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Not All Categories Get Blog Bounce, comScore Finds - Apparel, food and beverage, and low-cost product categories are better received by consumers visiting blogs than other types of marketers, according to Chicago-based comScore’s new product measuring so-called “conversational media.”                                

Online Health Info Starts with Search - More than three-quarters of Internet users in the United States go online for health information, according to Burst Media. Of this audience, more than one-third researched health topics online before visiting a medical professional. After a medical appointment, 43.5% of respondents went online to learn more.                

Hollywood Producers Create ‘Big Budget,’ Web-only Series - It’s a sign of things to come: big-time Hollywood producers are starting to create content specifically for the Web. Former Disney chief Michael Eisner, one-time Yahoo Media Group Head Lloyd Braun, Paramount Pictures’ Gail Berman, and My Damn Channel President and CEO Rob Barnett have all shifted their time, focus and money to various Web-only ventures. Other big-name producers like Joel and Ethan Coen, Will Ferrell, and now, Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, are creating Web-only content through their respective ventures.                

MTV, YouTube Capitalize on Britney, VMAs - The so-called “Britney Bomb” at MTV’s Video Music Awards was certainly a ratings boost for Viacom’s MTV, but it was also, significantly, a great day for online video providers–particularly MTV. According to the Street.com, MTV’s strategy to show the awards once on cable television provided the boost it wanted for its Web site. And Britney Spears’ “universally celebrated” disaster comeback helped drive the highest day of traffic ever on MTV.com in terms of unique visitors and video streams.                      

MMOs to Drive Gaming Growth - Massively multiplayer online role-playing games are still in the very nascent stages of development, but the niche genre–which it most certainly is–are set for a sustained period of big growth, according to a new report from Strategy Analytics. The measurement firm says the overall online gaming market–advertising included–is set to hit $11.5 billion by 2011, growing at an annual compounded rate of 25.2 percent. However, by that time, revenues from MMORPGs like the “World of Warcraft” are set to double–while online gaming swells to 11 percent of the market.

Yahoo strikes exclusive ad deal with Bebo - Yahoo! is striking an exclusive deal with Bebo to sell display and video ads on the social network’s UK and Ireland sites, which boast 11.6m members. Financial details were not disclosed. The multi-year deal is a coup for Yahoo!, which had not yet signed a deal with a major social network, unlike Google and Microsoft which already have deals with MySpace and Facebook respectively.                 

Largest online advertiser in US spends USD51m in Aug - Low Rate Source, which provides online mortgage quotes, was the top online advertiser in the US in Aug, spending more than USD51m with over 25bn of its ads rendered for viewing according to a recent survey by Nielsen//NetRatings of the top 10 online advertisers in the US. The firm was followed by comparison shopping site NexTag, spending almost USD50m with 23.6bn ads rendered for viewing and in third place credit report agency Experian, with an almost USD41m ad spend for 14.9bn rendered ads. InterActive Corp which owns Ask.com, TicketMaster and Lending Tree spent USD35.5m with 8.8bn ads rendered for viewing.         

Online Display Ads Grew 17.7% to $5.52B For First Half: TNS - The financial services category led the way as overall Internet display advertising registered a 17.7% year-over-year increase to $5.52 billion for the first six months, TNS Media Intelligence reported Tuesday.                        

Ask.com And You Shall Receive: Embedded, Customizable Maps - Ask City has a new feature that allows users to embed an interactive map onto their Web site or blog — complete with local business information and driving directions. Users can customize the map with a number of drawing tools, then search inside (or outside of) the chosen area. Ask’s local, city-focused map tool also features information on specific attractions, like a movie theater’s showtimes. Google added the embed option to its maps service this summer — and Ask City’s move illustrates how the race for innovation in the local search and mapping space is heating up.                        

Revenue Science Finds BT Ads 22% More Effective - A new Revenue Science study conducted by JupiterResearch found that for online shoppers, behaviorally targeted (BT) ads outperformed contextual ads–in some cases by up to 22%.                  

