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Google Defends DoubleClick Deal As Benefit To Industry - In a hearing before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, Google’s legal counsel defended the search giant’s purchase of the leading ad serving network as a deal that would benefit the industry rather than stifle competition. Begging to differ was Microsoft, whose acquisition of aQuantive is already a done deal.                          

Microsoft Expands Search - Still intent on capturing market share from Google and others, Microsoft has expanded the scope of pages spidered by its search engine by 400%, revamped its query response technology, and deepened the breadth of its core verticals–including health, local, shopping, and entertainment.        

Marketers Bank on Google Competitors To Increase Search Share: Study - New data from MarketingSherpa’s annual Search Marketing Benchmark Guide found that while most search marketers think they get the most bang for their buck with Google, ROI expectations for their investments with Yahoo, MSN and Ask’s search offerings are on the rise.       

Microsoft Extends Into TV Initiatives - Microsoft will begin marketing media extenders to enable Web content viewing on the TV and also announced “Internet TV” with ads powered by YuMe.      

Sony Execs Open Studio For Digital Content - “Non-traditional” studios focused on content for the digital age are popping up left and right. Continuing the trend, a couple of Sony Pictures execs, Michael Wayne and Chris Kimbell, have launched a studio named Deca to identify, develop, finance, market, and distribute interactive entertainment concepts and properties across emerging media platforms.      

Panel Talks Around Question Of Interactive Leadership - What does it take to be a leader in interactive advertising these days? Good question–and one that did not necessarily get answered during Thursday’s AOL-sponsored Advertising Week discussion on the topic. But one thing was apparent: Buying up as many digital ad properties as possible isn’t a bad start.      

Hollywood Goes Online - Some film industry pundits feel Hollywood is reeling down. The key revenue streams that have traditionally driven the Hollywood economy—box office receipts and DVD sales and rentals—have hit a plateau. “In 2006, studios spent an average of 3.7% of their marketing budgets on Internet advertising,” Mr. Verna said. “While that is a small fraction, it is on the increase, and eMarketer projects that by 2011, an average of 11% of film marketing budgets will go toward new media channels.”    

AOL Preparing For Advertising IPO? - Time Warner may be preparing to spin off AOL’s advertising businesses through an IPO early next year. All of those businesses have been grouped together under the name “Platform A,” which includes the collection of outward-looking ad networks that AOL has bought over the past few years: Advertising.com, Tacoda, Third Screen Media, Lightningcast, and AdTech.      

CBS EyeLab Offers Short Clips - To cater to what it believes is the short attention span of online audiences, CBC Corp. today is launching CBS EyeLab, a digital-production studio that will create and distribute short clips cut together from the network’s most popular shows. Preliminary network research shows that less than one-third of CBS’ Web audience is interested in watching full-length episodes of shows online.          

Microsoft Updates MSN Video Platform - Microsoft is rolling out a new version of its video service across its Web properties — including a range of fresh ad formats — to take a larger share of the booming online advertising market. The company will introduce the video capability “horizontally” across its entire MSN network as well as to Windows Live, the personalized Web page users can set up which includes its instant messenger. Microsoft is also unveiling three new video advertising formats that will work in conjunction with the new video player services. Advertisers will be able to choose pre-rolls — ads that run before a user watches a piece of video content — a format that Google decided against when it unveiled its first in-video advertising for YouTube clips. The second format is a large box-like ad that slides out of the side of the video player, and the third is a smaller banner-style advert that drops down from the bottom of the video player.       

Note To Small Businesses: If You Get Indexed, They Will Come - A recent study by Opus Research found that 59% of small business owners do NO online marketing. Clearly video and rich media may be out of their budget range - but not even a lousy PPC campaign or blog? What about search engine optimization?              

Marchex acquires VoiceStar for $28MM - Marchex Inc., a local online advertising company and publisher of local content, has entered into an agreement to acquire VoiceStar, a call-based advertising services firm in a $28 million deal. The acquisition extends Marchex’s technology offering from search and online into voice-based services. Marchex will pay about $20 million in transaction consideration and $8 million in company investment for the acquisition, which is expected to be completed in October. The transaction consideration consists of about $12.9 million in cash consideration and Marchex will issue about $7.1 million in restricted stock that is subject to vesting over two and a half years from closing to certain employees of VoiceStar. In addition company investment consists of $8 million relating to products, infrastructure, human resources and other items through 2008.  

Sugar Publishing Acquires Social Shopping Pioneer ShopStyle.com; Changes Company Name to Sugar Inc. - Sugar Publishing announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire ShopStyle, the leading social shopping website for women who love fashion. ShopStyle will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Sugar Publishing and continue to operate independently at ShopStyle.com. The company also announced today plans to change its name to Sugar Inc. to better reflect its growing reach and expansion over the past year.      

New Motion merging with Traffix - It’s rare that a firm with bulletin board-traded stock picks off a Nasdaq company, but it happened Thursday, Sept. 27, when mobile entertainment company New Motion Inc. agreed to buy interactive marketing company Traffix Inc. in a deal originally valued at $159 million. Shareholders of Pearl River, N.Y.-based Traffix are set to receive 0.683 of a share of New Motion for every share of Traffix they own. At that exchange rate, shares of Traffix were valued at $10.59 based on New Motion’s closing price of $15.50 a share on Wednesday, more than double Traffix’s closing price of $4.76 on Wednesday. Traffix shareholders will own 45% of the merged company.            

