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Facebook Revamps Beacon Program Amid Protests - Facebook capitulated to MoveOn.org protesters late Thursday evening, announcing that it would require users’ opt-in consent to the Beacon program. Confronted with growing resistance to its new ad program said it would no longer publish information about users’ online purchases without their explicit consent.                                

IAB Forum Panelists Underscore Need For Clarity In Web Metrics - A panel of online audience research specialists grappled Thursday with issues ranging from simplifying Web metrics to reconciling server and panel-based data to how many Web metrics firms the market will support. The panelists–featuring top executives from Nielsen Online, comScore, Hitwise and Microsoft, among others–were convened for the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s first Audience Measurement Leadership Forum.                          

Huffington: Next Big Thing On Internet = Logging Off - To the agency world, digital is like that stalking cyborg in James Cameron’s sequel “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” That’s according to Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor in chief of The Huffington Post. At first, the Terminator seems like a threat to the movie’s mother-and-son protagonists, Sarah and John Connor. But, “little by little, [Sarah] realized that it was her only true friend,” she says. In other words, just like the Connors survived by embracing the Terminator, Huffington said, “the only agency people who’ll succeed are those who fully integrate.”          

Disney Exec: Online Revenue Could Be Double - Online ad revenues could be double what they are if Internet audience metrics were simpler and clearer for marketers to grasp. That was one of the conclusions of Steven Wadsworth, president of Walt Disney Internet Group, who gave the keynote address at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s inaugural Measurement Leadership Forum on Thursday.               

What Are Marketers Thinking? - Have you ever wanted to get inside another marketer’s head? That is exactly what researchers from Anderson Analytics set out to do. At a moment when the marketing environment may more difficult than at any time in history, they surveyed over 600 members of the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG) to identify the “Top Marketing Trends for 2008.”        

TV Companies Make $120 Million Online in 2007 - While Hollywood writers continue to strike over royalties for digital work, the four major U.S. television networks will generate around $120 million from free Web streams of their content. That’s according to Tracey Scehppach, senior vice president of leading media-buying agency Starcom, which claims that advertisers are flocking to reproductions of shows like “Desperate Housewives” and “Heroes” on the Web. The $120 million figure is an estimate based on what Starcom has been paying for spots across the four networks.                           

No Truth in Online Advertising - If you’re looking for one truth in online advertising, it’s that there is no truth. At least that’s what Bob Ivins, one of the leading men at Web measurement firm comScore Media Metrix says. comScore is in the business of telling advertisers what they’re paying for.                  

Intuit to Acquire Homestead Technologies - Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq:INTU - News) today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to purchase Homestead Technologies Inc., a leader in Web site and Web store solutions for small businesses. The cash transaction is valued at approximately $170 million, including the assumption of Homestead’s outstanding options and restricted stock units. This transaction will enable Intuit to offer Web site creation and e-commerce solutions that help small businesses acquire and serve customers through the Internet, which are increasingly important factors to entrepreneurial success and business expansion.    

American Greetings to acquire PhotoWorks for $26.5MM - Greeting card maker American Greetings Corp (AM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) will acquire PhotoWorks Inc (PHTW.OB: Quote, Profile, Research), through its unit, for about $26.5 million, the companies said. American Greetings will make a cash tender offer to acquire all outstanding common shares of PhotoWorks at a price of 59.5 cents a share.                   

Big Fish Games Purchases Thinglefin - Thinglefin, a developer of massively multi-player online casual games, was acquired by Big Fish Games (Seattle, WA). Terms of the transaction are undisclosed. Prior to this transaction, California Technology Ventures was the company’s investor.         

Social Gaming Company Aims To Snag Brand Dollars Via New Acquisition - Sites that serve the online gaming community tend to feature ads shilling “gamer-friendly” products like electronics, but GuildCafe Entertainment CEO Jon Radoff is betting that lifestyle brands will jump on the bandwagon in the next 12 months. That’s part of the reason why GuildCafe has acquired Uberguilds, a network of high-profile gaming communities that connect players of online games like Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft and Sony’s EverQuest series.

