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Yahoo’s 100-Day Plan Laid Out With Promising Q3 Results - At the start of Tuesday’s earnings call, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang defined the execution of three strategic objectives as crucial to the Web giant’s future success–becoming the “starting point” for most Web users rather than original content creator, becoming the “must buy” with inventory for advertisers, and creating industry-leading platforms that are open to outside developers.                                     

MySpace Will Host Sony BMG In Next-Generation Deal - MySpace has signed a new licensing agreement with Sony BMG Music Entertainment to host the label’s various offerings. The deal marks MySpace’s first partnership with a major record label.                            

Viacom Says The Google Suit Is Still On - Now that Google has unveiled technology to prevent the illicit access of copyrighted video on YouTube, what impact will it have on the Viacom copyright infringement lawsuit? ‘None at all,’ Viacom said this week.                         

Web Sites Seeing More Traffic From Direct Navigation - With all the discussion–and anxiety among media companies–about “world domination” by the major search companies, you might think that nearly all activity on the Web begins with search. While the amount of traffic from search engines is clearly on the rise, many of the sites at my company, IDG, are starting to see a trend that a lot of publishers whom I speak with are also seeing: Traffic from organic search is leveling off as a percentage of total traffic, while traffic from direct-navigation visits is increasing.                    

Bubble Signs Are Back - Silicon Valley bubble talk is bubbling up once again. The action this time is taking place in the private sector, leaving the public somewhat safer; even so, a wider bubble burst could drive inflation and send the economy into recession. The telltale signs are there: Internet companies with funny names, little revenue and few customers are commanding high prices. And once again, Internet advertising is being seen as a bottomless trough of cash on which to base one’s business model.                            

Address Book 2.0: The Future of Social Media? - Wired says that the Web 2.0 iteration of the popular address book will be one of the main topics of conversation at this week’s Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. Address Book 2.0 refers to technology that knows where you are and what you’re doing on the Web. Think of it as a gigantic mashup of your email inbox with every social network you belong to.                      

Google’s AdSense For Facebook Apps - This is sneaky: Google is apparently recruiting third-party developers to run AdSense ads across Facebook. It’s also specifically developing an ad network for third-party developers on Facebook, letting them run ads that only appear on programs within the popular social network. Facebook can’t be feeling too good about this. When the social network opened its Facebook Platform to third parties in May, it clearly said that developers could sell ads and keep all the revenue.                             

MySpace Adds Skype To IM Client - News Corporation and eBay on Tuesday agreed to put eBay’s Skype, a Web-based phone service, on MySpace’s instant messaging application. The move should drive greater usage of Skype, as MySpace users trade phone numbers over IM chat to talk with one another. The companies will split revenues from the partnership, which begins in November. Skype only makes money from calls made to mobile and land-line telephones; computer-to-computer calls are free.                                

IAC Video Site Goes HD - Barry Diller and IAC/InterActiveCorp will start distributing user-generated videos in HD this week through Vimeo, its video-sharing site. The resolution comes in at the high-def standard 1280 pixels by 720 pixels, four times as clear as the 320×240 typically found on video sharing sites like YouTube. Not that you can’t find high-def videos elsewhere on the Web. Movie trailers, for example, have been streamable in HD for a long time, as has other professionally produced content. However, Vimeo is the first-known Web site to make HD quality user generated content available.                       

Yahoo Gaining In Search Dollar Share: RBC - A study from SearchIgnite and RBC Capital Markets reveals that more marketers chose to spend incremental search dollars with Yahoo than Google in Q3. While not a seismic shift, it represents positive momentum for Yahoo, which reports its third-quarter results this afternoon.                           

Agencies Urge AOL To Save Content, As It Slashes 2,000 Jobs - Media executives cautioned that AOL needs to retain the quality of properties such as Moviefone and TMZ in the wake of another 2,000 layoffs worldwide. Otherwise, the move is seen as “background noise” in the positive shift to an organization built for an ad-supported business.                        

Acxiom Takes Behavioral Targeting To The Next Stage - Database marketing giant Acxiom today officially launches its Relevance-X products designed to allow marketers to make online media buys using an ad network targeting specific customer segments based on their predictive lifestyle and purchase intent profiles.                    

Nielsen’s New Online, Mobile Units Promise 360-Degree Insights - Nielsen announced structural and organizational changes to its online and mobile audience measurement divisions–aimed at providing advertisers with a “360-degree” read on who their targets are, how they’re consuming media, and which devices to reach them on. The changes are built on the formation of two separate, but fully cooperative divisions–Nielsen Online and Nielsen Mobile.             