RealNetworks Buys Supplier Of Online Game Tools - RealNetworks Inc. has reached an agreement to acquire Game Trust Inc., as part of a plan to marry its growing games business to social-networking capabilities. A person familiar with the matter said RealNetworks is paying about $20 million to acquire Game Trust of New York, a start-up that supplies tools to online game sites that let them add social-networking features such as chat, multiplayer gaming capabilities and competitive tournaments. Game Trust’s customers include Time Warner Inc.’s America Online and Miniclip Ltd., a European games site.

Microsoft Reduces Ad-To-Video Ratio In New MSN Video - To attract a larger audience, Microsoft on Wednesday launched a new version of MSN Video with more dispersed ad-placement, and a centralized page where viewers can simultaneously stream videos and search through the entire MSN Video catalog.                                                   

Quantcast’s Audience Metrics Help Smaller Pubs Compete - San Francisco-based Quantcast has upgraded its suite of free online audience measurement tools–adding multiple views of traffic data, and the ability to view media assets such as videos, games and widgets in a single dashboard–as well as increased security for e-commerce sites.                     

Marchex Revamps Open List Portal, Adds Local Sites - Marchex has revamped its Open List service, adding new functionality that aims to create a customizable local search and information portal that includes maps, reviews, and other descriptive content.

In-Game Advertising Targets All Gamers - Justin Townsend is the CEO of IGA Worldwide. eMarketer spoke with him about in-game advertising, gamer demographics and how to increase ad recall.                 

Out-of-Context Ads Prove Effective - MediaVest casts doubt on the belief that online ads are most effective when placed near content related to the product. In a study of consumers passionate about a particular subject area, product ads displayed out of context had roughly the same impact on brand preference as identical placements shown next to related content.                

Bush Pushes for Permanent Internet Tax Exemption - Senior Bush administration officials called on Congress to permanently exempt the Internet from access taxes or taxes on electronic commerce. The Senate Commerce Committee is expected to approve a bill that would extend the tax-free status of the Internet until 2011. Under current law, this status will expire at the end of 2007.

MSN Takes Search Live - So Microsoft has finally launched Live Search 2.0, its long awaited search engine algorithm and user interface upgrade. The last time the software giant revamped search was three years ago, a move that actually resulted in users being unable to access the engine or get meaningful results for the first few days. The company has clearly learned from its mistakes, as Live Search 2.0 is fully functional and packed with improvements like better results for generic terms like “the” in search queries, video thumbnails, and improved relevance overall.

Finally! Actions Are Replacing Words On Lead Quality - Online lead generation and quality now go hand in hand, but that hasn’t always been the case. The measures for quality and response rate are expanding exponentially and the list of advertisers using the medium continues to grow almost as quickly.

Widgets Craze In Full View - The ratio of widget views to actual users is a key metric to consider when evaluating widgets, said speakers at an OMMA panel on Tuesday. Also, what’s the difference between widgets and portable applications, and does it even matter?                                       

Digitas Sees Mobile on Margins, Widgets At Forefront - Because of its present inability to scale, mobile will remain on the margins of Digitas’ media planning strategies, according to its vice president and media director Jordan Bitterman. But he and his peers can’t get enough of widgets.                       

Exponential To Serve Contextual Ads On Tribal Fusion - Exponential has announced the launch of EchoTopic, a contextual advertising solution that will serve ads onto sites within the Tribal Fusion network according to specific topics — as opposed to keywords.           

Radio Newest Competitor In Online Classifieds - It’s official: everyone wants a piece of online classifieds. The latest competitor to throw a hat in the ring is Citadel Interactive and ABC Radio Networks, both divisions of Citadel Broadcasting. All this cross-platform action is more bad news for newspapers.              

Microsoft Launches Assault Against Google - Microsoft is taking solid aim at a business outside its core competence: advertising. And it is deliberately facing off against a specialist: Google. Chief combatant Brian McAndrews joined Microsoft last month and knows the Internet ad business well, having run aQuantive, the advertising company that Microsoft acquired for $6 billion last month.              

AOL-ValueClick Buyout Rumor Resurfaces - Rumors are swirling that Time Warner Inc.’s AOL LLC business is considering buying ValueClick Inc. to boost its online advertising properties. The company is one of few publicly traded companies in its sector that hasn’t yet been gobbled up by a major technology company. In the past year, Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and WPP PLC — among others — have acquired a variety of public and private companies in the space. The company’s units include an affiliate marketing business, which could be of interest to AOL since AOL has shown interest in buying such companies.                 

Amazon Music Store Takes On Apple iTunes - Discount online retailer Amazon.com jumped into the digital music download business Tuesday by offering 2.3 million songs that can play on any portable device — including the popular Apple iPod. More than 1 million of the tracks are being sold at 89 cents — a dime less than tracks at Apple’s iTunes store.          

