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Google/DoubleClick Deal Faces Congressional Inquiry - The search giant’s plan to buy the leading ad-serving company for $3.1 billion is under fire for the umpteenth time since it was first announced on Friday the 13th of April. But now the deal’s harshest detractors say the groundswell of opposition may become insurmountable.            

Yang Vows Urgency As Yahoo Numbers Fail To Impress - Yahoo’s top brass dropped less than stellar numbers on shareholders during Tuesday’s earnings call. But in their new roles as the Web giant’s CEO, president and CFO, respectively, Jerry Yang, Sue Decker and Blake Jorgensen vowed to deliver better financial performance–and with a definite sense of urgency–through better technology, continued emphasis on strategic partnerships, and a leaner, more decisive organizational structure.

Search Spending Flat, With Google Disproportionate - Despite costly efforts by Yahoo and Microsoft to check Google’s search dominance, spending across the major engines has remained flat this year, according to new research from RBC Capital Markets and bid-management technology company SearchIgnite.

comScore And CTAM/Nielsen Focus On Web Video - comScore’s Video Metrix report for May said that nearly 75% of U.S. Internet users watched an average of 158 minutes of online video during the month. The Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM), meanwhile, in a report commissioned from Nielsen and involving a slew of the research company’s departments, found that viewing of online video has little effect on traditional TV viewing.

Rep Firm Ronning Lipset Intros Adcor Server For Online Radio - RL Radio has partnered with upstart tech firm Corstarr for an ad server platform designed to improve the ad sales process for both online radio stations and advertisers.

Microsoft’s Office Live Adds Ask.com Search - Appealing to small business owners, Microsoft’s Office Live has added Ask.com sponsored listings to its search advertising service.

Email: Dead to Millennials - For today’s teenagers, email has been replaced by social networking. Teens and analysts agree that kids think email is more suited to keeping up professional relationships or communicating with adults. Kids today are more likely to check MySpace or Facebook than email. For many adults, email is what we’re used to–it keeps things simple and professional. But for kids, who grew up with instant messaging, voice-over-IP, text messaging and email, they want to see these services integrated. To a certain extent, each of these can be wrapped up in a social network, along with the ability to add photos, videos and of course, new friends and networks.

Users More Aware Of Cookies, Deletion Skills Grow Crummier - Awareness of cookies has increased significantly among consumers over the past two years, but most are still ignorant about the actual role they play in the online industry. That’s the bad news, according to a new study conducted by online marketing research firm InsightExpress, which found that consumers delete cookies for the wrong reasons. The good news for industry pros is that consumers are equally ignorant in their ability to delete cookies.                         

Google Unveils Search Service For Small Businesses - Google on Monday unveiled a new search service for small businesses that lets visitors search for information deep within their sites. At $100 per year, it’s pretty cheap. The service will be hosted on Google’s computers, but does not require participation in AdSense, the Web giant’s advertising network.

Google, Viacom Execs Square Off in Sun Valley - Google and Viacom’s YouTube-face off heated up last week at the Allen & Company media summit when Google CEO Eric Schmidt vehemently defended his company’s policy of taking down copyrighted materials flagged by the owner. Viacom and others believe the Web giant has the resources to filter out copyrighted content altogether, but chooses not to because it benefits from their illegal use. They also complain that the laborious process of copyright identification is both costly and inefficient.

Possible Injunction Could Deflate Facebook’s Sails - It’s not often referred to amid all the hoopla, but Michael Zuckerberg and Facebook have been embroiled in a three-year court battle with a smaller rival that seeks an injunction that would shut the social network down. ConnectU claims that Zuckerberg created Facebook using code and other ideas stolen from the rival site, which was started by three of his Harvard classmates.

Casual Games Takes Center Stage at E3 - “Casual” was the buzzword of this year’s E3 conference in Los Angeles, championed mainly by Wii-maker Nintendo, which is widely being regarded as the leader of the next generation of video games. This year’s E3 stressed the importance of reaching out the mainstream–and for good reason.

Harry Potter’s Web Explosion - Author J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books are so popular they’ve spawned a parallel universe on the Web, where some sites attract millions of fans every day who chat about the books and view Web pages built around them. One of the biggest is Mugglenet.com, created by Emerson Spartz when he was just 12. Today the site is visited up to 40 million times in a month, making it one of the biggest Harry Potter-related Web sites-not to mention a commercial success.