Google Helps Callers Find Themselves With Maps App - Google announced a new version of its popular mobile maps application that includes a new feature giving users their approximate location. The “My Location” feature allows people without GPS-enabled phones to find out where they are by pressing “0″ on their device keypads.                                       

Adobe Taps Yahoo To Serve Ads In PDF Files - Adobe has tapped Yahoo to launch a new contextual ad service for PDF files, giving publishers the option of monetizing their white papers, case studies and other documents with dynamic ads. Called “Ads for Adobe PDF Powered by Yahoo,” publishers can participate in the beta program for free starting Thursday, while advertisers will be able to buy PDF inventory as part of routine Yahoo Publisher Network buys.                 

1,500 Web Publishers Join the ADSDAQ Ad Exchange in Only 30 Days - ContextWeb, Inc. announced today that 1,500 web publishers have joined its ADSDAQ(tm) Ad Exchange via the company’s new self-service name-your-price “Selling Desk“ since it was first offered on October 17th. The new web-based offering allows small- and medium-sized content publishers to join the ADSDAQ Exchange in less than five minutes. The additions more than double the number of Web publishers working with ContextWeb’s ADSDAQ to 2,500 (see Table 1 for rankings).              

A Bigger Footprint for Engagement: The Value of the Mid-Tail - Online brand advertisers know about the power of engagement–the more time a user spends with a brand the better–and that engagement potential increases with both the size of creative unit and opportunity for interaction. Ideally, advertisers should avail themselves of some of the larger creative units and many emerging forms of integration that take advantage of the unique interactive opportunities of the Web–e.g., home page re-skins, microsites, product placement, advertorials, promotions, etc. But the cost of these results in reducing the overall budget for audience reach.                    

I Want My…MySpace? - MySpace is bigger and some might say more mature than Facebook, the current rising star of social networking. At the moment, it’s certainly more profitable: This year the News Corp. company is set to rake in $200 to $300 million before interest and taxes on revenue of $800 million. However, MySpace’s user growth is slowing, which means that stickiness, or average time spent per user, has become the key growth metric for the social network moving forward. As it ages, MySpace is starting to look more like MTV and less like a traditional social network.

LinkedIn Worth “A Lot More” Than $1 Billion - Is LinkedIn exploring a possible sale to MySpace parent News Corp.? Dan Nye, the social network’s CEO, doesn’t deny that Rupert Murdoch made an offer, but he maintains that the company’s board is more interested in building LinkedIn than cashing out. “It would take a helluva lot to get us off that path,” Nye says. $1 billion? More than that, he says.       

Nearly Now or Never For eBay’s Skype - 2008 could be a “make-or-break-year” for Skype, the voiceover Internet protocol company eBay bought for $2.6 billion two and a half years ago. At the time, the Skype purchase widely regarded as a bizarre deal because many wondered how the online auctioneer planned to integrate an Internet telephony company that offered its services for next to nothing into its online shopping business. In the end (if indeed the marriage is approaching an end), eBay never quite made it work, admitting as much when the company took a $1.4 billion impairment charge on the 2005 acquisition.

Privacy Groups Ready FTC Complaint Against Facebook - Adding to the backlash against Facebook’s new advertising programs, privacy groups are preparing to file complaints with the Federal Trade Commission against the social networking site. The digital civil rights group Electronic Privacy Information Center intends to file a complaint by January about both Facebook’s new SocialAds and Beacon programs.                                  

Networks Look to AOL’s Userplane For Tools - Seeking new ways to engage and retain viewers, TV networks are increasingly investing in online community tools and other initiatives. Several have enlisted the help of America Online’s Userplane subsidiary, which licenses ad-supported chat, instant messaging and video messaging tools.

Social Media Bubble Poised to Burst - Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble: with the “R” word looming over the greater U.S. economy, the “B” word is once again being tied to Silicon Valley. Over the past few years, private equity and Silicon Valley VC firms have poured millions into social media startups aiming for a slice of the growing online advertising pie, but some analysts fear that to avoid another bubble burst, that pie has to be big. Their concern: investors over-estimating its size.                    

Pros and Cons Of “Open” Verizon - Perhaps the most surprising news this week is the decision by Verizon Wireless–one of the old-guard cellular carriers–to open its network and platform to third-party handset makers and software developers. From a pessimist’s perspective, Verizon decided to do this because it doesn’t want to make open network concessions at the upcoming 700 MHz FCC auction. Opening up now means the company would be able to say “we’re already open,” even though third parties would be forced to use the telecom’s proprietary software development kit to create and run programs on its CDMA-based network.