Not Enough Web Dollars to Go Around? - As Web spending continues to hit new records each year, media execs are wondering whether the growth is sustainable. Are advertising expectations out of control? Some say that new media companies are taking advertising for granted, worrying that there may not be enough ad dollars to go around. Says NBC Universal’s Beth Comstock, whose Integrated Media division is setting up a fund to invest in new media companies. “It’s just not going to be possible,” she said. “There are not going to be enough advertising dollars in the marketplace. No matter how clever we are, no matter what the format is.”               

Google Unveils Fingerprinting Technology For YouTube - Nearly one year and several lawsuits after buying YouTube, Google has finally unveiled a digital fingerprinting technology to help identify user uploaded videos that violate the intellectual property rights of media content owners. Reviewers of the long-delayed new system applaud Google’s efforts, but say the search giant still needs to do some refining.                  

Why Google Fears Facebook - By even the highest valuation, Google is still more than 15 times the size of Facebook. With a market capitalization of $190 billion, Google could eat the social network for lunch, and yet it’s Facebook that’s got the Web giant running scared. Google understands that it needs to grab a foothold in social networking, but Facebook, frustratingly, isn’t for sale. And given its ad ambitions, Mark Zuckerburg’s Facebook reminds one of a pre-IPO Google, circa 2003.                      

Universal To Challenge iTunes - Its relationship with Apple in tatters, Universal Music Group has decided to pool together other big music companies independent record labels to create an iTunes competitor. UMG already has Sony BMG and Warner Music Group on board, which together would represent 75% of the music market. UMG’s plan is to supply iPod competitors like Microsoft’s Zune with the fodder it needs to compete with Apple. The service would be called Total Music. No comment yet from UMG.            

Network Solutions’ Local Search Offering - Domain name registration and Web hosting services firm Network Solutions recently rolled out a business-only local search offering called ThinkLocal.com — and Chris “Silver” Smith gives it a quick write-up in this post. Smith notes that while Network Solutions has some advantages (indexing the wealth of domains it hosts, for example) the ThinkLocal service still has kinks to work out and more robust sources of business listings to crawl.

Marketers Put More Money Into Social Media: Survey - A recent survey indicates that nearly a third of Web marketers plan to increase spending significantly on such social media as blogs and discussion boards. Attention is the top measure for success.                          

Google Pays Advertisers To Use Audio Ads - Google is running a promotion for its Audio Ads product that will give advertisers a $2,000 credit toward future radio spots if they spend at least $1,000 on a single campaign. Whether it’s a sign of desperation or merely a way to introduce the program to a broader audience is up for debate.                              

AdBrite Delivers Print-Style Engagement With New Format - AdBrite has rolled out the ‘Full Page Ad,’ a new digital ad format that aims to blend the branding impact of a full-page magazine ad with the interactivity of the Web. Pennzoil, Sanyo and LiveNation are inaugural advertisers.                   

Infospace Exits Mobile Business; Motricity Buys Its Mobile Services Business For $135 Million - The deal has gone through after rumors for the last two months—InfoSpace (NSDQ: INSP) has sold its mobile services business to Motricity for $135 million in cash, meaning that the company will now be solely focused on online search. INSP also recently sold its online directory business for $225 million in cash. Once the transaction closes InfoSpace expects to have $550 million in cash, and will return part of it back to investors as a special cash distribution.                 

AOL To Lay Off 2000 Out of Its 10K Employees - The much-rumored AOL (NYSE: TWX) layoffs have been officially announced, at least internally…Kara has the memo here. “We refocused the business around three core areas – Platform-A, Publishing and Access – and are now managing these as three distinct but related components,” said CEO Randy Falco in the memo. Platform-A is its online and mobile ad serving and advertising business.                  

Reviewing Online TV Ad Sales Efforts, Google Moves Forward As eBay Remains Stuck - Although they’re not exactly going head-to-head, in assessing Google’s and eBay’s respective attempts at online media buying systems for TV over the past six months, Adweek finds Google (NSDQ: GOOG) meeting with some success, while eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) continues to struggle.            

Alibaba.com to Raise up to $1.33 Billion in IPO - Alibaba.com, the B2B arm of China-based Alibaba Group, told investors that it plans to raise up to $1.33 billion through its IPO, currently scheduled for November 6th. Bloomberg has the full details: the company plans to sell 858.9 million shares at HK$10-HK$12 (US $1.29-$1.54) each; at the upper end of the range, it will have a market cap of $7.8 billion market cap, making it the largest internet IPO in Hong Kong this year.                     