NBC.com Broadens Its Social Networking Around Shows - NBC Digital Entertainment will continue beefing up NBC.com throughout the summer with additional tech and content features. Several additions noted Monday include new social networking tools, streaming episodes of “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” the continued rollout of “Heroes 360,” the show’s multi-platform presentation, along with new WAP mobile sites for new and returning shows.

Legislation Watch: No ‘Solutions’ In Sight - Since 2003, Congress has considered bills aimed at curbing spyware. And since 2003, these bills have stalled, despite overwhelming backing in the House of Representatives. Now, once again, legislators are mulling over new measures that specifically take aim at spyware, including ad-serving software installed on people’s computers without their consent.

Online Radio Tops June comScore Gains As Gays, Gaming, Gambling Also Soar - Radio was the top-gaining Web category in June, according to comScore MediaMetrix. Yahoo Music led the growth in the category, and Yahoo again led comScore’s list as top U.S. online property. In the ad network rankings, Yahoo moved down from second to third place, falling slightly to flip places with ValueClick.

Four Out of Five Newspaper Website Readers Also Read the Printed Edition - A new study recently released by the Newspaper National Network LP, conducted by Scarborough Research, found that 81% of newspaper website users also read the printed newspaper in the last 7 days. Crossover users (those who used both print and online newspapers in the past 7 days) have deep affinity with both their printed newspaper and their newspaper website, and 83% say “I love both my printed newspaper and visiting my newspapers website.”

Time Warner Mulls AOL Sale, Again - Time Warner may be preparing to shed AOL and other properties in an effort to push its stock price to $25, according to a recent report from Pali Capital. Analyst Richard Greenfield raised his rating on TW’s stock from “neutral” to “buy,” on speculation that the media giant would sell its cable unit and either spin off or sell its AOL Internet division. Greenfield added that Time Warner should get rid of Time, Inc., too.

P&G Vet Looks to Build a Google for the Beauty-Care Business - A former Procter & Gamble Co. marketing executive is out to make sense of the jumble of tens of thousands of beauty-care products — and create the industry’s killer digital media app in the process. The fall launch of TotalBeauty.com aims to catalog and update in real time the vast array of beauty products; review as many as possible in-house; have visitors review them on their own; and provide a “personalization engine” that lets people sort through them in categories such as price, “eco issues,” and skin and hair type.

Association For Downloadable Media To Address Ad Standards For Podcasting, Other Content - A new industry trade association will develop standards and best practices in ad content and audience measurement for podcasting and other portable audio/video content.                  

Facebook Proves Both Profitable And Desirable - Well, the posh social network is profitable, will post a positive EBITA, and will do well over $100 million in revenue this year, according to Jim Breyer, managing partner of venture capital firm Accel Partners–one of Facebook’s biggest investors along with Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital Partners.            

Podbridge Intros New Ad Format For Personal Life Media, As Isobar & BlueLithium Sponsor A Transplanted DishyMix - Susan Bratton’s startup Personal Life Media teams with Podbridge on “Surround Sessions,” a dynamic ad format that adds a seamless mid-roll position to pre- and post-roll audio or video spots. Bratton’s own DishyMix show moves to Personal Life and adds two industry sponsors.

Coremetrics Goes 2.0 With Behaviorally Targeted Email App - The San Mateo-based Web analytics vendor has begun testing an email application that targets consumers by both individual and group behavior data.

Internet Radio Lives On, But Yahoo and AOL Must Pay Up - While smaller radio Webcasters apparently won’t be sued just yet for ignoring greatly increased royalty rates, SoundExchange made a point of letting larger ones like Yahoo and AOL know their bill is due.

IAC’s Service Magic Bridges Gap Between Web and Print Business Listings - Service Magic’s ‘Contractor Files’ business directory, a locally focused print supplement to its Web home improvement marketplace, helps meld online and offline spend while hitting consumers across multiple media.

VeohTV Latest Headache For Big Media - Veoh Networks hopes its new VeohTV platform does for Internet TV what YouTube did for online video sharing: dominate. The product is a downloadable application that acts like a Web browser for video, which figures to be a practical way to organize the glut of video–both professional and amateur–that exists on the Web. VeohTV displays both clips from YouTube as well as full-length video from traditional media companies like NBC. But it could ruffle the feathers of big media, and open up the pathway to court.

Microsoft Victim Of Search Promotion-Fraud - Last week, Information Week reported on MSN’s tremendous gains in search share for Live Search. After the report, readers openly questioned the merits of the company’s astonishing 67%t gain in search volume. At the time, the gains were attributed to the prizes users were awarded for using Live Search in the new MSN game zone, Live Search club. As it turns out, a huge chunk of the statistical spike can be better-attributed to bots, says one Live Search Club user.