Online Display Ads Grew 17.7% to $5.52B For First Half: TNS - The financial services category led the way as overall Internet display advertising registered a 17.7% year-over-year increase to $5.52 billion for the first six months, TNS Media Intelligence reported Tuesday.                    

eMarketer: Pharma Industry Failing at Web 2.0 - Despite accounting for an ever-increasing share of online ad spending, the pharmaceutical industry is still failing to embrace the Web 2.0 strategies that could help it better engage consumers looking for health care assistance, according to eMarketer research.            

Yahoo Opens Up - Yahoo is taking a cue from Facebook’s playbook, encouraging outside developers to create new software programs that would make Yahoo’s pages “stickier.” The company has already released the source code for Yahoo Mail and aims let users embed non-Yahoo products and services into their My Yahoo homepages. The company hopes that developers’ programs, also called widgets, will entice users to hang around Yahoo’s pages longer.                     

ABC In Online Video Distribution Talks - The networks, confused about what to do with their Web distribution strategy, are trying to make friends with the Web’s major audience holders. News. Corp.’s Fox and GE’s NBC partnered with MSN, Yahoo, News Corp.’s own MySpace and others to create a digital distribution venture called Hulu. CBS Corp. has also forged distribution deals with many of the same players for its CBS Interactive Audience Network, and ABC is now looking to do something in the same vein.                        

CBS Adds Affiliates To Audience Network - CBS Corp. is adding its local TV and radio station Web sites to its Web distribution venture, CBS Interactive Audience Network, which will place its programming on the Web sites of some 29 CBS owned and operated affiliates, 144 CBS Radio Web sites and 183 additional sites owned by CBS affiliates across the U.S. The move will assuage the network’s nervous local affiliates, which feared they would be left behind as CBS and others move forward into new Web ventures.            

Video Games Expand Audience - For the $13 billion-and-expanding video game industry, it’s all about newbies this Christmas. Professionals in the 30-year-old-plus industry are counting on a sizable chunk of sales coming from a whole new audience this holiday season, as video games become more mainstream. Most of these so-called “noobs” will be casual gamers crossing over to console gaming. In a way, video game makers owe their expected growth to the proliferation of casual games on the Web.                

Search Marketing’s Long Tail to Get Longer, Says Study - Investment firm William Blair & Company partnered with AdGooroo for a keyword-based advertiser-side analysis of the global search industry, authoring a report that pegs the number of advertisers at more than 500,000 and growing–with 90% of them currently running search campaigns with Google.                                   

eCrush & OTX: Teens Learn About New TV Shows From TV, Not the Internet - Whatever teens are discussing on their social networks, it isn’t the new fall TV season, according to research conducted by Hearst Magazines Digital Media’s own teen social networking site eCRUSH, in conjunction with OTX. Their “Teen Topix” study found that most teens (51%) still learn about new TV shows the old-fashioned way: from on-air ads and promos.                           

How High Can You Count: New Facebook Fundraising? - Here’s an interesting idea if you don’t want to get bought and you can’t quite IPO yet and you need to have a tidy war chest for expansion or perhaps a choice acquisition or two: Bring in more investors and raise more money at a huge valuation. That’s a concept that the top dogs at Facebook are seriously mulling over now, according to sources, after getting so many inquiries from investment funds and several bigger companies–such as its ad-serving partner, Microsoft–about grabbing a stake in the fast-growing social-networking Web site.                        

Once Considered a YouTube Rival, MTV Does Away With IFilm.com - In the pre-YouTube era — you know, that ancient, halcyon time of 2005 and before — one had to be very resourceful to find pirated clips of the previous night’s awards show highlights or “Daily Show” monologues. But if there was any single destination for online video back then, one would be hard-pressed to disagree it was iFilm.com. SpikeTV.com and iFilm.com will be no more by first-quarter 2008, forever rebranded together under the name Spike.com.                           