Is Google Backing Off From Universal Search? - In May of this year, Google announced the advent of what it called “Universal Search,” which blends results from a wide array of multimedia objects into what had hitherto been an exclusively text-dominated SERP. The other engines quickly followed suit and modified their SERPs accordingly, making Universal Search a genuine trend, if not an actual craze. And yet in the past several weeks, Google’s SERP appears to have reverted to its old, text-heavy format. Google’s defenders will certainly claim that it’s merely tweaking its algorithm again, but I’d venture a guess that Google has quietly concluded that Universal Search is a bust.                

Web Bubble? Not at These Prices - Many believe the valuations being placed on Web firms in Silicon Valley are out of control. Facebook fetching $10 billion? The company’s only expected to sell $150 million worth of advertising this year. What about RockYou, which creates programs for Facebook, seeking $500 million? The sum total of third-party revenues on the social networking site is less than $1 million. Then there’s the rumor that CNET wants TechCrunch for $100 million. TechCrunch is an industry blog. These were all unsubstantiated rumors of course, but the result is a whole bunch of bubble chatter in Silicon Valley.              

How Google Did It Without Advertising - Google is ubiquitous. By some counts, it’s the most popular brand in the world, yet it’s unlike just about any other global brand, spending almost no money on marketing. Ironically, perhaps, advertising has been the pathway to Google’s mega millions. That it’s become a necessary tool for those searching for content and advertisers searching for consumers is advertising enough for the $190 billion Web company. Indeed, who needs to advertise when you provide a service people (and advertisers) need?                  

Kids Fueling Virtual World Growth - Virtual worlds have been billed as a kind of social networking 2.0, but so far, they’ve yet to really catch on-with adults, that is. Kids, on the other hand, love the colorful 3D environments at sites like Neopets, Stardoll.com, Gaia Online and Club Penguin, where they create and care for avatars of their own making. These sites are mostly skewed towards kids, because the market for kiddy virtual worlds is several times bigger than that of adults. Sites like Webkinz and Club Penguin have millions of active members, compared to Second Life and There.com, which attract between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of users per month.                         

Facebook Adds Professional Networking - Facebook continues to pile on the press coverage, getting credit this time for stealing working professionals from the professional networking site LinkedIn. But it shouldn’t. The Web’s No. 2 social site is perfect for college dorm networking, but not so much for job or business development hunting. LinkedIn allows workers to delve into an extended network of contacts developed around the people you know. With Facebook, you can only see your friends’ friends.

Marketers Unprepared For New World Disorder: ANA - More than 90% of the 250-plus marketers surveyed for a study set for release at the ANA Annual Meeting say they plan to increase their digital spending. But plenty of obstacles stand in the way of fully embracing the new world disorder of fragmentation and personalization of media–culture being the biggest one.                                   

Online Ad Marketplace To Exceed $61B By 2012: Forrester - Online publishers need to offer increasingly innovative ways for marketers to reach their audiences if they want to keep their share of ad dollars and not lose out to newer formats such as social media, says the author of the latest Interactive Marketing Forecast from Forrester Research.                  

IAB To Lead Gen Industry: Shape Up By April 1 - The Interactive Advertising Bureau and its Lead Generation Committee have set a firm deadline for the adoption of guidelines regarding the practice of online lead generation.                  

A Good Deal for Smaller Pubs? - Reuters warns against the recent alliance between Yahoo and hundreds of newspaper sites. Under the deal, forged last November and amended in April, Yahoo will deliver ads across the network of sites, and feature certain stories in Yahoo News. The alliance was intended to boost readership and bring in more advertisers, but Reuters’ Robert MacMillan says the partnership “will saddle [the newspaper publishers] with unproven technology and cost them some independence and flexibility.”               

Schmidt Reveals Social Network Plan - Speaking at Google’s recent (and exclusive) Zeitgeist conference, Eric Schmidt on Thursday dismissed the notion that social networking is just a fad. Quite the contrary–the Google CEO said the company has big plans for the Web’s hottest trend. “People don’t appreciate how many page views on the Internet are in social networks,” he said. “It is very real. It’s a very real phenomenon.”             