End Of Online Pay Models - The shift by The New York Times to abandon its subscription Web site may now influence a broad change across the entire newspaper industry. The Times officially walked away from its subscription model last week, deciding it could make more money by making its content free online — including its vast digital archive that users have paid to access in the past.

AOL’s Co-Founder Backs Internet Pay System - AOL co-founder Steve Case’s investment company Revolution LLC has launched an Internet-based payment system which would slash merchants’ costs for accepting credit cards by some 75%. Revolution Money’s first two products will be an online money-transfer service and a credit card with “significantly lower interchange fees” for companies that accept it, Revolution said.

Kids and Teens: Virtual Worlds Open New Universe - For marketers trying to figure out how to reach kids and teens on social networking sites, there is a new game in town: virtual worlds. The Kids and Teens Online report analyzes the ever-changing trends and forces affecting marketing to the 3-to-18-year-old segment. eMarketer estimates that 24% of the 34.3 million child and teen Internet users in the US will use virtual worlds on at least a monthly basis in 2007. By 2011, 53% of them will be going virtual.                                      

NBC Honcho: Hulu Will Have Failures - Expect failure from Hulu, according to George Kliavkoff, NBC Universal’s chief digital officer. Just as NBC expects some of its new fall TV series to flop, NBC Digital is factoring some degree of failure into its joint venture with News Corp., he told a packed crowd at OMMA New York.

Branded and Video Advertising Key to Future: eMarketer’s Ramsey - eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey told OMMA New York that branding dollars are fast on their way to matching the budgets spent on search. Next year, digital ad spending in total will increase 32%, amounting to nearly $28.8 billion, he forecast.             

comScore Intros Ad Metrix Publisher - comScore introduced Ad Metrix Publisher, a service that reports where display ads are actually viewed across the Internet and the characteristics of the people exposed to them.                   

Microsoft Touts Atlas Gains From aQuantive Purchase - Microsoft launched a video ad server for the Associated Press Online Video Network that uses MSN Video and Atlas AdManager. It also said that more than 20 publishers have switched to the Atlas Publisher Suite since its plans to acquire aQuantive were announced in May.                        

DoubleClick Mobile to Provide Ad Trafficking - DoubleClick Mobile will integrate with DART for Publishers to provide ad trafficking and yield optimization for campaigns designed to appear on phones. DoubleClick Mobile is launching simultaneously in the U.S. and Europe, a first for a DoubleClick product. Much of the development process was handled by its European operation. Next year, the company plans to release a more comprehensive mobile ad management suite that includes tools for agencies to plan and track their mobile campaigns.

Company Uses Phone Conversations to Trigger Ads - Pudding Media is introducing an Internet phone service that will be supported by advertising related to what people talk about. The Web-based phone service is similar to Skype’s online service — consumers plug a headset and a microphone into their computers, dial any phone number and chat away. But unlike Internet phone services that charge by the length of the calls, Pudding Media has no toll charges. The trade-off is that Pudding Media is eavesdropping on phone calls in order to display ads on the screen that are related to the conversation.

Survey Finds Women Own More Game Consoles Than Men - A new survey from JWT found that 44% of women reported owning a gaming console such as a Wii, Xbox or PlayStation, compared with just 39% of men.                                 

Fox Offers Ad-Free Show Downloads On iTunes - Looking to juice up its fall season–and that of the Apple iTunes Music Service–Fox announced that it will, for the first time, offer ad-free downloads of series premieres beginning this week. Such a move signals a shift in philosophy for iTunes–perhaps because of some pressure from Fox executives.                              

Online Is Ad Spending Bright Spot - Internet display advertising grew 17.7% to $5.52 billion during the second quarter of 2007, according to TNS Media Intelligence. However, TNS found total ad spending in the first half of 2007 fell 0.3% to $72.59 billion versus the same period in 2006. “Internet spending growth used to be driven by small and midsize businesses,” he said. “Now it’s the large companies like consumer packaged goods firms which are getting more into the Internet. The percentage of budget allocated to display by the top 50 blue-chip firms is still comparatively low, but that’s changing.”                  

E-Mail Top Digital Marketing Tool - Major marketers worldwide use e-mail in their campaigns, according to The McKinsey Quarterly. In a survey of 311 marketing executives, McKinsey found that 83% used e-mail, ahead of display ads, paid search and online video. Over one-half of respondents said they planned to increase their e-mail spending in the next three years, but plans to increase spending could mean that e-mail would lose some budget to paid search and other tactics.

Effective Web-Video Ads Focus on Viewers’ Interests - If share of budgets matched share of mind for online video advertising, it would be worth a lot more than eMarketer’s $775 million 2007 revenue estimate. But much of the attention paid to the ad channel is because there are still so many unknowns. The latest parties to research the space are two of the Web’s giants, AOL and Google, which have teamed with TNS to produce a study of video-viewing habits. They found that online-video viewing steadily increases throughout the day, peaking in the evening, but that the heaviest viewers also watch in the afternoon. As for online-video destinations, most users had requested a video-sharing site in the past month (77%), followed by news sites (55%) and broadcast TV sites (49%).

