Articles of the Day
AOL Unveils Consumer Education Campaign On B.T. - On the eve of an FTC Town Hall meeting addressing privacy issues related to behavioral targeting, AOL has unveiled a new initiative to educate consumers about how the company uses their Web-surfing history to serve ads.
VSS: Don’t Count Out Old Media Yet In Digital Future - Don’t count out media’s old guard in the battle for the new media landscape, said John Suhler, founding general partner and president of private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson.
Media M&A Slowing In Wake Of Credit Crunch - The mortgage crisis and resulting credit crunch haven’t impacted valuations yet, but have led to a slowdown in media M&A activity, according to a group of top industry dealmakers.
Report: Google in Verizon Talks - Ever-busy Google is now talking with major U.S. wireless carrier Verizon Wireless about putting its applications on Verizon-powered handsets. During a third-quarter earnings call, Verizon Communications COO Denny Strigl confirmed that the company had spoken with Google, but he didn’t elaborate.
NBCU Digital/IGA Deal Strengthens In-Game Ad Opps - NBC Universal Digital Media has entered a sales deal with New York-based IGA Worldwide–a move that strengthens both companies’ abilities to offer in-game ad packages that also feature online, TV and wireless components.
Google “Out-Opens” Facebook - Today’s technology news is all about Google vs. Facebook, after the search giant announced a common application programming interface that lets software developers create programs to run within a whole host of social networking Web sites. The idea is to let developers keep the information they obtain about various sites and their activity across different sites so that advertisers may target them better.
HuffPo Reinvents the Media Wheel - Is Arianna Huffington reinventing the media business? As it’s grown, the HuffPo’s business model has morphed into something akin to “building communities around news content” by getting experts and influential people to blog about their specialties for free. But who wants to blog for free? Apparently, 1,600 people and counting–all personally invited by Huffington to drop their two cents on specific topics from politics to entertainment to food.
Congress Extends Web Tax Ban - Consumers and telecommunications and technology firms rejoiced on Tuesday after the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously voted to extend the moratorium on Internet taxes, prohibiting state and local authorities from taxing Web access for another seven years. The Senate had already passed the measure, which means that President George W. Bush now has to sign off on it before the current ban expires on Thursday. State and local authorities are upset; they wanted to see a shorter extension and a “narrower definition” of the taxes that could not be charged.
Casual Games: Big Reach, Small Bucks - The”casual games” sector, an industry generating a serious $2.25 billion per year, according to the Casual Games Association, is growing annually at 20 percent. That’s a healthy growth figure, especially when you consider that some 200 million people already play casual games. The nascent sector has also proved to be a great way for advertisers to reach everyone, as the ratio of men to women is a nearly even 48.3 to 51.7 percent. Compared to the hardcore or “enthusiast” gaming sector, which consists of console gaming and massively multiplayer games like World of Warcraft, casual gaming’s $2.25 billion is a mere pittance: enthusiasts generate up to $20 billion per year with far smaller audiences.