ABC News Targets Younger Audiences With Web Programming - While the likes of CBS and NBC repurpose their nightly news programs online, ABC News is trying hard to adapt its Web programming to reach younger audiences. Its daily Webcast, simply called “World News,” has an MTV bent to it–delivering news in a “raw” and more “personal” format, says The New York Times. At fifteen minutes in length, it’s cut for the ADD generation, too–a perfect fit for iPod and cell phone viewing.        

Google Earth Adds Videos - YouTube users can now peg videos set in specific locations to maps in Google Earth. So, if you go to Paris and scroll over the Eiffel Tower, a video overlay would pop up containing information about the building. The feature could be a real boon for tourism, enabling would-be travelers to surf the digital globe for information about potential vacation spots. Head to Maui and you might find snorkeling or surfing videos, hotel tours, or information about local wildlife. Producers enable the feature by adding geo-tags to their YouTube videos; Google Earth users will not be able to geo-tag videos.      

On The Newsvine: MSNBC Buys Citizen Journalism Site - Msnbc.com announced the first acquisition in its 11-year history on Sunday, and is buying Seattle-based citizen journalism site Newsvine.com in an all-cash deal whose terms were not disclosed.            

Imaginova Buys Comic Book Site - Imaginova Corp., which recently secured $15 million with a stated intention of adding to its network of sites for the intellectually curious, announced the purchase today of Newsarama, the media property of record for the global comic book community.            

Washington Post Acquires Lead Generator CourseAdvisor.com - The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO) has announced the acquisition of CourseAdvisor.com, an online lead generator serving the education industry. The Wakefield, MA.-based company matches up students with suitable degree or certificate-granting programs across 800 institutions. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Sugar Publishing Buys Fashion Blog Network Coutorture - Blog network Sugar Publishing, based in San Francisco, is making another buy: it has bought Coutorture, a network of about 230 sites and blogs focusing on fashion segment. Two weeks ago Sugar announced buying social shopping site Shopstyle.             

Microblogging Platform Jaiku Acquired by Google - Finnish microblogging service Jaiku has been acquired by Google (NSDQ: GOOG) for an undisclosed sum, according to an announcement on the company’s site. Like its main competitor Twitter, Jaiku allows users to share short messages and presence alerts with each other, using either a computer or a mobile device. A FAQ on the deal offers few details on the deal’s terms, saying only that Jaiku’s employees will be joining Google and that Google is interested in doing more with activity streams and mobile presence.           

CBS Pays $10 Million For Celebrity Blog - Continuing on the acquisition track, CBS has paid $10 million for a nine-month-old celebrity gossip site named Dotspotter. The acquisition follows a string of new media investments by CBS this year.

IAB Issues Final Word On Rich Media Impressions - The Interactive Advertising Bureau has issued final guidelines on how to count rich online media ad impressions in a world increasingly powered by AJAX and other auto-refresh technologies.                                

IGA Worldwide Gets Into Casual Games - New York-based in-game ad firm IGA Worldwide has begun its push into the casual game space, announcing an exclusive partnership with Merscom to place ads directly into its suite of casual games.                

Searching to the Nth Degree - How many home runs were hit by the Baltimore Orioles between 1953 and 1959? Google has its strengths, but answering such precisely worded queries isn’t yet among them.                 

E-Mail Usage High, Marketing Spend Low - More than one-half of US e-mail marketing executives get 20% or less of their firm’s e-mail budgets, according to StrongMail Systems and JupiterResearch’s “Maturation of Email: Controlling Messaging Chaos Through Centralization” report. E-mail marketers appear to get shortchanged when it comes to e-mail budgets, especially considering the medium’s wide usage. JupiterResearch found more than one-quarter of the e-mail that consumers received in their inboxes was marketing. But there are reasons why e-mail spending growth will stay moderate in the short term.                   

Shoppers Look to User Reviews, Search - US online shoppers researching products are turning to user reviews more than expert reviews, according to a study by Avenue A | Razorfish. More than one-half of online shoppers doing research said they consulted user reviews most often. User reviews still trail some other information-gathering methods, with search being the most notable. However, consumers do not have to do much research for well-known goods before heading to a Web site to make their purchases.

Colleges Form P2P Activist Groups - The Recording Industry Association of America better watch out: a new kind of fraternity is popping up at college campuses that advocates looser copyright law restrictions and free information exchange over the Internet. Called Students for Free Culture, the group has chapters at more than 35 colleges across the country. “We will listen to free music, look at free art, watch free film and read free books,” reads the manifesto from its Web site, freeculture.org. “We refuse to accept a future of digital feudalism.”                 