Microsoft Wages Stealth Anti-Google Campaign - Microsoft Corp. is waging a quiet campaign to convince all interested parties to oppose Google Inc.’s acquisition of DoubleClick Inc., in part via its public-relations firm. Burson-Marsteller pitched media outlets and Internet companies on the dangers of the deal, which would bolster Google’s already strong presence in online advertising. Burson cites the deal as part of a larger discussion of “fair and free competition” in Internet-search and privacy rights of consumers.

Hey! Guess What Just Went Live, And Is Rising With A Bullet? - Media and marketing research giant Nielsen Company opened the beta for its new “Hey! Nielsen” social network to the general public. And based on what’s happening on its pages, the site is destined to be a monitor of pop culture, ranging from TV to music to online media content. Based on the initial conversations from 2,720 members — mainly Nielsen employees — TV is generating the most buzz. Shows like CBS’ “Jericho,” NBC’s “Heroes,” and ABC’s “Ugly Betty” are the buzziest. Its in

TV Networks Flex Web Muscles - Television executives are convinced that the bigger opportunity for their industry is not digital downloads but streaming their programs over the Internet with advertising. The networks began to experiment with streaming video last year. An ABC survey in August 2006 found that 84% of viewers believed they were getting “a great deal” by being allowed to stream programs for free, even if it meant advertisements could not be skipped. The network also found that 87% of respondents were able to recall which advertisers had sponsored particular episodes.               

Microsoft Fires Volley At Google in Ad Battle - Microsoft is in talks to buy a minority stake in the popular social-networking Web site Facebook Inc., a sign of a new urgency by the software giant to jump-start its online business at a time when Google is widening its lead in the fast-growing Internet-advertising business. Microsoft in recent weeks approached Facebook with proposals to invest in the startup that could value the fast-growing site at $10 billion or higher, said people familiar with the matter. If those talks bear fruit, Microsoft could purchase a stake of up to 5% in the closely held startup, at a cost in the range of $300 million to $500 million, the people said.

Google’s Armstrong: We’re Not Launching An Ad Agency - Ad agencies have nothing to fear from the newly launched Google Creative Lab, according to Tim Armstrong, Google’s President, Advertising and Commerce, North America. “We are not launching an ad agency. It would be mathematically impossible for us to get into that business, and we have no interest in doing it.”                               

Financial Category Holds Steady At Google - The current crisis in the subprime mortgage and lending industries is not causing any cutback in financial services spending on Google, the search giant’s industry sector head and a leading advertiser in the category said Thursday.                    

ABC Sees Wisdom In Syndication: First Deal Up With AOL - Proving itself syndication-friendly, ABC has agreed to distribute its programming through AOL Video. AOL is the first portal to carry the Disney unit’s primetime fare, but likely not the last in light of ABC’s recent vow to branch out beyond its own site.                 

Nielsen: Ad Spend In First Half Of 2007 Tumbles - The latest Nielsen Company report confirms what other research companies have revealed–advertising spending is in a weakened state. The big research company says for the first half of 2007, ad spending slipped 0.5% versus the same time period for 2006. Not surprisingly, the Internet led the way–again–as the most improved category, up 23.6% versus a year ago. Also on the upswing is outdoor media.

Intel: WiMax Goes Live In ‘08 - WiMax is coming, seriously, this time. Chip maker Intel, whose invested hundreds of millions into the technology, is so sure that WiMax will go live in 2008 it’s pumping its next-generation semiconductor technology with a new Wi-Fi/WiMax module called Echo Peak. What does any of that mean? On a larger scale, notebooks powered by the technology, called Montevina, will process information faster and be low-power, but they’ll also support the new mobile WiMax standard being developed by Sprint Nextel and Clearwire that you’ve heard about for nearly five years. According to a recent Intel announcement, 150 million people will have WiMax access by 2008, 750 million by 2010 and 1.3 billion by 2012.                 

The Google Monopoly - “Don’t be Evil.” You knew that motto would come back to haunt any company with enormous growth aspirations like Google. Evil–or something approaching it–is exactly what Microsoft and AT&T worry about in Google’s bid to acquire the display advertising giant DoubleClick. The prospect of marrying cookies to search data is just a little too scary, they say–mostly for Google’s competitors, which would be at the Web giant’s mercy when it comes to establishing online advertising rates.

Email As Foundation For Social Networking - Earlier this week Yahoo completed the $350 million purchase of Zimbra, a provider of Web-based email (among other things), Firefox maker Mozilla spun off its free, cross-platform email client Thunderbird, and Xobni, a company that pledges to “take back” the inbox (”Xobni” is inbox spelled backwards), made its “impressive” launch.

SK Telecom To Invest $110M In Online Businesses in US; Includes Cyworld USA; Invests $270M in Helio - SK Telecom (NYSE: SKM), the Korean telecom giant, made a bunch of investment related announcement today, and among them, it will invest up to an additional $270 million to support their struggling wireless JV Helio, effectively pulling other JV partner Earthlink (NSDQ: ELNK) out of committing any further cash. We’ve covered that in detail on MocoNews here. The more relevant part here it is also earmarked $110 million to invest in online businesses in U.S., though it didn’t give a lot of detail…the brief SEC filing from SKT today says this: “Investment in the Internet business in the U.S., which may include the social network service”.                