Imagine: MySpace As Ad Network - Fox Interactive Media, News Corp.’s Internet division that oversees the social network MySpace, announced a plan to sell advertising across its online network with the ultimate goal of allowing other media companies to join. “We’re well down the path in terms of discussions with some of the other News Corp properties to do ad serving,” FIM CEO Ross Levinsohn said. “Ultimately, we’ll take the company off network and become an ad network for assets outside of the News Corporation empire.” The plan could take effect as early as the first half 2008.      

A Micro-Yahoo Google Competitor In 3 Easy Steps - As a follow-up to his post about why perennial Google chaser Microsoft might have to buy Yahoo, Silicon Alley Insider’s Henry Blodget explores how such a deal might unfold–and why it would be bad for Yahoo. This is mostly because Microsoft’s online division “will always play second-fiddle to the Windows and Office monopolies,” meaning that any strategy for the combined company would deign to preserve those monopolies. This is why he says Microsoft has “failed so miserably online for the past 12 years: internal politics and competing priorities.”

Classmates.com Parent Updates IPO Prospectus - The parent of pioneering social networking site Classmates.com has filed an updated prospectus indicating that it plans to raise up to $144 million in an initial public offering. Classmates Media, the social networking arm of United Online which also includes loyalty marketing service MyPoints.com, plans to sell 12 million shares priced at $10 to $12 each.                                

Online Shopping Up 22% On Black Friday - Despite the threat of recession and reduced holiday sales, online retailers enjoyed spending and traffic gains over last year on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving known for heavy shopping.Online buying on Black Friday increased 22% over 2006 to $531 million, according to Web measurement firm comScore, with sales of video games and consoles nearly tripling.                        

Study: Consumer Brands Drop The Ball When It Comes To Online Transactions - Despite the feature-rich, brand-positive experience that top consumer brands like Mercedes, Colgate-Palmolive and IBM strive to create, their Web sites dropped the ball when it came to purchases and other transactions, according to a study by Blast Radius.          

FCC Urged to Subsidize Broadband Access In Rural Areas - In a move aimed at making high-speed Internet service more widely available, a government advisory board is urging the Federal Communications Commission in a report to devote $300 million to subsidizing broadband access in rural areas. The report has drawn a lukewarm reception from some consumer advocates who say they’re pleased that the government wants to improve broadband availability, but that far more than $300 million is needed.

Google Upgrades Checkout Offerings, Adds Perks - Launched in late June 2006, Google Checkout is an electronic payment system that aims to simplify the online shopping experience — letting users create a single account for purchases on multiple sites. Shoppers can keep track of their purchases, retailer contact info and shipping status, as the system creates a purchase history log.

Online Advertising Continues to Bolster Newspapers - Preliminary estimates from the Newspaper Association of America show that advertising expenditures for newspaper Web sites increased by 21.1 percent to $773 million in the third quarter versus the same period a year ago. This is the fourteenth consecutive quarter of double digit growth for online newspaper advertising since 2004. The continued year-over-year gains have demonstrated the importance of newspaper Web site advertising, which now accounts for 7.1 percent of total newspaper ad spending, compared to 5.4 percent in last year’s third quarter.

Retail Adapts to Digital Movie Rentals - Blockbuster is focusing on its retail stores and turning attention away from its online movie service, according to an analyst call this month reported by Reuters. As part of the announcement, the company said it would decrease advertising for the next six months. The announcements come at a time of change in home entertainment. US digital movie download spending will reach $846 million in 2011, eMarketer projects.

Google To Launch Service That Stores Users’ Data - In an effort to turn up the heat with its battle with Microsoft, Google plans to launch a service that lets users store on its computers essentially all of the files they might keep on their personal-computer hard drives: word-processing documents, digital music, video clips and images. Some storage space would be available for free and users would pay for additional room. Google will likely face matters such as privacy matters and copyright issues before this service takes flight.                    

NBC Offers Interactive Ads - NBC Universal will begin offering nteractive advertising services and subscribe to a ratings service from TiVo, the companies said on Tuesday. The agreement covers GE’s 14 networks — including NBC, Telemundo and Bravo — as well as its 10 NBC-owned TV stations.