Experts: GoogleClick Should Pass - Antitrust experts tell Reuters they expect Google’s $3.1 billion DoubleClick merger to soon be approved by the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates mergers and acquisitions, despite opposition from Google competitors Microsoft and Yahoo. Both Mark Kovner, a lawyer, and consultant Steven Sunshine believe the acquisition will go through because advertising is still a huge market with many competitors.              

National Advertisers Behind The Digital Times - We are knee-deep in the digital revolution, yet marketers are still having trouble making the transition. A new study from consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton in conjunction with the upcoming Association of National Advertisers conference reveals that interactive marketing still lags badly behind consumer behavior. The Web has become an essential part of most consumers’ lives–eight in ten Americans are online, and usage is nearly parallel to that of television, yet marketers on average allocate just 5-10 percent of their ad budgets to digital media.            

The Ramifications Of A Poor Web Infrastructure - In a CNET column, Michael Kleeman, a UC San Diego senior fellow, warns against the need for repairing the existing Internet infrastructure. If the information superhighway were as visible as a road system, he says “it would appear to be excellent in some places, but riddled with potholes in others; heavily congested at many times and locations; and in need of massive redesign.” The problem is pure supply and demand: there’s not a great enough supply of bandwidth to keep pace with the growing number of requests for large files delivered over the Internet.

Widget Marketing Metrics That Matter - This past summer, when comScore launched its Widget Metrix Service, the industry was served notice that widgets are big. One hundred and seventy-seven million big. Widgets aren’t just big because comScore is now measuring them, but because 177 million of anything is big. However, millions of widgets across the Web alone don’t really say anything meaningful to advertisers. While the figure may pique their interest, it doesn’t help them measure or target or even conceptualize a campaign.                                     

MySpace, Google To Open Platforms - As novel an idea as the Facebook Platform certainly was, there’s absolutely nothing stopping other social networks from opening their borders to third-party software developers, too. According to separate reports from TechCrunch, Google plans to take the “open” concept to the next level by allowing developers to create programs across its many Web properties and services, while MySpace is gearing up to launch its own developer platform sometime next week.                       

IBM, Linden Lab Seek Virtual World Metaverse - IBM and Second Life creator Linden Lab are teaming up to create “universal avatars” that let patrons of virtual worlds move from one to another using the same identity. An interesting vision, to be sure, but a “borderless” virtual world society presents all kinds of data integration problems–of course, this is where IBM comes in. The integration of identities also calls for standards to be developed to allow for things like secure business transactions and porting business and personal data over from one world to another.                                

BitTorrent’s Streaming Technology Is Beside The Point - BitTorrent, founder of modern (illegal) file-sharing, is reinventing itself once again. In its bid to turn straight, the company’s new plan, introduced this year, is to help media companies stream videos over the Internet–which is a little weird, as Forbes’ Andy Greenberg points out. “[The] company whose name has long meant digital piracy to content owners now wants to be the online media industry’s humble servant,” he says.                               

Ask.com Still Needs Google - This finance-focused piece uses feedback from investment analysts to examine Ask and Google’s symbiotic relationship — and the repercussions for the smaller search engine if it is unable to (or chooses not to) renew its ad and content distribution deal with the search giant. The deal expires at the end of this year - and there’s been no word yet on whether the two engines have been able to set agreeable revenue-sharing terms.                     

Is PPC Dying? - Gary Stein’s look at the state of paid search today combines a historical overview of the practice with a focus on new developments — and begs a heavy, albeit hypothetical question: With all the advancements in rich media and display ads and the ever-present issue of click fraud , is PPC as we know it becoming extinct? Stein admits that pay-per-click advertising isn’t dead yet — but it’s rapidly being eclipsed by more targeted, efficient models like CPA.

Google Recruits Publishers For AdSense Content Network - Google has recruited roughly 100 YouTube publisher partners to help transform its AdSense network into a content distribution network. The program promises more visibility to content publishers facing an increasingly fragmented audience online.                                 

Real Leaders Are Stepping Up In Online Health - It’s long been conventional wisdom that our health system — for all its success in innovation — is structurally broken. But change is coming. Some great enterprises are leading the charge to give individuals the control, information and tools they need to make the best health and wellness decisions. One of the most intriguing was launched last week by Microsoft’s HealthVault.                       

