web 2.0 companies are hoping to harness a more affordable ad channel: YouTube.

NBC: Viewers Catch Up Online - Most Web users who’ve streamed primetime shows on NBC.com did so after missing the episode on its original air date, but a large proportion also went online to watch a show a second time. Those are among the findings of a report issued Wednesday by NBC Universal.

Yahoo Launches New Brand Sites - As part of its continuing “Brand Universe” initiative to attract entertainment marketing dollars, Yahoo has launched six new brand-focused sites, promoting “Lost,” “The Office,” “Transformers,” the video games “Halo 3″ and “The Sims,” and the Harry Potter franchise. The initiative aims to launch 100 brand sites by the end of 2007.

Calacanis’s New Company: 20.com - After exiting Weblogs Inc and AOL couple of months ago, Jason Calacanis is ready for his new adventure..meaning his new company. Here’s what we know: it has investment from Sequoia, where Calacanis is now an EIR, Mark Cuban (previous Weblogs Inc investor) and investment from another big media company is in the works. The idea as we know it: to develop an online talent network, possibly as video blogs, podcasts and others, with the owners/talent given equity into the new company, as well as revenue cut from the ad sales.

Earnings: Amazon 4Q Profit Falls 50 Percent; Movie Service Unbox Strong, Company Claims - Despite record holiday sales, Amazon’s Q4 profit fell 50 percent, the company said. Net income was $98 million for the quarter, compared with net income of $199 million in Q405. The company cited higher taxes and increased spending on promotions and discounts during the Christmas shopping season.  

Disney Sold 1.3 million Movies on iTunes in Three Months: Iger - So said Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, in a video interview with FT.com (Text transcript here). The company, the first studio to sign onto iTunes when it went video, has sold 1.3 million movies in 3 months ending December 2006. IN the interview, Iger dismissed fears that digital downloads would cannibalize DVD sales, pointing to record sales of Cars and of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, which is on course to be the biggest selling DVD ever.  

Comcast’s Roberts: 4 Percent of Comcast HSD Traffic Connected To YouTube - Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts told analysts during Thursday’s earnings call that there’s a correlation between how well his company’s HSD business is doing and the growth in streaming media. “Streaming video over the Internet is a great driver of the growth of high-speed Internet. I don’t think there’s any coincidence that we had our strongest year in high-speed Internet and the growth of video on the Internet. I think I saw a statistic that 4 percent of all the bits going across high-speed Internet lines at Comcast is YouTube.”  

Earnings: Infospace’s Q4 Profits Fall; 2006 in Losses - Infospace has reported its Q4 earnings today, and its profits fell to $30 million from $37.9 million in the year-ago quarter. Revenues rose slightly to $89.3 million from $86.5 million in year-ago quarter. The latest quarter also included a tax benefit of $32.6 million. Because of all the upheaval at the company, it recorded stock-based compensation costs of $3.3 million and a restructuring charge of $4.5 million in Q4.