Forget Facebook. Search Ads Are the Revolution - Facebook unleashed SocialAds this month, calling it the beginning of a revolutionary, hundred-year era in advertising that will see the end of untargeted messages in mass media. If the revolution is upon us, allow me to submit the lowly search ad as the true revolutionary. For unlike social ads and most other types of advertising, search is something people want rather than something that gets in the way.

Looking to Extend Online Reach? Try a Vertical Ad Network - Rule No. 1 in the transition from traditional to digital media company: Being an offline powerhouse doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be blessed with online scale. That’s why many of those players are turning to vertical ad networks. Publishers and TV networks such as Martha Stewart, The Washington Post, The Guardian and Lifetime all are selling audiences they didn’t actually attract. They are doing so through partnerships with companies such as Adify, which provides the technology to create vertical ad networks, and Glam Media, which already boasts a massive women-focused network.

Cyber Monday: Shop ‘Til You Drop….or Flop? - Will today be one of the top-selling days of the holiday season for online retailers–or just another Monday? Retail experts expect a surge of online shopping today, but industry watchers appear divided over whether “Cyber Monday”–the online counterpart to Black Friday–will exceed last year’s sales as consumers begin their online shopping earlier than ever.                                                       

Study Analyzes Social Engagement Marketing - That social networks are monopolizing an ever greater share of consumers’ time is clear. It is less clear exactly how marketers in the United States and abroad can most effectively measure their engagement across these burgeoning channels. JupiterResearch recently analyzed the European market for social and engagement marketing, which highlights key findings about how marketers and their agencies measure the effectiveness of engagement in marketing campaigns.                                          

CPG Starts Thinking Outside the Box - After decades of relying on television and print advertising, US consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketers are finally moving a larger proportion of their marketing budgets online. This year, eMarketer projects that CPG companies will spend $920 million on all forms of Internet advertising, up 33% over 2006.                          

Facebook’s Dangerous Data Game - More than 13,000 Facebook users have signed a petition against the new advertising practices laid out by the company a few weeks ago. An opt-out recommendation system that sends notices to users’ friends about the products and services they buy is among the ad “innovations” that have been identified by the group as compromising user privacy. Blogger/Web entrepreneur Jason Calacanis calls the new advertising tools “extremely innovative, extremely rude, extremely helpful, and extremely disconcerting.”                  

Facebook, ABC Strike Political Partnership - The social network Facebook may be turning itself into something of a media hub–having struck a partnership with ABC News that allows Facebook users to electronically follow political news through a new “U.S. politics” category that allows users to follow ABC reporters, view reports and video and participate in polls and debates. The two companies also announced that they would be jointly sponsoring the upcoming Democratic and Republican presidential debates in New Hampshire.                                  

The Sorry State Of The Mobile Web - Small gains have been made recently, but the mobile Web still has a long, long way to go, says The New York Times’ Michael Fitzgerald. Apple’s iPhone is encouraging, and so is Google’s Open Handset Alliance–which allows developers to make programs for Google’s operating software, Android–but for the most part, companies are offering mobile services that people just don’t use. According to Fitzgerald, “disaster” is “lurking like your next dropped call.”        

The Big Four: Who’s Best At Specific Kinds Of Searches? - According to comScore’s latest qSearch data report, Google (surprise!) gained the most ground in terms of market share and number of search queries. But in an informal poll, the SEO Space team asked searchers which of the Big Four (Google, Yahoo, ASK and Live Search) they liked best for specific variations on core search. Surprisingly, ASK took the top spot in over half of the categories, while Google ranked best for only one.          

Online Revenue Grew 21% In 3Q For Newspapers - Advertising revenue for online newspapers’ operations grew 21% in the third quarter to $773 million, according to figures released Tuesday by the Newspaper Association of America. Overall, online now accounts for 7.1% of total advertising revenue in the newspaper industry–up from 5.4% in the third quarter of 2006.