Word of Mouth Works Worldwide - There are more marketing channels aimed at consumers than ever. Yet more than three-quarters of consumers surveyed worldwide find that consumer opinions are the most effective form of advertising, according to a Nielsen study. Nielsen surveyed Internet users in 47 markets in Europe, Asia Pacific, the Americas and the Middle East on their attitudes toward many types of ads, including television, branded Web sites and consumer-generated content.                   

Ballmer’s Big Bet: Microsoft Will Be Ad Giant - Steve Ballmer has discovered the gospel of advertising — again. And he’ll need all his evangelical powers to convince the world’s largest marketers at this week’s Association of National Advertisers conference in Phoenix that this time, he means it. He’ll discuss how Microsoft itself is a huge marketer, spending $3 billion on advertising. And he’ll outline how, in four to 10 years, advertising will account for as much as 25% of Microsoft’s business. For those of you who are counting, based on the most recent year’s revenue that would be north of $12 billion — a couple billion more than Google made in total last year.                     

Why MySpace Monetizes Traffic Better - The Web press is still absolutely transfixed by Facebook (which is registering new users at a clip of 150,000 per day), so it’s not surprising that executives at rival MySpace are granting interviews all over the place–’hey guys, what about us?’ To be fair, MySpace is still the largest social network, and one of the most highly trafficked sites on the Web. It’s also far more lucrative than its young competitor: parent Fox Interactive tells USA Today that MySpace is on pace to earn $1 billion in revenue for the fiscal year ending in June.                 

News Aggregation A Bright Spot For Web Portals - One of Yahoo’s most valuable areas is news. In the last few years, the Web giant has firmly entrenched itself as the No. 1 provider of news on the Internet in all the major categories: general, financial and sports. An astonishing two in five users reads Yahoo News–or 50 million people per month, according to comScore, which is more than Google News, even.                                    

Google Has A Social Network, Btw - Google shares have shot past $600, giving the Web giant a valuation of $190 billion-plus. For many critics, the question now becomes: where do we grow from here? Industry watchers have often criticized Google for failing to get into social networking, but BusinessWeek points out that they would be wrong, as Google–outside of North America and Europe–is very much in the social networking game. Orkut, as Google’s social network is called, generates 24.6 million monthly uniques across the globe (nearly a quarter of MySpace’s traffic)–nearly all of which come from Asia and Latin America.            

Create Virtual Worlds Using Google Earth - Virtual world developer Multiverse is announcing a partnership today with Google allowing Web users to create their own virtual worlds using 3D models from Google 3D Warehouse, Google SketchUp and Google Earth. Although it sounds complicated, CNET insists that it’s not: the Multiverse platform allows users to literally grab images from 3D Warehouse, whole environments from Google Earth, and 3D models created using SketchUp, and plot them in a digital universe that’s all your own–well, you and anyone else who wants to play in your newly created world.

Microsoft’s Health Vault Could Snag Advertisers, Given Time - HealthVault, Microsoft’s online medical records repository and health search engine hybrid, would appear to be a likely shoo-in for pharmaceutical and health-care advertisers–but experts say that user adoption is the crucial element that will determine its success.                          Advertisers Seem Unfazed By Issue Of Sexual Predators On Social Networks - MySpace, Facebook and even Google’s lowly Orkut are facing increased governmental scrutiny to monitor for sexual predators. Brand researchers say parental concern is growing. Advertisers, meanwhile, are not letting the issue deter their experimentation. “It’s not on the radar,” says the ANA’s Bob Liodice.            

Yahoo Worth More Divided Or Sold: Analyst - Yahoo’s value will not be unleashed until it is broken up or sold, Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Jeffrey Lindsay said in a research report last week.                  

What About The Long Tail? - On the Internet, big does not mean better. Small, long-tail Web sites are indispensable to consumers — and they provide a new way for brands to position ads where users want to see them. Here’s how ad exchanges factor in.                     

Radiohead’s Approach Worries Recording Industry - The release of the album “In Rainbows” by British rock band Radiohead is being closely watched this week by the music industry for several reasons: for one thing, the band is one of the most highly acclaimed rock groups by critics worldwide. For another, the band decided to allow fans to pay whatever they want to download the new album, which is sure to make recording industry executives sit up and take notice.                 

Facebook Targets Musicians - It looks like Facebook is readying a new feature that will let musicians create pages for their bands and promote their tracks and upcoming concerts on the site. News of the service surfaced late last week on PaidContent. With this initiative, aimed at capturing a bigger share of the indie music crowd, Facebook will challenge rival social networking site MySpace in one of its oldest core strengths.                                   