Apple In Talks For Movie Rental Service - The Financial Times breaks the news that Apple is in talks with the Hollywood majors about launching an online film rental service to challenge the likes of Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Netflix, Microsoft’s Xbox Live and just about anybody else in the movie rental/video-on-demand business. However, Apple would certainly have the edge in distribution through both its iTunes media store–which reaches millions worldwide–and its suite of consumer electronics offerings, like the iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, and its line of Mac PCs. Apple already sells movies from Walt Disney and Paramount on iTunes, but it doesn’t yet rent them out.                 

SpiralFrog Files For IPO - Remember SpiralFrog? It would be entirely understandable if you didn’t (in part because of the terrible name), but the New York-based company burst onto the scene last year with the promise of offering consumers free ad-supported music. SpiralFrog may have signed a few deals with big record labels, but the company has failed to get off the ground. It also needs to raise money. CNET says the company’s top dogs are now turning to an IPO–albeit through a 10SB filing, which is usually reserved for small companies with, um, no other options–to do the trick.                   

Web Advertising Weathers August Credit Storm - The argument has been made that a recession would be bad for Web advertising, and it certainly could be if advertisers decide to cut spending across the board, but the Silicon Valley Insider’s Peter Kafka says new data from Nielsen//NetRatings supports the counterargument that despite tough economic times, financial advertisers still have to spend to attract new customers–and it’s cheapest to attract new customers via the Web.              

Heavy Lands Another Biggie - Heavy.com is adding to its executive roster again, luring Eric Hadley from Microsoft to the online video service. Hadley, who has been at the Seattle powerhouse for 10 years, will lead all sales and marketing efforts as CMO at Heavy.                                   

MTV to Launch Targeted Web Sites - MTV’s new targeted Web sites will allow users to get closer to their favorite music, entertainment, comedy and pop culture content. This new slate will bring MTVN’s global Web site portfolio to more than 300 sites by year’s end.                            

ScanScout, TurnHere Tout Investments, Deals - ScanScout’s proprietary Brand Protector technology and ad model made the firm a “compelling” partner for Time Warner. Meanwhile, online video production firm TurnHere has expanded distribution of its BookVideos.tv channel, syndicating original content to over a dozen new properties. The two announcements underscore the sustained advertiser and publisher interest in ways to effectively monetize online video.                       

Tremor Media, ExpoTV Fold User-Generated Content Into Ads - Embedding homemade product reviews into ads enables advertisers to incorporate user-generated video into their marketing mix in a way that is safe for their brands by ensuring a positive brand message and experience. Advertisers are able to leverage ExpoTV’s Videopinions reviews across Tremor Media’s network, consisting of more than 800 Web sites and reaching more than 92 million unique visitors per month.                         

Online Video Viewers Looking For News Clips - A new study by Advertising.com, Inc., reports that that the majority of consumers are viewing video online, at 62 percent of survey respondents. These viewers are not just young adults viewing user-generated videos, says the report, but, in fact, 69 percent are ages 35 and older with a preference for viewing news clips online. Lynda Clarizio, president of Advertising.com, says “The Internet is still seen first and foremost as an information resource. With news clips remaining the most popular type of streamed content… (but) we may see a shift in usage toward recreation; these latest figures… hint at that trend.”                      

Online Video Strategy Hinges on Content - A lack of content is keeping some marketers from developing an online video strategy, according to a PermissionTV poll of advertising, branding and marketing executives. Three in 10 respondents said they either wanted to develop a strategy but lacked content or had compelling content but were unsure how to leverage it. One thing that respondents did not lack, however, was enthusiasm. “Web-based video is becoming an essential element in the marketing mix,” said Jonathan Sackett, chief digital officer of Arnold Worldwide, in a statement. “It provides a unique channel to engage customers, offering unlimited viral potential and interactivity.”                         

Clouds on Silicon Valley Horizon - The “R” word (recession) was bandied about last week by financial people after it was revealed Friday that 40,000 jobs were lost in August (analysts were expecting a gain of around 100,000), as companies started to lay off employees in the wake of an economy-wide credit crunch. So what does this mean for the Web industry, GigaOm asks? Is the Silicon Valley startup bubble about to burst?                