Web 2.0 Tools Lift Productivity - The introduction of Web 2.0 technologies marks “the very beginning of the next phase of creativity, that will last, I think, a minimum of 10 years, probably 15 years,” says John Chambers, the chairman and chief executive of Cisco Systems. But how does the introduction of social media tools help drive business? The power of [connecting] many to many allows you to do things at a dramatically different speed.”

Sony Dumps Grouper, Introduces “Crackle” - Sony Corp. has turned its video site into a recruiting ground for top talent, giving it a new name: Crackle. The site formerly known as Grouper will transfer all of its old accounts to the new site, which contains 12 branded channels for different show concepts, from comedy to music news, animation, etc. Crackle features a channel guide and a high-quality 16×9 embeddable video player. Advertisers can buy 5- to 15- second ads between the site’s videos and banner units.

Yahoo/Right Media Gets Green Light, Leaving GoogleClick As ‘Last Deal Standing’ - While Yahoo joined WPP and Microsoft in getting FTC clearance or major ad-related acquisitions, Google’s deal for DoubleClick remains under antitrust scrutiny.               

Court Nixes Stay For Sunday’s ‘Death’ of Web Radio - A federal court rejected a stay of execution, so higher royalty rates are set to take effect on Sunday. DiMA, SaveNetRadio and webcasters appealed to listeners to appeal to Congress for overriding legislation.            

Apple Bites Into comScore World Metrix Top 10 - In May, a month before the release of iPhone, Apple saw a 5% increase in worldwide Web visitors, jumping to 120 million unique visitors and entering comScore’s worldwide Top 1Properties list at number 10.

Ringtone Growth Headed For Slowdown: iSuppli - The market intelligence firm said ringtone sales in the U.S. will be down by more than 20% by 2011, a sharp drop from 2007’s $700 million in sales. 

Vertical Search Picks Up Google Slack - Big Search may belong to Google, future competition will come from vertical search providers. For example, GlobalSpec.com, a search-engine for engineers, has already established itself as the best way to find information about anything related to engineering. “They own that market,” says Charlene Li of Forrester Research. Indeed, GlobalSpec has some 3.5 million registered users, adding them at a rate of 20,000 per week.

Pirated Music Helps Terrestrial Radio - Record labels and artists might think they’re going to recoup some of the revenue lost to music piracy thanks to higher online royalty rates, but Web radio may die in the wake of a recent court decision. And piracy isn’t going away, either.

Jupitermedia Raises $115 Million in Credit Line - Jupitermedia, the tech media, events and images company, has closed a $115 million senior credit facility, arranged by KeyBanc Capital Markets. It has initially borrowed $75 million of this amount to repay a previous credit facility with JPMorgan Securities and to fund future acquisitions. The company has made a slew of small to mid size acquisitions in the B2B images and music licensing business over the last two years.

Fortune iMeme: Facebook Will Make Over $100 Million Revenues This Year; Media Company Or Not? - That was from Jim Breyer, from Accel Partners, the main investment firm invested into Facebook, speaking at Fortune iMeme conference, covered here by Eric. He was asked about whether Facebook would be sold: “The company will do well over $100 million in revenue, and profitable, and significant EBITDA positive this year. Right now our job is to build out the company as significantly as possible.

CNBC, FT Consider Sharing Some News Resources Online: Report - Last month, GE and Pearson were exploring the heady notion of a joint bid for Dow Jones, ultimately a no go. Now the WSJ is reporting that GE’s CNBC and Pearson’s Financial Times Group are talking about a much lower-level collaboration: sharing some news resources to “bolster” their online operations. One option, according to the Journal, would give ft.com access to CNBC video clips, while CNBC would have access to FT articles for cnbc.com.

Internet Brands Acquires Real Estate Community Site ApartmentRatings - Just a week after its acquisition of Welsh message board provider Jelsoft, Internet Brands, the Los Angeles-based operator of websites such as CarsDirect and BBOnline, has bought real estate social net ApartmentRatings. The purchase of ApartmentRatings is designed to buttress the online services of Internet Brands’ home buyers and sellers site RealEstateABC.com and mortgage lending information provider Loan.com.