Analyst: Yahoo Needs To Split Up, Or Restructure - To boost its share price, Yahoo needs to either break up its online businesses or go through a major business model makeover, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay said in an a research note last week. Viewed separately, Lindsay said Yahoo’s operations–which include advertising services, content, and Web search–could be valued as high as $39 per share; its current share price is $27.                                   

Big Four Seek To Benefit From Consumer Fragmentation - The major portals, sensing that the fragmentation of Web content consumption is an irreversible trend, have all moved aggressively into the business of online ad-serving. In fact, AOL, MSN, Yahoo and Google have collectively spent more than $10 billion on such companies this year to help expand their online networks. If you can’t beat ‘em, you might as well grab a cut of their ad revenue. Instead of spending more money to create stickier content, the Internet majors plan on becoming a one-stop shop for advertisers. The networks they have purchased (with the exception of Google-DoubleClick and AOL-Tacoda) mostly feed ads to small Web sites.

eMarketer Analysts on Fee vs. “Free” - The New York Times has abandoned its “Times Select” subscription service. The Financial Times is making more of its content available free. Rupert Murdoch is widely rumored to be planning the same for The Wall Street Journal. Is this a trend? Several eMarketer analysts weighed in on the state of fee-based versus ad-supported online content.                       

How eBay Created Latest Internet Bubble - eBay’s failure with respect to its 2005 purchase of Skype is CEO Meg Whitman’s fault. Earlier in the week, eBay issued the bookkeeping equivalent of a “mea culpa” by taking a $1.4 billion charge related to its $2.6 billion acquisition of the voice-over Internet protocol provider. Skype, as many predicted, has been a disaster for eBay. It paid way too much for a company with an unproven business model and there are no obvious synergies.                

MySpace To Facebook Exodus Continues - Sick of all the spam, MySpace users are leaving the News Corp. site in droves and heading for Facebook. The defection may soon become an exodus: August data from comScore shows that Facebook attracted 33 percent more users than July, while MySpace declined 7.4 percent over the same period. Still, Facebook has a long way to go to eclipse Rupert Murdoch’s prized online possession: MySpace had 105.7 million users to Facebook’s 69.3 million, according to the comScore data.        

UC-Berkeley Opens YouTube Channel - Who needs to pay to go to college? Earlier this week, the University of California at Berkeley announced it would make full course lectures available on Google’s YouTube. At launch, Berkeley will have over 300 hours of video available through its new YouTube channel. Course lectures include bioengineering, physics, chemistry, peace and conflict studies, and of course, search engines, by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.       

Microsoft Moves Into Health Care - Microsoft Corp. is moving into health care. CEO Steve Ballmer described a future where everyone would have a secure and private Web site containing their personal health information, where doctors could post scans, x-rays, test results and visit information. Individuals could then choose to see who has access to view some or all of that information. The new product is called Health Vault. Microsoft’s plan is to make each personal Web site as secure as keeping it in a bank, storing all health data and giving users immediate access to those records at any time, via the Web.             

Media M&A Surges In Q3; Online Deals Worth $8.3 Billion: Report - A new report from media investment bank Jordan, Edmiston Group pegs the total value of media M&A during the third quarter at $95 billion, up 110 percent from $45 billion in the same quarter last year. In terms of volume, online media saw the most activity, with 232 deals worth $8.3 billion— up from 136 deals worth $5.7 billion last year. Large deals in this sub-sector included R.H. Donnelley’s $345 million purchase of Business.com and Disney’s (NYSE: DIS) $350 million purchase of Club Penguin.      

BabyCenter Head Tina Sharkey Says Site Worth $500 Million - $1 Billion - Tina Sharkey, global president of Johnson & Johnson-owned baby site BabyCenter, says she gets three calls per week from parties interested in acquiring the site, though of course it is fully owned by Johnson & Johnson. Speaking at the Momentum Conference, Sharkey denied that J&J was interested in selling the site, but that it could fetch between $500 million and $1 billion, reports Tech Confidential. The price tag would be a nice score for J&J, which acquired the site for $10 million back in 2001.            

AzoogleAds Branches Into SEM with Bazaar Acquisition - In an effort to morph AzoogleAds into more than just a performance-based affiliate advertising specialist, the company has acquired Bazaar Advertising, a San Francisco search engine management and advertising player whose technology impressed AzoogleAds’ executives.         