Facebook Closing Off Open Apps - The opening of Facebook, received as a blessing by many software developers, has created a few pitfalls for the social network, too, says The New York Times’ Saul Hansell. Last week, TechCrunch reported that one software developer created a program that allows users to change their people’s “status” messages without logging into Facebook. Well, Facebook didn’t like that, and pressured the guy to remove the program.

Murky Future for Marketing and Online Gaming - The experts of the online gaming world convened last week at the Austin Game Developers Conference to talk about the state of the burgeoning industry. Most believe that online gaming will continue to grow, but not without setbacks. Marketing in games and branded advergames are two areas of particular promise, but not all marketers will be successful. Experimentation is risky but potentially rewarding, too.                             

Microsoft AdCenter Upgrade - Microsoft updated its AdCenter offering over the weekend, improving the user interface as per Webmaster requests and feedback. The top change makes it easy for users to view keyword statistics and manage their bids on the same page — a major timesaver. The piece also provides a link to Microsoft’s pdf that details the upgrades in full.

Google Considers Video for Search Listings - Google is discussing ways to integrate video or image ads into sponsored search results. But Google executives say they will proceed “cautiously and slowly” because the images and video ads on content networks will not carry over in the Universal Search context.                        

Nielsen: Obama On Top For Web Traffic - Democrats are getting more bang for the buck in terms of traffic on their Web sites, according to new data from The Nielsen Co. Senator Barack Obama is leading all presidential candidates in visitors to their campaign Web sites with 717,000 unique visitors. Among Republicans, Fred Thompson’s ImWithFred.com drew the most unique visitors in July, with 381,000–although he had not yet announced his candidacy.

NEXT.TV Brings TV-Like Experience to PCs - A new Internet television service on Hewlett-Packard consumer notebooks will allows users to view TV and video content anywhere there is a broadband Internet connection. Users will be able to enjoy hit TV shows, movies, music videos, shorts, documentaries and more for free.

AOL Finalizes Tacoda Acquisition - AOL joins the ranks of Google and Yahoo with the acquisition of its own behavioral targeting network. The behavioral targeting market is projected to increase to $3.8 billion by 2011, from $350 million in 2006.

Shareholders File Another Class Action Against ValueClick - Another class action lawsuit charges that ValueClick senior management violated federal securities laws by issuing various materially false and misleading statements that artificially inflated the market price of the Company’s securities. ValueClick maintains it did nothing inappropriate or illegal.

Cox TV Spins Off Digital Sales Company - COX TELEVISION HOPES TO TAKE a bite out of the billions of dollars spent annually on online display advertising. The Atlanta-based company is spinning off Cox Cross Media. Effective Oct. 1, the new digital sales company will be based in New York. It will initially market and sell online media advertising for the 300-plus television stations that are currently represented by Cox Television’s three national sales representative firms: TeleRep, Harrington Righter & Parsons (HRP) and MMT Sales.

Casting the Big Movie Download Roles - There are a lot of ways to download movies. Netflix and Blockbuster offer digital rentals. CinemaNow and Amazon offer movies for sale. Yet none have gone mainstream in the way that Apple’s iTunes has. The competition may also last a while, since studios are trying to avoid creating another power player as happened with Apple and digital music. The market for movie downloads will reach $720 million in 2011 in the United States, according to Screen Digest’s “Online Movie Strategies: Competitive Review and Market Outlook.” Studio and content owners are expected to take $530 million of that 2011 market. Service and solution providers including Amazon, Apple and Netflix will take the rest.

‘Daily Show,’ Other MTV Brands Get Their Own Sites - Web sites for “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and two dozen other brands that fall under the MTV Networks umbrella are being prepared for a first-quarter launch, according to the Hollywood Reporter. “The Daily Show” site, for example, which actually launches in the fourth quarter, will contain the entire video history of each show, including headlines, interviews and the “Back in Black” feature. Episodes will be available in their entirety an hour or two after broadcast.