Multi-platform Gamer PopCap Buys Retro64 - Casual gaming developer PopCap Games has acquired Retro64, a site that provides downloads of old-style arcade games. Retro64, which is headquartered in Chicago, also markets a series of action and puzzle games, which Seattle-based PopCap feels will round out its product line. The merger, the terms of which were undisclosed, followed PopCap’s publishing of Retro64’s Venice game, which lets players search for underwater treasure while navigating a gondola in a computerized version of the Italian city.

Level 3 Buys Video Delivery Firm Servecast For $45 Million - Fiber optic network operator Level 3 has acquired Servecast, an Irish online and mobile video delivery and webcasting company, for about $45 million in cash. The deal follows a series of acquisitions by Level 3, which has a large metro fiber network, in an effort to expand into the media delivery business, reports Reuters. In January, Level 3 closed its $135 million acquisition of the content delivery network assets of Savvis.

Online Information Resource GolfLink Buys Instructional Video Site GolfSpan - GolfLink, a site that offers news and tips about golf, has bought instructional site GolfSpan for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition gives GolfLink, which currently runs a daily video feature on its home page, access to GolfSpan’s existing video library of more than 1,400 instructional golf tips. Started in 1995, GolfLink says it has more than 100,000 registered members and claims to be the third most popular golf site behind PGAtour.com and Golf.com.

Online Entertainment Distributor DMGI Merges With Rival The Orchard; Will Keep Orchard Name - Online music and video distributor Digital Music Group Inc. and New York-based indie music download service The Orchard have agreed to merge. While the merged entity will retain DMGI’s Nasdaq listing, it will be controlled by Orchard and it will market its services under The Orchard’s name.The deal calls for Sacramento-based DMGI to issue 9 million shares of common stock and 4.4 million shares of convertible preferred stock to The Orchard’s shareholders, who would own 60 percent of the combined company.

Widget Industry Struts Its Stuff At 1st WidgetCon - Analysts and agency types gathered in New York to talk up the online world’s latest hot property. Widgets are on the cusp of a boom, said one participant.                 

Forbes.com: Widgets For A Serious Audience - The financial site has launched eight separate widgets with the help of widget syndication startup WidgetBox. Topics range from “technology” to “lifestyle.”

Microsoft Kicks Off E3 With Storm of Online Gaming Developments - The software giant’s two online gaming networks, Xbox LIVE and Games for Windows-LIVE, sign up Disney and others.          

Juniper Router Tracks, Targets, Serves IPTV Ads - Juniper’s new broadband services router can collect and aggregate viewing data and also serve targeted ads to individual IPTV subscribers.       

Online Retailers Take Stock - What happens when an online shopper doesn’t find what she wants? Like many retail shoppers, she goes to another store, according to “The Online Inventory Impact Survey.” The survey was commissioned by the e-tailing group and BetweenMarkets and conducted in May 2007. While about half of respondents said they checked for the out-of-stock item at another site, 56% of online shoppers also said they simply checked back later for replenished stock, or signed up to be e-mailed when the item became available.

Is P2P Ready for Sponsored Downloads? - Nearly three-quarters of US Internet users are willing to view ads in exchange for free or discounted downloads, according to the INTENT MediaWorks-sponsored “P2P Usage Survey” conducted in May 2007. The study was fielded by InfoSurv among Internet users ages 16 to 40, all of whom used multiple online services for searching, downloading and sharing music.

Microsoft Offering $6 Billion For Facebook? - Unnamed sources on Tuesday told Internet Outsider Henry Blodgett that Microsoft is eyeing a $6 billion takeover of Facebook–an unconfirmed rumor the former Internet industry analyst says makes sense. He writes: “Steve Ballmer, desperate and furious, sick of sucking wind in the Internet game, sick of losing every Internet in-play company and much of the future to You Know Who … should … scoop up “the hottest company on earth.”

Google Partners For ‘Bourne’ Online Game - Google is taking its second stab at online gaming, announcing on Thursday a partnership with Universal Pictures to heavily feature services like Search, Maps, Images and YouTube in an online game for the upcoming action flick, “The Bourne Ultimatum.” The game is inspired by all three “Bourne” films and launches this Monday in seven countries as part of the film’s massive marketing push, two weeks ahead of its Aug. 3 launch.

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em… Warner Partners With Imeem - Warner Music Group has added imeem to the roster of Web companies it’s partnering with, as opposed to litigating against. The music giant said today it will drop a pending copyright infringement lawsuit against social networking site imeem and, instead, will enter into a revenue-sharing agreement with the company.