Microsoft Acquires Jellyfish.com - Social shopping, shopping 2.0, shopping discovery. Whatever you want to call it, there’s a ton of action these days around services that add community elements to legacy shopping features like ratings and price comparisons. The news on this front today is that Microsoft has acquired Madison-based Jellyfish.com, which generates large discounts by mobilizing large groups of buyers through chat and auctions to purchase a single product on a single day.          

eBay Buys German Auction Site Afterbuy.com - eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) has acquired ViA-Online GmbH, the German auction management software developer that operates Afterbuy.com. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.      

Liberty Media Offers To Buy Remaining Shares in Online Gaming Firm Fun Technologies - Liberty Media (NSDQ: LINTA), the media holding company, will buy the remaining shares in online and casual publisher Fun Technologies, parent group of the Skilljam and Worldwinner sites, at a price per share of GBP 1.75. Liberty presently indirectly owns nearly 53 percent of the outstanding Fun common shares. More details in the release.

Facebook Charges Forward - As Facebook continues its rise speculation mounts over its future. EMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson says the company’s “may be onto something big” with its new ad targeting system. “It takes Google’s concept of targeted search advertising and goes multiple steps further,” she says, by delivering targeted ads not just to individuals but also their friends. Others are equally bullish about Facebook’s long-term prospects. IDC analyst Karsten Weide says that Faceook, and not Google, could become the operating system of the future, especially if it successfully integrates necessary Web services like word processing. That would indicate a sovereign future for the company, which analysts believe will attempt to go public late next year. Others say an acquisition or two may be on the horizon between now and then.                    

Facebook “Barnacles” Find Success - Facebook is growing rapidly. The site is now 43 million strong, and a rash of third-party software programs is making it even stickier. Indeed, third-party development is supposed to be a big part of the company’s future, but no one has made that model profitable yet. Nevertheless, RockYou and Slide, the site’s most prolific third-party developers, believe that being “a barnacle” on Facebook, is a business model for the future. “This is a completely new channel of delivering content to users and letting them communicate,” said RockYou CEO Luke Tokuda. “Owning that over the long stretch can be worth a lot.”             

GoogleClick Union May Dominate Media - Count San Francisco Chronicle columnist Joseph Turow, a communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania, as one of those who’s freaked out by the idea of a Google-DoubleClick merger being approved. For one thing, the move to acquire the ad serving giant signals the company’s (scary) intent to control all media. Google’s technology has the power to tell us what we’d like to see, based on the massive amount of information it collects. The search giant also has the power (and intention) to sell that information to advertisers. Turow warns that the DoubleClick merger would be a giant step in the direction of making Google “the only place marketers have to go to reach you and just about anybody else.”

Three Warnings For Facebook - Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, whose company powers advertising for Facebook, told the Times Online that the social networking site and media darling ran a serious risk of becoming a passing fad. Is that any way to treat a business partner? The young company could befall a number of unfortunate fates if it fails to play its hand correctly in the near future. The magazine offers three potential causes of such a death, starting with user exodus, Facebook’s most serious concern. Web users are a fickle bunch; despite a host of great bells and whistles, if something else comes along, watch how quickly its users defect.             

IAB: First-Half Internet Ad Revenues Of $10B Up 27% - IAB President/CEO Randall Rothenberg calls it the “Oh my God, it happened” year for major marketers as the shift of marketing budgets to online channels marches on. Search continued to account for the highest dollar spending, at 41% of the total. Still, Rothenberg says, more efficiency and simplicity are needed for spending to really take off.    

Yahoo Considering “Strategic Options” For Comparison Shopping Service Kelkoo in Europe - Besides closing down some services here in U.S., Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) is now considering divesting the European comparison shopping site Kelkoo, reports FT. It bought the site in 2004, for a price then of about $575 million. It said in the FT story: “Today we are starting a process to give Kelkoo more independence—while we evaluate strategic options for the long-term future of the business.”           

Was $1 Billion Invested in 35 Virtual Worlds In The Past Year? Not Quite - A report from Virtual Worlds Management, which tracks the virtual worlds industry, says over $1 billion was invested in 35 virtual worlds over the last 12 months. Most of this figure is Disney’s (NYSE: DIS) purchase of Club Penguin, which the group is calling a $700 million deal, although $350 million is contingent on performance and has yet to be paid out. The other huge deal on the list is Intel’s (NSDQ: INTC) $110 million purchase of Havok, which is not a virtual world, but rather makes graphics technology that can be used by virtual worlds, although not exclusively. It counts Second Life as a customer.