US Media Owners Substituting “Pennies for Dollars” Online? - Are new online business models just substituting “pennies for dollars” for media owners? That was the woeful conclusion of Mort Zuckerman, publisher of the New York Daily News and US News and World Report, according to the detailed minutes of a recent inquiry into media ownership by the UK House of Lord’s Communications Committee released Friday. In September, the committee visited the U.S. and the offices of its major media owners, regulators, and media groups looking at the state of newspapers, broadcasters, radio and online.                                                       

TV Networks’ Online Ad Inventory Unexpectedly Opens - Thanks to rising online viewership and the nature of broadband audience agreements with advertisers, the major TV networks have a lot more advertising to sell for their streaming programming, TVWeek reports. The situation highlights a major difference in the economics of TV and online advertising: On TV, if a show attracts more viewers than promised, advertisers essentially get “free” exposure on top of what they paid for, as deals cover specific episode dates and times. But online, a network can cease running an ad once it has delivered the number of viewers the advertiser has previously requested.                        

Who’s Who in B2B Publishing - From Media Business magazine, the always-interesting list of the top players in the B2B publishing industry in its latest November issue. It includes some of the execs we cover here regularly, including Neil Ashe, CEO, CNET (NSDQ: CNET) Networks; David Carey, Group president-publishing director, Conde Nast Business Media; Keith Fox, President, BusinessWeek; and our friend Rex Hammock, President, Hammock Publishing.                     

Diller Says IAC Will Invest As Much As $100 Million in China - IAC, (NSDQ: IACI) in the process of splitting into five groups, will invest as much as $100 million in China to build a new Internet business there and will bring in Ask.com, said Barry Diller, speaking to reporters in Beijing today. Details on what it will do there are unclear, and also not sure if Diller’s remarks were off the cuff. This Reuters story quotes him on it: “We certainly have enough capital to do damage..I think about $100 million,” he said. Diller said he would consider buying an existing company, but would prefer to establish a new business, perhaps by backing a Chinese entrepreneur.                                          

AT&T to Acquire Ad Company Ingenio - AT&T said Monday it plans to acquire advertising company Ingenio and integrate its technology into the carrier’s online Yellow Pages and other services. The acquisition highlights growing interest in mobile advertising by wireless carriers and online companies alike.

WPP Buys 75 Percent Of Indian Online Ad Agency Quasar - WPP, the global ad agency holding company, is buying a 75 percent stake in Indian online media agency Quasar Media. This puts to rest the speculation that has been on for some time about WPP’s M&A goals in India. WPP CEO Martin Sorrell mentioned this on Friday, on the sidelines of the Morgan Stanley technology, media and telecoms conference, and the official announcement came out today. 

Yahoo Signs Licensing Deal With Sony BMG - Yahoo has signed a broad new licensing agreement with Sony BMG that allows consumers to add music and video content from the label and its artists to user-generated creations. The agreement marks the first time Yahoo has licensed content from a major record label in connection with user-generated videos. Sony BMG signed a similar licensing deal with Google last year and another struck last month with social networking site MySpace.                                                        

Digital Music: Just A Band-Aid For Music Industry’s Gaping Wound - Despite the growth of digital spending to one-third of the U.S. consumer music market by 2012, it won’t be enough to offset the decline in CD sales, according to JupiterResearch, a New York-based research company. Digital sales this year are expected to hit $1.3 billion. But gains in the online business aren’t expected to reverse the industry’s overall slide, with total revenues estimated in 2012 at $10.1 billion, down from $11.6 billion in 2006.                                          

Growing Backlash Over Facebook Social Ads - The early verdict is in: Facebook’s “social ads” are a bust. Two weeks after Facebook’s “groundbreaking” announcement about “a new way of advertising online,” more than 2,000 of its own users have joined activist group MoveOn.org in complaining that the new system compromises user privacy. They want the social network to immediately suspend or reform “Beacon,” the program that recommends products and services people buy to their friends.                                                       

Google Stock Price Heads For $900 - Financial analysts continue to raise their target price for high-flying Google. Credit Suisse Group on Tuesday became the latest firm to push its valuation of the search giant closer to $1,000 per share, saying it expects Google to surpass $900 per share next year. According to Bloomberg data, Credit Suisse’s valuation is the highest among the 37 brokerages that rate its stock. As of Wednesday morning, Google was trading at $647.85 per share, which means a jump to $900 would represent a 40 percent increase. Google’s stock has risen 31 percent so far in 2007.                                       