Google Opens Online Maps to Users - Hoping to make it easier to turn its online maps into collages of local information, Google Inc. is introducing tools that will stitch together applications from a hodgepodge of Web sites. The free service represents the Internet search-engine company’s most ambitious attempt yet to capitalize on the growing popularity of hybrid maps known as “mashups.” In the past two years, Google estimates more than 50,000 mashups have been built on its maps to highlight information about gas prices, running routes, earthquakes, apartment vacancies, home prices and a wide range of other information. Until now, the mapping mashups were scattered across thousands of Web sites.                

Online Gaming Community More Than 200 Million Strong: comScore - Online gaming sites around the globe attracted almost 217 million unique visitors in May, with Yahoo Games snagging a quarter of them.         

DailyMotion Adds U.S. Portal - The U.S. launch is being led by Catherine Mullen, former general manager of MTV UK and Ireland and executive vice president of fuse, and Joy Marcus, former senior vice president of global marketing at Time Warner.       

TV Guide Enlists Maven For Video Services - Maven will work with Gemstar-TV Guide to launch new broadband video creations on more than 300 video players at TVGuide.com.

AccuStream Projects $2.6 Billion Streaming/Downloading Biz, As Netflix Online Rentals Top 5 Million - As AccuStream iMedia Research reported that revenues from subscription streaming and downloading will rise 39% this year, to $2.6 billion, Netflix said 5 million of its movies and TV episodes have been viewed online since January.

eBay Threatens Newspaper Classifieds - Although it got a low-key rollout in the U.S., eBay’s Kijiji classified service could grow to be as important as its other businesses, according to UBS analyst Benjamin A. Schachter. While that’s good news for eBay, it spells more trouble for newspapers–unless they find a way to partner with the online auction giant.

Microsoft’s Search Surges, Thanks To Prizes - Microsoft’s bold move to offer prizes to users of MSN Live Search is paying off: for the first time since its inception (almost), MSN Search is showing growth. According to Web metrics firm Complete, MSN’s search volume increased a whopping 67%, from 8.4% of total search queries in May to 13.2% in June. Perplexingly, the Information Week report doesn’t include Complete’s numbers (perhaps there weren’t any to publish) for Google and Yahoo, but it does mention data from Amazon’s Alexa, showing that Google’s search volume fell from 67% of total queries in May to 62.7% in June.

Report: Piracy Rampant On Google Video, Too - With all the copyright attention focused firmly on YouTube, it seems Google has conveniently forgotten about copyright violations on Google Video, the Web giant’s other online video property. The Hollywood Reporter says that among other titles it easily found Walt Disney Pictures’ “Cars” and “Meet the Robinsons,” Picturehouse’s “Pan’s Labyrinth,” and HBO’s “Da Ali G Show during a recent search at video.google.com on Monday — along with Michael Moore’s “Sicko,” which had been taken down after much press coverage of its first appearance on the site.

Newspapers Continue to Lose Ad Dollars To Online Media; TV Ad Spend Up Slightly: Report - nline ad spending rose 17.8 percent in 2006, as major marketers continued to reduce spending on newspapers, according to a study by Wachovia Equity Research written up by E&P. Wachovia researcher John Janedis and his team looked at 100 leading national advertisers to measure the migration of ad revenue from traditional media to the web. Wachovia examined advertisers in financial services, automotive, retail, telecommunications, general services, media and tech/internet.

BlueTie Opens No-Cost Branded Email App to Publishers - Along with Google’s acquisition of Postini, BlueTie’s expansion of its online email and calendaring application to Web publishers demonstrates how the SAAS market is heating up.              

ScanAlert Suggests Longer Time For Pay-Per-Click ROI - Online retailers must reevaluate their pay-per-click advertising campaigns by using a much longer time frame to calculate return-on-investment, according to ScanAlert, whose latest “Digital Window Shopping” analysis found that online shoppers are taking more time to make up their minds.              

MediaLink to Create One-Stop Shop for Online Video Management - MediaLink will launch Mediaseed, a content management platform that will allow clients like American Express and Johnson & Johnson to create, distribute and track their video and rich media content in one dashboard.

NextEra & Affiliated.net Rolling Out Video Ad Networks - NextEra Media has rolled out its Pay-Per-Click video ad network, and Affiliated.net said it will launch its video affiliate marketing network by the end of this month as well.