E-Mail: Not an Open-and-Shut Case - The use of e-mail as a marketing tool has become ubiquitous and widespread almost a dozen years after it was first introduced. Its future should be bright. eMarketer estimates that e-mail advertising spending will grow from $338 million in 2006 to $616 million in 2011 — a six-year increase of 82%. Comparatively, total Internet ad spending will grow twice as fast during the same period. So why is the e-mail ad growth rate lagging?

Senate Gets Into GoogleClick Review - It’s not just the FTC and privacy advocates like EPIC and USPIRG anymore. Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick will be subject to a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee review next week, according to a WSJ Washington Wire blog post. It seems that Google’s new in-house political lobbying team couldn’t have come at a better time.

Yahoo! buys news aggregator BuzzTracker - Yahoo! is buying Participate Media, the two-year old startup which developed BuzzTracker, for an undisclosed amount that could be around USD5m according to unnamed sources. BuzzTracker is a website that uses a mix of human editing and technology - the BuzzTracker software - to aggregate news from over 90,000 licensed sources, including blogs, reviews and multimedia sources, before grouping them by topics, popularity or date, while mapping the stories geographically.

Hearst Buys Realage.com, Bolsters Cross-Platform Ad Sales - Hearst has added Realage.com to its growing stable of digital properties. Health care sites with a vertical search component are a good way to deliver targeted advertising, as they allow advertisers to bid on key search terms and subject headings. For magazine publishers, the acquisition of health-related sites provides opportunities for cross-platform ad sales.

Yahoo To Buy Email Provider Zimbra - Yahoo on Monday announced an agreement to acquire e-mail software provider Zimbra for about $350 million. The acquisition is intended to help Yahoo expand its presence in universities, businesses and through ISPs by helping organizations host e-mail on or off premises with their own domain. Zimbra’s offerings include rich, AJAX-based e-mail, calendar, and contact management features that can be used both on and offline.

Comcast Buying Entertainment Community Site BuddyTV - Seattle-based BuddyTV, a TV community site, is being acquired by Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA), paidContent.org has learned from sources. BuddyTV took a loan of $250K from the Charles River Ventures’ Quick Start Seed Funding program back in May, before taking a $2.8 million investment from Gemstar-TV Guide this summer.

InfoSpace Sells Online Directory Business To Idearc For $225 Million - Not necessarily a sale of its mobile unit, yet, as has been reported before, but InfoSpace (NSDQ: INSP) has sold off its online directory business, including Switchboard.com, to yellow-pages publisher Idearc (NYSE:IAR) for $225 million in cash. After the close of the deal, expected end of this year, InfoSpace will return the net proceeds from the sale to shareholders as a special dividend. At closing, InfoSpace’s cash position is expected to be in excess of $400 million. Switchboard.com site was acquired by InfoSpace in 2004 for approximately $103 million, and formed the majority of the revenues for its online directory business…For the first half of 2007, this business had revenues of $17.2 million. The business employs approximately 50 people.

ProfileBuilder Acquires Social Networking Photo Site ZingFu.com - Online identity management service ProfileBuilder has announced the acquisition of ZingFu.com, a site for manipulating photographs (see site for examples) for use on social networking sites. For its part, ProfileBuilder offers tools to create one online identity card that can be displayed across the web on sites like MySpace and Facebook.

MySpace Data-Driven Ad Plans Outlined By Levinsohn - Peter Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive Media, outlined the company’s plans to mine the data from MySpace profile pages to deliver interest-based ads in 10 key advertising categories. One key intent is to create a formidable marketing competitor to Facebook. He spoke Tuesday at Merrill Lynch’s Media & Entertainment Conference.                                   

It’s Official: AdWords + Widgets = Google Gadget Ads - After months of testing first reported in Online Media Daily, Google has officially launched Gadget Ads–widgets that advertisers can use to spread their messages across the search giant’s content network. At least one beta advertiser is pleased so far.                        

Nine Billion Videos Viewed Online in July - According to a comScore recent release, nearly 75 percent of U.S. Internet users watched an average of three hours of online video during the month of July, with Americans viewing more than 9 billion videos online. Google Sites ranked as the top U.S. video property with nearly 2.5 billion videos viewed (27.0 percent share of videos), 2.4 billion of which occurred at YouTube.com. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 390 million (4.3 percent), followed by Fox Interactive Media with 298 million (3.3 percent) and Viacom Digital with 281 million (3.1 percent).       

IAC Takes Majority Stake in Game Developer GarageGames; Launching Gaming Site InstantAction - Interactive Corp. (NSDQ: IACI) is getting serious about games: it has taken a majority stake in game developer GarageGames.com, and will launch gaming site, InstantAction in private beta today, reports WSJ. The company plans to focus on 3-D games in the browser, more advanced than the casual games genre. Eugene, Oregon-based GarageGames launched in 1999, and has provided game development tools for platforms like Xbox 360. But more recently it began developing its Web-based platform as a step toward distributing games as well.            