GoogleClick: Coming Up With a Plan B; $250 Million to Build In-House Ad Exchange: Report - Last week, the EU announced its intent to launch an expanded probe into Google’s (NSDQ: GOOG) acquisition of DoubleClick, prompting real concern that the deal may end up blocked. While the EU’s decision does not prejudge the outcome, it’s always good to have a backup plan. A new research report form Bernstein’s Jeff Lindsay looks at some of the options available to Google, should the EU (or the FTC for that matter) ultimately come down against the acquisition. He lays out four scenarios: a) Forgo competing in the ad-exchange business. b) Purchase another player, possibly ValueClick. C) Build an in-house ad exchange. D) Form a JV, possibly with DoubleClick.                                                

TheStreet.com: TCV’s 13 Percent Minority Stake; Calculating the Potential Profits - Last week, TheStreet.com (NSDQ: TSCM) announced that it had sold a minority stake in itself to PE/VC firm TCV for $55 million. In an 8-K filed with the SEC today, the company clarified what TCV got for its investment. In addition to the 1.1 million warrants exercisable at $15.69/share over the next five years (as stated in the initial release), the firm got Series B shares that convert to 3.85 million common shares at a price of $14.26. Based on the company’s most recent share count of 29.54 million, this stake comes to 13 percent. Also, at $14.26, the 3.85 mill shares come right to $55 million, the size of the investment. 

Senators Voice Concern Over Google, DoubleClick Deal - Two high-ranking senators Monday told the Federal Trade Commission they were concerned that Google’s planned $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick carries “profound and potentially far-reaching” implications for the Internet ad market, and “raises fundamental consumer privacy concerns.”                                   

Use Of Broadband Service To Overtake TV Viewing - Within the next three years, more than 16 million U.S. households with televisions will use their broadband service more than they use their TV sets today, says technology consulting firm In-Stat. Up to 30% of viewers will drop subscription TV and use the Internet for watching TV, according to a recent survey by the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based In-Stat. More than 40% say they aren’t getting enough international news and information from their current TV service, despite having hundreds of channels to choose from.                      

How Widgets Turn Distributed Content into Distributed Marketing - Nobody ever said online publishing is easy, but no amount of warning could have adequately prepared us for the perfect storm of competition that arose over the last couple of years. On one front, broadband reached critical mass and pushed online media consumption (and consumer reliance on it) to new heights, spurring a new rash of startups and the venture capital to fund and promote them. Amidst this new competition, our very audience became extraordinarily prolific, producing themselves countless gigabytes of blogs and photo galleries and videos that compete with established publishers not just for mindshare, but even for authority on almost all topics.                       

Banking Sold Online, Serviced Offline - In the first six months of 2007, US financial services companies spent $1.5 billion on online ads. But that still isn’t enough to convince US consumers to seek financial advice online.             

Is User-Produced Video Losing its Appeal? - The explosion of online video on the Web used to be all about amateurs. Not anymore. Apparently, the average Web user has become bored with clips of lip-syncing 7-year-olds and kittens falling asleep. Professionally produced programming surpasses amateur video as the hottest trend in online video. VideoEgg co-founder Matt Sanchez. z would know: Video Egg provides producers with tools for making and delivering ads to online videos.            

Yahoo Europe on Probation - Yahoo has issued an ultimatum to its Yahoo Europe employees: improve performance or we will sell the company or close down these doors entirely. Toby Coppel, the new head Yahoo’s European business, says its challenges in Europe are more substantial than in the U.S. “In rushing out to market, we built a lot of applications that didn’t speak to each other,” he said. We were managing a larger number of legacy products with fewer people than in the States.”              

Facebook To Acquire Chinese Social Network? - The hot rumor this week is that Facebook is planning on acquiring its way into the expanding Chinese social networking market by buying Zhanzuo.com. The Web startup, which runs on massive funding provided by Silicon Valley investors and most recently, Microsoft, is reported to have tabled an $85 million offer for the Chinese social network, according to British paper The Guardian. However, any deal has been refuted. “No offer has been made and no acquisition in China is being considered by Facebook,” its director of Communications told TechCrunch.

FTC Investigation Takes Toll On ValueClick - ValueClick chief executive of Online Marketing Tom Vadnais says the FTC investigation is casting a cloud over its lead-generation business, with both advertisers and publishers skittish about running ads that might be considered questionable. Vadnais said he sees little difference between the types of promotions people often get in their mailboxes at home and the kinds of offers presented online by ValueClick and others.                                    