DoJ Warns Against Net Neutrality - The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday backed the big telecommunications companies in the States, warning the Federal Communications Commission not to impose so-called “net neutrality” rules on Internet service providers. Should the FCC decide not to, ISPs would be allowed to prioritize how they distribute network bandwidth.

OnTheToob Joins Joost - Joost, a startup itself in the area of Web TV, has just brought in digital programming guide OnTheToob.com along with its creator Hal Schechner. OnTheToob’s technology–which helps Joost beta testers create customized channels and RSS feeds out of Joost’s some 238 channels and 10,298 programs–will now likely be rolled into an enhanced version of Joost.

Gauging Yahoo’s $300 Million BlueLithium Grab - Yahoo’s imminent acquisition of the BlueLithium ad network for $300 million comes at the midway mark of CEO Jerry Yang’s 100-day strategic planning period, on the heels of a management overhaul by president Sue Decker, and prior to government clearance of rival Google’s deal to buy DoubleClick. So what’s it all mean?                                      

NetRatings Sustains Heavy Loss, Finance Chief Steps Down, Joins Popular Video Service - Internet ratings giant NetRatings has a somewhat lighter senior management team following the departure of finance chief Todd Sloan, who has joined online video service Heavy.com as CFO, Online Media Daily has learned. The move is a bit ironic because Heavy.com has been waging a public feud with NetRatings over its online ratings, which Heavy.com chief David Carson asserts substantially underestimates Heavy’s actual audience.                                          

Offline Influence on Online Search Yields 39% Conversion - According to a the “iProspect Offline Channel Influence on Online Search Behavior Study,” conducted by JupiterResearch, 67% of the online search population is driven to search by offline channels. It also revealed that 39% of online searchers who are influenced by offline channels ultimately make a purchase. This 39% conversion rate suggests a synergistic relationship exists between search and offline channels, concludes the study.

Online Yellow Pages to Pump Local Ads? - A vast proportion of local ad spending goes into yellow pages directories. While a national yellow pages market exists, it will reach only $2.2 billion in 2007, compared with $12.4 billion going to the local pages, according to Universal McCann. Internet yellow pages (IYP) might seem to be the most obvious online parallel to the traditional yellow pages, but that is not the way it turns out. According to “The User Revolution,” a February 2007 report from Piper Jaffray, the offline yellow pages and classifieds market—at $37 billion—shows the potential of local ad dollars. If only 20% of that budget shifts to the Internet, for example, that would add $7 billion to local online ad spending.

Casual Gamers Bring Family Along - More than 50 million video gamers play simple online games with other family members, a report says. Hardcore games get the headlines, but casual games may end up getting the ad dollars.

How to “Retarget” Consumers - If you thought that 50% of your ad budget wasn’t wasted if you were spending on the Internet, you’d be wrong. Thank goodness most of it is cheap, though. If you’re in the biz, you know that low CTRs (click-through rates) are the norm, especially for display, but a new startup called Fetchbook has “a slightly creepy solution to the problem.”

Search Pro’s Take On Where Engines Are Headed - 2007 has seen two major upgrades to the way search engines work — with Ask’s busy, feature-rich, three-panel approach and Google’s Universal Search — as well as changes to the way search is perceived by media measurement firms like Nielsen//NetRatings. SEOmoz’ CEO and co-founder Rand Fishkin serves up nine more ways that he thinks the search industry will evolve, from incorporating more user data and searching history, to more vertical fracturing, to a widespread inclusion of human-powered results.

Nets Sharpen Web Tactics - As the networks gear up to roll out their new fall shows, they’re also coming out with new Web strategies for those programs. In a two-year deal reported last night by Variety, ABC.com will stream four Warner Bros. TV shows aired on ABC — “Pushing Daisies,” “Men in Trees,” “Notes From the Underbelly,” and “Big Shots.” ABC will be able to stream shows for up to four weeks after they air. Next year, Warner Bros. TV will have the right to stream reruns of the shows and sell downloads of them.