MySpace and Facebook: Not Competitors? - For all the talk about MySpace vs. Facebook, there are vast differences between social networking’s top two; they might even be able to coexist peacefully. Content-wise, MySpace and Facebook couldn’t be more different. There’s a strong hint of old media to the former’s model for expansion, while Facebook is about the development of new software to help its users interact with one another.

Relevant Advertising (Behaviorally Targeted) Yields More Receptive Prospects - Revenue Science, Inc. announced the results of a study on consumer receptivity to online advertising, conducted by JupiterResearch, that found that more online consumers are consistently more receptive to behaviorally targeted ads than to contextual advertising, outperforming contextual by as much as 22 percent in some categories.

Google Clear August Search Share Leader - With 63.98% of all U.S. searches, Google led the pack for August, Hitwise reports. MSN, meanwhile, continues to show the most marked decline among the leading search providers.

EyeWonder Rollout Adds Rich Media Ads To IM - Eyeing instant messaging as an untapped ad platform, rich media shop EyeWonder has launched a new service for advertisers to run video and rich media campaigns across major IM clients.          

NBC Goes Direct With Free Ad-Supported Downloads - To accommodate consumers’ varied viewing habits, NBC now plans to offer its shows as free, ad-supported downloads. Come October, viewers should be able to walk away with full-length episodes of prime-time and late-night programming–ranging from “Heroes” and “30 Rock” to “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.         

MTV Launches Activist Social Network - In the wake of “Flux”, MTV on Thursday announced another social networking initiative, Think.MTV, aimed at young people interested in social activism. Whereas Flux is more of a distributed set of social media tools, Think is a destination site that aims to connect Web users on sociopolitical issues, like discrimination, the environment and sexual health.              

AOL Underlines Web Portal Woes - AOL, like its Big Web competitors, has made a few significant moves into the advertising network business–moves that will likely increase the company’s aggregated revenue and advertising effectiveness. But acquisitions like the behavioral targeting firm Tacoda are band-aids for a much bigger problem: AOL’s core business, the Web portal business, ain’t really growin’– enough. Time Warner recently admitted that gains at its Web unit won’t match that of the greater U.S. online advertising market–bad news for a company that just started getting serious about advertising two years ago.

ABC, NBC Update Online Video Strategies - In yet another example of TV networks scrambling to distribute programs online, ABC today said it will stream a number of its shows including “The Bachelor,” “Brothers & Sisters” and “Grey’s Anatomy” on AOL. The news comes one day after NBC announced plans to offer downloads of TV shows online. As ABC already plans to stream many of these shows on its own site, ABC.com, adding AOL as a partner won’t necessarily give consumers more options. But it should help ABC to reach more people — such as AOL users who haven’t thought to visit ABC.com on their own for programs.

Media Buyers Give Thumbs Up To New AOL Ad Network - With its continued focus on advertising, AOL has established a new division for its ad networks–including Advertising.com and Tacoda–and named Curt Viebranz, former CEO of TACODA and a one-time Time Inc. executive, to lead it. The unit, called Platform A, will reach an estimated 90% of Web users.                      

Google Brings AdSense Onto Mobile - First it was AdWords. Now, Google is extending its AdSense program to mobile, allowing for the contextual targeting of ads to mobile Web site content.                      

Reuters Introduces Facial-Recognition Video Search - Reuters announced two developments for its online news and video syndication services–one with Viewdle, for a new facial-recognition feature that lets users search videos for specific people, and the other with Attributor, which will provide the news giant with a robust content tracking and reader analysis system.              

EBay To Undergo Massive Relaunch - Amid mounting competition from direct retailers like Amazon and flagging interest in online auctions, eBay has lost some of “the magic” that has made it one of the Web’s biggest and most important companies. As one seller says, the days of easily selling out one’s inventory are over. Investors, too, have noted as much in eBay’s earnings, which have been consistently flat in the auctions department; almost all of its growth these days comes from PayPal, the company’s online payment service.                    

Facebook To Compensate App Developers - MySpace rival Facebook is handing out cash incentives for developers to create compelling programs on the social network, offering up to $250,000 to those who develop apps that are both “innovative and disruptive.” The grants will come out of the $10 million recently raised by Facebook from its primary backers Accel Capital and The Founders Fund.                 

Ad-Supported Music Downloading Finally Becoming a Reality - Launching a free, ad-supported music-downloading service has been not unlike downloading an actual song — unintended glitches may occur. But despite one early, high-profile stumble and the lack of a proven model, a trio of startups is still bullish on the business opportunity. Last fall, the much-hyped Spiralfrog announced it would make its debut by year’s end as the first free, ad-supported major music service to offer downloadable MP3s of songs from a major-label music catalog (in this case Universal Music) ,with Perry Ellis as its first sponsor.       

Are EBay and Others the New New Media? - What makes media “media”? Increasingly, that question is getting harder to answer. The web, it turns out, is doing more than just transforming media-business models — it’s blurring the definition of media in the first place. Does a media site create content with the goal of selling ads or subscriptions to pay for it? Or can we now define as a medium any site that aggregates an audience through other means — e-commerce or lead generation — then it turns around and sells to advertisers? Companies such as Amazon and eBay and IAC brands such as ServiceMagic that were not built as media companies, lately have all begun to act like them: They all sell ads to targeted audiences who are in an acquiring state of mind. And when online media agencies can’t find what they’re looking for among “traditional” media sites, they’re increasingly not afraid to approach these aggregators to manufacture ad opportunities.