DoubleClick Performics Widens Affiliate Network Access - AFTER A SUCCESSFUL SIX-MONTH BETA test, DoubleClick Performics has introduced AffliateDirect, opening up the performance marketing division’s affiliate network to smaller advertisers and external consultants. Jeff White, managing partner with beta tester Boltz Furniture, said in a statement that his company had “generated new sales immediately upon launching” AffiliateDirect, which enables advertisers to manage all aspects of their affiliate marketing programs–including attracting, reaching and paying publishers, and tracking and reporting on performance.

Log Off: The Cookie Monster - It’s no secret that the unique visitor counts reported by measurement companies are flawed at best. One explanation and perhaps the most important: Consumers delete their cookies. Widely documented in March 2005 by JupiterResearch in its report Measuring Unique Visitors: Addressing the Dramatic Decline in the Accuracy of Cookie-Based Measurement, cookie deletion has weighed heavily on the minds of many advertising buyers and site owners.

Consumers Spend More on Electronics if Studied First on Web - According to new research from Yahoo! and ChannelForce, consumers who search online for televisions and digital cameras spend ten percent more when making their purchase in-store than those who did not use a search engine. The survey also found that a vast majority research products online prior to making in-store purchases, and that online research is helping consumers make key purchasing decisions before they enter a store.

VCs Pownce On Latest Rose Project - Kevin Rose, the 30-year-old entrepreneur who started the community-based article voting site Digg.com and the Web video production firm Revision3, is at it again. His new project is a social networking, instant messaging, file-sharing hybrid called Pownce. Given Rose’s track record, venture capitalists are lining up to get a glimpse.

Social Networking Around the World - About a fifth of adults have visited a social networking Web site, and an equal percentage of Internet users have done so in the past 30 days, according to a survey of several countries by Ipsos Insight. “The Face of the Web 2006″ survey was conducted in November and December 2006 in urban Brazil, Canada, urban China, France, Germany, urban India, Japan, urban Mexico, urban Russia, South Korea, the UK and the US.

Can We Expect A Facebook Revolution? - Facebook CEO Michael Zuckerberg’s decision to open up the social network to any consumers and outside developers willing to participate has drawn almost unanimous praise, not to mention unprecedented growth. With 29 million users, up 5 million from just three weeks ago, Facebook is growing at an average 150,000 users per day. Venture capitalists across Silicon Valley are even quizzing their potential investments on their “Facebook strategy.”

Google to Aggregate Social Networks - Given the resurgence of Facebook and social networking, you may be wondering where Google stands on social media. YouTube is really the only social media site in the Web giant’s vast catalog of services, but it’s hardly a social network. But Google is creating a social networking technology — and it heavily leverages the company’s industry-leading search technology.

The Real Key to Communities: Connecting On and Offline - In the near future, every online marketing program will start by asking how to engage a community in a way that first meets its goals, not the marketer’s. That’s just the beginning, however. The most exciting moments will come when marketers use online communities to foster connections offline. That’s the big idea behind Meetup.com, a social-networking site that facilitates real-world meetings, and why it’s thriving. It’s also why eBay Live, the annual gathering of thousands in the eBay community, is a successful event.

Microsoft’s LiveStation Looming In Web TV Wars - New details have emerged concerning LiveStation, the peer-to-peer Web TV service being readied by Microsoft and Skinkers, a British software developer.                          

Yankee: In-Game Ads To Reach Nearly $1 Billion In 2011 - In-game advertising will be a nearly billion dollar industry by 2011, according to a new report from the Yankee Group. Globally, the in-game ad market is expected to grow from the $77.7 million generated last year to $971.3 million by 2011.    

Quantcast Adds Video, Widget Measurement To Platform - Internet ratings site Quantcast has added video and widget measurement services to capitalize on the rapid profileration of both.

EMarketer: Brands Shouldn’t Ignore Offline WOM Activity - Debra Aho Williamson, author of eMarketer’s Word of Mouth Marketing report, cautioned that advertisers who focus only on using online media to reach the loudest influencers may be missing the mark.

Warner Launches Casting Call On SugarLoot Social Network - Warner Premiere, the direct-to-DVD division of Warner Bros. Entertainment, and Alloy Media + Marketing’s SugarLoot have launched an online casting call for “The Clique,” based on Lisi Harrison’s young adult books.

Live Earth On MSN: Over 10 Million Streams, And Growing - As of mid-afternoon Saturday, MSN reported more than 10 million video streams for the Live Earth concerts at www.liveearth.msn.com, which it said constituted “the most simultaneous viewers of any online concert ever.” “We expect to see an even greater number of streams after the concerts are over as people return to watch their favorite performances or enjoy them for the first time if they missed the concerts live,” said Joanne Bradford, corporate vice president and chief media officer, MSN.