AOL Unveils Video ‘Ticker’ Ads, New Alternative To Pre-Roll - In the latest effort to find an alternative to pre-roll video ads, AOL this morning announced plans to begin offering “video ticker ads,” a graphic banner ad this is integrated directly into streaming video content.                         

You’ve Got Competition: AOL Enters Digital Madison Avenue - With the recent announcement that AOL is moving its headquarters from Dulles, Virginia to New York City and slashing its workforce, the company is stepping forward to present itself as a major player in the increasingly competitive world of online advertising. Despite the initial shock of the numbers, the layoffs may have been inevitable as AOL works to reinvent itself and looks for people that will advance this new path. However, the talent with the necessary skill sets and know-how that AOL needs for their evolution is few and far between.                         

Amid Strike, NBC Hires Web-Only Show - A Web-only show is making the giant digital leap from the Internet to network television. “Quarterlife”, the creation of “thirtysomething” producers Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, is on its way to NBC starting in February or March, after its run on the Internet ends. Quarterlife is about a young woman who publishes a video blog to the Web that gets her into trouble with friends. It’s a 36-part series and social-networking forum, with each episode running about eight minutes.                                   

Writer’s Strike Hinges On Uncertain Economics - Talks will resume after Thanksgiving, but the writers and TV networks still remain far apart on the issue of new media compensation. Writers feel shortchanged because they don’t make a dime from digital downloads or online ad revenue gleaned from the shows they write. However, neither do the studios. While most TV and cable networks sell their shows online or distribute them via ad-supported services or on their own sites, they do so at a loss. Both parties are trying to protect their future: Writers want Viacom and Time Warner to eat the cost as part of their overall investment in online media; these media giants have shareholders to answer to.                          

Strike May Give New Writers Opportunities - There are a couple of things writers should keep in mind as they continue to strike for their share of new media revenues. Some studies say that online media content is accelerating America’s ever-expanding appetite for TV. The battle for audiences, whether online or on the television, isn’t exactly a “zero-sum” game. The Web is still a long way away from replacing the traditional television set.

Google’s Expensive Mobile Ambition - Does it make any financial sense for Google to move in the mobile wireless industry? Financial analysts have expressed reservations about the search giant moving into the complicated and expensive wireless world. It shouldn’t come as a shock that Google will participate in the FCC’s wireless spectrum auction in January; after all, the company’s participation is tied to the FCC’s agreement to “open” a portion of the spectrum per Google’s request.

Online Videos Attract Broad Audience - Almost half of the U.S. population watches as least one online video per month, according to a new study of online video viewing habits. “One of the most notable things we found is the broad range of users,” says Michael Vorhaus, senior vice president and managing director at Magid Associates. “This is not any sort of niche behavior.”                        

Comcast Sued for Impeding Web Traffic To Peer-to-Peer Networks - Jon Hart claimed that Comcast impeded his visits to peer-to-peer sites like BitTorrent by slowing down service to those sites. Hart, who seeks class-action status, alleges that the delays happened after he upgraded to an ultra-high-speed Internet access plan specifically to access such sites. He accuses Comcast of breach of contract, among other claims.                 

Word-of-Mouth Marketing On The Upswing - Word-of-mouth marketing is expected to surpass $1 billion in 2007, making it one of the fastest-growing alternative media formats. In a new research report, PQ Media also predicts that spending on word-of-mouth marketing will grow at an annual rate of 30.4% and hit $3.7 billion by 2011. Helping drive the growth of WoM marketing are Web 2.0 technologies such as social networks, blogs that allow consumers to share information and opinions about brands and products.                                           

Google Bids On Wireless Spectrum - Hot on the heels of Google’s Android announcement (commonly referred to as the “Gphone”), G’s next move will be to bid on open wireless spectrum set to be auctioned off by the FCC in January. The move is a logical step forward for a company whose mobile future depends on scale. Google’s wireless network would free consumers from the exclusive contracts binding them to certain handsets on certain mobile networks. Having its own network would also give the search giant leverage in negotiating deals to let its software run on rival carriers’ networks.                       

Microsoft Unveils Bold Expansion Goals - Microsoft’s Kevin Johnson, president of platforms and services, was in a bullish mood yesterday as he outlined the company’s Web advertising goals for the next three to five years. In something called the “10, 20, 30, 40″ plan, Microsoft aims to increase its share in Web search, page views, time spent per user and percentage of ad dollars. The software giant currently trails Google and/or Yahoo in each of these categories.                        