Powerset: Birth Of A Natural Language Search Engine - Powerset has been in somewhat of a stealth mode since last year, with only bits and pieces of information about the “natural language” search engine showing up on blogs and tech Web sites. At yesterday’s TechCrunch40 Conference, the startup officially unveiled Powerset Labs — an online community aimed at culling tester feedback and developer insight to help build and improve the search engine before it goes public next year.                

Google, Yahoo, IBM Challenge Microsoft’s Desktop Dominance - Google has officially changed the name of Google Docs & Spreadsheets to simply Google Docs, and also unveiled its presentation software Presently (dubbed the PowerPoint-killer by some in the blogosphere). Combined with Yahoo’s recent acquisition of hosted-mail provider Zimbra, and IBM’s announcement that its Lotus Symphony office software suite would now be free — the hosted application/desktop/office landscape is now very competitive indeed.                 

Times Online Content: Free At Last! - As expected, The New York Times ended its premium TimesSelect service and is once again offering all of its content, including columns by well-known authors like Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich, for free. In an article about the shift, the Times reported that 227,000 people paid for service to the tune of around $10 million a year, but said online ads could generate even more revenue if the site was free again.

Analysts To Time Warner: Sell AOL - Time Warner’s honeymoon with AOL seems to be over, as some analysts are strongly suggesting the media company should make major moves concerning the online service. A UBS media analyst downgraded the stock from “buy” to “neutral.”                       

Risking the Internet Audience - YouTube and Facebook each took steps recently to harvest the considerable advertising revenue opportunity on their sites. Understandable. But are we squandering the best hope we’ve had in years to leverage consumer involvement with media in the interest of brand relationships?               

Core Ad Spending Facing Challenges While Web, Outdoor and Cable Up - According to data released recently by TNS Media Intelligence Total advertising expenditures in the first half of 2007 slipped by 0.3 percent to $72.59 billion versus the same period in 2006. Steven Fredericks, president and CEO of TNS Media Intelligence, said “For the first time since 2001, media advertising expenditures have declined for two consecutive quarters… the overall results reflect weakness across a wide range of industries and advertisers… we expect core ad spending will continue to face challenges during the second half of the year.” Internet display advertising maintained its growth leadership position, registering a 17.7 percent increase. Consumer magazines posted a 6.9 percent gain in advertising, while Outdoor expenditures and Cable TV were also up.                         

B2B Online Advertising Up - US business-to-business ad spending totaled $14.39 billion in 2006, up 1.4% from $14.19 billion in 2005, according to a BtoB Magazine analysis of ad spending data from TNS Media Intelligence. Online display ads made up nearly 10% of B2B ad spending, or $1.4 billion, according to TNS. That figure is 17% up from 2005 levels, BtoB said. The firm does not track paid search or online video.                

An Idea Bank for Advertising Creative - A new service called OpenAd.net, an online marketplace, gives advertisers and agencies access to a huge network of creative producers, both amateur and professional. Gillette was one of the first global brands to use the service, asking producers around the world to create a campaign to convince the men of Puerto Rico to trade in their disposable razors for a new Gillette Fusion. The three winners were a Slovenian student, a British photographer and an American creative director.             

Yahoo Mash Invokes Wikipedia - Saul Hansell, technology writer for The New York Times, opens his review of Yahoo Mash with the following: “I just turned Brad Garlinghouse’s profile on Yahoo’s new social network, Yahoo Mash, peanut butter brown.” Garlinghouse, of course, is the Yahoo executive of “Peanut Butter Manifesto” fame; the fact that Hansell has changed the color of his profile is significant. Mash allows you to do something that Facebook, MySpace, et. al. don’t: edit your friend’s profiles. That’s right, Mash adds an element of Wikipedia to social networking. You can change information, redecorate and add features to your friends’ profiles. Think Facebook wall 2.0.           

Web 2.0 Conference: Questions For Facebook - “There is no question that Mark and Facebook are getting the Google circa 2004 treatment,” says search guru John Battelle on his Searchblog. Mark Zuckerberg’s story is similar to that of Google boys Sergey Brin and Larry Page. A young entrepreneur drops out of a top college (Harvard) to nurture “a simple but powerful idea” into a billion-dollar business. Facebook still has a long, long way to go to get into Google territory, but Zuckerberg’s open app decision may have given the social network the legs it needs to grow into something truly huge. But Facebook has a different sort of problem to Google, in that it can’t necessarily beat its competitors by offering better technology. The business of social networking is all about the users, innovation, and ease-of-use.                   

5 Ways To Make The Most Of Comparison Shopping Engines - For e-commerce Web sites or other properties where promoting products is key, getting listed in comparison shopping engines like Brilliant Shopper and Become.com should definitely be part of the organic search strategy. Knowledgeable shoppers often move beyond the big search engines — preferring sites that allow them to research products, user recommendations and prices all at once.                   