Nielsen To Drop Page View Ratings In Favor Of Time Spent - Earlier today we wrote about IAB’s efforts to standardize web video metrics. Now, news that Nielsen/NetRatings is planning a major shift in web metrics, moving, according to the AP, from page views as the key metric to time spent on a site. This comes as more sites are using Ajax, which allows updating without reloading a page and has been wreaking havoc with page view rankings.

TV Consumes Half of All Leisure Time - On an average day, nearly everyone in the US ages 15 and older engages in some sort of leisure activity, like watching TV, using a PC, socializing or exercising, according to the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics’ “American Time Use Survey.” Watching TV accounted for about half of leisure time, on average, for both men and women. Socializing accounted for about three-quarters of an hour per day for both sexes.

Look out Google, Here Comes Facebook - Forget Microsoft. Google’s biggest competition these days comes from the social media growth machine, Facebook. Google may have an “operating system for search” and a big bank of data about each of its users, but the future belongs to the masses of individuals — and Facebook, the second-largest social network on the Web, knows comparatively more about each of its users.

Microsoft-aQuantive Deal Clears Regulatory Hurdle - In an SEC filing on Friday, aQuantive Inc. said it had cleared a major regulatory hurdle in its bid to be acquired by Microsoft Corp. for $6 billion. It passed the Federal Trade Commission’s waiting period to review anticompetitive fallout from mergers and acquisitions without a request for further information. By contrast, the government organization a few weeks ago solicited further information from Microsoft rival Google over its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick.

Acquisitions Rev Up Google-Microsoft Rivalry - Cranking up its battle with arch-rival Microsoft, Google today said it has agreed to buy e-mail services company Postini for $625 million in cash. With Postini, which offers spam filters, encryption and other e-mail security services to businesses, Google will be able to give companies even more incentive to use its Google Apps software package, which includes programs for word processing, spreadsheets, e-mail and instant messaging.

Ipsos: Social Networking Becoming Dominant Web Activity Worldwide - While the U.S. leads all other countries in online video use, social networking is most popular in South Korea, followed by Brazil, China, Mexico and then the U.S,, according to Ipsos Insight’s annual study “The Face of the Web.”                             

Attractive Demographics at Second Tier Video Sites - comScore recently released a study from its comScore Video Metrix service of U.S. video streaming activity of up-and-coming video-sharing sites. Dailymotion.com drew more than 4.7 million video streamers in April. The average video streamer at Dailymotion.com viewed more than 10 videos and nearly one hour of video content in the month.  Metacafe.com also generated substantial activity, followed by Break.com. Finally, Veoh.com, attracted the smallest video-viewing audience of the group, but had the highest level of user engagement with more than 104 minutes per streamer, benefiting from the many full-length videos hosted on the site.

Microsoft, Yahoo Yield To EU Privacy Concerns - In response to a European Union inquiry into their data retention practices, Microsoft and Yahoo are getting ready to announce that they’ve made concessions to their privacy policies. The move follows mounting pressure in the EU over the length of time search companies retain personal data. Last month, the EU said it would investigate how long companies like Google and Yahoo keep individuals’ search data.

For Google, Success Hinges on Trust - As Google shares hit yet another all-time high, Oxford Analytica, a strategic-marketing firm, warns the Web giant may lose the most important source of its momentum: trust.

Interview With Yahoo SVP Todd Teresi On SmartAds - The Yahoo behavioral engine is but one targeting lever a SmartAd can pulls to determine which combination of creative elements to serve a user. It is this layering of multiple target criteria that can double and triple the effectiveness of display ads, says Senior Vice President of Display Marketplaces Todd Teresi. SmartAds launched last week in the travel segment, but expect to see it soon in other categories.

Apple Launches Lower-Priced Indie Albums, Week After UMG Contract Fracas - Apple sure knows how to sneak one through: just as Universal Music Group refused to sign a long-term contract with it over iTunes sales (with disagreement on, among other things, album and song pricing), Apple has quietly launched lower prices for full indie-music albums.

Local Community Network Backfence Closing Down All Sites - Backfence, the once-hyped citizen journalism startup, is closing all its 13 local sites, after a series of management troubles over the last year, and inability to get any local traction editorially. CEO Mark Potts has also left, and told me in an e-mail that the investors are “continuing to talk to potential buyers or new investors, but have decided for business and operational reasons to shut down the sites rather than operate them without sufficient support.”