McClatchy Sticks With CareerBuilder - Internet job site CareerBuilder.com will remain partly owned by The McClatchy Co. now that the newspaper publisher has resolved issues pertaining to its affiliate agreement with the site. Also, McClatchy’s Real Cities added 51 more Web sites from MediaNews Group to its network.                                          

Yellow Book, IQzone Launch Video Classifieds For Web, Mobile Phones - Mobile firm IQzone rolled out a free service that lets users create, send and post photo and video ads to online classifieds via mobile phone. Meanwhile, Yellow Book USA posted links to a set of online video ads.                                  

PopCap: Over A Third of CEOs Play Casual Online Games At Work - PopCap Games, in a survey of more than 7,100 consumers, found that nearly a quarter (24%) of all “white collar” workers played casual games on the job–for reasons varying from “improving their mental state” to “entertainment.” Playing puzzle, word or other casual online games at work actually seems to be beneficial to productivity, according to the survey.            

Viral Campaigns Falling Short, Says JupiterResearch - Viral marketing campaigns are mostly ineffective, reports JupiterResearch, which found that only 15% of viral campaigns in the past year achieved the goal of prompting consumers to promote the marketer’s message.                    

Fox Interactive Media’s ‘Stranglehold’ For Midway - Fox Interactive Media has launched an integrated campaign for the third-person shooter game “Stranglehold” from Chicago-based game publisher and developer Midway.

Cross-Channel Sales Suit Online Apparel - How can shoppers get a sense of how clothes feel? The answer for most shoppers is simple: Go to the store. A January 2007 Accenture survey found that two-thirds of online consumers prefer to buy clothing in stores rather than online. “Apparel is a big cross-channel shopping category,” said eMarketer senior analyst Jeffrey Grau. “Traditional retailers who understand the consumer purchase process will develop strategies for driving online shoppers to their stores.”

Facebook Profiles Become Publicly Searchable - Facebook has started notifying members that its pages will soon be open to Google, Yahoo and other search engines whose crawlers index billions of pages across the Web. The move, clearly aimed at growing the number of page views on the social network, could spark a privacy backlash among users, although the company is marketing the move as an “opportunity” to let the rest of the world find them. Facebook users, have revolted against the site’s policy changes in the past.

Will Consumers Pay For Privacy? - Internet companies are collecting an unprecedented amount of information about who consumes their content and services. And while raises privacy concerns for many users, few are willing to spend money to do anything about it. In fact, a recent Carnegie Mellon/UC-Berkeley study suggests that consumers aren’t even willing to pay 25 cents to protect sensitive information. “People prefer money over data, always,” said one CMU official.

R.H. Donnelly, Call Genie Launch Voice Search Beta - Yellow pages and local search giant R.H. Donnelly has launched a four-market beta test of voice-powered search called 1-800-CallDex. The company partnered with Call Genie to power free local directory assistance service for callers in Denver; Spokane,Wash.; Phoenix; and Tucson, Ariz. Voice-powered search is emerging as a contender in the local search market, as consumers may not always have Web access via mobile phone — and calling for directory assistance (albeit ad-supported) is often the default option.

Cuill Buzz Growing Hot - Buzz is growing amidst tech and financial insiders about Cuill (pronounced “cool”), the Menlo Park, Ca.-based search startup that claims its technology and algorithms index Web pages faster and cheaper than Google can. Cuill currently exists as a landing page only, one that offers bits of information about the founders — Tom Costello, Anna Patterson, and Russell Power and a cheeky tagline: “Yup. We’re working on it.” But the team itself sparks major interest, as Patterson and Power are both former Google search alumni, while Costello was the founder of mobile Web firm Xift.

Gauging The Hype On Mortgage Meltdown’s Online Ad Impact - Wall Street types are saying the sub-prime mortgage meltdown will hit the online advertising industry hard–almost as hard as the dot-com bust–but some digital marketing pros disagree.               