AOL Integrates Acquisitions Into ‘Platform A’ - In hopes of boosting its online ad business, AOL said today it’s moving its headquarters from Dulles, Va., to Manhattan, where it will integrate newly acquired behavioral targeting company Tacoda and mobile marketing shop Third Screen Media into its new “Platform A.” The new platform will give marketers access to a variety of ad options both within AOL and on its network of other sites. The move comes more than one year after AOL decided to stop charging broadband users subscription fees, in an effort to remake itself as a free, ad-supported Web portal.

Nielsen: Yahoo, Veoh Way Up In Video; MySpace Trumps Facebook - Nielsen//NetRatings released the rankings for the top 10 U.S. social networking and video sites.                       

Local Business Failing To Keep Pace With Online Demand - Local businesses are failing to establish themselves online as quickly as the consumers in search of their services. A report released this week from Marchex indicated that only 5% of the $100 billion regional businesses will spend on local outreach will go to the Internet.            

18% of Internet Users Visit Radio Site Monthly - Almost one-fifth of Americans on the Internet visit the Web site of a radio station at least once a month, according to market research from the Media Audit released on Thursday. With 70% of the total American population on the Internet–about 212 million people–that equals roughly 38.6 million unique visitors a month. That’s good news for radio broadcasters looking to open up new revenue streams online.                

Which Rich Media Type Works Best? - Online video gets all the attention these days, but consumers actually spend more time with online promotions and coupons — 30.8 seconds versus 16.26 — according to PointRoll’s “Entertainment Performance Analysis: The Big Picture of Online Advertising” report. The fact that consumers spend more time with promotions and coupons than online video makes sense since the only action required of most video viewers is to press play, whereas filling out forms for promotions takes longer.                   

Is Ad-Blocking Software Legal? - Ad-blocking software may be growing in popularity, but no word on its legal status. Even so, plug-ins like Firefox’s Adblock make it easy to configure your Web browser not to display ads. Understandably, advertisers and publishers are furious. John Palfrey, an executive director of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, doesn’t expect the Web business to let ad-blocking last for long, especially if it becomes more common. “I absolutely would expect to see litigation in this area,” he said.              

Viacom Opens Micro Social Network - While some big media firms try to create high-trafficked online destinations to rival MySpace and Facebook, Viacom’s strategy has been to create hundreds of microsites for its many brands. However, critics have wondered how the MTV parent plans to tie it all together. The answer, it seems is, Flux, a social media system that allows MTV users to personalize pages with social networking tools like blogs, photos, videos and friends. The personalized pages will appear when users sign into any MTV or third-party site in the Flux network.             

Yahoo Music Program To Be Shown On MTV - Yahoo Music’s “Nissan Live Sets,” an online “MTV Unplugged”-esque concert series taped before a live audience, has just inked a deal with MTV to bring the Yahoo Webcast to the Viacom company’s high definition channel, MHD. “Live Sets” was borne out of a multimillion-dollar sponsorship deal inked a year ago between Yahoo and Nissan North America; it has featured performances from Christina Aguilera, Kelly Clarkson and Avril Lavigne, generating more than 10 million views, according to Yahoo.       

Omniture Acquires Offermatica - Omniture, Inc. (NASDAQ:OMTR), a leading provider of online business optimization software, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Offermatica, a leading on-demand A/B testing and multivariate testing company. Under the terms of the agreement, Omniture will pay $65 million for all of the outstanding capital stock of Offermatica, including all outstanding options, warrants and any other rights to acquire Offermatica capital stock.           

WPP acquires US digital agency, Schematic - WPP is acquiring US digital agency Schematic for an undisclosed amount. The move follows WPP chief executive, Sir Martin Sorrell’s recent announcement that he wanted to ensure that the company continues its claimed dominance of the development of digital services relating to mobile, internet and video. Los Angeles-based Schematic, which was founded eight years ago, was hired by ITV last year to lead the GBP20m (USD40m) redesign of ITV.com and its media player. It also boasts clients such as ABC, MTV, CNN, Comcast, Time Warner and Turner. It also has offices in New York, Boston, Atlanta and San Jose, Costa Rica and employs 255 people. Revenues for the year ended Mar 31 2007 were USD29.6m with gross assets of USD8m.

Weather Channel buys web 2.0 portal - Weather Channel Interactive is buying a web 2.0 portal called Weather Bonk for an undisclosed fee. Weather Bonk, which offers real-time weather information, uses a variety of web 2.0 tools to provide images and reports of weather information. It uses data from several sources, combined with Google Maps and Google Earth software. Weather Channel will acquire Golf Bonk, Camp Bonk and Ski Bonk as part of the deal.                          

Wcube Buy Increases Publicis’ Digital Breadth - Publicis said that Wcube–now named Publicis Modem France–is key to the expansion of its global digital network, which also includes marketing services firm Publicis Dialog.                 

Rumors Swirl Of News Corp./NBCU Deal Offering Hulu Help - As the industry awaits the launch of Hulu, rumors swirled Wednesday that News Corp. and NBC have acquired a Beijing-based startup named Mojiti to help their much-hyped video venture take off.