CMP Buys Online Virtual Gaming Firm How Machines Work - CMP Technology, the tech media firm undergoing a big restructuring in its business, has acquired How Machines Work, a designer and developer of interactive online environments. CMP’s newest acquisition “strengthens its Web 2.0 product portfolio with proven expertise in creating and deploying state-of-the-art games and sophisticated virtual environments that educate and engage technology innovators in bold, exciting new ways while enabling marketers to reach their targeted audiences and create a unique brand experience”.

WPP’s G2 Grabs Refinery - In an ironic twist on this week’s theme of American independence, WPP Group’s G2 Worldwide has acquired Refinery - one of the few remaining independent digital agencies in North America.

Yahoo’s Smart Move - The introduction of SmartAds by Yahoo! provides advertisers with an opportunity to improve banner performance; however, it also inflates spending. In addition, the new product challenges advertising networks because the game in advertising is ultimately based on the ability of platforms to bring to bear multiple forms of data in order to target ads with consumer preferences. SmartAds provides Yahoo! with a unique dataset that can bring proactive intelligence on the viewer and determine the relevancy of advertising in addition to projecting click through rates and conversions.                     

Openads Offers New Beta, Names CEO - London-based Openads has beta-launched an improved version of its open source ad server and named former Skype and Yahoo executive James Bilefield as CEO.

NBBC, We Hardly Knew Ye - The National Broadband Company, the unit created by NBC Universal last September to handle online video distribution, is being rolled into NewSite–the still-unnamed co-venture between NBCU and News Corp.

Local.com Secures Sponsored Link Text Message Patent - Local.com has secured a patent for the delivery of sponsored directory assistance listings via SMS and MMS, positioning itself as the conduit between advertisers, free 411 service providers and mobile search consumers.

CNN.com’s Redesign Tailored For Advertisers - The site, which launched earlier this week, was designed first and foremost to please advertisers, and less cluttered and cleaner experiences were at the top of agencies’ wish lists, said senior VP and GM David Payne.

Internet, TV distribution and video games will be the fastest-growing global segments - The global entertainment & media (E&M) industry is experiencing sustained growth and will increase at a 6.4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to $2 trillion in 2011, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2007-2011, released today. Double-digit growth is expected for digital and mobile spending in each territory during the next five years rising to $153 billion by 2011. Within the next five years, nearly half of the total industry growth is expected to be generated through online and wireless technologies and, during the same period, broadband households will grow by 300 million to 540 million subscribers and wireless subscribers will increase by 1.1 billion to 3.4 billion.

Video Game Ads Shoot for High Score - In-game ads are experiencing the swift growth of an up-and-coming medium. What will it take to get to the next level? Video game advertising spending will pass $2 billion in 2012, up from $370 million in 2006, according to Parks Associates’ “Electronic Gaming in the Digital Home: Game Advertising” report. That is a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33%, which is much more than other major ad types — including the Internet.

UGC Not Critical for Many Marketers - User-generated content (UGC) is not a must-have tool for most marketers, according to PR Week and Manning, Selvage & Lee’s “Marketing Management Survey.” The survey of US senior marketers was conducted in April and May 2007, in partnership with Millward Brown. Only 12% of respondents said UGC (also known as consumer-generated media, or CGM) was “very important.”

Why eBay Won’t Beat Craigslist On Classifieds - Henry Blodget thinks eBay’s purchase of Kijiji’s classified ads business makes strategic sense because the ads complement eBay’s core buying and selling business. But with the free Craigslist as the dominant player in general classifieds, much as eBay is in auctions, the competition may be unbeatable. If eBay/Kijiji were emphasizing listing quality, seller reputations or some element missing from Craigslist, he says, the competitive story might make some sense, but Kijiji’s problem is its dearth of listings. So it’s hard to see how “Just like Craigslist–except no listings!” is going to carry the day.

FTC Gives Green Light To Fox’s Photobucket Deal - The Federal Trade Commission issued a notice this week saying it has approved plans by MySpace owner Fox Interactive Media, a unit of News Corp., to buy photo-sharing site Photobucket, which lets its more than 42 million users upload photos and videos to their own Web sites, blogs and social networks.

Google, DoubleClick Deal Draws Privacy Concerns - BEUC, a major consumer group in Europe, has a major problem with the intended Google/DoubleClick merger. Both companies are privy to a wealth of users’ online search habits. The consumer group is concerned that combined data would mean to unmatched user profiles.