Newspaper Site Ad Spending Up 19.3% - Advertising on newspaper Web sites in the second quarter increased 19.3% year-over-year to $796 million, according to preliminary estimates from the Newspaper Association of America–the 13th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.

Local Online Ad Spending At $2.9 Billion In 2007: eMarketer - A new eMarketer report projects local online ad spending in the U.S. will reach $2.9 billion in 2007, up from $2.1 billion in 2006–or 13.4% of total Internet ad revenues, up from 12.1% last year. 

Chinese Cartoon Cops To Warn Surfers of Surveillance - Authorities in Beijing announced that two virtual police officers would soon begin visible patrols on Chinese Web sites–avatars will pop up every half hour to remind surfers that their online activities are being watched.

NBC Bolts From iTunes, Links Up With Amazon - NBC’s decision to bolt from iTunes Music Store wasn’t only affected by lower-than-expected revenues from the subscription download service, say analysts, but disappointing revs from its ad-supported services. The exit signals the net’s decision to consolidate distribution elsewhere, like its new Web site, Hulu.com and its deal with Amazon Unbox.                   

When Brands Need Buddies - Marketers have had a very challenging time trying to figure out how to be relevant in social networking environments. Advertising there should be seen as “something living or breathing that needs to be managed, measured, optimized and renewed,” says Denuo’s Tim Hanlon.                      

The Agency’s Role In The UGC/Brand Relationship - The relationship between user-generated content and brands presents both inherent challenges and enormous opportunities for interactive advertising agencies.

Where Can You Find Guys Online? - US men age 18 to 34 have always been an elusive target for marketers, and one they pay dearly to hit — think of the ever-rising cost of Super Bowl spots. eMarketer estimates that the segment now comprises 27% of the total male Internet user population, and the percentage is growing. However, even though men 18 to 34 are going online more than ever before, they consider TV a better advertising medium. When Maxim’s annual “Man Study,” conducted by Hall & Partners, asked about the “most effective” way to advertise to their age group, 74% cited TV, 56% cited Magazines, 55% the Web and 17% radio.

Double Fusion Brings TV Ad Flexibility to Video Games - In-game advertising company DoubleFusion, whose technology can dynamically serve ads into video games, is rolling out a new product that allows ad-buyers to create campaigns in a similar fashion to the way they buy TV spots-i.e. over anything from new games to popular older, possibly free, titles. Ad inventory is something game developers must hard-code into their games, allowing brokers like Double Fusion to sell ad content in the locations created by developers. Double Fusion’s new technology lets publishers change or add new ad locations post-development with “almost unlimited flexibility.”

Sited: Google’s “Gphone” - Ever since Google’s extensive plans for the mobile wireless industry were unveiled, the media and blogosphere have been abuzz over whether big G plans to enter the phone-making market, too. A prototype for Google’s new mobile phone is being built in the search giant’s local research lab in Cambridge, Mass.

Google Wins Another Legal Battle - Continuing its winning streak in AdWords lawsuits, Google has obtained a favorable settlement in a trademark infringement case brought four years ago by American Blind and Wallpaper Factory. The agreement, filed Friday, provides that American Blind will withdraw its lawsuit and won’t bring any other similar cases against Google.

Mexico is a traveler’s paradise, crammed with a multitude of opposing identities: desert landscapes, snow-capped volcanoes, ancient ruins, teeming industrialized cities, time-warped colonial towns, glitzy resorts, deserted beaches and a world-beating collection of flora and fauna.  This mix of modern and traditional, clichéd and surreal, is the key to Mexico’s charm, whether your passion is throwing back margaritas, listening to howler monkeys, surfing the Mexican Pipeline, scrambling over Mayan ruins or expanding your collection of posable Day of the Dead skeletons.

Mexico is enjoyable year-round, but we went in August, the most hot and humid time of the year.  However, due to its size, Mexico’s climate has something for everyone: it’s hot and humid along the coastal plains, and drier and more temperate at higher elevations inland (Guadalajara or Mexico City, for example).