Microsoft Needs Yahoo To Achieve Goals - Microsoft’s so-called “10, 20, 30, 40″ plan may have left you scratching your head in disbelief-and for good reason: a 30 percent search share and a 40 percent Web advertising share sound like impossible goals for the next three-to-five years considering where the company is today. Sure, the $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive will help boost Web revenues, but not to such an extreme extent.                      

New Investment Fund Launched By Ex-AOL/IAC Execs - Yes, we need another investment/advisory fund for digital media…desperately. With every ex-AOLer on the advisory board. Snark aside, a new investment fund in digital media has been started by Julius Genachowski, former chief of business operations at IAC; Sean Greene, founder of The Away Network; and former AOL (NYSE: TWX) CTO John McKinley. It is called LaunchBox Digital, and operates like an incubator-with-advisors (FirstRound Capital, YCombinator, etc).                    

AOL acquires question-and-answer service Yedda - Time Warner unit AOL announced early Monday morning that it has acquired Yedda, a question-and-answer start-up that was founded in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 2006. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition, according to a release from AOL, was all about Yedda’s code: the patent-pending semantic technology “automatically matches questions to other related questions and topics, while selecting the best available users to answer the question.” Yedda-powered features are set to begin appearing on AOL’s sites over the next few months.                                       

WhiteFence Acquires GetConnected - WhiteFence, a Houston, Texas-based online comparison shopping site for residential home services, has acquired the IP rights and domain name of GetConnected Inc., a Boston-based operator of an ecommerce and integration platform service for merchants like Best Buy, AOL, Circuit City and Radio Shack. No financial terms were disclosed. WhiteFence has raised around $29 million in VC funding from firms like Adams Street Partners and Internet Capital Group, while GetConnected had raised around $25 million from Vantage Partners, VantagePoint Venture Partners, Atlas Venture and Asset Management Company Venture Capital.                     

Zustek Buys Adverb Media - Zustek Corp., an email marketing company recently acquired by Investcorp Technology Partners, has acquired Adverb Media, an interactive marketing, technology and services company. No financial terms were disclosed. The combined company will be known as Zeta Interactive.                       

Technology Crossover Ventures has invested $55 million in financial media company TheStreet.com - TheStreet.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: TSCM), a leading financial media company, today announced that Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), a leading provider of growth capital to late-stage private and public companies, has agreed to purchase a minority stake in TheStreet.com to support the Company’s accelerated expansion strategy. The investment of $55 million represents the purchase of preferred stock and warrants to purchase shares of common stock. The preferred stock converts into common stock at $14.26 per share. The five-year warrants permit TCV to purchase approximately 1.1 million shares of common stock at an exercise price of $15.686, or a premium of 10%.                       

MediaNews and Hearst Buy Majority in Classifieds Site Kaango For $20 Million - This was buried in newspaper conglom MediaNews‘s 10-Q filed earlier today with SEC: the newspaper group, along with The Hearst Corp., has bought 80 percent of online classifieds and software firm Kaango, for about $20 million. Kaango will be held by a newly formed LLC, which is 50 percent owned by each of the two. The remaining 20 percent of Kaango is owned by its founders and is subject to a call option and is expected to be purchased in the future, the company said.                            

Answers.com Extends Deadline For Lexico Acquisition by 48 Days; Ups Reimbursement if Deal Fails - Another sign that Answers.com (NSDQ: ANSW) may not be able to complete its $100 million acquisition of Lexico (parent of Dictionary.com) … in a filing with the SEC this morning, the company said that it has extended the original 180-day deadline (from July 13, 2007) by 48 days, to 228. In return for the longer wait, Lexico will get a $500,000 reimbursement if the deal falls through, up from the previously agreed $400,000.                 

Online Live Music Firm Control Room Sells Stake To PE Firm Intermedia - Online live music firm ControlRoom, which handled the big Live Earth series of concerts earlier this summer, has received investment from PE firm Intermedia. The NYC-based firm will use the money to expand its programming content beyond music and widen its distribution channels, it said. The PE firm is run by Leo Hindery, who previously ran the Yes Network, reports Reuters.